Aristophanes

“ LEADER OF THE CHORUS: But how would a man fail to be recognized amongst women?
CLISTHENES: Euripides singed and depilated him and disguised him as a woman.
MNESILOCHUS: This is pure invention! What man is fool enough to let himself be depilated? As for myself, I don't believe a word of it.
CLISTHENES: Nonsense! I should not have come here to tell you, if I did not know it on indisputable authority.
LEADER OF THE CHORUS: Great gods! what is it you tell us! Come, women, let us not lose a moment; let us search and rummage everywhere! Where can this man have hidden himself escape our notice? ”

“ MNESILOCHUS (aside) : Then you make love horse-fashion [13] when you are composing a Phaedra.
AGATHON: If the heroes are men, everything in him will be manly. What we don't possess by nature, we must acquire by imitation.
MNESILOCHUS: When you are staging Satyrs, call me; I will do my best to help you from behind, if I can get my tool up.
AGATHON: Besides, it is bad taste for a poet to be coarse and hairy. Look at the famous Ibycus, at Anacreon of Teos, and at Alcaeus, [14] who handled music so well; they wore headbands and found pleasure in the lascivious dances of Ionia. ”

“ To AGATHON
And you yourself, who are you? Do you pretend to be a man? Where is your penis, pray? Where is the cloak, the footgear that belong to that sex? Are you a woman? Then where are your breasts? Answer me. But you keep silent. Oh! just as you choose; your songs display your character quite sufficiently.
AGATHON: Old man, old man, I hear the shafts of jealousy whistling by my ears, but they do not hit me. My dress is in harmony with my thoughts. A poet must adopt the nature of his characters. Thus, if he is placing women on the stage, he must contract all their habits in his own person. ”

“ AGATHON: Euripides!
EURIPIDES: Well?
AGATHON: Have you not said in one of your pieces, "You love to see the light, and don't you believe your father loves it too?" [18]
EURIPIDES: Yes.
AGATHON: Then never you think I am going to expose myself in your stead; it would be madness. It's up to you to submit to the fate that overtakes you; one must not try to trick misfortune, but resign oneself to it with good grace.
MNESILOCHUS: This is why you, you fairy, offer your posterior with a good grace to lovers, not in words, but in actual fact. ”

“ Yes! we must have striking vengeance on the insults of Euripides.
MNESILOCHUS: Oh, women! I am not astonished at these outbursts of fiery rage; how could your bile not get inflamed against Euripides, who has spoken so ill of you? As for myself, I hate the man, I swear it by my children; it would be madness not to hate him! Yet, let us reflect a little; we are alone and our words will not be repeated outside. Why be so bent on his ruin? Because he has known and shown up two or three of our faults, when we have a thousand? ”

“ But I have long been pained to see us women insulted by this Euripides, this son of the green-stuff woman, [36] who loads us with every kind of indignity. Has he not hit us enough, calumniated us sufficiently, wherever there are spectators, tragedians, and a chorus? Does he not style us adulterous, lecherous, bibulous, treacherous, and garrulous? Does he not repeat that we are all vice, that we are the curse of our husbands? So that, directly they come back from the theatre, they look at us doubtfully and go searching every nook, fearing there may be some hidden lover. ”

“ MNESILOCHUS: Archer, I adjure you.
SCYTHIAN: 'Tis labour lost.
MNESILOCHUS: Loosen the wedge a little. [95]
SCYTHIAN: Aye, certainly.
MNESILOCHUS: Oh! by the gods! why, you are driving it in tighter.
SCYTHIAN: Is that enough?
MNESILOCHUS: Oh! Oh! Ow! Ow! May the plague take you!
SCYTHIAN: Silence! you cursed old wretch! I am going to get a mat to lie upon, so as to watch you close at hand at my ease.
MNESILOCHUS: Ah! what exquisite pleasures Euripides is securing for me! But, oh, ye gods! oh, Zeus the Deliverer, all is not yet lost! I don't believe him the man to break his word ”

