housed like the gods, for we shall erect gables[6] over your dwellings;
if you hold some public post and want to do a little pilfering,
we will give you the sharp claws of a hawk. Are you dining in town,
we will provide you with crops.[7] But, if your award is against us,
don't fail to have metal covers fashioned for yourselves, like those
they place over statues;[8] else, look out! for the day you wear
a white tunic all the birds will soil it with their droppings.

f[1] A disciple of Democrites; he passed over from superstition
to atheism. The injustice and perversity of mankind led him to deny
the existence of the gods, to lay bare the mysteries and to break
the idols. The Athenians had put a price on his head, so he left Greece
and perished soon afterwards in a storm at sea.
f[2] By this jest Aristophanes means to imply that tyranny is dead, and
that no one aspires to despotic power, though this silly accusation
was constantly being raised by the demagogues and always favourably
received by the populace.
f[3] A poulterer. --Strouthian, used in joke to designate him, as if
from the name of his 'deme,' is derived from [the Greek for] 'a sparrow.'
The birds' foe is thus grotesquely furnished with an ornithological
surname.
f[4] From Aphrodite (Venus), to whom he had awarded the apple, prize
of beauty, in the contest of the "goddesses three."
f[5] Laurium was an Athenian deme at the extremity of the Attic
peninsula containing valuable silver mines, the revenues of which
were largely employed in the maintenance of the fleet and payment
of the crews. The "owls of Laurium," of course, mean pieces of money;
the Athenian coinage was stamped with a representation of an owl,
the bird of Athene.
f[6] A pun, impossible to keep in English, on the two meanings