Characters of the Play
DIONYSOS
XANTHIAS his slave
HERAKLES
CORPSE
CHARON
CHORUS (as Frogs; as Initiates; and as the population of Hades)
AIAKOS, the janitor of Hades
MAID
HOSTESS of the inn
PLATHANE, maid of the inn
EURIPIDES
AESCHYLUS
PLUTO (or Hades)
VARIOUS EXTRAS (stretcher bearers. dead souls rowing in the
SCENE: A Door. Enter Dionysos, on foot; Xanthias, riding a
donkey, and with a bundle on his back. Dionysos wears a
long yellow robe, but over it the lion skin affected by Herakles,
and he carries a primitive knobby club.
XANTHIAS
Shall I give them any of the usual jokes, master?
You know, the ones that are always good for a laugh?
DIONYSOS
Go ahead. Any of them. Except "what a day!"
Don't give them that one. It's gone awfully sour.
XANTHIAS
But something witty, like...
DIONYSOS
Anything. Except "my poor back."
XANTHIAS
Well, can I tell the really funny one?
DIONYSOS
Yes, do,
go right ahead. Only don't say this one.
XANTHIAS
Don't say what?
DIONYSOS
Don't shift your load because "you need to go to the
baffroom."
XANTHIAS
Can't I even tell the people I'm so over-loaded
that unless somebody unloads me I'll blow my
bottom?
DIONYSOS
No, don't, please don't. Wait till I need to vomit.
XANTHIAS
So what did I have to carry all this stuff for.
if I can't pull any of the jokes Phrynichos* pulls.
or what Lykis pulls, or what Ameipsias pulls?
DIONYSOS
Well, just don't do it. When I'm in the audience
and have to watch any of these conscious efforts,
I'm a year older when I leave the place.
XANTHIAS
Poor me. Oh, my poor neck. I think it's broken now.
It won't say anything funny.
DIONYSOS
Now isn't this a sassy slave? I've spoiled him.
Here am I, Dionysos, son of Grapejuice,
wearing out my own feet, and I let him ride
so that he won't get tired carrying the bundles.
XANTHIAS
What do you mean, not carrying them?
DIONYSOS
How can you?
You're riding.
XANTHIAS
But I'm carrying.
DIONYSOS
How?
XANTHIAS
With an effort.
DIONYSOS
Isn't the donkey carrying what you're carrying?
XANTHIAS
Not carrying what I'm carrying no, by golly.
DIONYSOS
How can you carry it, when somebody's carrying you?
XANTHIAS
Dunno. I only know my shoulder's falling apart.
DIONYSOS
All right, so the donkey isn't doing any good,
why don't you pick him up and carry him?
XANTHIAS
Why wasn't I in that sea battle,* where they freed the
slaves who fought? Then I could tell you to go jump in
the lake.
DIONYSOS
Get down, you bum. Here we are at the door.
This is the place I was trying to find. First stop. Get
down.
Knocks on the door.
Hey there! You inside! Hey. Anybody home? Bang bang
Herakles half opens the door, pokes his head out.
HERAKLES
Who was pounding on my door? Sounded like a Centaur
kicking it or something. What goes on?
DIONYSOS
To Xanthias.
Slave boy!
XANTHIAS
What is it?
DIONYSOS
You noticed, didn't you?
XANTHIAS
Noticed what?
DIONYSOS
How scared he was.
XANTHIAS
Yeah, scared. Scared you were going bats.
HERAKLES
Demeter! I have to laugh.
I'm biting my lip to hold it in, but I can't help it.
DIONYSOS
Come here, dear boy. I have a favor to ask of you.
HERAKLES
Wait till I get rid of the giggles. Only I can't stop them.
That lion skin being worn over that buttercup nightie!
Haw haw haw.
Collapses. Recovers.
What's the idea, this meeting of the warclub and slipper?
Where were you bound?
DIONYSOS
Well. I served aboard a kind of
dreamboat named the Kleisthenes.
HERAKLES
And did you engage?
DIONYSOS
I did. We sank
a dozen, a baker's dozen, of the enemy craft.
HERAKLES
You two?
DIONYSOS
So help me Apollo.
XANTHIAS
And then I woke up.
DIONYSOS
So then I'm sitting on deck, see, reading this new book,
Andromeda. by Euripides: all of a sudden it hits me
over the heart, a craving, you can't think how hard.
HERAKLES
A craving, huh. A big one?
DIONYSOS
Little one Molon*-size
HERAKLES
A craving. For a woman?
DIONYSOS
No.
HERAKLES
For a boy?
DIONYSOS
No no.
HERAKLES
For a, uh, man?
DIONYSOS
Shush shush shush.
HERAKLES
Well, what about you
and Kleisthenes?
DIONYSOS
Don't laugh at me, brother dear. Truly I am in a bad
way. I've got this craving. It's demoralizing me.
HERAKLES
What kind of craving, little brother?
DIONYSOS
I don't know how
to explain. I'll paraphrase it by a parable.
Did you ever feel a sudden longing for baked beans?
HERAKLES
Baked beans? Gosh yes, that's happened to me a million
times.
DIONYSOS
Shall I give you another illustration? Expound this one?
HERAKLES
Don't need to expound baked beans to me. I get the
point.
DIONYSOS
Well, that's the kind of craving that's been eating me:
a craving for Euripides.
HERAKLES
You mean, dead and all?
DIONYSOS
And nobody's going to persuade me to give up my plan
of going after him.
HERAKLES
Way to Hades', down below?
DIONYSOS
Absolutely. Belower than that, if there's anything there.
HERAKLES
What do you want?
DIONYSOS
What I want is a clever poet
For some of them are gone. The ones who're left are
bad.*
HERAKLES
What? Isn't lophon* living?
DIONYSOS
He's the one good thing
that's left--that is, if he really is any good.
I don't quite altogether just know about that.
HERAKLES
But if you got to resurrect somebody, why
not Sophocles instead of Euripides?
DIONYSOS
No. First I want to get Iophon all by himself
without Sophocles, take him apart, see how he does.
Anyway, Euripides is a slippery character
who'd like to make a jailbreak and come back with me.
Sophocles behaved himself up here. He would down
there.
HERAKLES
What happened to Agathon?*
DIONYSOS
Oh, he's left me, gone away.
And he was a good poet, too. His friends miss him.
HERRAKLES
Too had. Where did he go?
DIONYSOS
To join the saints. For dinner.
HERAKLES
What about Xenokles?
DIONYSOS
I only wish he would die.
HERAKLES
Pythangelos?
XANTHIAS
And nobody ever thinks of me,
and look at me standing here with my shoulder dropping
off.
HERAKLES
Look here, there still are a million and one young guys
around.
You know, Tragic Poets
who can outgabble Euripides by a country mile.
DIONYSOS
A lot of morning-glories talking to themselves,
just twitterbirds and free-verse writers, sloppy craftsmen.
