Oh, ugh! Lord Zeus, how long the nights are! Endless! Will day never come? And I heard the rooster ages ago. And the slaves are snoring. They would not have dared, in the old days.

The play opens on a groan, iou iou, the noise a man makes when he has been lying awake too long. Strepsiades talks to Zeus the way anyone talks to the ceiling at four in the morning: the night is a chrêma, a "thing", a great shapeless stretch of it. He has already heard the rooster and still the day will not come. The last line carries the first grievance. His slaves sleep through it all, which in the old days they would never have dared. Strepsiades cannot even get his own household up in the morning. His son and his money come next.