Chapter 14

AESCHYLUS. What, are then the wicked those she loves?

DIONYSUS. Not at all, but she employs them against her will.

AESCHYLUS. Then what deliverance can there be for a city that will neither have cape nor cloak?[531]

DIONYSUS. Discover, I adjure you, discover a way to save her from shipwreck.

AESCHYLUS. I will tell you the way on earth, but I won't here.

DIONYSUS. No, send her this blessing from here.

AESCHYLUS. They will be saved when they have learnt that the land of the foe is theirs and their own land belongs to the foe; that their vessels are their true wealth, the only one upon which they can rely.[532]

DIONYSUS. That's true, but the dicasts devour everything.[533]

PLUTO (_to Dionysus_). Now decide.

DIONYSUS. 'Tis for you to decide, but I choose him whom my heart prefers.

EURIPIDES. You called the gods to witness that you would bear me through; remember your oath and choose your friends.

DIONYSUS. Yes, "my tongue has sworn."[534] ... But I choose Aeschylus.

EURIPIDES. What have you done, you wretch?

DIONYSUS. I? I have decided that Aeschylus is the victor. What then?

EURIPIDES. And you dare to look me in the face after such a shameful deed?

DIONYSUS. "Why shameful, if the spectators do not think so?"[535]

EURIPIDES. Cruel wretch, will you leave me pitilessly among the dead?

DIONYSUS. "Who knows if living be not dying,[536] if breathing be not feasting, if sleep be not a fleece?"[537]

PLUTO. Enter my halls. Come, Dionysus.

DIONYSUS. What shall we do there?

PLUTO. I want to entertain my guests before they leave.

DIONYSUS. Well said, by Zeus; 'tis the very thing to please me best.

CHORUS. Blessed the man who has perfected wisdom! Everything is happiness for him. Behold Aeschylus; thanks to the talent, to the cleverness he has shown, he returns to his country; and his fellow-citizens, his relations, his friends will all hail his return with joy. Let us beware of jabbering with Socrates and of disdaining the sublime notes of the tragic Muse. To pass an idle life reeling off grandiloquent speeches and foolish quibbles, is the part of a madman.

PLUTO. Farewell, Aeschylus! Go back to earth and may your noble precepts both save our city[538] and cure the mad; there are such, a many of them! Carry this rope from me to Cleophon, this one to Myrmex and Nichomachus, the public receivers, and this other one to Archenomous.[539] Bid them come here at once and without delay; if not, by Apollo, I will brand them with the hot iron.[540] I will make one bundle of them and Adimantus,[541] the son of Leucolophus,[542] and despatch the lot into hell with all possible speed.

AESCHYLUS. I will do your bidding, and do you make Sophocles occupy my seat. Let him take and keep it for me, against I should ever return here. In fact I award him the second place among the tragic poets. As for this impostor, watch that he never usurps my throne, even should he be placed there in spite of himself.

PLUTO (_to the Chorus of the Initiate_). Escort him with your sacred torches, singing to him as you go his own hymns and choruses.

CHORUS. Ye deities of the nether world, grant a pleasant journey to the poet who is leaving us to return to the light of day; grant likewise wise and healthy thoughts to our city. Put an end to the fearful calamities that overwhelm us, to the awful clatter of arms. As for Cleophon and the likes of him, let them go, an it please them, and fight in their own land.[543]

* * * * *

FINIS OF "THE FROGS"

* * * * *

Footnotes:

[382] These were comic poets contemporary with Aristophanes. Phrynichus, the best known, gained the second prize with his 'Muses' when the present comedy was put upon the stage. Amipsias had gained the first prize over our author's first edition of 'The Clouds' and again over his 'Birds.' Aristophanes is ridiculing vulgar and coarse jests, which, however, he does not always avoid himself.

[383] Instead of the expected "son of Zeus," he calls himself the "son of a wine-jar."

[384] At the sea-fight at Arginusae the slaves who had distinguished themselves by their bravery were presented with their freedom. This battle had taken place only a few months before the production of 'The Frogs.' Had Xanthias been one of these slaves he could then have treated his master as he says, for he would have been his equal.

[385] The door of the Temple of Heracles, situated in the deme of Melité, close to Athens. This temple contained a very remarkable statue of the god, the work of Eleas, the master of Phidias.

[386] A fabulous monster, half man and half horse.