One performance, and you never hear of them again.
They sprinkle Drama in passing like a dog at a pump.
You tell me where there's still an honest-to-god poet
to bark me out one good round solid tragic line.
HERAKLES
Honest-to-god like what?
DIONYSOS
Honest-to-god like this,
someone with an adventurous style, as who should say:
Bright upper air, Zeus' penthouse* or the foot of Time,
or heart that would not swear upon the holy things
or tongue that was forsworn when the heart knew it not.
HERAKLES
You like that stuff?
DIONYSOS
It's absolutely dreamy, man.
HERAKLES
Its bilge. It's awful. Nobody knows it better than you.
DIONYSOS
Rule not my mind. Thine own is thy mind. Rule thou it. *
HERAKLES
No, really, it does seem the most awful slop to me.
DIONYSOS
You stick to food.
XANTHIAS
And nobody ever thinks of me.
DIONYSOS
Now, let me tell you why I'm here, wearing all this stuff
that makes me look like you. It's so you can tell me
about your friends who put you up when you went there
to fetch the Kerberos dog. Well, I could use some
friends, so tell me about them. Tell me the ports, the
bakery shops, whorehouses, parks and roadside rests,
highways and springs, the cities, boarding houses, and
the best hotels scarcest in bedbugs..
XANTHIAS
Nobody ever thinks of me.
HERAKLES
You poor idiot. You're really going to try and get there?
DIONYSOS
No more of that stuff, please, just tell me about the
roads, and what's the quickest way to Hades' under-
house, and don't make it a hot one. Not too cold either.
HERAKLES
Hm. What's my first recommendation? What indeed?
Well, here's a way. You need a footstool and a rope.
Go hang yourself.
DIONYSOS
Stop stop. That's a stifling sort of way.
HERAKLES
Well, there's a short well-beaten path. Well-beaten,
I say, via mortar-and-pestle.
DIONYSOS
That's hemlock you're talking about?
HERAKLES
Nothing else but.
DIONYSOS
A chilly way. It makes me shiver.
Your shins go numb.
HERAKLES
Shall I tell you about a downhill road? It's good and
quick.
DIONYSOS
That's what I'd like. I'm somebody who hates to walk.
HERAKLES
Well, take just a little walk down to the Potters' Quarter.
DIONYSOS
Yes.
HERAKLES
Climb up the tower, the high one.
DIONYSOS
What do I do then?
HERAKLES
Watch for the drop of the signal torch that starts the
race, and when they drop it, all the spectators around
will say "go!" You go. too.
DIONYSOS
Go where?
HERAKLES
Over the edge.
DIONYSOS
I'd smash my twin croquettes of brains.
No, I won't go that way of yours.
HERAKLES
What do you want?
DIONYSOS
The way you went, the deathless way.*
HERAKLES
It's a long voyage.
The first thing that you'll come to is a great swampy
lake. It's bottomless.
DIONYSOS
Well, then, how do I get across?
HERAKLES
There's an ancient mariner with a little tiny boat.
He'll take you across. And you'll give him two bits*
for it.
DIONYSOS
Oh, gee.
Those two bits. You can't ever get away from them.
How did they ever get here?
HERAKLES
Theseus* brought them along from
Athens. After that, you'll see snakes, and armies of wild
animals, monsters.
DIONYSOS
Stop trying to scare me out of this.
You'll never stop me.
HERAKLES
Next comes a great sea of mud
and shitten springs eternal, and people stuck therein,
whoever did an injury to his guest or host,
debauched some child and picked its pockets in the
process, or beat his mother up, or broke his father's jaw,
or swore an oath and broke it,
or copied out a tragic speech of Morsimos. *
DIONYSOS
Don't stop. I've got another one to add to those.
Whoever learned the war-dance by Kinesias. *
HERAKLES
Next a sweet sound of flutes will come upon your ears,
and you'll see a lovely light like the sunlight here above.
myrtles. and solemn troops and sweet societies
of men and women. and an endless clapping of hands.
DIONYSOS
And who are they?
HERAKLES
The blessed, the Initiates.*
XANTHIAS
And I'm the donkey carrying mystic properties.
but I don't mean to keep them for the rest of time.
HERAKLES
Ask them. They'll tell you everything else you need.
for they live closest to the road you have to go.
Their habitation is by Pluto's doors.
So. good luck. little brother.
Herakles disappears. shutting the door.
DIONYSOS
Oh, the same to you!
Keep healthy. You there, Xanthias, pick the bundles up.
XANTHIAS
You mean. before I've put them down?
DIONYSOS
Get a move on.
XANTHIAS
Oh please. please don't make me do it. Why don't you
hire one of these stiffs they're carrying out? There'll
be one soon.
DIONYSOS
What if I can't get one?
XANTHIAS
Then I'll do it.
DIONYSOS
Fair enough.
Look, here comes a corpse now being carried out.
Corpse is brought in on a stretcher.
Hey! Hey, you there, the dead one. I'm talking to you.
Want to carry some luggage to Hades?
Corpse sits up.
CORPSE
How much?
DIONYSOS
Showing his hand.
That much.
CORPSE
Give me two bucks*?
DIONYSOS
My god no, that's too much.
Corpse lies down again.
CORPSE
Keep carrying me, you guys.
DIONYSOS
Hey. what's the matter, wait, we've got to work this out.
CORPSE
Two bucks. Put up or shut up.
DIONYSOS
Make it one and a half.
CRPSE
I'd sooner come to life again.
Corpse is carried off.
XANTHIAS
Stuck up bastard. isn't he? The hell with him!
I'll take the baggage.
DIONYSOS
You are nature's nobleman.
Let's go catch a boat.
CHARON
Off stage.
Woo-oop! Coming alongside!
XANTHIAS
What's going on here?
DIONYSOS
What indeed. Oh here. it's the lake
right where he said it would be, and now here comes
the boat.
Charon, in a little boat (on wheels) is pushed in.
XANTHIAS
So help me Poseidon, so it is, and Charon too.
DIONYSOS
O carry me Charon o sweet chariot carry me home. *
CHARON
Who wants a cruise? Relaxation from business worries?
The Meadows of Forgetting, or Horsefeatherland?
To go to the Dogs? To go to the Birds? To go to Hell?
DIONYSOS
Me.
CHARON
Get aboard and shake a leg.
DIONYSOS
Where d'you think we're bound?
Strictly for the Birds?
CHARON
We sure are, with you aboard.
Get on, get on.
DIONYSOS
Here, boy!
CHARON
No, I won't take a slave.
Only a veteran of our hide-saving sea battle.*
XANTHIAS
I would have made it but I was sick. I had the pinkeye.
CHARON
Then you can just take a little walk around the lake.
XANTHIAS
Where shall I wait for you?
CHARON
By the Stone of Parching Thirst,*
at the pull-off.
DIONYSOS
Got it?
XANTHIAS
Oh, I've got it. Wish I were dead.
