Lines 640–846

AEACUS.
Upon my word you’re quite the gentleman,
You’re all for right and justice. Strip then, both.

XANTHIAS.
How can you test us fairly?

AEACUS.
Easily,
I’ll give you blow for blow.

XANTHIAS.
A good idea.
We’re ready! Now! (Aeacus strikes him) see if you catch me flinching.

AEACUS.
I struck you.

XANTHIAS.
(incredulously) No!

AEACUS.
Well, it seems “no,” indeed.
Now then I’ll strike the other. (Strikes Di.)

DIONYSUS.
Tell me when?

AEACUS.
I struck you.

DIONYSUS.
Struck me? Then why didn’t I sneeze?

AEACUS.
Don’t know, I’m sure. I’ll try the other again.

XANTHIAS.
And quickly too. Good gracious!

AEACUS.
Why “good gracious”?
Not hurt you, did I?

XANTHIAS.
No, I merely thought of
The Diomeian feast of Heracles.

AEACUS.
A holy man! ’Tis now the other’s turn.

DIONYSUS.
Hi! Hi!

AEACUS.
Hallo!

DIONYSUS.
Look at those horsemen, look!

AEACUS.
But why these tears?

DIONYSUS.
There’s such a smell of onions.

AEACUS.
Then you don’t mind it?

DIONYSUS.
(cheerfully) Mind it? Not a bit.

AEACUS.
Well, I must go to the other one again.

XANTHIAS.
O! O!

AEACUS.
Hallo!

XANTHIAS.
Do pray pull out this thorn.

AEACUS.
What does it mean? ’Tis this one’s turn again.

DIONYSUS.
(shrieking) Apollo! Lord! (calmly) of Delos and of Pytho.

XANTHIAS.
He flinched! You heard him?

DIONYSUS.
Not at all; a jolly
Verse of Hipponax flashed across my mind.

XANTHIAS.
You don’t half do it: cut his flanks to pieces.

AEACUS.
By Zeus, well thought on. Turn your belly here.

DIONYSUS.
(screaming) Poseidon!

XANTHIAS.
There! he’s flinching.

DIONYSUS.
(singing) who dost reign
Amongst the Aegean peaks and creeks
And o’er the deep blue main.

AEACUS.
No, by Demeter, still I can’t find out
Which is the god, but come ye both indoors;
My lord himself and Persephassa there,
Being gods themselves, will soon find out the truth.

DIONYSUS.
Right! right! I only wish you had thought of that
Before you gave me those tremendous whacks.

CHORUS.
Come, Muse, to our Mystical Chorus,
O come to the joy of my song,
O see on the benches before us
that countless and wonderful throng,
Where wits by the thousand abide,
with more than a Cleophon’s pride—
On the lips of that foreigner base,
of Athens the bane and disgrace,
There is shrieking, his kinsman by race,
The garrulous swallow of Thrace;
From that perch of exotic descent,
Rejoicing her sorrow to vent,
She pours to her spirit’s content,
a nightingale’s woful lament,
That e’en though the voting be equal,
his ruin will soon be the sequel.

Well it suits the holy Chorus
evermore with counsel wise
To exhort and teach the city;
this we therefore now advise—
End the townsmen’s apprehensions;
equalize the rights of all;
If by Phrynichus’s wrestlings
some perchance sustained a fall,
Yet to these ’tis surely open,
having put away their sin,
For their slips and vacillations
pardon at your hands to win.
Give your brethren back their franchise.
Sin and shame it were that slaves,
Who have once with stern devotion
fought your battle on the waves,
Should be straightway lords and masters,
yea Plataeans fully blown—
Not that this deserves our censure;
there I praise you; there alone
Has the city, in her anguish,
policy and wisdom shown—
Nay but these, of old accustomed
on our ships to fight and win,
(They, their fathers too before them),
these our very kith and kin,
You should likewise, when they ask you,
pardon for their single sin.
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.

And O if I’m able to scan
the habits and life of a man
Who shall rue his iniquities soon!
not long shall that little baboon,
That Cleigenes shifty and small,
the wickedest bathman of all
Who are lords of the earth—which is brought
from the isle of Cimolus, and wrought
With nitre and lye into soap—
Not long shall he vex us, I hope.
And this the unlucky one knows,
Yet ventures a peace to oppose,
And being addicted to blows
he carries a stick as he goes,
Lest while he is tipsy and reeling,
some robber his cloak should be stealing.

Often has it crossed my fancy,
that the city loves to deal
With the very best and noblest
members of her commonweal,
Just as with our ancient coinage,
and the newly-minted gold.
Yea for these, our sterling pieces,
all of pure Athenian mould,
All of perfect die and metal,
all the fairest of the fair,
All of workmanship unequalled,
proved and valued everywhere
Both amongst our own Hellenes
and Barbarians far away,
These we use not: but the worthless
pinchbeck coins of yesterday,
Vilest die and basest metal,
now we always use instead.
Even so, our sterling townsmen,
nobly born and nobly bred,
Men of worth and rank and mettle,
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.
O unwise and foolish people,
yet to mend your ways begin;
Use again the good and useful:
so hereafter, if ye win
’Twill be due to this your wisdom:
if ye fall, at least ’twill be
Not a fall that brings dishonour,
falling from a worthy tree.

AEACUS.
By Zeus the Saviour, quite the gentleman
Your master is.

XANTHIAS.
Gentleman? I believe you.
He’s all for wine and women, is my master.

AEACUS.
But not to have flogged you, when the truth came out
That you, the slave, were passing off as master!

XANTHIAS.
He’d get the worst of that.

