by Aristophanes
DIONYSUS He doesn’t seem to have taught Pantacles97 much. Of all the clumsy, cack-handed… Do you know, I saw him holding a parade the other day, and he had put his helmet on without a crest. There he was, on parade, trying to attach his ponytail without taking his helmet off – you should have seen it!
AESCHYLUS [annoyed] But a lot of excellent men did learn.
1040 Look at Lamachus.98 And you can see the stamp of Homer on my own work clearly enough. I depicted men of valour – lion-hearted characters like Patroclus99 and Teucer100 –encouraging the audience to identify with these heroes when the call to battle came. I didn’t clutter the stage with whores like Phaedra and Stheneboea.101 No one can say I ever put a lustful woman into a play.
EURIPIDES How could you? You’ve never even met one.
AESCHYLUS And thank heaven for that. You, on the other hand, have had ample experience of Aphrodite. If I remember rightly, she proved too much for you in the end!102
DIONYSUS He’s got you there, Euripides. You were afflicted in your own home by what you showed other men’s wives doing onstage!
EURIPIDES [irritated] Look, you pain in the neck, what harm did my Stheneboeas do to the public?
1050 AESCHYLUS Why, every decent woman, or decent man’s wife, was so shocked by plays like your Bellerophon that she went off and took poison straightaway.103
EURIPIDES Did I invent the story of Phaedra?
AESCHYLUS Of course not, but the poet should keep quiet about them, not put them onstage as an example to everyone. Schoolboys have a master to teach them, adults have poets. We have a duty to see that what we teach them is right and proper.104
EURIPIDES And you think the proper way to teach them is to write your high-flown, Olympian idiom instead of the language of ordinary men?
AESCHYLUS Look, you fool, noble themes and sentiments need to be couched in suitably dignified language. If your characters
1060 are demigods, they should sound like demigods – what’s more, they should dress like them. I set an example in this respect, which you totally perverted.
EURIPIDES How?
AESCHYLUS By dressing your kings in rags so that they appear as objects of pity.
EURIPIDES What harm is there in that?
AESCHYLUS Well, these days you can’t get the wealthy to pay their ship levy.105 They dress up in rags and claim exemption on the grounds of poverty.
DIONYSUS While wearing nice warm underwear. And the next day you see them splashing out at the most expensive fish stall in the market.
AESCHYLUS And look how you’ve encouraged people to babble.
1070 The wrestling schools are empty. And where have all the young men gone? Off to these notorious establishments where they practise the art of debating – and that’s not all they practise either! These days even the sailors argue with their officers; in my day the only words they knew were ‘slops’ and ‘heave-ho’!
DIONYSUS Whereas now they refuse to row, and the ships drift all over the place.
AESCHYLUS Think of all the other harm he’s done showing us
1080 women playing bawds,106 giving birth in temples,107 sleeping with their brothers108 and claiming that ‘life is not life’.109 Isn’t that why the city’s so full of lawyers’ clerks and scrounging officials, swindling the community left, right and centre? And there’s not a decent athlete left in the whole city – everyone’s unfit!
DIONYSUS How right you are! I nearly died laughing during
1090 the torch race at the Panathenaic Games. There was a little fat, pale fellow waddling along miles behind everyone else, making a right meal of it. And when he got to the Potter’s Gate, and they all ran out and slapped him, the way they do, you know, with the flat of the hand – well, talk about second wind! This fellow produced enough of a draught to keep his torch alight till the end of the race!
CHORUS
Fiercely the fight goes on,
Doubtful the ending;
1100 Well matched these duellers are,
Grim their contending.
When one’s in full career,
The other’s quick to veer
And sneak up in the rear
To catch him bending.
Although you think your gains
Are quite extensive,
Time spent on digging in
May prove expensive.
Show us what wit can do,
Vary your tactics too;
Bring out old tricks and new
For an offensive.
As for the audience,
You’re quite mistaken
1110 If you think subtle points
Will not be taken.