What kind of bad-luck-sign did I run into this morning?
Xanthias trudges off, carrying the bundles. Dionysos climbs,
awkwardly, into the boat.
CHARON
You, sit to your oar.
Dionysos sits on his oar.
Anyone else going? Hurry it up.
A few Extras (the ones who carried the corpse), get into the
boat, each taking an oar.
Hey, you there. What d'you think you're doing?
DIONYSOS
With dignity.
I am sitting
to my oar. Exactly what you told me to do.
CHARON
Rearranging him.
Well, sit here, fatso. Sit like this. Got it?
DIONYSOS
Okay.
CHARON
Now get your hands away and bring them back.
DIONYSOS
Okay.
CHARON
Stop being such an ass, will you? Bring your weight
forward. Get your back into it.
DIONYSOS
What do you want? I never rowed before.
I'm no Old Navy Man. I didn't make the First Crew.*
How'm I supposed to row?
CHARON
Easily. Just begin to do it.
and you'll get a pretty song to give you the time.
DIONYSOS
Who's singing?
CHARON
It's a swan song, but the swans are lovely frogs.
DIONYSOS
Go ahead.
Give me the stroke.
CHARON
OO-pah, oo-pah.
If he cares to, Charon can go on doing this all during the
following chorus.
The Chorus appears, in green masks and tights, as Frogs.
They are Frogs only in this rowing-scene. They dance around
the boat.
CHORUS
Brekekekex ko-ax ko-ax,
Brekekekex ko-ax ko-ax,
children of freshwater ponds and springs,
gather we all together now
and swell our lofty well-becroaken chorus,
ko-ax ko-ax
Dionysos' Nysos-song
we sing to the son of Zeus,
Dionysos-in-the-marshes, when with morning-frog-in-the-throat
the hangover-haggard procession staggers to the holy Pot-Feast
through my dominion,
brekekekex ko-ax ko-ax.
DIONYSOS
I think that I'm beginning to fail,
I'm raising blisters on my tail,
ko-ax ko-ax, I think I am,
but possibly you don't care a damn.
CHORUS
Brekekekex ko-ax ko-ax.
DIONYSOS
I can't hear anything but ko-ax,
go 'way, I'd like to give you the axe.
CHORUS
Of course, you fool, you can't hear anything else.
for the sweet Muses have gifted me with their lyres,
and Pan the horned walker, voice of reed in the woods.
and lyric Apollo himself goes glad for my singing
when with the music of piping my lyrical
song is heard in the pondy waters.
Brekekekex ko-ax ko-ax.
DIONYSOS
My bloody blisters refuse to heal.
My anguished bottom's beginning to squeal.
When I bend over it joins the attack.
CHORUS
Brekekekex ko-ax ko-ak.
DIONYSOS
Oh ah ye songful tribe, will you
shut up?
CHORUS
Exactly what we won't do.
Longer stronger
sing in the sunny daytime
as we wriggle and dive in the marsh-
flowers blithe on the lily pads
and dive and duck as we sing,
and when Zeus makes it rain
in green escape to the deep
water our song still pulses
and bubbles up from below.
DIONYSOS
Brepepepeps ko-aps ko-aps
I'm picking the rhythm up from you chaps.
CHORUS
We're sorry for us if you join in.
DIONYSOS
I'm sorry for me if I begin
to split in two from bottom to chin.
CHORUS
Brekekekex ko-ax ko-ax.
DIONYSOS
And the hell with you. I don't care what you do
CHORUS
Whatever you say we'll croak all day
as long as we're stout
and our throats hold out.
DIONYSOS
Brekekekex ko-ax ko-ax.
There. I can do it better than you.
CHORUS
No, we can do it better than you.
DIONYSOS
No, I can do it better than you.
I'll croak away
if it takes all day, brekekekex ko-ax ko-ax,
and I'll croak you down in the grand climax
brekekekex ko-ax ko-ax
Frogs slink away. Silence.
Ha ha. I knew I could beat you. You and your ko-ax!
CHARON
Easy. easy Ship oars now. Coming alongside.
Everybody off Pay your fare.
DIONYSOS
Two bits for you. my good man
Charon with his boat is wheeled off
Xanthias! Hey. Xanthias! Now where's he got to?
Xanthias'
XANTHIAS
Off.
Yoo hoo!
DIONYSOS
This way. Over here
Xanthias appears.
XANTHIAS
Why. hello, master.
DIONYSOS
What's over there?
XANTHIAS
A lot of mud and darkness.
DIONYSOS
Well. did you see those criminal types he was talking
about. the murderers and swindlers?
XANTHIAS
Haven't you seen them?
Dionysos stares at the audience and points rudely.
DIONYSOS
Oh, sure, now I know where to look. They're all out
there. Well, what do we do next?
XANTHIAS
I think we'd better get out of here.
This is the place he said the wild animals would be,
you know, those monsters he was talking about.
DIONYSOS
Oh, him.
He was just laying it on thick, trying to frighten me.
He knows what a fighting man I am, and it makes him
jealous. There's nobody who's quite as vain as Herakles.
I wish we could have met some terrifying thing,
you know, some ghastly struggle, to make the trip worth while.
XANTHIAS
You know, I think I do hear something moving around.
DIONYSOS
Wh wh which direction?
XANTHIAS
Right behind us.
DIONYSOS
Get behind.
XANTHIAS
No, it's in front of us now.
DIONYSOS IIONYSOS
You better stay in front.
XANTHIAS
I see it. It's an animal--an enormous thing.
DIONYSOS
What does it look like?
XANTHIAS
Monster. It keeps changing shape.
Now it's a cow. Now it's a mule Oh. now it's a girl.
whee-whew. what a beauty!
DIONYSOS
Let me at her Where'd she go?
XANTHIAS
Too late No girl any longer. She turned into a bitch.
DIONYSOS
It's Empousa *
XANTHIAS
Whoever she is. she done caught fire
Her face is burning
DIONYSOS
Does she have one brazen leg?
XANTHIAS
She does, she does. The other one is made of dung
I'm not lying.
DIONYSOS
Where can I run to?
XANTHIAS
Where can I?
DIONYSOS
To the priest of Dionysos sitting in the front row
Save me. your reverence' We belong to the same lodge
XANTHIAS
Lord Heralcles. we're lost
DIONYSOS
Dumb-bell. don't call me that
Don't give away my name Please
XANTHIAS
Lord Dionysos then
IIONYSOS
No no. that's even worse
Go on the way you were going.
XANTHIAS
Here. master. over here
DIONYSOS
Got something?
XANTHIAS
Don't be frightened, we've come out all right
and I can speak the line now that Hegelochos spoke
The storm is over, and the clam has stilled the waves.*
Empousa's gone.
DIONYSOS
You swear it's true?
XANTHIAS
So help me Zeus.
DIONYSOS
Swear it again.
XANTHIAS
So help me Zeus.
