Ugh! I wish the matchmaker had died a horrible death, the woman who talked me into marrying your mother. I had the sweetest life in the country, unwashed, unswept, lying around any old how, teeming with bees and sheep and olive-cakes. Then I, a countryman, married the niece of Megacles son of Megacles, a city girl, grand, spoiled, a real Coesyra.

Strepsiades remembers his bachelor life the way a farmer would: no washing, no sweeping, nothing put away, and everything alive and full, bees, sheep, pressed olives. The words are rough and happy. Then comes the marriage, and the style changes with the bride. She is the niece of Megacles son of Megacles, a name every Athenian knew. The Alcmaeonids were the grandest family in the city and raced chariots for glory, and their men kept being named Megacles, so the name comes twice, like a pedigree read aloud. The last word turns a lady of the same family into a verb: the bride has been "Coesyra-ed" from head to toe. Here, half a line from his debts, is where the horses came from.