“ SCYTHIAN: Artemuxia. [103] Good!
EURIPIDES (aside) : Hermes, god of cunning, receive my thanks! everything is turning out for the best. (To the Scythian.) As for you, friend, take away this girl, quick. (Exit the Scythian with the dancing-girl.) Now let me loose his bonds. (To Mnesilochus.) And you, directly I have released you, take to your legs and run off full tilt to your home to find your wife and children.
MNESILOCHUS: I shall not fail in that as soon as I am free.
EURIPIDES (releases Mnesilochus) : There! 'Tis done. Come, fly, before the archer lays his hand on you again. ”

“ LEADER OF THE CHORUS: Let us address ourselves to the spectators to sing our praises, despite the fact that each one says much ill of women. If the men are to be believed, we are a plague to them; through us come all their troubles, quarrels, disputes, sedition, griefs and wars. But if we are truly such a pest, why marry us? Why forbid us to go out or show ourselves at the window? You want to keep this pest, and take a thousand cares to do it. If your wife goes out and you meet her away from the house, you fly into a fury. Ought you not rather to rejoice and give thanks to the gods? ”

“ CHORUS (singing) : Look quickly for the traces that might show you a man hidden here, let your glance fall on every side; look well to the right and to the left. If we seize some impious fellow, woe to him! He will know how we punish the outrage, the crime, the sacrilege. ”

“ Mighty divinity, oh, Demeter, and thou, Persephone, grant that I may be able to offer you many sacrifices; above all things, grant that I may not be recognized. Would that my well-holed daughter might marry a man as rich as he is foolish and silly, so that she may have nothing to do but amuse herself. But where can a place be found for hearing well? Be off, Thratta, be off; slaves have no right to be present at this gathering. ”

“ The criminal will then acknowledge at last that gods exist; his fate will teach all men that the deities must be revered, that justice must be observed and that they must submit to the sacred laws. If not, then woe to them! Heaven itself will punish sacrilege; being aflame with fury and mad with frenzy, all their deeds will prove to mortals, both men and women, that the deity punishes injustice and impiety, and that she is not slow to strike.
LEADER OF THE CHORUS: But I think I have now searched everywhere and that no other man is hidden among us. ”

“ As CHORUS
I, in my turn, celebrate the everlasting happiness of the chaste Artemis, the mighty daughter of Leto!
As LEADER OF THE CHORUS
... and Leto and the tones of the Asiatic lyre, which wed so well with the dances of the Phrygian Graces. [9]
As CHORUS
I do honour to the divine Leto and to the lyre, the mother of songs of male and noble strains. The eyes of the goddess sparkle while listening to our enthusiastic chants. Honour to the powerful Phoebus! Hail! thou blessed son of Leto!
MNESILOCHUS: Oh! ye venerable Genetyllides, [10] what tender and voluptuous songs! ”

“ The husband goes off full of joy, and the old wretch quickly takes the honey out of the child's mouth, which starts crying; then she seizes the baby, runs to the father and tells him with a smile on her face, "'Tis a lion, a lion, that is born to you; 'tis your very image. Everything about it is like you, even his little tool, which is all twisty like a fir-cone." Are these not our everyday tricks? Why certainly, by Artemis, and we are angry with Euripides, who assuredly treats us no worse than we deserve!
CHORUS (singing) : Great gods! ”

“ MNESILOCHUS (as Helen) : "These shores are those of the Nile with the beautiful nymphs, these waters take the place of heaven's rain and fertilize the white earth, that produces the black syrmea." [81]
SECOND WOMAN: By bright Hecate, you're a cunning varlet.
MNESILOCHUS: "Glorious Sparta is my country and Tyndareus is my father." [82]
SECOND WOMAN: He your father, you rascal! Why, 'tis Phrynondas. [83]
MNESILOCHUS: "I was given the name of Helen." ”

“ Therefore we maintain that men are greatly our inferiors. You see no woman who has robbed the State of fifty talents rushing about the city in a magnificent chariot; our greatest peculations are a measure of corn, which we steal from our husbands, and even then we return it them the very same day. But we could name many amongst you who do quite as much, and who are, even more than ourselves, gluttons, parasites, cheats and kidnappers of slaves. ”

“ Euripides is summoned as a notorious woman-hater and detractor of the female sex to appear for trial and judgment before the women of Athens assembled to celebrate the Thesmophoria, a festival held in honour of the goddesses Demeter and Persephone, from which men were rigidly excluded. The poet is terror-stricken, and endeavours to persuade his confrère, the tragedian Agathon, to attend the meeting in the guise of a woman to plead his cause, Agathon's notorious effeminacy of costume and way of life lending itself to the deception ”