DIONYSOS
Swear.
XANTHIAS
Help me Zeus
DIONYSOS
What a fright. I lost my pretty color when I saw her.
XANTHIAS
Our donkey got a fright too, so you're all in yellow.
DIONYSOS
Now what did I ever do to have this happen to me?
Looking upward.
Which one of you gods must I hold responsible for this?
XANTHIAS
Bright upper air Zeus penthouse? Or the foot of Time?
Flute within
DIONYSOS
Hey, you
XANTHIAS
What is it?
DIONYSOS
Did you hear?
XANTHIAS
Did I hear what?
DIONYSOS
Flutes being blown
XANTHIAS
I heard them too. and there's a crackle
and smell of torches Seems like it's mysteries going on.
IONYSOS
Let's just quietly squat where we are. and listen in
CHORUS
Off
lacchos lacchos*
lacchos o lacchos
XANTHIAS
That's what I mought it was. master. The Initiates
Remember, he told us. their playground's hereabouts
They sing the Iacchos song by that noted theologian,
Diagoras.*
DIONYSOS
I think you're right, but still we'd better sit quiet here
until we find out just exactly what goes on.
CHORUS
In white, as Initiates.
lacchos! Well beloved in these pastures o indwelling
lacchos o Iacchos
come to me come with dance steps down the meadow
to your worshipping companions
with the fruited, the lifebursting,
the enmyrtled and enwreathed garland on your brows,
and bold-footed stamp out the sprightly measure
of the dancing full of graces, full of light and sweet and
sacred for your dedicated chosen ones.
XANTHIAS
Demeter's daughter, Persephone. holy lady and queen,
ineffable fragrance wafts upon me. Roasting pigs!*
DIONYSOS
If I promise you a handful of tripes, will you shut up?
CHORUS
Let flames fly as the torch tosses in hand's hold
Iacchos o Iacchos
star of fire in the high rites of the night time.
And the field shines in the torch light,
and the old men's knees are limber,
and they shake off aches and miseries
and the years of their antiquity drop from
them in the magical measure.
Oh, torch-in-hand-shining.
Iacchos go before us to the marsh flowers and the
meadow
and the blest revel of dances.
Parabasis. The Chorus advances down stage and the leader
addresses the audience directly.
LEADER
All now must observe the sacred silence: we ban from
our choruses any
whose brain cannot fathom the gist of our wit: whose
hearts and feelings are dirty;
who never has witnessed and never partaken in genuine
cult of the Muses,
who knows not the speech of bullgobble Kratinos,* who
knows not the Bacchic fraternity,
who laughs at cheap jokes that should not have been
made, who writes such stuff at the wrong time,
who stirs up sedition dissension and hate, who does not
like the Athenians,
who hopes to make money out of our quarrels and
lights them and fans them to fury,
who holds high office and then takes bribes when the
city is tossed in the tempest,
who sells out a ship or a fort to the enemy, smuggling
our secret intelligence
from Aigina over to Epidauros, like any goddam tax-
collecting
Thorykion,* with the oarpads and sails and pitch that
was meant for our navy,
who goes on his rounds and collects contributions to
finance the enemy's war fleet,
who, humming his cyclical verses the while, uses
Hekate's shrine as a backhouse,*
who gets up to speak in the public assembly and nibbles
at the fees of the poets
just because they once made a fool of him in the plays
that our fathers established.
Such men I forbid, and again I forbid, and again I
forbid them a third time,
let them get up and go from our choral mysteries.
All others, strike
up the singing
and dance of our holy and nightlong revels befitting
this solemn occasion.
CHORUS
Slowly.
Advance all now, firmly
into the flower strewn hollows
of meadow fields. Stamp strongly
and jeer and sneer
and mock and be outrageous.
For all are well stuffed full with food.
Advance advance, sing strongly
our Lady of Salvation
and march to match your singing.
She promises
to save our land in season
for all Thorykion can do.
LEADER
Come now and alter the tune of the song for the queen
of the bountiful seasons;
sing loud, sing long, and dance to the song for Demeter
our lady and goddess.
CHORUS
Demeter, mistress of grave and gay,
stand by now and help me win.
Protect this chorus. It is your own.
Let me in safety all this day
play on and do my dances.
Help me say what will make them grin.
Help me say what will make them think.
Help me say what will make me win
in your own festival today
and wear the victor's garland.
LEADER
Change the tune.
Sing to the pretty god of the time summon him to
join us.
We have a sacred way to go and he goes with us.
CHORUS
Iacchos, well-beloved spirit of song, o be
my leader and march along with me
his holy way.
Bring me to Eleusis swift and musically.
To you I pray.
Iacchos lover of dancing help me on my way.
You split my shirt to make them laugh and boo.
You cut my cheap little shoes in two.
My rags flap on me.
You know how to make do.
Wartime economy.
Iacchos lover of dancing help me on my way.
I saw a sweet little girl in the crowd down there.
As she leaned forward, her dress, I swear,
bust open a trifle
and I was happy to stare
at a bosomy eyeful.
lacchos lover of dancing help me on my way.
DIONYSOS
I've always been a fellow who's good
at follow-my-leader; I gladly would
go down and help you play with her.
XANTHIAS
I would if I could.
CHORUS
Shall we now, all together
make fun of Archedemos?*
Seven years he tries to naturalize and still he hasn't
made it.
Now he's a leading citizen
among the upworld corpses.
Nobody up there can claim a similar fame--for being
a bastard.
And Kleisthenes,* they tell me,
sits mourning among the tombstones,
and tears the hair from his you-know-where, and
batters his jawbones.
He was seen, in his usual posture
in tears for his vanished sweetheart--
the dear little friend (of his after-end) Sebinos of
Anaphlystos.
And Kallias,* they say,
the son of Ponyplay,
wears a panoply and has gone to sea and the ships with
a lionskin over his hips.
DIONYSOS
Can any of you guys tell
me where Pluto happens to dwell?
We're visiting firemen. Never been here before.
CHORUS
Stop bothering me so.
You haven't got far to go.
He lives right here. Walk up and knock at the door.
DIONYSOS
Boy! Pick up the stuff again.
XANTHIAS
What's the matter with this guy?
Pick up, pick up, it's nothing but pick up bundles.
CHORUS
Forward, now
In the goddess' sacred circle-dance to the grove that's in
blossom
and play on the way for we belong to the company of
the elect,
and I shall go where the girls go and I shall go with
the women
who keep the nightlong rite of the goddess and carry
their sacred torch.
Let us go where roses grow
and fields are in flower,
in the way that is ours alone,
playing our blessed play
which the prosperous Fates today
ordain for our playing.
On us alone the sun shines here
and the happy daylight.
for we are Initiates, we
treat honorably
all strangers who are here
and our own people.
The white-robed Chorus file off.
PIONYSOS
Well, tell me. how am I supposed to knock on the door?
How do the natives knock on doors in these here parts?
