Chapter 9
HERALD. Come quickly to the feast and bring your basket and your cup; 'tis the priest of Bacchus who invites you. But hasten, the guests have been waiting for you a long while. All is ready--couches, tables, cushions, chaplets, perfumes, dainties and courtesans to boot; biscuits, cakes, sesamé-bread, tarts, and--lovely dancing women, the sweetest charm of the festivity. But come with all haste.
LAMACHUS. Oh! hostile gods!
DICAEOPOLIS. This is not astounding; you have chosen this huge, great ugly Gorgon's head for your patron. You, shut the door, and let someone get ready the meal.
LAMACHUS. Slave! slave! my knapsack!
DICAEOPOLIS. Slave! slave! a basket!
LAMACHUS. Take salt and thyme, slave, and don't forget the onions.
DICAEOPOLIS. Get some fish for me; I cannot bear onions.
LAMACHUS. Slave, wrap me up a little stale salt meat in a fig-leaf.
DICAEOPOLIS. And for me some good greasy tripe in a fig-leaf; I will have it cooked here.
LAMACHUS. Bring me the plumes for my helmet.
DICAEOPOLIS. Bring me wild pigeons and thrushes.
LAMACHUS. How white and beautiful are these ostrich feathers!
DICAEOPOLIS. How fat and well browned is the flesh of this wood-pigeon!
LAMACHUS. Bring me the case for my triple plume.
DICAEOPOLIS. Pass me over that dish of hare.
LAMACHUS. _Oh!_ the moths have eaten the hair of my crest!
DICAEOPOLIS. I shall always eat hare before dinner.
LAMACHUS. Hi! friend! try not to scoff at my armour.
DICAEOPOLIS. Hi! friend! will you kindly not stare at my thrushes.
LAMACHUS. Hi! friend! will you kindly not address me.
DICAEOPOLIS. I do not address you; I am scolding my slave. Shall we wager and submit the matter to Lamachus, which of the two is the best to eat, a locust or a thrush?
LAMACHUS. Insolent hound!
DICAEOPOLIS. He much prefers the locusts.
LAMACHUS. Slave, unhook my spear and bring it to me.
DICAEOPOLIS. Slave, slave, take the sausage from the fire and bring it to me.
LAMACHUS. Come, let me draw my spear from its sheath. Hold it, slave, hold it tight.
DICAEOPOLIS. And you, slave, grip, grip well hold of the skewer.
LAMACHUS. Slave, the bracings for my shield.
DICAEOPOLIS. Pull the loaves out of the oven and bring me these bracings of my stomach.
LAMACHUS. My round buckler with the Gorgon's head.
DICAEOPOLIS. My round cheese-cake.
LAMACHUS. What clumsy wit!
DICAEOPOLIS. What delicious cheese-cake!
LAMACHUS. Pour oil on the buckler. Hah! hah! I can see an old man who will be accused of cowardice.
DICAEOPOLIS. Pour honey on the cake. Hah! hah! I can see an old man who makes Lamachus of the Gorgon's head weep with rage.
LAMACHUS. Slave, full war armour.
DICAEOPOLIS. Slave, my beaker; that is _my_ armour.
LAMACHUS. With this I hold my ground with any foe.
DICAEOPOLIS. And I with this with any tosspot.
LAMACHUS. Fasten the strappings to the buckler; personally I shall carry the knapsack.
DICAEOPOLIS. Pack the dinner well into the basket; personally I shall carry the cloak.
LAMACHUS. Slave, take up the buckler and let's be off. It is snowing! Ah! 'tis a question of facing the winter.
DICAEOPOLIS. Take up the basket, 'tis a question of getting to the feast.
CHORUS. We wish you both joy on your journeys, which differ so much. One goes to mount guard and freeze, while the other will drink, crowned with flowers, and then sleep with a young beauty, who will rub his tool for him.
I say it freely; may Zeus confound Antimachus, the poet-historian, the son of Psacas! When Choregus at the Lenaea, alas! alas! he dismissed me dinnerless. May I see him devouring with his eyes a cuttle-fish, just served, well cooked, hot and properly salted; and the moment that he stretches his hand to help himself, may a dog seize it and run off with it. Such is my first wish. I also hope for him a misfortune at night. That returning all-fevered from horse practice, he may meet an Orestes,[259] mad with drink, who breaks open his head; that wishing to seize a stone, he, in the dark, may pick up a fresh stool, hurl his missile, miss aim and hit Cratinus.[260]
SLAVE OF LAMACHUS. Slaves of Lamachus! Water, water in a little pot! Make it warm, get ready cloths, cerate, greasy wool and bandages for his ankle. In leaping a ditch, the master has hurt himself against a stake; he has dislocated and twisted his ankle, broken his head by falling on a stone, while his Gorgon shot far away from his buckler. His mighty braggadocio plume rolled on the ground; at this sight he uttered these doleful words, "Radiant star, I gaze on thee for the last time; my eyes close to all light, I die." Having said this, he falls into the water, gets out again, meets some runaways and pursues the robbers with his spear at their backsides.[261] But here he comes, himself. Get the door open.