Such fears are vain, I vow –
They’ve all got textbooks now –
However high your brow,
They’ll not be shaken.
No talking down to these:
That’s all outdated!
In terms of native wit
They’re highly rated;
But now they’ve learnt to read,
It’s cultured stuff they need;
They don’t want chicken-feed –
They’re educated!
EURIPIDES Well now, first things first. Let’s turn to your prologues.
1120 I maintain that they fail to give a clear outline of the opening situation.
AESCHYLUS Which prologues do you propose to criticize?
EURIPIDES Quite a few. But let’s start with the one from the Oresteia.
DIONYSUS Silence for Aeschylus.
AESCHYLUS [reciting]
‘Netherworld Hermes, watching the paternal realm,
Hear now my prayer, and be my ally and my saviour!
For I have come back to this land and do return.’110
DIONYSUS Do you find anything to criticize in that?
EURIPIDES A dozen things at least.
1130 DIONYSUS But he’s only given us three lines.
EURIPIDES With several mistakes in each.
DIONYSUS You’d better not recite any more, Aeschylus – it seems you’re three lines down already.
AESCHYLUS What, stop for him?
DIONYSUS It might be wise.
EURIPIDES You see, he starts off straightaway with a howling blunder.
AESCHYLUS Nonsense!
EURIPIDES Well, if that’s how you feel – it couldn’t matter less to me.
AESCHYLUS What is this blunder?
EURIPIDES Give me those lines again.
AESCHYLUS [reciting]
‘Netherworld Hermes, watching the paternal realm…’
1140 EURIPIDES And Orestes says this over the tomb of his dead father?
AESCHYLUS That’s correct.
EURIPIDES So is he saying that when his father was brutally murdered by his own wife through a treacherous ambush, this all happened under the approving eye of Hermes?
AESCHYLUS Of course not! He is addressing himself to Hermes the Helper, ‘Netherworld Hermes’, not to Hermes as the god of deceit. This is made quite clear by what follows: ‘watching the paternal realm’. His subterranean function111 is a perquisite from his father Zeus.
EURIPIDES That makes it even worse than I thought.
DIONYSUS Subterranean perks? Sounds like he takes a cut from the tomb offerings.
1150 AESCHYLUS A remark in the worst taste, Dionysus.
DIONYSUS [to AESCHYLUS] Give him a bit more. [To EURIPIDES] And you watch out for mistakes.
AESCHYLUS [reciting]
‘Hear now my prayer, and be my ally and my saviour!
For I have come back to this land and do return.’
EURIPIDES The great Aeschylus tells us the same thing twice.
AESCHYLUS What do you mean, the same thing twice?
EURIPIDES Listen. I’ll repeat the line. ‘For I have come back to this land’, he says, ‘and do return’. Surely ‘coming back’ and ‘returning’ are the same thing.
DIONYSUS So they are: like saying to a neighbour, ‘Lend me a mirror – or a looking glass w
ill do.’
1160 AESCHYLUS The two things are not the same, you rambling pedant! The line is a particularly good one.
EURIPIDES How so? Do explain.
AESCHYLUS Anyone can ‘come back’ to his native country, if he belongs there still; nothing need have happened to him at all. But when an exile comes home he ‘returns’.
DIONYSUS Very good! What do you say to that, Euripides?
EURIPIDES I say that Orestes didn’t ‘return’ home in that sense: he had to come secretly because he didn’t trust those in power.112
DIONYSUS Ingenious! Though I’m not sure what you mean.
1170 EURIPIDES Come on, let’s hear some more.
DIONYSUS Yes, get on with it, Aeschylus. [To EURIPIDES] And you, look out for howlers.
AESCHYLUS [reciting]
‘Beside this burial mound I call on my dead father
To hear me and to hearken.’
EURIPIDES There he goes again, the same thing twice: ‘to hear me and to hearken’.
DIONYSUS He’s calling on the dead, you fool! Even three times wouldn’t be enough.
AESCHYLUS And how did you construct your prologues?
