The Origin Of The Peloponnesian War Poem Rhyme Scheme and Analysis

Rhyme Scheme: A ABACAD EFAGHIJKL CCACMNAHOPQAAARARS AARRAATRALACAAUUVUU WAXAAR

DICAEOPOLISA
-
Be not surprised most excellent spectatorsA
If I that am a beggar have presumedB
To claim an audience upon public mattersA
Even in a comedy for comedyC
Is conversant in all the rules of justiceA
And can distinguish betwixt right and wrongD
-
The words I speak are bold but just and trueE
Cleon at least cannot accuse me nowF
That I defame the city before strangersA
For this is the Lenaean festivalG
And here we meet all by ourselves aloneH
No deputies are arrived as yet with tributeI
No strangers or allies but here we sitJ
A chosen sample clean as sifted cornK
With our own denizens as a kind of chaffL
-
First I detest the Spartans most extremelyC
And wish that Neptune the Taenarian deityC
Would bury them in their houses with his earthquakesA
For I've had losses losses let me tell yeC
Like other people vines cut down and injuredM
But among friends for only friends are hereN
Why should we blame the Spartans for all thisA
For people of ours some people of our ownH
Some people from among us here I meanO
But not the People pray remember thatP
I never said the People but a packQ
Of paltry people mere pretended citizensA
Base counterfeits went laying informationsA
And making a confiscation of the jerkinsA
Imported here from Megara pigs moreoverR
Pumpkins and pecks of salt and ropes of onionsA
Were voted to be merchandise from MegaraR
Denounced and seized and sold upon the spotS
-
Well these might pass as petty local mattersA
But now behold some doughty drunken youthsA
Kidnap and carry away from MegaraR
The courtesan Simaetha Those of MegaraR
In hot retaliation seize a braceA
Of equal strumpets hurried forth perforceA
From Dame Aspasia's house of recreationT
So this was the beginning of the warR
All over Greece owing to these three strumpetsA
For Pericles like an Olympian JoveL
With all his thunder and his thunderboltsA
Began to storm and lighten dreadfullyC
Alarming all the neighborhood of GreeceA
And made decrees drawn up like drinking songsA
In which it was enacted and concludedU
That the Megarians should remain excludedU
From every place where commerce was transactedV
With all their ware like 'old Care' in the balladU
And this decree by land and sea was validU
-
Then the Megarians being all half starvedW
Desired the Spartans to desire of usA
Just to repeal those laws the laws I mentionedX
Occasioned by the stealing of those strumpetsA
And so they begged and prayed us several timesA
And we refused and so they went to warR

Aristophanes



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