Lines 1309–1533

AESCHYLUS.
Halcyons, who by the ever-rippling
Waves of the sea are babbling,
Dewing your plumes with the drops that fall
From wings in the salt spray dabbling.

Spiders, ever with twir-r-r-r-rling fingers
Weaving the warp and the woof,
Little, brittle, network, fretwork,
Under the coigns of the roof.

The minstrel shuttle’s care.

Where in the front of the dark-prowed ships
Yarely the flute-loving dolphin skips.

Races here and oracles there.

And the joy of the young vines smiling,
And the tendril of grapes, care-beguiling.
O embrace me, my child, O embrace me.
(To Dio.) You see this foot?

DIONYSUS.
I do.

AESCHYLUS.
And this?

DIONYSUS.
And that one too.

AESCHYLUS.
(to Eur.) You, such stuff who compile,
Dare my songs to upbraid;
You, whose songs in the style
Of Cyrene’s embraces are made.
So much for them: but still I’d like to show
The way in which your monodies are framed.
“O darkly-light mysterious Night,
What may this Vision mean,
Sent from the world unseen
With baleful omens rife;
A thing of lifeless life,
A child of sable night,
A ghastly curdling sight,
In black funereal veils,
With murder, murder in its eyes,
And great enormous nails?
Light ye the lanterns, my maidens,
and dipping your jugs in the stream,
Draw me the dew of the water,
and heat it to boiling and steam;
So will I wash me away the ill effects of my dream.
God of the sea!
My dream’s come true.
Ho, lodgers, ho,
This portent view.
Glyce has vanished, carrying off my cock,
My cock that crew!
O Mania, help! O Oreads of the rock
Pursue! pursue!
For I, poor girl, was working within,
Holding my distaff heavy and full,
Twir-r-r-r-rling my hand as the threads I spin,
Weaving an excellent bobbin of wool;
Thinking ‘To-morrow I’ll go to the fair,
In the dusk of the morn, and be selling it there.’
But he to the blue upflew, upflew,
On the lightest tips of his wings outspread;
To me he bequeathed but woe, but woe,
And tears, sad tears, from my eyes o’erflow,
Which I, the bereaved, must shed, must shed.
O children of Ida, sons of Crete,
Grasping your bows to the rescue come;
Twinkle about on your restless feet,
Stand in a circle around her home.
O Artemis, thou maid divine,
Dictynna, huntress, fair to see,
O bring that keen-nosed pack of thine,
And hunt through all the house with me.
O Hecate, with flameful brands,
O Zeus’s daughter, arm thine hands,
Those swiftest hands, both right and left;
Thy rays on Glyce’s cottage throw
That I serenely there may go,
And search by moonlight for the theft.”

DIONYSUS.
Enough of both your odes.

AESCHYLUS.
Enough for me.
Now would I bring the fellow to the scales.
That, that alone, shall test our poetry now,
And prove whose words are weightiest, his or mine.

DIONYSUS.
Then both come hither, since I needs must weigh
The art poetic like a pound of cheese.

CHORUS.
O the labour these wits go through!
O the wild, extravagant, new,
Wonderful things they are going to do!
Who but they would ever have thought of it?
Why, if a man had happened to meet me
Out in the street, and intelligence brought of it,
I should have thought he was trying to cheat me;
Thought that his story was false and deceiving.
That were a tale I could never believe in.

DIONYSUS.
Each of you stand beside his scale.

AESCHYLUS and EURIPIDES.
We’re here.

DIONYSUS.
And grasp it firmly whilst ye speak your lines,
And don’t let go until I cry “Cuckoo.”

AESCHYLUS and EURIPIDES.
Ready!

DIONYSUS.
Now speak your lines into the scale.

EURIPIDES.
O that the Argo had not winged her way—

AESCHYLUS.
River Spercheius, cattle-grazing haunts—

DIONYSUS.
Cuckoo! let go. O look, by far the lowest
His scale sinks down.