EURIPIDES I’ll show you. And if I say the same thing twice, or if you find anything that’s extraneous to the plot, you can spit on me for being a liar.
1180 DIONYSUS Go on, then. I simply must hear the verbal precision of your prologues.
EURIPIDES [reciting]
‘A happy man was Oedipus initially…’
AESCHYLUS No he wasn’t! Even before he was born Apollo had decreed that he would kill his own father. I’d hardly call that being ‘a happy man’.
EURIPIDES [reciting]
‘… But then became the most wretched of mortal men.’113
AESCHYLUS He didn’t become so, he was so all along. Look at
1190 his story. First of all, as a newborn baby he’s exposed during winter in a pot to prevent him from growing up and murdering his father; next he’s brought to Corinth with swollen feet; then he marries a woman old enough to be his mother. And then, as if that wasn’t bad enough, it turns out she is his mother! Finally he blinds himself.
DIONYSUS Better to have been an Athenian commander at Arginusae!
EURIPIDES I still maintain my prologues are good.
AESCHYLUS Look, I don’t want to split hairs over every word.
1200 I assure you I can demolish any prologue of yours with a little flask of oil.
EURIPIDES My prologues, with a flask of oil?
AESCHYLUS Just one. You see, the way your iambics are written, you can fit in anything: a flask of oil; tufts of wool; a purse of rags. I’ll show you what I mean.114
EURIPIDES All right, show me.
DIONYSUS You recite one.
EURIPIDES [reciting]
‘Aegyptus, as the story is most often told,
Crossing the sea together with his fifty sons,
On reaching Argos…’115
AESCHYLUS
‘… lost his little flask of oil.’
EURIPIDES What do you mean, lost his little flask of oil? You’ll regret this.
1210 DIONYSUS Recite another prologue so we can see it again.
EURIPIDES [reciting]
‘Dionysus, sporting his fennel wands and fawnskins,
Amid the pine trees on the slopes of Mount Parnassus,
Leapt to the dance and…’116
AESCHYLUS
‘… lost his little flask of oil.’
DIONYSUS That’s two flasks.
EURIPIDES He can’t keep it up. I’ve got one here that’s sure to be flaskproof. [Reciting]
‘No man was ever fortunate in everything.
He may have been noble and lost his wealth;
He may have been lowborn and…’117
AESCHYLUS
‘… lost his little
flask of oil.’
DIONYSUS Euripides!
EURIPIDES What?
1220 DIONYSUS Trim your sails. This is turning out to be a storm in an oil-flask!
EURIPIDES Don’t you believe it, by Demeter! This one’ll knock it right out of his hand.
DIONYSUS All right, let’s have it. But beware the flask!
EURIPIDES [reciting]
‘Cadmus, the son of Agenor, departing from
The town of Sidon,…’118
AESCHYLUS
‘… lost his little flask of oil.’
DIONYSUS If I were you, I’d try and buy the flask off him; otherwise you won’t have any prologues left.
EURIPIDES Me buy from him!
DIONYSUS If you want my advice.
1230 EURIPIDES I’ve got lots of prologues he can’t fit it into.
[Reciting]
‘Pelops, the son of Tantalus, approaching Pisa
On speedy horses,…’119
AESCHYLUS
‘… lost his little flask of oil.’
DIONYSUS You see, he’s done it again. Sell it to him, Aeschylus, for god’s sake. You can get a nice new one for an obol.
EURIPIDES No, no, I’ve got plenty of prologues yet. [Reciting]
1240 ‘ ’Tis said that Oeneus…’
AESCHYLUS
‘… lost his little flask of oil.’
EURIPIDES At least let me finish the line!
‘ ’Tis said that Oeneus, while offering the first fruits
From a full harvest…’120
AESCHYLUS
‘… lost his little flask of oil.’
DIONYSUS What, in the middle of a sacrifice? How very awkward for him. Who took it, I wonder?