XANTHIAS
Stop dithering around. Take a good whack at it.
You wear the gear and spirit of Herakles. Act
according.
DIONYSOS
Knocking.
Boy! Hey, boy.
AIAKOS*
Inside.
Who's out there?
DIONYSOS
The mighty Herakles.
AIAKOS
Still inside but he will appear later on.
You hoodlum; did you ever have a nerve,
you bastard, bastard plus, and bastard double-plus.
You were the one who dragged our Kerberos-dog away.
You choked him by the collar and made off with him,
and I was on duty. We've got a scissors-hold on you.
We've got the cliffs of blackheart Styx* all ready
for you,
the blood-dripping rocks of Acheron to shove you off--
or maybe the bloodhounds sniff your trail by Kokytos.
Echidna, our pet hundred-headed viper, waits
to chew your gizzard, and Muraina, eel of hell
shall have your lungs to gnaw on, while your kidneys go
with all the rest of your innards and the bleeding bowels
to the Teithrasian gorgons. Oh, they'll rip you up.
They're straining at the leash. I'll let them loose on you.
Dionysos collapses, doubled up.
XANTHIAS
What's the matter?
DIONYSOS
I can't hold it. Is there a god in the house?
XANTHIAS
You clown. Don't disgrace us. Alley oop! On your feet
before somebody sees you.
DIONYSOS
But I feel so faint.
Be a good chap, put a wet sponge over my heart.
XANTHIAS
Here it is, you put it.
DIONYSOS
Where are we?
Takes it, searches. and claps it over his lower anatomy.
XANTHIAS
O ye golden gods,
is that where you keep your heart?
DIONYSOS
You see, the poor little thing
got awfully frightened, so she crept down there to hide.
ANTHIAS
You're the worst coward of all gods and men.
DIONYSOS
Who, me?
Call me a coward? Didn't I ask you for a sponge?
Nobody else would have dared do that.
XANTHIAS
What would they have done?
DIONYSOS
Laid there and stunk, that's what a good coward would
have done. I got to my feet again. What's more, united
I stand.
XANTHIAS
That's manliness, by Poseidon.
DIONYSOS
Goodness gracious yes.
Long pause.
He talked so loud and said such awful things. Weren't
you a little scared?
XANTHIAS
Hell no, I never gave it a thought.
DIONYSOS
Well, tell you what. You win. I guess you're the hero-
boy. So you be me. Here you are. Here's the club, here's
the lion's skin.
Exchange going on.
You're the guy with the fearless guts.
I'll be you. and take my turn with the duffel bags.
XANTHIAS
I cannot but obey thee.* Gimme. Hurry it up.
Exchange completed. Xanthias parades the stage.
Hey, look at me, everybody. I'm Xanthierakles.
Now see if I'm a sissy, like you.
DIONYSOS
You look like someone
who came from the same ward--but got rode out on
a rail. Well, there's the baggage. Suppose I've got to
carry it.
A maid comes out of the door, and squeals with joy.
MAID
Why, Herakles! Darling, it's you! Come on inside.
When the Mistress* heard you might be around, she put
the buns in the oven, and lit the stove, and put the
pot of beans to cook, and, oh yes, barbecued you a
steer, whole, and there'll be cakes and cookies.
So come on in.
XANTHIAS
Thanks, it's awfully kind of you, but...
MAID
Here me, Apollo,
I simply won't let you go away. Let's see, we were fixing
some roast chickens, and she was toasting the salted nuts
and mixing the wine--vintage stuff. Here, take my hand
and follow me in.
XANTHIAS
Awfully nice, but...
MAID
Don't be so silly.
It's all yours, and I won't let you go. Oh, there's a flute-
player-girl waiting for you inside, she's lovely, and
two or three dancers, too, I believe.
XANTHIAS
What did you say? Dancing girls?
MAID
Pretty, just come to flower, all bathed and plucked for
you. Come on. come on. they were just putting the tables
out. and the cook was taking the hot dishes off the stove.
XANTHIAS
Dancing girls! Dancing girls! Run on ahead, will you
please and tell those dancing girls of yours I'm coming
right in
Maid disappears
Boy. you pick up the baggage there. and follow me
DIONYSOS
Hey. wait a minute. You didn't think I was serious,
did you. when I got you up as Herakles, for fun?
Xanthias, will you kindly stop being such an ass?
Here's your baggage again Take it It's all yours
During the following dialogue. the Chorus come back on
They are no longer Initiates specifically. but simply represent
an ideal audience. the population of Hades.
XANTHIAS
What is this, anyway? Are you thinking of taking back
What you gave me?
DIONYSOS
I'm not thinking of it. I'm doing it.
Give me that lionskin
XANTHIAS
Witnesses! Make a note! I'll sue!
I'm putting this in the hands of my--uh--gods.
DIONYSOS
What gods,
you stupid clown, thinking you could be Herakles,
Alkmene's son, when you're human, and a slave at that.
XANTHIAS
Oh, the hell with it. Here, take it, take it.
Re exchange.
Maybe, though,
if God so wills, you'll find you need me after all.
CHORUS
There's an adaptable guy.
Must have been in the navy.
He's been around. He'll never get drowned.
Always knows where the gravy
is. The ships on her beam,
he's on the side that's dry.
He's got supersensory vision
like our glorious politician
Theramenes. * Just call him galosh
or any old boot you can easily put
on either your right- or your left-hand foot.
DIONYSOS
Here's what would have been funny.
Picture it like this.
Here's Xanthias and his honey
ready to kiss.
But he needs to go. Here's me,
and I hold the pot for him, see?
I make a pass at the girl's--well
anyway. he's on to me,
so he hauls off and socks
me one in the teeth, and knocks
the spots out of Attic Tragedy
Hostess comes out the door.
HOSTESS
Plathane! Plathane! Come out, come out. Here's that
awful man! Remember the one who came to our hotel
one time and ate up sixteen loaves of our bread?
Plathane the maid. emerges
PLATHANE
Heavens yes
it's him. it's him
XANTHIAS
Somebody's going to be sor-ry
HOSTESS
That's wasn't all. He made away with twenty pounds
of roast beef too
XANTHIAS
Somebody's going to get hu-urt.
HOSTESS
And a lot of garlic
DIONYSOS
Woman, you're crazy in the head.
You don't know what you're talking about
HOSTESS
I don't, don't I?
You thought I wouldn't know you in your tragic boots?
Well, what about it? I didn't even mention the herrings
PLATHANE
You didn't even mention our poor white feta cheese
He ate the lot, boxes and all.
HOSTESS
Then, when I asked him please if he would pay for it
he just glared at me. fighting mad. He bellowed at me
XANTHIAS
Yes, that's exactly like him. He always does like that
HOSTESS
Pretended he was out of his mind, and pulled a sword
PLATHANE
You poor thing, so he did.
I IOSTESS
He frightened us girls so
we had to run away upstairs and hide.