[387] So also, in 'The Thesmophoriazusae,' Agathon is described as wearing a saffron robe, which was a mark of effeminacy.

[388] A woman's foot-gear.

[389] He speaks of him as though he were a vessel. Clisthenes, who was scoffed at for his ugliness, was completely beardless, which fact gave him the look of a eunuch. He was accused of prostituting himself.

[390] Heracles cannot believe it. Dionysus had no repute for bravery. His cowardice is one of the subjects for jesting which we shall most often come upon in 'The Frogs.'

[391] A tragedy by Euripides, produced some years earlier, some fragments of which are quoted by Aristophanes in his 'Thesmophoriazusae.'

[392] An actor of immense stature.

[393] The gluttony of Heracles was a byword. See 'The Birds.'

[394] Euripides, weary, it is said, of the ridicule and envy with which he was assailed in Athens, had retired in his old age to the court of Archelaus, King of Macedonia, where he had met with the utmost hospitality. We are assured that he perished through being torn to pieces by dogs, which set upon him in a lonely spot. His death occurred in 407 B.C., the year before the production of 'The Frogs.'

[395] This is a hemistich, the Scholiast says, from Euripides.

[396] The son of Sophocles. Once, during his father's lifetime, he gained the prize for tragedy, but it was suspected that the piece itself was largely the work of Sophocles himself. It is for this reason that Dionysus wishes to try him when he is dependent on his own resources, now that his father is dead. The death of the latter was quite recent at the time of the production of 'The Frogs,' and the fact lent all the greater interest to this piece.

[397] Agathon was a contemporary of Euripides, and is mentioned in terms of praise by Aristotle for his delineation of the character of Achilles, presumably in his tragedy of 'Telephus.' From the fragments which remain of this author it appears that his style was replete with ornament, particularly antithesis.

[398] Son of Caminus, an inferior poet, often made the butt of Aristophanes' jeers.

[399] A poet apparently, unknown.

[400] Expressions used by Euripides in different tragedies.

[401] Parody of a verse in Euripides' 'Andromeda,' a lost play.

[402] Heracles, being such a glutton, must be a past master in matters of cookery, but this does not justify him in posing as a dramatic critic.

[403] Xanthias, bent double beneath his load, gets more and more out of patience with his master's endless talk with Heracles.

[404] The mortar in which hemlock was pounded.

[405] An allusion to the effect of hemlock.

[406] A quarter of Athens where the Lampadephoria was held in honour of Athené, Hephaestus, and Prometheus, because the first had given the mortals oil, the second had invented the lamp, and the third had stolen fire from heaven. The principal part of this festival consisted in the _lampadedromia_, or torch-race. This name was given to a race in which the competitors for the prize ran with a torch in their hand; it was essential that the goal should be reached with the torch still alight. The signal for starting was given by throwing a torch from the top of the tower mentioned a few verses later on.

[407] Theseus had descended into Hades with Pirithous to fetch away Persephoné. Aristophanes doubtless wishes to say that in consequence of this descent Pluto established a toll across Acheron, in order to render access to his kingdom less easy, and so that the poor and the greedy, who could not or would not pay, might be kept out.

[408] Morsimus was a minor poet, who is also mentioned with disdain in 'The Knights,' and is there called the son of Philocles. Aristophanes jestingly likens anyone who helps to disseminate his verses to the worst of criminals.

[409] The Pyrrhic dance was a lively and quick-step dance. Cinesias was not a dancer, but a dithyrambic poet, who declaimed with much gesticulation and movement that one might almost think he was performing this dance.

[410] Those initiated into the Mysteries of Demeter, who, according to the belief of the ancients, enjoyed a kind of beatitude after death.

[411] Xanthias, his strength exhausted and his patience gone, prepares to lay down his load. Asses were used for the conveyance from Athens to Eleusis of everything that was necessary for the celebration of the Mysteries. They were often overladen, and from this fact arose the proverb here used by Xanthias, as indicating any heavy burden.

[412] The Ancients believed that meeting this or that person or thing at the outset of a journey was of good or bad omen. The superstition is not entirely dead even to-day.

[413] Dionysus had seated himself _on_ instead of _at_ the oar.

[414] One of the titles given to Dionysus, because of the worship accorded him at Nysa, a town in Ethiopia, where he was brought up by the nymphs.

[415] This was the third day of the Anthesteria or feasts of Dionysus. All kinds of vegetables were cooked in pots and offered to Dionysus and Athené. It was also the day of the dramatic contests.