AEACUS.
Bravo! that’s spoken
Like a true slave: that’s what I love myself.

XANTHIAS.
You love it, do you?

AEACUS.
Love it? I’m entranced
When I can curse my lord behind his back.

XANTHIAS.
How about grumbling, when you have felt the stick,
And scurry out of doors?

AEACUS.
That’s jolly too.

XANTHIAS.
How about prying?

AEACUS.
That beats everything!

XANTHIAS.
Great Kin-god Zeus! And what of overhearing
Your master’s secrets?

AEACUS.
What? I’m mad with joy.

XANTHIAS.
And blabbing them abroad?

AEACUS.
O heaven and earth!
When I do that, I can’t contain myself.

XANTHIAS.
Phoebus Apollo! clap your hand in mine,
Kiss and be kissed: and prithee tell me this,
Tell me by Zeus, our rascaldom’s own god,
What’s all that noise within? What means this hubbub
And row?

AEACUS.
That’s Aeschylus and Euripides.

XANTHIAS.
Eh?

AEACUS.
Wonderful, wonderful things are going on.
The dead are rioting, taking different sides.

XANTHIAS.
Why, what’s the matter?

AEACUS.
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.

XANTHIAS.
I understand.

AEACUS.
Until another comes, more wise than he
In the same art: then must the first give way.

XANTHIAS.
And how has this disturbed our Aeschylus?

AEACUS.
’Twas he that occupied the tragic chair,
As, in his craft, the noblest.

XANTHIAS.
Who does now?

AEACUS.
But when Euripides came down, he kept
Flourishing off before the highwaymen,
Thieves, burglars, parricides—these form our mob
In Hades—till with listening to his twists
And turns, and pleas and counterpleas, they went
Mad on the man, and hailed him first and wisest:
Elate with this, he claimed the tragic chair
Where Aeschylus was seated.

XANTHIAS.
Wasn’t he pelted?

AEACUS.
Not he: the populace clamoured out to try
Which of the twain was wiser in his art.

XANTHIAS.
You mean the rascals?

AEACUS.
Aye, as high as heaven!

XANTHIAS.
But were there none to side with Aeschylus?

AEACUS.
Scanty and sparse the good, (regards the audience) the same as here.

XANTHIAS.
And what does Pluto now propose to do?

AEACUS.
He means to hold a tournament, and bring
Their tragedies to the proof.

XANTHIAS.
But Sophocles,
How came not he to claim the tragic chair?

AEACUS.
Claim it? Not he! When he came down, he kissed
With reverence Aeschylus, and clasped his hand,
And yielded willingly the chair to him.
But now he’s going, says Cleidemides,
To sit third-man: and then if Aeschylus win,
He’ll stay content: if not, for his art’s sake,
He’ll fight to the death against Euripides.

XANTHIAS.
Will it come off?

AEACUS.
O yes, by Zeus, directly.
And then, I hear, will wonderful things be done,
The art poetic will be weighed in scales.

XANTHIAS.
What! weigh out tragedy, like butcher’s meat?

AEACUS.
Levels they’ll bring, and measuring-tapes for words,
And moulded oblongs,

XANTHIAS.
Is it bricks they are making?

AEACUS.
Wedges and compasses: for Euripides
Vows that he’ll test the dramas, word by word.

XANTHIAS.
Aeschylus chafes at this, I fancy.

AEACUS.
Well,
He lowered his brows, upglaring like a bull.

XANTHIAS.
And who’s to be the judge?

AEACUS.
There came the rub.
Skilled men were hard to find: for with the Athenians
Aeschylus, somehow, did not hit it off,

XANTHIAS.
Too many burglars, I expect, he thought.

AEACUS.
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.
But we go in: for when our lords are bent
On urgent business, that means blows for us.

CHORUS.
O surely with terrible wrath
will the thunder-voiced monarch be filled,
When he sees his opponent beside him,
the tonguester, the artifice-skilled,
Stand, whetting his tusks for the fight!
O surely, his eyes rolling-fell
Will with terrible madness be fraught!
O then will be charging of plume-waving words
with their wild-floating mane,
And then will be whirling of splinters,
and phrases smoothed down with the plane,
When the man would the grand-stepping maxims,
the language gigantic, repel
Of the hero-creator of thought.
There will his shaggy-born crest
upbristle for anger and woe,
Horribly frowning and growling,
his fury will launch at the foe
Huge-clamped masses of words,
with exertion Titanic up-tearing
Great ship-timber planks for the fray.
But here will the tongue be at work,
uncoiling, word-testing, refining,
Sophist-creator of phrases,
dissecting, detracting, maligning,
Shaking the envious bits,
and with subtle analysis paring
The lung’s large labour away.

EURIPIDES.
Don’t talk to me; I won’t give up the chair,
I say I am better in the art than he.

DIONYSUS.
You hear him, Aeschylus: why don’t you speak?

EURIPIDES.
He’ll do the grand at first, the juggling trick
He used to play in all his tragedies.

DIONYSUS.
Come, my fine fellow, pray don’t talk too big.

EURIPIDES.
I know the man, I’ve scanned him through and through,
A savage-creating stubborn-pulling fellow,
Uncurbed, unfettered, uncontrolled of speech,
Unperiphrastic, bombastiloquent.

AESCHYLUS.
Hah! sayest thou so, child of the garden quean!
And this to ME, thou chattery-babble-collector,
Thou pauper-creating rags-and-patches-stitcher?
Thou shalt abye it dearly!

DIONYSUS.
Pray, be still;
Nor heat thy soul to fury, Aeschylus.

AESCHYLUS.
Not till I’ve made you see the sort of man
This cripple-maker is who crows so loudly.