Hermes: “I know not if ye e’er again Will see the face of Peace.”
Trygaeus: “Why, where’s she gone to?”
He: “War has immured her in a deep deep pit.”
Tr: “Where?”
He: “Here, beneath our feet. And you may see The heavy stones he piled about its mouth, That none should take her out.”
~ ‘The Peace’ by Aristophanes (Benjamin B. Rogers translation. GB5 - p. 528)
I’m on the 5th play of Aristophanes, and I guess I know the general structure of the plays by now. The plays always start with two servants talking (except ‘The Clouds’, where the two people at the start were a father-son duo). Here, two servants of Trygaeus, a farmer, talk to each other about the difficulty of feeding a giant beetle. Trygaeus has decided to fly to heaven to confront Zeus about the war that has brought about so much destruction to everyone. He has tried different ways but always ended up crashing down. He finally buys a giant beetle, and when his daughters ask him why not Pegasus, he says, as per Aesop’s fables, a beetle went to the heavens to take revenge on an eagle. He hops on and flies away.
“It is the only living thing with wings, So Aesop says, that ever reached the Gods.”