Aristophanes

“ O Iacchus! Morning Star that shinest nightly. Lo, the mead is blazing brightly, Age forgets its years and sadness, Aged knees curvet for gladness, Lift thy flashing torches o'er us, Marshal all thy blameless train, Lead, O lead the way before us; lead the lovely youthful Chorus To the marshy flowery plain. (The warning-off of the profane.) All evil thoughts and profane be still: far hence, far hence from our choirs depart, Who knows not well what the Mystics tell, or is not holy and pure of heart; Who ne'er has the noble revelry learned, or danced the dance of the Muses high ”

“ Pick up the traps, my lad, and follow me. DIO. Hi! stop! you're not in earnest, just because I dressed you up, in fun, as Heracles? Come, don't keep fooling, Xanthias, but lift And carry in the traps yourself. XAN. Why! what! You are never going to strip me of these togs You gave me! DIO. Going to? No, I'm doing it now. Off with that lion-skin. XAN. Bear witness all The gods shall judge between us. DIO. Gods indeed! Why how could you (the vain and foolish thought!) A slave, a mortal, act Alcmena's son? ”

“ DIO. Aye, but he's speaking to the dead, you knave, Who cannot hear us though we call them thrice. AESCH. And how do you make your prologues? EUR. You shall hear; And if you find one single thing said twice, Or any useless padding, spit upon me. DIO. Well, fire away: I'm all agog to hear Your very accurate and faultless prologues. EUR. A happy man was Oedipus at first— AESCH. Not so, by Zeus; a most unhappy man. Who, not yet born nor yet conceived, Apollo Foretold would be his father's murderer. How could he be a happy man at first. EUR. Then he became the wretchedest of men. ”

“ And you, my poor Euripides, begone If you are wise, out of this pitiless hail, Lest with some heady word he crack your scull And batter out your brain-less Telephus. And not with passion. Aeschylus, but calmly Test and be tested. 'Tis not meet for poets To scold each other, like two baking-girls. But you go roaring like an oak on fire. EUR. I'm ready, I! I don't draw back one bit. I'll lash or, if he will, let him lash first The talk, the lays, the sinews of a play: Aye and my Peleus, aye and Aeolus, And Meleager, aye and Telephus. ”

“ Each has got a venturesome will, Each an eager and nimble mind; One will wield, with artistic skill, Clearcut phrases, and wit refined; Then the other, with words defiant, Stern and strong, like an angry giant Laying on with uprooted trees, Soon will scatter a world of these Superscholastic subtleties. DIO. Now then, commence your arguments, and mind you both display True wit, not metaphors, nor things which any fool could say. ”

“ HER. A man? DIO. Ah! ah! HER. Was it for Cleisthenes? DIO. Don't mock me, brother; on my life I am In a bad way: such fierce desire consumes me. HER. Aye, little brother? how? DIO. I can't describe it. But yet I'll tell you in a riddling way. Have you e'er felt a sudden lust for soup? HER. Soup! Zeus-a-mercy, yes, ten thousand times. DIO. Is the thing clear, or must I speak again? HER. Not of the soup: I'm clear about the soup. DIO. Well, just that sort of pang devours my heart For lost Euripides. HER. A dead man too. DIO. And no one shall persuade me not to go after the man. ”

“ AESCH. From noblest source for noblest ends I brought them, Unwilling in the Muses' holy field The self-same flowers as Phrynichus to cull. But he from all things rotten draws his lays, From Carian flutings, catches of Meletus, Dance-music, dirges. You shall hear directly. Bring me the lyre. Yet wherefore need a lyre For songs like these? Where's she that bangs and jangles Her castanets? Euripides's Muse, Present yourself: fit goddess for fit verse. DIO. The Muse herself can't be a wanton? No! ”

“ I tell you when I see Their plays, and hear those jokes, I come away More than a twelvemonth older than I went. XAN. O thrice unlucky neck of mine, which now Is getting crushed, yet must not crack its joke! DIO. Now is not this fine pampered insolence When I myself, Dionysus, son of—Pipkin, Toil on afoot, and let this fellow ride, Taking no trouble, and no burden bearing? XAN. What, don't I bear? DIO. How can you when you're riding? XAN. Why, I bear these. DIO. How? XAN. Most unwillingly. DIO. Does not the donkey bear the load you're bearing? XAN. Not what I bear myself: by Zeus, not he. ”

