Lines 847–1008

DIONYSUS.
Bring out a ewe, a black-fleeced ewe, my boys:
Here’s a typhoon about to burst upon us.

AESCHYLUS.
Thou picker-up of Cretan monodies,
Foisting thy tales of incest on the stage—

DIONYSUS.
Forbear, forbear, most honoured Aeschylus;
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.

EURIPIDES.
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.

DIONYSUS.
And what do you propose? Speak, Aeschylus.

AESCHYLUS.
I could have wished to meet him otherwhere.
We fight not here on equal terms.

DIONYSUS.
Why not?

AESCHYLUS.
My poetry survived me: his died with him:
He’s got it here, all handy to recite.
Howbeit, if so you wish it, so we’ll have it.

DIONYSUS.
O bring me fire, and bring me frankincense.
I’ll pray, or e’er the clash of wits begin,
To judge the strife with high poetic skill.
Meanwhile (to the Chorus) invoke the Muses with a song.

CHORUS.
O Muses, the daughters divine
of Zeus, the immaculate Nine,
Who gaze from your mansions serene
on intellects subtle and keen,
When down to the tournament lists,
in bright-polished wit they descend,
With wrestling and turnings and twists
in the battle of words to contend,
O come and behold what the two
antagonist poets can do,
Whose mouths are the swiftest to teach
grand language and filings of speech:
For now of their wits is the sternest
encounter commencing in earnest

DIONYSUS.
Ye two, put up your prayers before ye start.

AESCHYLUS.
Demeter, mistress, nourisher of my soul,
O make me worthy of thy mystic rites!

DIONYSUS.
(to Eur.) Now put on incense, you.

EURIPIDES.
Excuse me, no;
My vows are paid to other gods than these.

DIONYSUS.
What, a new coinage of your own?

EURIPIDES.
Precisely.

DIONYSUS.
Pray then to them, those private gods of yours.

EURIPIDES.
Ether, my pasture, volubly-rolling tongue,
Intelligent wit and critic nostrils keen,
O well and neatly may I trounce his plays!

CHORUS.
We also are yearning from these to be learning
Some stately measure, some majestic grand
Movement telling of conflicts nigh.
Now for battle arrayed they stand,
Tongues embittered, and anger high.
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.

DIONYSUS.
Now then, commence your arguments,
and mind you both display
True wit, not metaphors, nor things
which any fool could say.

EURIPIDES.
As for myself, good people all,
I’ll tell you by-and-by
My own poetic worth and claims;
but first of all I’ll try
To show how this portentous quack
beguiled the silly fools
Whose tastes were nurtured, ere he came,
in Phrynichus’s schools.
He’d bring some single mourner on,
seated and veiled, ’twould be
Achilles, say, or Niobe
—the face you could not see—
An empty show of tragic woe,
who uttered not one thing.

DIONYSUS.
’Tis true.

EURIPIDES.
Then in the Chorus came,
and rattled off a string
Of four continuous lyric odes:
the mourner never stirred.

DIONYSUS.
I liked it too. I sometimes think
that I those mutes preferred
To all your chatterers now-a-days.

EURIPIDES.
Because, if you must know,
You were an ass.

DIONYSUS.
An ass, no doubt;
what made him do it though?

EURIPIDES.
That was his quackery, don’t you see,
to set the audience guessing
When Niobe would speak; meanwhile,
the drama was progressing.

DIONYSUS.
The rascal, how he took me in!
’Twas shameful, was it not?
(To Aesch.) What makes you stamp and fidget so?

EURIPIDES.
He’s catching it so hot.
So when he had humbugged thus awhile,
and now his wretched play
Was halfway through, a dozen words,
great wild-bull words, he’d say,
Fierce Bugaboos, with bristling crests,
and shaggy eyebrows too,
Which not a soul could understand.

AESCHYLUS.
O heavens!

DIONYSUS.
Be quiet, do.

EURIPIDES.
But not one single word was clear.

DIONYSUS.
St! don’t your teeth be gnashing.

EURIPIDES.
’Twas all Scamanders, moated camps,
and griffin-eagles flashing
In burnished copper on the shields,
chivalric-precipice-high
Expressions, hard to comprehend.

DIONYSUS.
Aye, by the Powers, and I
Full many a sleepless night have spent
in anxious thought, because
I’d find the tawny cock-horse out,
what sort of bird it was!