[416] Dionysus' temple, the Lenaeum, was situated in the district of Athens known as the _Linnae_, or Marshes, on the south side of the Acropolis.

[417] He points to the audience.

[418] A spectre, which Hecaté sent to frighten men. It took all kinds of hideous shapes. It was exorcised by abuse.

[419] This was one of the monstrosities which credulity attributed to the Empusa.

[420] He is addressing a priest of Bacchus, who occupied a seat reserved for him in the first row of the audience.

[421] A verse from the Orestes of Euripides.--Hegelochus was an actor who, in a recent representation, had spoken the line in such a manner as to lend it an absurd meaning; instead of saying, [Greek: gal_en_en], which means _calm_, he had pronounced it [Greek: gal_en], which means _a cat_.

[422] The priest of Bacchus, mentioned several verses back.

[423] High-flown expressions from Euripides' Tragedies.

[424] A second Chorus, comprised of Initiates into the Mysteries of Demeter and Dionysus.

[425] A philosopher, a native of Melos, and originally a dithyrambic poet. He was prosecuted on a charge of atheism.

[426] A comic and dithyrambic poet.

[427] This Thorycion, a toll collector at Aegina, which then belonged to Athens, had taken advantage of his position to send goods to Epidaurus, an Argolian town, thereby defrauding the treasury of the duty of 5 per cent, which was levied on every import and export.

[428] An allusion to Alcibiades, who is said to have obtained a subsidy for the Spartan fleet from Cyrus, satrap of Asia Minor.

[429] An allusion to the dithyrambic poet, Cinesias, who was accused of having sullied, by stooling against it, the pedestal of a statue of Hecaté at one of the street corners of Athens.

[430] Athené.

[431] The route of the procession of the Initiate was from the Ceramicus (a district of Athens) to Eleusis, a distance of twenty-five stadia.

[432] A shaft shot at the _choragi_ by the poet, because they had failed to have new dresses made for the actors on this occasion.

[433] It was at the age of seven that children were entered on the registers of their father's tribe. Aristophanes is accusing Archidemus, who at that time was the head of the popular party, of being no citizen, because his name is not entered upon the registers of any tribe.

[434] At funerals women tore their hair, rent their garments, and beat their bosoms. Aristophanes parodies these demonstrations of grief and attributes them to the effeminate Clisthenes. Sebinus the Anaphlystian is a coined name containing an obscene allusion, implying he was in the habit of allowing connexion with himself a posteriori, and being masturbated by the other in turn.

[435] Callias, the son of Hipponicus, which the poet turns into Hippobinus, i.e. one who treads a mare, was an Athenian general, who had distinguished himself at the battle of Arginusae; he was notorious for his debauched habits, which he doubtless practised even on board his galleys. He is called a new Heracles, because of the legend that Heracles triumphed over fifty virgins in a single night; no doubt the poet alludes to some exploit of the kind here.

[436] A proverb applied to silly boasters. The Corinthians had sent an envoy to Megara, who, in order to enhance the importance of his city, incessantly repeated the phrase, "_The Corinth of Zeus_."

[437] Demeter.

[438] Tartessus was an Iberian town, near the Avernian marshes, which were said to be tenanted by reptiles, the progeny of vipers and muraenae, a kind of fish.

[439] Tithrasios was a part of Libya, fabled to be peopled by Gorgons.

[440] "Invoke the god" was the usual formula which immediately followed the offering of the libation in the festival of Dionysus. Here he uses the words after a libation of a new kind and induced by fear.

[441] That is, Heracles, whose temple was at Melité, a suburban deme of Athens.

[442] Whose statues were placed to make the boundaries of land.

[443] One of the Thirty Tyrants, noted for his versatility.

[444] Celon and Hyperbolus were both dead, and are therefore supposed to have become the leaders and patrons of the populace in Hades, the same as they had been on earth.

[445] Already mentioned; one of the chiefs of the popular party in 406 B.C.

[446] Heracles had carried of Cerberus.

[447] Names of Thracian slaves.

[448] As was done to unruly children; he allows every kind of torture with the exception of the mildest.

[449] A deme of Attica, where there was a temple to Heracles. No doubt those present uttered the cry "Oh! oh!" in honour of the god.

[450] He pretends it was not a cry of pain at all, but of astonishment and admiration.

[451] Pretending that it was the thorn causing him pain, and not the lash of the whip.