“ Zeus, as by Truth's own voice the tale is told, DIO. No, he'll cut in with "Lost his bottle of oil!" Those bottles of oil on all your prologues seem To gather and grow, like styes upon the eye. Turn to his melodies now for goodness' sake. EUR. O I can easily show that he's a poor Melody-maker; makes them all alike. CHOR. What, O what will be done! Strange to think that he dare Blame the bard who has won, More than all in our days, Fame and praise for his lays, Lays so many and fair. Much I marvel to hear What the charge he will bring 'Gainst our tragedy king; Yea for himself do I fear. ”

“ Now haste we to the roses, And the meadows full of posies, Now haste we to the meadows In our own old way, In choral dances blending, In dances never ending, Which only for the holy The Destinies array. O happy mystic chorus, The blessed sunshine o'er us On us alone is smiling, In its soft sweet light: On us who strove for ever With holy, pure endeavour, Alike by friend and stranger To guide our steps aright. DIO. What's the right way to knock? I wonder how The natives here are wont to knock at doors. XAN. No dawdling: taste the door. You've got, remember, The lion-hide and pride of Heracles. ”

“ CHOR. This is the part of a dexterous clever Man with his wits about him ever, One who has travelled the world to see; Always to shift, and to keep through all Close to the sunny side of the wall; Not like a pictured block to be, Standing always in one position; Nay but to veer, with expedition, And ever to catch the favouring breeze, This is the part of a shrewd tactician, This is to be a—THERAMENES! DIO. Truly an exquisite joke 'twould be, Him with a dancing girl to see, Lolling at ease on Milesian rugs; Me, like a slave, beside him standing, Aught that he wants to his lordship handing ”

“ The knave who tries to procure supplies for the use of the enemy's armaments; The Cyclian singer who dares befoul the Lady Hecate's wayside shrine; The public speaker who once lampooned in our Bacchic feast, would, with heart malign, Keep nibbling away the Comedians' pay;—to these I utter my warning cry, I charge them once, I charge them twice, I charge them thrice, that they draw not nigh To the sacred dance of the Mystic choir. ”

“ AEAC. That's Aeschylus and Euripides. XAN. Eh? AEAC. Wonderful, wonderful things are going on. The dead are rioting, taking different sides. XAN. Why, what's the matter? AEAC. There's a custom here With all the crafts, the good and noble crafts, That the chief master of his art in each Shall have his dinner in the assembly hall, And sit by Pluto's side. XAN. I understand. AEAC. Until another comes, more wise than he In the same art: then must the first give way. XAN. And how has this disturbed our Aeschylus? AEAC. 'Twas he that occupied the tragic chair, As, in his craft, the noblest. ”

“ HER. But have you not a shoal of little songsters, Tragedians by the myriad, who can chatter A furlong faster than Euripides? DIO. Those be mere vintage-leavings, jabberers, choirs Of swallow-broods, degraders of their art, Who get one chorus, and are seen no more, The Muses' love once gained. But O my friend, Search where you will, you'll never find a true Creative genius, uttering startling things. HER. Creative? ”

“ Even so, our sterling townsmen, nobly born and nobly bred, Men of worth and rank and metal, men of honourable fame, Trained in every liberal science, choral dance and manly game, These we treat with scorn and insult, but the strangers newliest come, Worthless sons of worthless fathers, pinchbeck townsmen, yellowy scum, Whom in earlier days the city hardly would have stooped to use Even for her scapegoat victims, these for every task we choose. ”

“ XAN. Is it bricks they are making? AEAC. Wedges and compasses: for Euripides Vows that he'll test the dramas, word by word. XAN. Aeschylus chafes at this, I fancy. AEAC. Well, He lowered his brows, upglaring like a bull. XAN. And who's to be the judge? AEAC. There came the rub. Skilled men were hard to find: for with the Athenians Aeschylus, somehow, did not hit it off. XAN. Too many burglars, I expect, he thought. AEAC. And all the rest, he said, were trash and nonsense To judge poetic wits. So then at last They chose your lord, an expert in the art. ”

“ She loves, and hates, and longs to have him back. But give me your advice about the man. EUR. I loathe a townsman who is slow to aid, And swift to hurt, his town: who ways and means Finds for himself, but finds not for the state. DIO. Poseidon, but that's smart! (To Aesch.) And what say you? AESCH. 'Twere best to rear no lion in the state: But having reared, 'tis best to humour him. DIO. By Zeus the Saviour, still I can't decide. One is so clever, and so clear the other. ”