LAMACHUS. Oh! heavens! oh! heavens! What cruel pain! I faint, I tremble! Alas! I die! the foe's lance has struck me! But what would hurt me most would be for Dicaeopolis to see me wounded thus and laugh at my ill-fortune.
DICAEOPOLIS (_enters with two courtesans_). Oh! my gods! what bosoms! Hard as a quince! Come, my treasures, give me voluptuous kisses! Glue your lips to mine. Haha! I was the first to empty my cup.
LAMACHUS. Oh! cruel fate! how I suffer! accursed wounds!
DICAEOPOLIS. Hah! hah! hail! Knight Lamachus! (_Embraces Lamachus._)
LAMACHUS. By the hostile gods! _(Bites Dicaeopolis.)_
DICAEOPOLIS. Ah! great gods!
LAMACHUS. Why do you embrace me?
DICAEOPOLIS. And why do you bite me?
LAMACHUS. 'Twas a cruel score I was paying back!
DICAEOPOLIS. Scores are not evened at the feast of Cups!
LAMACHUS. Oh! Paean, Paean!
DICAEOPOLIS. But to-day is not the feast of Paean.
LAMACHUS. Oh! support my leg, do; ah! hold it tenderly, my friends!
DICAEOPOLIS. And you, my darlings, take hold of my tool both of you!
LAMACHUS. This blow with the stone makes me dizzy; my sight grows dim.
DICAEOPOLIS. For myself, I want to get to bed; I am bursting with lustfulness, I want to be fucking in the dark.
LAMACHUS. Carry me to the surgeon Pittalus.
DICAEOPOLIS. Take me to the judges. Where is the king of the feast? The wine-skin is mine!
LAMACHUS. That spear has pierced my bones; what torture I endure!
DICAEOPOLIS. You see this empty cup! I triumph! I triumph!
CHORUS. Old man, I come at your bidding! You triumph! you triumph!
DICAEOPOLIS. Again I have brimmed my cup with unmixed wine and drained it at a draught!
CHORUS. You triumph then, brave champion; thine is the wine-skin!
DICAEOPOLIS. Follow me, singing "Triumph! Triumph!"
CHORUS. Aye! we will sing of thee, thee and thy sacred wine-skin, and we all, as we follow thee, will repeat in thine honour, "Triumph, Triumph!"
* * * * *
FINIS OF "THE ACHARNIANS"
* * * * *
Footnotes:
[147] A name invented by Aristophanes and signifying 'a just citizen.'
[148] Cleon had received five talents from the islanders subject to Athens, on condition that he should get the tribute payable by them reduced; when informed of this transaction, the Knights compelled him to return the money.
[149] A hemistich borrowed from Euripides' 'Telephus.'
[150] The tragedies of Aeschylus continued to be played even after the poet's death, which occurred in 436 B.C., ten years before the production of the Acharnians.
[151] A tragic poet, whose pieces were so devoid of warmth and life that he was nicknamed [Greek: chi_on], i.e. _snow_.
[152] A bad musician, frequently ridiculed by Aristophanes; he played both the lyre and the flute.
[153] A lively and elevated method.
[154] A hill near the Acropolis, where the Assemblies were held.
[155] Several means were used to force citizens to attend the assemblies; the shops were closed; circulation was only permitted in those streets which led to the Pnyx; finally, a rope covered with vermilion was drawn round those who dallied in the Agora (the marketplace), and the late-comers, ear-marked by the imprint of the rope, were fined.
[156] Magistrates who, with the Archons and the Epistatae, shared the care of holding and directing the assemblies of the people; they were fifty in number.
[157] The Peloponnesian War had already, at the date of the representation of the 'Acharnians,' lasted five years, 431-426 B.C.; driven from their lands by the successive Lacedaemonian invasions, the people throughout the country had been compelled to seek shelter behind the walls of Athens.
[158] Shortly before the meeting of the Assembly, a number of young pigs were immolated and a few drops of their blood were sprinkled on the seats of the Prytanes; this sacrifice was in honour of Ceres.