He charged away Took our rush mats along with him
XANTHIAS
Yes, that's him all the way.
PLATHANE
Let's do something about it
HOSTESS
Run and get us a dead Politician Kleon* will do.
PLATHANE
Bring the whole subcommittee. Bring Hyperbolos.
We'll fix him, once for all.
HOSTESS
You horrid gourmet, you,
I'd like to take a rock to you and break those teeth
you ate me out of house and home with.
PLATHANE
And I'd like
to throw you in the ditch they bury criminals in.
HOSTESS
I'd like to find that carving knife you used
to cut our sausages up--and carve your neck with it.
PLATHANE
I'll go get Kleon. If we ask him he'll come today
and pull the stuffings out of this guy, bit by bit.
Women rush off. Long pause.
DIONYSOS
Dear Xanthias. How I love him. Wonder if he knows it.
XANTHIAS
I know what you're thinking about. You stop right there.
I will not be Herakles again.
DIONYSOS
Sweet little Xanthias
say not so.
XANTHIAS
Tell me, how can I be Herakles,
Alkmene's son, when I'm human, and a slave at that?
D1ONYSOS
I know you're cross, my Xanthias. I don't blame you a
bit.
You can even hit me if you want. I won't say a thing
I tell you: If I ever make you change again
I hope to die, with my whole family: my wife:*
my kiddies:* throw in bleary Archedemos too.
XANTHIAS
I note your oath, and on these terms I will accept
Re-exchange going on. Xanthias becoming Herakles
CHORUS
Now you've got his costume on you.
Now you've got a reputation
to live up to. Better do
a transformation.
Remember the kind of god*
you're supposed to be.
Act accordingly
with masculinity.
Be rough and tough
or you'll be reduced to the bottom roost
and have to carry the stuff.
XANTHIAS
Gentlemen, you are not so
far off the mark, but, you know,
I thought of that too.
If it's anything bad this lovely lad
hands it to me: anything good
he'd take it back if he could.
I'll chew brave herbs* and I won't take fright.
so fight fight fight
for Xanthias. Yeah!
And it's time for it, boys. I hear a noise.
The doors! Trouble coming this way
Aiakos rushes out, followed by two unprepossessing assistants.
AIAKOS
There's the dog-stealer. Get him, fellows, tie him up
and take him away. We'll fix him.
DIONYSOS
Somebody's going to be sor-ry.
Xanthias waves the club of Herakles and holds them off.
XANTHIAS
The hell with you. Keep away from me.
AIAKOS
So you'll fight, will you?
Hey Ditylas hey Skeblyas hey Pardokos,
out here. Fight going on! Come along, give us a hand.
The reinforcements rush on.
DIONYSOS
Tut tut. Shocking, isn't it. the way this fellow
steals from you, .then assaults you?
AIAKOS
He's too big for his boots.
DIONYSOS
Outrageous, shouldn't be allowed.
XANTHIAS
So help me Zeus
and hope to die if I ever, was in this place before
or ever stole a hair's worth of goods that belonged to you.
Here, I'll make you a gentlemanly* proposition, my man.
Here's my slave-boy. Take him, put him to the torture;
then kill me, if you find I did anything wrong.
AIAKOS
What tortures?
XANTHIAS
Oh, try them all. Tie him on the ladder,
hang him up, beat him with a whip of bristles, take his
skin off, twist him on the rack, pour vinegar up his nose,
pile bricks on him. Just give him the works--only please
excuse him from anything gentle, like soft onion-whips.
or leeks.*
AIAKOS
Why, fair enough. And if I hit your slave too hard
and cripple him--the damages will be paid to you.
XANTHIAS
Never mind paying me. Take him away and work on
him.
AIAKOS
I'll do it right here, so he'll confess before your eyes.
Here, put that luggage down. Be quick about it. See that
you don't tell me any lies.
DIONYSOS
I protest. I'm warning everybody
not to torture me. I'm a god. If you touch me
you'll have yourself to blame.
AIAKOS
What are you talking about?
DIONYSOS
I am immortal Dionysos, son of Zeus.
Pointing to Xanthias.
And he's the slave.
AIAKOS
You hear that?
XANTHIAS
Oh, I hear it. Sure.
That's all the better reason for him to get a whipping.
If he's really a god, he won't feel anything.
DIONYSOS
Well, you're claiming you're a god too. So what about it?
Shouldn't you get the same number of strokes as me?
XANTHIAS
That's fair enough too. Whip us both, and if you see
either of us paying any attention, or crying in pain
at what you're doing, you'll know that one isn't a god.
AIAKOS
You must be a gentleman. Can't be any doubt about it,
the way you love a trial scene. Well, strip, both of you.
Xanthias and Dionysos bare their backs.
XANTHIAS
How are you going to make this even?
AIAKOS
Picking up a whip.
Easy.
Flit one of you first and then the other, and so on.
XANTHIAS
Okay.
AIAKOS
Hitting him.
There!
XANTHIAS
And when you hit me, see if I move.
AIAKOS
I did hit you.
XANTHIAS
Like hell you did.
AIAKOS
Hm. Must have missed him.
Well, here goes for the other one.
Hits Dionysos
DIONYSOS
When are you going to hit me?
AIAKOS
I did hit you already.
DIONYSOS
Oh? Why didn't I sneeze?
I do when I'm tickled.
AIAKOS
Dunno. Let's try this one again.
XANTHIAS
You supposed to be doing something?
Aiakos hits him.
XANTHIAS
Oh my gosh!
AIAKOS
My gosh?
That hurt, did it?
XANTHIAS
Nyet. Just thought of something. Time
for my feast at Diomeia,* and the enemy won't let us
hold it.
AIAKOS
The man's too religious. Can't get to him. Try the other
one.
Hits Dionysos.
DIONYSOS
Wahoo!
AIAKOS
What's the matter?
DIONYSOS
There go the cavalry. That's their call.
AIAKOS
But there're tears in your eyes.
DIONYSOS
Got a whiff of their onion rations.
AIAKOS
Didn't feel anything?
DIONYSOS
Nothing that would bother me.
Aiakos goes back to Xanthias
AIAKOS
I'd better go back to this one and try again.
Hits Xanthias.
XANTHIAS
Owoo!
AIAKOS
What's the matter?
Xanthias holds up his foot.
XANTHIAS
Take this thing out. will you? Thorn.
AIAKOS
Where am I getting to? Try this other one again.
Hits Dionysos.
DIONYSOS
Apollo who art lord of Delos and Pvtho.*
XANTHIAS
That hurt him! Didn't you hear?
DIONYSOS
It did not. I was
simply going over a line of verse by Hipponax.
XANTHIAS
You aren't trying. Give him a good hard whack in the
ribs.
AIAKOS
Thanks. Good idea. Here, turn your belly. That's the
way.
Hits Dionysos in the belly.
DIONYSOS
Owoo Poseidon...