AESCHYLUS.
It was a sign, you stupid dolt,
engraved the ships upon.

DIONYSUS.
Eryxis I supposed it was,
Philoxenus’s son.

EURIPIDES.
Now really should a cock be brought
into a tragic play?

AESCHYLUS.
You enemy of gods and men,
what was your practice, pray?

EURIPIDES.
No cock-horse in my plays, by Zeus,
no goat-stag there you’ll see,
Such figures as are blazoned forth
in Median tapestry.
When first I took the art from you,
bloated and swoln, poor thing,
With turgid gasconading words
and heavy dieting,
First I reduced and toned her down,
and made her slim and neat
With wordlets and with exercise
and poultices of beet,
And next a dose of chatterjuice,
distilled from books, I gave her,
And monodies she took, with sharp
Cephisophon for flavour.
I never used haphazard words,
or plunged abruptly in;
Who entered first explained at large
the drama’s origin
And source.

AESCHYLUS.
Its source, I really trust,
was better than your own

EURIPIDES.
Then from the very opening lines
no idleness was shown;
The mistress talked with all her might,
the servant talked as much,
The master talked, the maiden talked,
the beldame talked.

AESCHYLUS.
For such
An outrage was not death your due?

EURIPIDES.
No, by Apollo, no:
That was my democratic way.

DIONYSUS.
Ah, let that topic go.
Your record is not there, my friend,
particularly good.

EURIPIDES.
Then next I taught all these to speak.

AESCHYLUS.
You did so, and I would
That ere such mischief you had wrought,
your very lungs had split.

EURIPIDES.
Canons of verse I introduced,
and neatly chiselled wit;
To look, to scan: to plot, to plan:
to twist, to turn, to woo:
On all to spy; in all to pry.

AESCHYLUS.
You did: I say so too.

EURIPIDES.
I showed them scenes of common life,
the things we know and see,
Where any blunder would at once
by all detected be.
I never blustered on, or took
their breath and wits away
By Cycnuses or Memnons clad
in terrible array,
With bells upon their horses’ heads,
the audience to dismay.
Look at his pupils, look at mine:
and there the contrast view.
Uncouth Megaenetus is his,
and rough Phormisius too;
Great long-beard-lance-and-trumpet-men,
flesh-tearers with the pine:
But natty smart Theramenes,
and Cleitophon are mine.

DIONYSUS.
Theramenes? a clever man
and wonderfully sly:
Immerse him in a flood of ills,
he’ll soon be high and dry,
“A Kian with a kappa, sir,
not Chian with a chi.”

EURIPIDES.
I taught them all these knowing ways
By chopping logic in my plays,
And making all my speakers try
To reason out the How and Why.
So now the people trace the springs,
The sources and the roots of things,
And manage all their households too
Far better than they used to do,
Scanning and searching What’s amiss?
And, Why was that? And, How is this?

DIONYSUS.
Ay, truly, never now a man
Comes home, but he begins to scan;
And to his household loudly cries,
Why, where’s my pitcher? What’s the matter?
’Tis dead and gone my last year’s platter.
Who gnawed these olives? Bless the sprat,
Who nibbled off the head of that?
And where’s the garlic vanished, pray,
I purchased only yesterday?
—Whereas, of old, our stupid youths
Would sit, with open mouths and eyes,
Like any dull-brained Mammacouths.

CHORUS.
“All this thou beholdest, Achilles our boldest.”
And what wilt thou reply? Draw tight the rein
Lest that fiery soul of thine
Whirl thee out of the listed plain,
Past the olives, and o’er the line.
Dire and grievous the charge he brings.
See thou answer him, noble heart,
Not with passionate bickerings.
Shape thy course with a sailor’s art,
Reef the canvas, shorten the sails,
Shift them edgewise to shun the gales.
When the breezes are soft and low,
Then, well under control, you’ll go
Quick and quicker to strike the foe.
O first of all the Hellenic bards
high loftily-towering verse to rear,
And tragic phrase from the dust to raise,
pour forth thy fountain with right good cheer.

AESCHYLUS.
My wrath is hot at this vile mischance,
and my spirit revolts at the thought that I
Must bandy words with a fellow like him:
but lest he should vaunt that I can’t reply—
Come, tell me what are the points for which
a noble poet our praise obtains.