[159] The name, Amphitheus, contains the word, [Greek: Theos], _god_.
[160] Amongst other duties, it was the office of the Prytanes to look after the wants of the poor.
[161] The summer residence of the Great King.
[162] Referring to the hardships he had endured garrisoning the walls of Athens during the Lacedaemonian invasions early in the War.
[163] Cranaus, the second king of Athens, the successor of Cecrops.
[164] Lucian, in his 'Hermotimus,' speaks of these golden mountains as an apocryphal land of wonders and prodigies.
[165] Cleonymus was an Athenian general of exceptionally tall stature; Aristophanes incessantly rallies him for his cowardice; he had cast away his buckler in a fight.
[166] A name borne by certain officials of the King of Persia. The actor of this part wore a mask, fitted with a single eye of great size.
[167] Jargon, no doubt meaningless in all languages.
[168] The Persians styled all Greeks 'Ionians' without distinction; here the Athenians are intended.
[169] A Greek measure, containing about six modii.
[170] Noted for his extreme ugliness and his obscenity. Aristophanes frequently holds him to scorn in his comedies.
[171] Ambassadors were entertained there at the public expense.
[172] King of Thrace.
[173] The tragic poet.
[174] A feast lasting three days and celebrated during the month Pyanepsion (November). The Greek word contains the suggestion of fraud ([Greek: apat_e]).
[175] A Thracian tribe from the right bank of the Strymon.
[176] The Boeotians were the allies of Sparta.
[177] Dicaeopolis had brought a clove of garlic with him to eat during the Assembly.
[178] Garlic was given to game-cocks, before setting them at each other, to give them pluck for the fight.
[179] At the least unfavourable omen, the sitting of the Assembly was declared at an end.
[180] The deme of Acharnae was largely inhabited by charcoal-burners, who supplied the city with fuel.
[181] He presents them in the form of wines contained in three separate skins.
[182] Meaning, preparations for war.
[183] Meaning, securing allies for the continuance of the war.
[184] When Athens sent forth an army, the soldiers were usually ordered to assemble at some particular spot with provisions for three days.
[185] These feasts were also called the Anthesteria or Lenaea; the Lenaeum was a temple to Bacchus, erected outside the city. They took place during the month Anthesterion (February).
[186] A celebrated athlete from Croton and a victor at Olympia; he was equally good as a runner and at the 'five exercises' ([Greek: pentathlon.]).
[187] He had been Archon at the time of the battle of Marathon.
[188] A sacred formula, pronounced by the priest before offering the sacrifice ([Greek: kan_ephoria]).
[189] The maiden who carried the basket filled with fruits at the Dionysia in honour of Bacchus.
[190] The emblem of the fecundity of nature; it consisted of a representation, generally grotesquely exaggerated, of the male genital organs; the phallophori crowned with violets and ivy and their faces shaded with green foliage, sang improvised airs, called 'Phallics,' full of obscenity and suggestive 'double entendres.'
[191] The most propitious moment for Love's gambols, observes the scholiast.
[192] Married women did not join in the processions.
[193] The god of generation, worshipped in the form of a phallus.
[194] A remark, which fixes the date of the production of the 'Acharnians,' viz. the sixth year of the Peloponnesian War, 426 B.C.
[195] Lamachus was an Athenian general, who figures later in this comedy.
[196] At the rural Dionysia a pot of kitchen vegetables was borne in the procession along with other emblems.
[197] Cleon the Demagogue was a currier originally by trade. He was the sworn foe and particular detestation of the Knights or aristocratic party generally.
[198] That is, the baskets of charcoal.
[199] The stage of the Greek theatre was much broader, and at the same time shallower, than in a modern playhouse.
[200] A mountain in Attica, in the neighbourhood of Acharnae.
[201] Orators in the pay of the enemy.
[202] Satire on the Athenians' addiction to lawsuits.
[203] 'The Babylonians.' Cleon had denounced Aristophanes to the senate for having scoffed at Athens before strangers, many of whom were present at the performance. The play is now lost.
[204] A tragic poet; we know next to nothing of him or his works.
[205] Son of Aeolus, renowned in fable for his robberies, and for the tortures to which he was put by Pluto. He was cunning enough to break loose out of hell, but Hermes brought him back again.
[206] This whole scene is directed at Euripides; Aristophanes ridicules the subtleties of his poetry and the trickeries of his staging, which, according to him, he only used to attract the less refined among his audience.
[207] "Wheeled out"--that is, by means of the [Greek: ekkukl_ema], a mechanical contrivance of the Greek stage, by which an interior was shown, the set scene with performers, etc., all complete, being in some way, which cannot be clearly made out from the descriptions, swung out or wheeled out on to the main stage.