XANTHIAS
Somebody did get hurt that time.
DIONYSOS
Singing.
Who dost hold sway
over Aigaion's promontories.
or in the depths of the sea's green waters. *
AIAKOS
Demeter. I can't tell
which of you two is a god. You'd better go on in.
The master will know who you are, anyway,
and Persephone the mistress. They're real gods. those
two.
DIONYSOS
Struck.
You're absolutely right, only I wish you'd thought
of that first. Then you wouldn't have had to whack me.
The principals enter the door, leaving the stage to the
Chorus.
CHORUS
Muse of the holy choruses come to us, come, make all
enjoy my music,
cast your eyes on this multitude of wits here seated
sharper than Kleophon,* that sharper, on whose no-spik-
Athenian beak
mutters bad pidgin-Attic,
Thracian swallowbird he
perched on a barberry blackball bush
singing his mournful nightingale threnody, how he must
hang, though the votes come out equal.
LEADER
It's the right and duty of our sacred chorus to determine
better courses for our city. Here's the first text of our
sermon.
All the citizens should be equal, and their fears be taken
away.*
All who once were tricked by Phrynichos, caught and
held and led astray,
ought to be allowed to join the rest of us, who slipped
away.
Amnesty. Let's all forgive them for mistakes made long
ago.
Nobody in our community ought to lose his civic rights.
Isn't it unfair that, just for having been in one sea fight,
slaves should have Plataian status,* and be over men
once free?
Please, I'm not against their freedom in itself. I quite
agree.
They deserve it. That's the only thing you've done in-
telligently.
Still, there are those others, men who also often fought
at sea,
by your side, whose fathers fought for us, akin by blood
to you.
Let their one fault be forgotten. Let them know your
mercy, too.
Oh, Athenians, wise beyond all other men, forget your
rage;
any man who fights at sea beside us, let him be our
friend,
take him as a citizen, honored kinsmen; let all hatred
end.
Now our city fights the storm and struggles in the grip of
the waves,
surely this is not the time for your old hard exclusive
pride.
Some day, you'll regret it, if you leave unsaid the word
that saves.
CHORUS
If I have true discrimination to judge a man and his sor-
rows to come,
not long will our current baboon be here to bother us.
That is little Kleigenes,*
cheapest of all the lords of the babble-whirlpool-bath
where soap's without soda.
What they really use
is the clay of Kimolos.
He won't be around very long, and he knows it.
but he carries a club against robbers whenever he goes
on one of his drunken strolls.
LEADER
We've been thinking much of late about the way the city
treats
all the choicest souls among its citizens: it seems to be
like the recent coinage as compared with the old cur-
rency.*
We still have the ancient money: finest coins, I think, in
Greece,
better than the coins of Asia; clink them, and they ring
the bell,
truly fashioned, never phony, round and honest every
piece.
Do we ever use it? We do not. We use this wretched
brass,
last week's issue, badly minted, light and cheap and
looks like hell.
Now compare the citizens. We have some stately gen-
tlemen,
modest, anciently descended, proud and educated well
on the wrestling ground, men of distinction who have
been to school.
These we outrage and reject, preferring any foreign fool,
redhead slave, or brassy clown or shyster. This is what
we choose
to direct our city--immigrants. Once our city would not
use
one of these as public scapegoat.* That was in the
former days.
Now we love them. Think, you idiots. Turn about and
change your ways.
Use our useful men. That will look best, in case of
victory.
Hang we must, if we must hang; but let's hang from a
handsome tree.
Cultured gentlemen should bear their sufferings with
dignity.
Aiakos and Xanthias come out of the door. Xanthias is in
his slave's costume.
AIAKOS
This master of yours, by Zeus the savior, he's a man
of parts, a gentleman.
XANTHIAS
That's a logical conclusion
if trencherman plus wencherman means gentleman
AIAKOS
But he didn't have you on the mat and beat you up
even when you said you were the master and he was the
slave.
XANTHIAS
He'd have been sorry if he had.
AIAKOS
Good slavemanship that.
Well played. Exactly the way I like to do it
XANTHIAS
Come again, please. You like what?
AIAKOS
Seeing myself in action
when I get off where he can't hear. and curse my master
XANTHIAS
What about sneaking out of doors after a good beating
and muttering at your master?
AIAKOS
I enjoy that too
XANTHIAS
And poking into his business?
AIAKOS
Can you think of anything nicer?
XANTHIAS
My brother, by Zeus! How about listening at the keyhole
hen masters are gossiping?
AIAKOS
Just about sends me crazy, man.
XANTHIAS
And spreading secrets you listened in on? Like that?
AIAKOS
Who, me?
That's more than crazy, bud, that's super crazy plus.
XANTHIAS
Phoebus Apollo! You're one of us. Give me the grip,
and kiss me, and let me kiss you, and then tell me, please,
in the name of Zeus-of-the-slaves, who wears his stripes
with us, what's all this racket and yelling and scream-
ing? What goes on inside?
AIAKOS
One's Aeschylus and one's Euripides.
XANTHIAS
Aha!
AIAKOS
Oh, it's a big business, it's a big business:
great fight among the corpses: this high argument.
XANTHIAS
What's it all about?
AIAKOS
We have a local custom here.
sort of award for literature and humanities.
and the one who wins top rating in the work he does
gets to eat dinner in the capitol and sits
in a chair next to Pluto. see?
XANTHIAS
I see
AIAKOS
That's until somebody else comes along who's better
at it than he is. Then he has to move over
XANTHIAS
I don't see
Aeschylus having anything to worry about.
AIAKOS
He held the Chair of Tragedy
He was the best at writing them
XANTHIAS
So who is now?
AIAKOS
Well. when Euripides came down, he exhibited
before the toughs. the sneak-thieves. and the pickpockets
and the safecrackers and the juvenile delinquents,
and there's a lot of that in Hades. and they listened
to his disputations and his wrigglings and his twists
and went crazy. and thought he was the cleverest writer
That all went to his head, so he challenged for the chair
where Aeschylus was sitting
XANTHIAS
Didn't they throw him out?
AIAKOS
They did not. The public cried out for a contest
to see which one really was better than the other.
XANTHIAS
You mean, the criminal public.
AIAKOS
Sure. They yelled to heaven.
XANTHIAS
But wasn't there anyone on the side of Aeschylus?
AIAKOS
Honesty's scarce. The same down here; the same up there.
XANTHIAS
Well, what's Pluto getting ready to do about it?
AIAKOS
He's going to hold a contest, an event, that's what,
and judge their skills against each other.
XANTHIAS
But how come
Sophocles didn't make a bid for the Tragic Chair?
AIAKOS
He never even tried to. When he came down here,
he walked up to Aeschylus, kissed him, and shook hands
with him, and gave up his claim on the chair, in favor
of Aeschylus. His idea, Kleidemidas* was telling me,
was to sit on the bench as substitute. If Aeschylus wins,
he'll stay where he is: if Aeschylus loses, then he means
to fight for his own art against Euripides.