[452] According to the Scholiast this is a quotation from the 'Laocoon,' a lost play of Sophocles.

[453] A general known for his cowardice; he was accused of not being a citizen, but of Thracian origin; in 406 B.C. he was in disfavour, and he perished shortly after in a popular tumult.

[454] According to Athenian law, the accused was acquitted when the voting was equal.

[455] He had helped to establish the oligarchical government of the Four Hundred, who had just been overthrown.

[456] The fight of Arginusae; the slaves who had fought there had been accorded their freedom.--The Plataeans had had the title of citizens since the battle of Marathon.

[457] Things were not going well for Athens at the time; it was only two years later, 404 B.C., that Lysander took the city.

[458] A demagogue; because he deceived the people, Aristophanes compares him with the washermen who cheated their clients by using some mixture that was cheaper than potash.

[459] Callistrates says that Clidemides was one of Sophocles' sons; Apollonius states him to have been an actor.

[460] Dionysus was, of course, the patron god of the drama and dramatic contests.

[461] The majestic grandeur of Aeschylus' periods, coupled with a touch of parody, is to be recognized in this piece.

[462] It is said that Euripides was the son of a fruit-seller.

[463] Euripides is constantly twitted by Aristophanes with his predilection for ragged beggars and vagabonds as characters in his plays.

[464] Bellerophon, Philoctetes, and Telephus, were all characters in different Tragedies of Euripides.

[465] Sailors, when in danger, sacrificed a black lamb to Typhon, the god of storms.

[466] An allusion to a long monologue of Icarus in the tragedy called 'The Cretans.'

[467] In 'Aeolus,' Macareus violates his own sister; in 'The Clouds,' this incest, which Euripides introduced upon the stage, is also mentioned.

[468] The title of one of Euripides' pieces.

[469] The titles of three lost Tragedies of Euripides.

[470] A verse from one of the lost Tragedies of Euripides; the poet was born at Eleusis.

[471] Aristophanes often makes this accusation of religious heterodoxy against Euripides.

[472] A dramatic poet, who lived about the end of the sixth century B.C., and a disciple of Thespis; the scenic art was then comparatively in its infancy.

[473] The Scholiast tells us that Achilles remained mute in the tragedy entitled 'The Phrygians' or 'The Ransom of Hector,' and that his face was veiled; he only spoke a few words at the beginning of the drama during a dialogue with Hermes.--We have no information about the Niobé mentioned here.

[474] The Scholiast tells us that this expression ([Greek: hippalektru_on]) was used in 'The Myrmidons' of Aeschylus; Aristophanes ridicules it again both in the 'Peace' and in 'The Birds.'

[475] An individual apparently noted for his uncouth ugliness.

[476] The beet and the decoctions are intended to indicate the insipidity of Euripides' style.

[477] An intimate friend of Euripides, who is said to have worked with him on his Tragedies, to have been 'ghost' to him in fact.

[478] An allusion to Euripides' obscure birth; his mother had been, so it was said, a vegetable-seller in the public market.

[479] Euripides had introduced every variety of character into his pieces, whereas Aeschylus only staged divinities or heroes.

[480] There are two Cycni, one, the son of Ares, was killed by Heracles according to the testimony of Hesiod in his description of the "Shield of Heracles"; the other, the son of Posidon, who, according to Pindar, perished under the blows of Achilles. It is not known in which Tragedy of Aeschylus this character was introduced.

[481] Memnon, the son of Aurora, was killed by Achilles; in the list of the Tragedies of Aeschylus there is one entitled 'Memnon.'

[482] These two were not poets, but Euripides supposes them disciples of Aeschylus, because of their rude and antiquated manners.

[483] Clitophon and Theramenes were elegants of effeminate habits and adept talkers.

[484] A proverb which was applied to versatile people; the two Greek names [Greek: Chios] and [Greek: Keios] might easily be mistaken for one another. Both, of course, are islands of the Cyclades.

[485] A verse from the 'Myrmidons' of Aeschylus; here Achilles is Aeschylus himself.

[486] The 'Persae' of Aeschylus (produced 472 B.C.) was received with transports of enthusiasm, reviving as it did memories of the glorious defeat of Xerxes at Salamis, where the poet had fought, only a few years before, 480 B.C.

[487] Nothing is known of this Pantacles, whom Eupolis, in his 'Golden Age,' also describes as awkward ([Greek: skaios]).