[208] Having been lamed, it is of course implied, by tumbling from the lofty apparatus on which the Author sat perched to write his tragedies.
[209] Euripides delighted, or was supposed by his critic Aristophanes to delight, in the representation of misery and wretchedness on the stage. 'Aeneus,' 'Phoenix,' 'Philoctetes,' 'Bellerophon,' 'Telephus,' 'Ino' are titles of six tragedies of his in this _genre_ of which fragments are extant.
[210] Line borrowed from Euripides. A great number of verses are similarly parodied in this scene.
[211] Report said that Euripides' mother had sold vegetables on the market.
[212] Aristophanes means, of course, to imply that the whole talent of Euripides lay in these petty details of stage property.
[213] 'The Babylonians' had been produced at a time of year when Athens was crowded with strangers; 'The Acharnians,' on the contrary, was played in December.
[214] Sparta had been menaced with an earthquake in 427 B.C. Posidon was 'The Earthshaker,' god of earthquakes, as well as of the sea.
[215] A song by Timocreon the Rhodian, the words of which were practically identical with Pericles' decree.
[216] A small and insignificant island, one of the Cyclades, allied with the Athenians, like most of these islands previous to and during the first part of the Peloponnesian War.
[217] A figure of Medusa's head, forming the centre of Lamachus' shield.
[218] Indicates the character of his election, which was arranged, so Aristophanes implies, by his partisans.
[219] Towns in Sicily. There is a pun on the name Gela--[Greek: Gela] and [Greek: Katagela] (ridiculous)--which it is impossible to keep in English. Apparently the Athenians had sent embassies to all parts of the Greek world to arrange treaties of alliance in view of the struggle with the Lacedaemonians; but only young debauchees of aristocratic connections had been chosen as envoys.
[220] A contemporary orator apparently, otherwise unknown.
[221] The _parabasis_ in the Old Comedy was a sort of address or topical harangue addressed directly by the poet, speaking by the Chorus, to the audience. It was nearly always political in bearing, and the subject of the particular piece was for the time being set aside altogether.
[222] It will be remembered that Aristophanes owned land in Aegina.
[223] Everything was made the object of a law-suit at Athens. The old soldiers, inexpert at speaking, often lost the day.
[224] A water-clock used to limit the length of speeches in the courts.
[225] A braggart speaker, fiery and pugnacious.
[226] Cephisodemus was an Athenian, but through his mother possessed Scythian blood.
[227] The city of Athens was policed by Scythian archers.
[228] Alcibiades.
[229] The leather market was held at Lepros, outside the city.
[230] Meaning an informer ([Greek: phain_o], to denounce).
[231] According to the Athenian custom.
[232] Megara was allied to Sparta and suffered during the war more than any other city, because of its proximity to Athens.
[233]: Throughout this whole scene there is an obscene play upon the word [Greek: choiros], which means in Greek both 'sow' and 'a woman's organs of generation.'
[234] Sacrificial victims were bound to be perfect in every part; an animal, therefore, without a tail could not be offered.
[235] The Greek word, [Greek: erebinthos], also means the male sexual organ. Observe the little pig-girl greets this question with _three_ affirmative squeaks!
[236] The Megarians used the Doric dialect.
[237] A play upon the word [Greek: phainein], which both means _to light_ and _to denounce_.
[238] An informer (sycophant), otherwise unknown.
[239] A debauchee of vile habits; a pathic.
[240] Mentioned above; he was as proud as he was cowardly.
[241] An Athenian general, quarrelsome and litigious, and an Informer into the bargain.
[242] A comic poet of vile habits.
[243] A painter.
[244] A debauchee, a gambler, and always in extreme poverty.
[245] This kind of flute had a bellows, made of dog-skin, much like the bagpipes of to-day.
[246] A flute-player, mentioned above.
[247] A hero, much honoured in Thebes; nephew of Heracles.
[248] A form of bread peculiar to Boeotia.
[249] A lake in Boeotia.
[250] He was the Lucullus of Athens.
[251] This again fixes the date of the presentation of the 'Acharnians' to 426 B.C., the sixth year of the War, since the beginning of which Boeotia had been closed to the Athenians.
[252] An Informer.
[253] The second day of the Dionysia or feasts of Bacchus, kept in the month Anthesterion (February), and called the Anthesteria. They lasted three days; the second being the Feast of Cups, a description of which is to be found at the end of this comedy, the third the Feast of Pans. Vases, filled with grain of all kinds, were borne in procession and dedicated to Hermes.