EURIPIDES.
Why, how came that about?

DIONYSUS.
He threw a river in, like some wool-seller
Wetting his wool, to make it weigh the more.
But you threw in a light and wingèd word.

EURIPIDES.
Come, let him match another verse with mine.

DIONYSUS.
Each to his scale.

AESCHYLUS and EURIPIDES.
We’re ready.

DIONYSUS.
Speak your lines.

EURIPIDES.
Persuasion’s only shrine is eloquent speech.

AESCHYLUS.
Death loves not gifts, alone amongst the gods.

DIONYSUS.
Let go, let go. Down goes his scale again.
He threw in Death, the heaviest ill of all.

EURIPIDES.
And I Persuasion, the most lovely word.

DIONYSUS.
A vain and empty sound, devoid of sense.
Think of some heavier-weighted line of yours,
To drag your scale down: something strong and big.

EURIPIDES.
Where have I got one? Where? Let’s see.

DIONYSUS.
I’ll tell you.
“Achilles threw two singles and a four.”
Come, speak your lines: this is your last set-to.

EURIPIDES.
In his right hand he grasped an iron-clamped mace.

AESCHYLUS.
Chariot on chariot, corpse on corpse was hurled.

DIONYSUS.
There now! again he has done you.

EURIPIDES.
Done me? How?

DIONYSUS.
He threw two chariots and two corpses in;
Five-score Egyptians could not lift that weight.

AESCHYLUS.
No more of “line for line”; let him—himself,
His children, wife, Cephisophon—get in,
With all his books collected in his arms,
Two lines of mine shall overweigh the lot.

DIONYSUS.
Both are my friends; I can’t decide between them:
I don’t desire to be at odds with either:
One is so clever, one delights me so.

PLUTO.
Then you’ll effect nothing for which you came?

DIONYSUS.
And how, if I decide?

PLUTO.
Then take the winner;
So will your journey not be made in vain.

DIONYSUS.
Heaven bless your Highness! Listen, I came down
After a poet.

EURIPIDES.
To what end?

DIONYSUS.
That so
The city, saved, may keep her choral games.
Now then, whichever of you two shall best
Advise the city, he shall come with me.
And first of Alcibiades, let each
Say what he thinks; the city travails sore.

EURIPIDES.
What does she think herself about him?

DIONYSUS.
What?
She loves, and hates, and longs to have him back.
But give me your advice about the man.

EURIPIDES.
I loathe a townsman who is slow to aid,
And swift to hurt, his town: who ways and means
Finds for himself, but finds not for the state.

DIONYSUS.
Poseidon, but that’s smart! (To Aes.) And what say you?

AESCHYLUS.
’Twere best to rear no lion in the state:
But having reared, ’tis best to humour him.

DIONYSUS.
By Zeus the Saviour, still I can’t decide.
One is so clever, and so clear the other.
But once again. Let each in turn declare
What plan of safety for the state ye’ve got.

EURIPIDES.
[First with Cinesias wing Cleocritus,
Then zephyrs waft them o’er the watery plain.

DIONYSUS.
A funny sight, I own: but where’s the sense?

EURIPIDES.
If, when the fleets engage, they holding cruets
Should rain down vinegar in the foemen’s eyes,]
I know, and I can tell you.

DIONYSUS.
Tell away.

EURIPIDES.
When things, mistrusted now, shall trusted be,
And trusted things, mistrusted.

DIONYSUS.
How! I don’t
Quite comprehend. Be clear, and not so clever.

EURIPIDES.
If we mistrust those citizens of ours
Whom now we trust, and those employ whom now
We don’t employ, the city will be saved.
If on our present tack we fail, we surely
Shall find salvation in the opposite course.

DIONYSUS.
Good, O Palamedes! Good, you genius you.
[Is this your cleverness or Cephisophon’s?