[488] Aristophanes had by this time modified his opinion of this general, whom he had so flouted in 'The Acharnians.'

[489] Son of Telamon, the King of Salamis and brother of Ajax.

[490] The wife of Proetus, King of Argos. Bellerophon, who had sought refuge at the court of this king after the accidental murder of his brother Bellerus, had disdained her amorous overtures. Therefore she denounced him to her husband as having wanted to attempt her virtue and urged him to cause his death. She killed herself immediately after the departure of the young hero.

[491] Cephisophon, Euripides' friend, is said to have seduced his wife.

[492] Meaning, they have imitated Sthenoboea in everything; like her, they have conceived adulterous passions and, again like her, they have poisoned themselves.

[493] Lycabettus, a mountain of Attica, just outside the walls of Athens, the "Arthur's Seat" of the city. Parnassus, the famous mountain of Phocis, the seat of the temple and oracle of Delphi and the home of the Muses. The whole passage is, of course, in parody of the grandiloquent style of Aeschylus.

[494] An allusion to Oeneus, King of Aetolia, and to Telephus, King of Mysia; characters put upon the stage by Euripides.

[495] It was only the rich Athenians who could afford fresh fish, because of their high price; we know how highly the gourmands prized the eels from the Copaic lake.

[496] If Aristophanes is to be believed, the orators were of depraved habits, and exacted infamous complaisances as payment for their lessons in rhetoric.

[497] Aristophanes attributes the general dissoluteness to the influence of Euripides; he suggests that the subtlety of his poetry, by sharpening the wits of the vulgar and even of the coarsest, has instigated them to insubordination.

[498] Augé, who was seduced by Heracles, was delivered in the temple of Athené (Scholiast); it is unknown in what piece this fact is mentioned.--Macareus violates his sister Canacé in the 'Aeolus.'

[499] i.e. they busy themselves with philosophic subtleties. This line is taken from 'The Phryxus,' of which some fragments have come down to us.

[500] In the torch-race the victor was the runner who attained the goal first without having allowed his torch to go out. This race was a very ancient institution. Aristophanes means to say that the old habits had fallen into disuse.

[501] A tetralogy composed of three tragedies, the 'Agamemnon,' the 'Choëphorae,' the 'Eumenides,' together with a satirical drama, the 'Proteus.'

[502] This is the opening of the 'Choëphorae.' Aeschylus puts the words in the mouth of Orestes, who is returning to his native land and visiting his father's tomb.

[503] i.e. your jokes are very coarse.

[504] He was one of the Athenian generals in command at Arginusae; he and his colleagues were condemned to death for not having given burial to the men who fell in that naval fight.

[505] As Euripides had done to those of Aeschylus; that sort of criticism was too low for him.

[506] [Greek: D_ekuthion ap_olesa], _oleum perdidi,_ I have lost my labour, was a proverbial expression, which was also possibly the refrain of some song. Aeschylus means to say that all Euripides' phrases are cast in the same mould, and that his style is so poor and insipid that one can adapt to it any foolery one wishes; as for the phrase he adds to every one of the phrases his rival recites, he chooses it to insinuate that the work of Euripides is _labour lost_, and that he would have done just as well not to meddle with tragedy. The joke is mediocre at its best and is kept up far too long.

[507] Prologue of the 'Archelaus' of Euripides, a tragedy now lost.

[508] From prologue of the 'Hypsipilé' of Euripides, a play now lost.

[509] From prologue of the 'Sthenoboea' of Euripides, a play now lost.

[510] From prologue of the 'Phryxus' of Euripides, a play now lost.

[511] From prologue of the 'Iphigeneia in Tauris' of Euripides.

[512] Prologue of 'The Meleager' by Euripides, lost.

[513] Prologue of 'The Menalippé Sapiens,' by Euripides, lost.

[514] The whole of these fragments are quoted at random and have no meaning. Euripides, no doubt, wants to show that the choruses of Aeschylus are void of interest or coherence. As to the refrain, "haste to sustain the assault," Euripides possibly wants to insinuate that Aeschylus incessantly repeats himself and that a wearying monotony pervades his choruses. However, all these criticisms are in the main devoid of foundation.

[515] This ridiculous couplet pretends to imitate the redundancy and nonsensicality of Aeschylus' language; it can be seen how superficial and unfair the criticism of Euripides is; probably this is just what Aristophanes wanted to convey by this long and wearisome scene.