[254] A parody of some verses from a lost poet.
[255] A feasting song in honour of Harmodius, the assassin of Hipparchus the Tyrant, son of Pisistratus.
[256] The celebrated painter, born at Heraclea, a contemporary of Aristophanes.
[257] A deme and frontier fortress of Attica, near the Boeotian border.
[258] An Athenian physician of the day.
[259] An allusion to the paroxysms of rage, as represented in many tragedies familiar to an Athenian audience, of Orestes, the son of Agamemnon, after he had killed his mother.
[260] No doubt the comic poet, rival of Aristophanes.
[261] Unexpected wind-up of the story. Aristophanes intends to deride the boasting of Lamachus, who was always ascribing to himself most unlikely exploits.
PEACE
INTRODUCTION
The 'Peace' was brought out four years after 'The Acharnians' (422 B.C.), when the War had already lasted ten years. The leading motive is the same as in the former play--the intense desire of the less excitable and more moderate-minded citizens for relief from the miseries of war.
Trygaeus, a rustic patriot, finding no help in men, resolves to ascend to heaven to expostulate personally with Zeus for allowing this wretched state of things to continue. With this object he has fed and trained a gigantic dung-beetle, which he mounts, and is carried, like Bellerophon on Pegasus, on an aerial journey. Eventually he reaches Olympus, only to find that the gods have gone elsewhere, and that the heavenly abode is occupied solely by the demon of War, who is busy pounding up the Greek States in a huge mortar. However, his benevolent purpose is not in vain; for learning from Hermes that the goddess Peace has been cast into a pit, where she is kept a fast prisoner, he calls upon the different peoples of Hellas to make a united effort and rescue her, and with their help drags her out and brings her back in triumph to earth. The play concludes with the restoration of the goddess to her ancient honours, the festivities of the rustic population and the nuptials of Trygaeus with Opora (Harvest), handmaiden of Peace, represented as a pretty courtesan.
Such references as there are to Cleon in this play are noteworthy. The great Demagogue was now dead, having fallen in the same action as the rival Spartan general, the renowned Brasidas, before Amphipolis, and whatever Aristophanes says here of his old enemy is conceived in the spirit of 'de mortuis nil nisi bonum.' In one scene Hermes is descanting on the evils which had nearly ruined Athens and declares that 'The Tanner' was the cause of them all. But Trygaeus interrupts him with the words:
"Hold--say not so, good master Hermes; Let the man rest in peace where now he lies. He is no longer of our world, but yours."
Here surely we have a trait of magnanimity on the author's part as admirable in its way as the wit and boldness of his former attacks had been in theirs.
* * * * *
PEACE
DRAMATIS PERSONAE
TRYGAEUS. TWO SERVANTS of TRYGAEUS. MAIDENS, Daughters of TRYGAEUS. HERMES. WAR. TUMULT. HIEROCLES, a Soothsayer. A SICKLE-MAKER. A CREST-MAKER. A TRUMPET-MAKER. A HELMET-MAKER. A SPEAR-MAKER. SON OF LAMACHUS. SON OF CLEONYMUS. CHORUS OF HUSBANDMEN.
SCENE: A farmyard, two slaves busy beside a dungheap; afterwards, in Olympus.
* * * * *
PEACE
FIRST SERVANT. Quick, quick, bring the dung-beetle his cake.
SECOND SERVANT. Coming, coming.
FIRST SERVANT. Give it to him, and may it kill him!
SECOND SERVANT. May he never eat a better.
FIRST SERVANT. Now give him this other one kneaded up with ass's dung.
SECOND SERVANT. There! I've done that too.
FIRST SERVANT. And where's what you gave him just now; surely he can't have devoured it yet!
SECOND SERVANT. Indeed he has; he snatched it, rolled it between his feet and boiled it.
FIRST SERVANT. Come, hurry up, knead up a lot and knead them stiffly.
SECOND SERVANT. Oh, scavengers, help me in the name of the gods, if you do not wish to see me fall down choked.
FIRST SERVANT. Come, come, another made of the stool of a young scapegrace catamite. 'Twill be to the beetle's taste; he likes it well ground.[262]
SECOND SERVANT. There! I am free at least from suspicion; none will accuse me of tasting what I mix.
FIRST SERVANT. Faugh! come, now another! keep on mixing with all your might.
SECOND SERVANT. I' faith, no. I can stand this awful cesspool stench no longer, so I bring you the whole ill-smelling gear.
FIRST SERVANT. Pitch it down the sewer sooner, and yourself with it.