EURIPIDES Don’t encourage him. See what he can do with this one:
‘Almighty Zeus, as is avowed by Truth herself…’
DIONYSUS You’re beaten, and you know it. That flask of oil keeps turning up like a stye on the eye. It’s time you turned your attention to his lyrics.
EURIPIDES Why, yes, I’m going to show that he’s a bad
1250 composer of lyrics. They’re all the same.
CHORUS121
What, Aeschylus not write good lyrics?
You’ll have the great man in hysterics!
I don’t know that much
About dactyls and such,
Though I know a good song when I hear it;
And I had an idea
That this gentleman here
Was faultless, or pretty damn near it.
Old Aeschylus not write good lyrics?
My goodness, what will he say next?
It seems a bit hard
On the venerable bard –
1260 No wonder he’s looking so vexed!
EURIPIDES They’re certainly remarkable lyrics, as we’ll soon see, when I conflate all his songs into one medley.
DIONYSUS I’ll keep score with these pebbles.
EURIPIDES [singing]
Achilles, do you not hear how the battle rages?
Ai, ai, I’m struck! Come quickly to the rescue!
We who dwell by the marsh, honour our forebear Hermes.
Ai, ai, we’re struck! Come quickly to the rescue!
DIONYSUS That’s two strikes for you, Aeschylus.
EURIPIDES [singing]
1270 Lord Agamemnon, noblest of the Greeks, now hear my words.
Ai, ai, I’m struck! Come quickly to the rescue!
DIONYSUS That’s three.
EURIPIDES [singing]
Silence! The priestesses of Artemis are opening the temple doors.
Ai, ai, I’m struck! Come quickly to the rescue!
I am empowered to give the lucky sign for travellers.
Ai, ai, I’m struck! Come quickly to the rescue!122
DIONYSUS Zeus almighty! What a salvo of strikes! Which way
1280 is the bathroom? I can’t hold out any longer. My bladder’s bursting.
EURIPIDES You can’t go till you’ve heard the next part. It has a wonderful lyre accompaniment.
DIONYSUS All right, get on with it. Only no more strikes this time.
Of how the twin-throned kings, the flower of Hellas’ manhood
Phlatto-thratto-phlatto-thrat,
Did send the Sphinx, the bitch who brought in baleful days,
Phlatto-thratto-phlatto-thrat,
With spear and vengeful hand, a warlike bird of omen,
1290 Phlatto-thratto-phlatto-thrat,
To be the prey of vicious sky-patrolling hounds,
Phlatto-thratto-phlatto-thrat,
And those who fought with Ajax,
Phlatto-thratto-phlatto-thrat.123
DIONYSUS What is all that phlatto-thrat stuff? A bit of Persian from Marathon?124 It sounds like it comes from a rope-makers’ shanty.
AESCHYLUS I may use traditional elements in my lyrics, but at least I take them from respectable sources and make them serve an artistic purpose. I didn’t want it to be thought that
1300 I picked from the same ‘garden of the Muses’ as Phrynichus. But he throws in bits and pieces from all over the place: prostitutes, drinking songs by Meletus,125 pipers, wailers, dancers from Caria.126 I’ll show you what I mean. Bring me a lyre – no, a lyre’s too good for this sort of thing. Where’s that girl with the castanets?127
[A DANCING-GIRL128 comes forward.]
Ah, the Muse of Euripides! Come along, my dear, stand over here. Just the right accompaniment for this kind of lyric.
DIONYSUS Not in the Lesbian mode I take it.129
AESCHYLUS [singing]
You halcyons, twittering
1310 By the ever-flowing waves,
Dampening the coat of your
Wings with watery droplets130–
And you spiders in the rafters,
Who with your dactyls spi-i-i-i-i-n
Your thread, tightened on the loom,
By the art of the singing shuttle –
Where the flute-loving dolphin leapt
At the prows with their dark-blue rams131
For the oracles and the stadium.
Gleaming delight of the vine’s fruit,
1320 The grape’s analgesic tendril.
Fling your arms about me, child!132
Did you notice that foot?
DIONYSUS I did.