“ AESCH. When they shall count the enemy's soil their own, And theirs the enemy's: when they know that ships Are their true wealth, their so-called wealth delusion. DIO. Aye, but the justices suck that down, you know. PLUTO. Now then, decide. DIO. I will; and thus I'll do it. I'll choose the man in whom my soul delights. EUR. O, recollect the gods by whom you swore You'd take me home again; and choose your friends. ”

“ And therefore our city is swarming to-day With clerks and with demagogue-monkeys, who play Their jackanape tricks at all times, in all places, Deluding the people of Athens; but none Has training enough in athletics to run With the torch in his hand at the races. DIO. By the Powers, you are right! At the Panathenaea I laughed till I felt like a potsherd to see a Pale, paunchy young gentleman pounding along, With his head butting forward, the last of the throng, In the direst of straits ”

“ CHOR. Blest the man who possesses a Keen intelligent mind. This full often we find. He, the bard of renown, Now to earth reascends, Goes, a joy to his town, Goes, a joy to his friends, Just because he possesses a Keen intelligent mind. RIGHT it is and befitting, Not by Socrates sitting, Idle talk to pursue, Stripping tragedy-art of All things noble and true, Surely the mind to school Fine-drawn quibbles to seek, Fine-set phrases to speak, Is but the part of a fool! ”

“ CHOR. Dread the battle, and stout the combat, mighty and manifold looms the war. Hard to decide in the fight they're waging, One like a stormy tempest raging, One alert in the rally and skirmish, clever to parry and foin and spar. Nay but don't be content to sit Always in one position only: many the fields for your keen-edged wit. ”

“ You're for fighting. Ho! Ditylas, Sceblyas, and Pardocas, Come hither, quick; fight me this sturdy knave. DIO. Now isn't it a shame the man should strike And he a thief besides? AEAC. A monstrous shame! DIO. A regular burning shame! XAN. By the Lord Zeus, If ever I was here before, if ever I stole one hair's-worth from you, let me die! ”

“ O by nature best and wisest, O relax your jealous ire, Let us all the world as kinsfolk and as citizens acquire, All who on our ships will battle well and bravely by our side If we cocker up our city, narrowing her with senseless pride Now when she is rocked and reeling in the cradles of the sea, Here again will after ages deem we acted brainlessly. ”

“ EUR. Bacchus, who, clad in fawnskins, leaps and bounds With torch and thyrsus in the choral dance Along Parnassus. AESCH. Lost his bottle of oil. DIO. Ah me, we are stricken—with that bottle again! EUR. Pooh, pooh, that's nothing. I've a prologue here, He'll never tack his bottle of oil to this: No man is blest in every single thing. One is of noble birth, but lacking means. Another, baseborn, AESCH. Lost his bottle of oil. DIO. Euripides! EUR. Well? DIO. Lower your sails, my boy; This bottle of oil is going to blow a gale. EUR. O, by Demeter, I don't care one bit ”

“ EUR. Persuasion's only shrine is eloquent speech. AESCH. Death loves not gifts, alone amongst the gods DIO. Let go, let go. Down goes his scale again. He threw in Death, the heaviest ill of all. EUR. And I Persuasion, the most lovely word. DIO. A vain and empty sound, devoid of sense. Think of some heavier-weighted line of yours, To drag your scale down: something strong and big. EUR. Where have I got one? ”

“ EUR. Wonderful lays! O yes, you'll see directly. I'll cut down all his metrical strains to one. DIO. And I, I'll take some pebbles, and keep count. (A slight pause, during which the music of a flute is heard. The music continues to the end of line 1277 as an accompaniment to the recitative.) EUR. Lord of Phthia, Achilles, why hearing the voice of the hero-dividing. Hah! smiting! approachest thou not to the rescue? We, by the lake who abide, are adoring our ancestor Hermes. Hah! smiting! approachest thou not to the rescue? DIO. O Aeschylus, twice art thou smitten! ”

“ If, when caught in a bit of a scrape, you Suffer a word of alarm to escape you, Showing yourself but a feckless knave, Then will your master at once undrape you, Then you'll again be the toiling slave. ”

“ He deserves to die. AESCH. For just consider what style of men he received from me, great six-foot-high Heroical souls, who never would blench from a townsman's duties in peace or war; Not idle loafers, or low buffoons, or rascally scamps such as now they are. But men who were breathing spears and helms, and the snow-white plume in its crested pride The greave, and the dart, and the warrior's heart in its seven-fold casing of tough bull-hide. ”