“ Let us unite our voices to the sound of the golden lyre, and may wisdom preside at the gathering of the noble matrons of Athens.
WOMAN HERALD: Address your prayers to the gods and goddesses of Olympus, of Delphi, Delos and all other places; if there be a man who is plotting against the womenfolk or who, to injure them, is proposing peace to Euripides and the Medes, or who aspires to usurping the tyranny, plots the return of a tyrant, or unmasks a supposititious child ”

“ Let us lead off anew, let us double our zeal during our solemn days, and especially let us observe a close fast; let us form fresh measures that keep good time, and may our songs resound to the very heavens. Do thou, oh divine Bacchus, who art crowned with ivy, direct our chorus; 'tis to thee that both my hymns and my dances are dedicated ”

“ My husband died at Cyprus, leaving me five children, whom I had great trouble to bring up by weaving chaplets on the myrtle market. Anyhow, I lived as well as I could until this wretch had persuaded the spectators by his tragedies that there were no gods; since then I have not sold as many chaplets by half. I charge you therefore and exhort you all to punish him, for he does not deserve it in a thousand respects, he who loads you with troubles, who is as coarse toward you as the vegetables upon which his mother reared him? But I must back to the market to weave my chaplets ”

“ And if a childless woman wishes to substitute one, the deceit can no longer be a secret, for the neighbours will insist on being present at her delivery. Formerly the old men married young girls, but they have been so calumniated that none think of them now, thanks to that line of his: "A woman is the tyrant of the old man who marries her." [40] Again, it is because of Euripides that we are incessantly watched, that we are shut up behind bolts and bars, and that dogs are kept to frighten off the adulterers. ”

“ But so far from throwing oil on the troubled waters, Mnesilochus indulges in a long harangue full of violent abuse of the whole sex, and relates some scandalous stories of the naughty ways of peccant wives. The assembly suspects at once there is a man amongst them, and on examination of the old fellow's person, this is proved to be the case. He flies for sanctuary to the altar, snatching a child from the arms of one of the women as a hostage, vowing to kill it if they molest him further. ”

“ But woe to those women who break their oaths, who speculate on the public misfortune, who seek to alter the laws and the decrees, who reveal our secrets to the foe and admit the Medes into our territory so that they may devastate it! I declare them both impious and criminal. Oh! almighty Zeus! see to it that the gods protect us, albeit we are but women!
WOMAN HERALD: Hearken, all of you! this is the decree passed by the Senate of the Women under the presidency of Timoclea and at the suggestion of Sostrate ”

“ We can do nothing as we used to, so many are the false ideas which he had instilled into our husbands. Is a woman weaving a garland for herself? It's because she is in love. [37] Does she let some vase drop while going or returning to the house? her husband asks her in whose honour she has broken it, "It can only be for that Corinthian stranger." ”

“ Would that the blazing shaft of the lightning would wither... this barbarian for me! (pointing to the Scythian archer) for the immortal light has no further charm for my eyes since I have been descending the shortest path to the dead, tied up, strangled, and maddened with pain.
(In the following scene EURIPIDES, from off stage, impersonates Echo.)
EURIPIDES: Hail! beloved girl. As for your father, Cepheus, who has exposed you in this guise, may the gods annihilate him.
MNESILOCHUS (as Andromeda) : And who are you whom my misfortunes have moved to pity? ”

“ There will be a gathering of the people on the morning of the third day of the Thesmophoria, which is a day of rest for us; the principal business there shall be the punishment that it is meet to inflict upon Euripides for the insults with which he has loaded us. ”

“ You must be bewitched to suffer this plague to belch forth insults against us all. Is there no one has any spirit at all? If not, we and our maid-servants will punish her. Run and fetch coals and let's depilate her cunt in proper style, to teach her not to speak ill of her sex.
MNESILOCHUS: Oh no no! not that part of me, my friends. Have we not the right to speak frankly at this gathering? And because I have uttered what I thought right in favour of Euripides, do you want to depilate me for my trouble? ”