EURIPIDES.
This is my own: the cruet-plan was his.]

DIONYSUS.
(to Aes.) Now, you.

AESCHYLUS.
But tell me whom the city uses.
The good and useful?

DIONYSUS.
What are you dreaming of?
She hates and loathes them.

AESCHYLUS.
Does she love the bad?

DIONYSUS.
Not love them, no: she uses them perforce.

AESCHYLUS.
How can one save a city such as this,
Whom neither frieze nor woollen tunic suits?

DIONYSUS.
O, if to earth you rise, find out some way.

AESCHYLUS.
There will I speak: I cannot answer here.

DIONYSUS.
Nay, nay; send up your guerdon from below.

AESCHYLUS.
When they shall count the enemy’s soil their own,
And theirs the enemy’s: when they know that ships
Are their true wealth, their so-called wealth delusion.

DIONYSUS.
Aye, but the justices suck that down, you know.

PLUTO.
Now then, decide.

DIONYSUS.
I will; and thus I’ll do it.
I’ll choose the man in whom my soul delights.

EURIPIDES.
O, recollect the gods by whom you swore
You’d take me home again; and choose your friends.

DIONYSUS.
’Twas my tongue swore; my choice is—Aeschylus.

EURIPIDES.
Hah! what have you done?

DIONYSUS.
Done? Given the victor’s prize
To Aeschylus; why not?

EURIPIDES.
And do you dare
Look in my face, after that shameful deed?

DIONYSUS.
What’s shameful, if the audience think not so?

EURIPIDES.
Have you no heart? Wretch, would you leave me dead?

DIONYSUS.
Who knows if death be life, and life be death,
And breath be mutton broth, and sleep a sheepskin?

PLUTO.
Now, Dionysus, come ye in,

DIONYSUS.
What for?

PLUTO.
And sup before ye go.

DIONYSUS.
A bright idea.
I’faith, I’m nowise indisposed for that.

CHORUS.
Blest the man who possesses a
Keen intelligent mind.
This full often we find.
He, the bard of renown,
Now to earth reascends,
Goes, a joy to his town,
Goes, a joy to his friends,
Just because he possesses a
Keen intelligent mind.
RIGHT it is and befitting,
Not, by Socrates sitting,
Idle talk to pursue,
Stripping tragedy-art of
All things noble and true.
Surely the mind to school
Fine-drawn quibbles to seek,
Fine-set phrases to speak,
Is but the part of a fool!

PLUTO.
Farewell then, Aeschylus, great and wise,
Go, save our state by the maxims rare
Of thy noble thought; and the fools chastise,
For many a fool dwells there.
And this to Cleophon give, my friend,
And this to the revenue-raising crew,
Nicomachus, Myrmex, next I send,
And this to Archenomus too.
And bid them all that without delay,
To my realm of the dead they hasten away.
For if they loiter above, I swear
I’ll come myself and arrest them there.
And branded and fettered the slaves shall go
With the vilest rascal in all the town,
Adeimantus, son of Leucolophus, down,
Down, down to the darkness below.

AESCHYLUS.
I take the mission. This chair of mine
Meanwhile to Sophocles here commit,
(For I count him next in our craft divine,)
Till I come once more by thy side to sit.
But as for that rascally scoundrel there,
That low buffoon, that worker of ill,
O let him not sit in my vacant chair,
Not even against his will.

PLUTO.
(to the Chor.) Escort him up with your mystic throngs,
While the holy torches quiver and blaze.
Escort him up with his own sweet songs,
And his noble festival lays.

CHORUS.
First, as the poet triumphant
is passing away to the light,
Grant him success on his journey,
ye powers that are ruling below.
Grant that he find for the city
good counsels to guide her aright;
So we at last shall be freed
from the anguish, the fear, and the woe,
Freed from the onsets of war.
Let Cleophon now and his band
Battle, if battle they must,
far away in their own fatherland.