XANTHIAS
So the thing's coming off?
AIAKOS
Zeus, yes, in just a little while.
and all the terrors of tragedy will be let loose.
They're going to have a scale to weigh the music on.
XANTHIAS
What's the idea of that? Short-changing tragedy?
AIAKOS
And they'll bring out their rulers and their angled rods,
and T-squares, the kind you fold.
XANTHIAS
Bricklayers' reunion?
AIAKOS
Wedges and calipers. You see, Euripides says
you have to wring the gist from tragedy, word by word.
XANTHIAS
I guess all this is making Aeschylus pretty mad.
AIAKOS
He lowered his head and glared, like a bull on the
charge.
XANTHIAS
Who's going to judge this?
AIAKOS
That was sort of difficult.
They found the intellectuals pretty hard to find.
Aeschylus didn't go down so well with the Athenians.
XANTHIAS
Maybe he noticed most of them were bank robbers.
AIAKOS
Besides, he thought it was pretty silly for anyone
but poets to judge poets. Then your master came
along, and they handed it to him. He knows technique.
We'd better go inside. When the masters get excited.
you know what happens: screams and yells of pain--
from us.
Aiakos and Xanthias go in the door.
CHORUS
Fearful shall be the spleen now of Thundermutter within-
side.
when the riptooth-sharpening he sees of his multi-
loquacious
antagonist to encounter him. Then shall ensue dread
eyewhirl of fury.
Horse-encrested phrases shall shock in helmtossing com-
bat,
chariots collide in whelm of wreckage and splinter-flown
action,
warrior beating off brain-crafted warrior's
cavalried speeches.
Bristling the hairy mane of his neck of self-grown horse-
hair
bellowing he shall blast the bolts from compacted joinery
hanging plank by plank nailed sections of verse in
stormburst gigantic.
Next, mouthforged tormenter of versification, the slim-
shaped
tongue unraveling to champ on the bit of malignance
wickedly shall chip and chop at its tropes, much
labor of lungwork.
Enter from the door Aeschylus and Euripides, Dionysos (in
his proper costume, without the gear of Herakles or Xanthias),
and Pluto. The poets stand one on each side of the stage.
Three chairs are placed. Pluto sits in the middle, Dionysos
on his right, and the chair on his left is empty.
EURIPIDES
I won't give up the chair, so stop trying to tell me to,
I tell you, I'm a better poet than he is.
DIONYSOS
You heard him, Aeschylus. Don't you have anything to
say?
EURIPIDES
He's always started with the line of scornful silence.
He used to do it in his plays, to mystify us.
DIONYSOS
Now take care, Aeschylus. Don't be overconfident.
EURIPIDES
I know this man. I've studied him for a long time.
His verse is fiercely made, all full of sound and fury,
language unbridled uncontrolled ungated-in
untalkable-around, bundles of blast and boast.
AESCHYLUS
Is that so, child of the goddess of the cabbage patch?*
You, you jabber-compiler, you dead-beat poet,
you rag-stitcher-together. you say this to me?
Say it again You'll be sorry
DIONYSOS
Now, Aeschylus. stop it.
Don't in your passion boil your mortal coils in oil.
AESCHYLUS
I won't stop. until I've demonstrated in detail
what kind of one-legged poet this is who talks so big.
DIONYSOS
Black rams, black rams. boys. run and bring us black
rams. quick. Sacrifice to the hurricane It's on the way
AESCHYLUS
Why, you compiler of Cretan solo-arias.
you fouled our art by staging indecent marriages
DIONYSOS
Most honorable Aeschylus. please stop right there
And as for you. my poor Euripides, if you
have any sense, you'll take yourself out of the storm's
way before the hail breaks on your head in lines of
wrath and knocks it open, and your--Telephos oozes out
--your brains, you know. Now. gently. gently. Aeschy-
lus, criticize. don't yell. It's not becoming for two poets
and gentlemen to squabble like two bakers' wives. You're
crackling like an oak log that's been set ablaze
EURIPIDES
I'm ready for him. Don't try to make me back down
I'll bite before I'm bitten. if that's what he wants.
with lines. with music. the gut-strings of tragedy.
with my best plays. with Peleus and with Aiolos.
with Meleagros. best of all. with Telephos
DIONYSOS
All right, Aeschylus, tell us what you want to do.
AESCHYLUS
I would have preferred not to have the match down here.
It isn't fair. We don't start even.
DIONYSOS
What do you mean?
AESCHYLUS
I mean my poetry didn't die with me, but his
did die with him; so he'll have it here to quote. Still,
if this is your decision, then we'll have to do it.
DIONYSOS
All right, bring on the incense and the fire, while I
in the presence of these great intelligences pray
that I may judge this match most literarily.
You, chorus, meanwhile, sing an anthem to the Muses.
CHORUS
Daughters of Zeus, nine maidens immaculate,
Muses, patronesses of subtly spoken acute brains
of men, forgers of idiom, when to the contest they
hasten, with care-sharpened wrestling-hooks
and holds for their disputations,
come, o Muses, to watch and bestow
potency on these mouths of magnificence,
figures and jigsaw patterns of words.
Now the great test of artistic ability goes into action.
DIONYSOS
Both of you two pray also, before you speak your lines.
AESCHYLUS
Putting incense on the fire
Demeter. mistress. nurse of my intelligence.
grant me that I be worthy of my mysteries
DIONYSIS
Now you put your incense on. too.
EURIPIDES
Excuse me. please
Quite other are the gods to whom I sacrifice
DIONYSOS
You mean. you have private gods? New currency?
EURIPIDES
Yes. I have
MONYSOS
Go ahead. then. sacrifice to your private gods.
EURIPIDES
Bright upper air. my foodage! Socket of the tongue!
Oh, comprehension. sensitory nostrils. oh
grant I be critical in all my arguments
CHORUS
We're all eager to listen
to the two great wits debating
and stating
the luminous course of their wissen-
schaft. Speech bitter and wild.
tough hearts. nothing mild.
Neither is dull
From one we'll get witty designs
polished and filed.
The other can pull
up trees by the roots for his use.
goes wild, cuts loose
stampedes of lines.
DIONYSOS
Get on with it, get on with it, and put your finest wit
in all
you say, and be concrete. and be exact; and, be original.
EURIPIDES
I'll make my self-analysis a later ceremony
after having demonstrated that my rival is a phony.
His audience was a lot of louts and Phrynichus* was all
they knew.
He gypped and cheated them with ease, and here's one
thing he used to do.
He'd start with one veiled bundled muffled character
plunked down in place,
Achilleus,* like, or Niobe, but nobody could see its face.
It looked like drama, sure, but not one syllable would
it mutter.
DIONYSOS
By Jove, they didn't and that's a fact.
EURIPIDES
The chorus then would utter
four huge concatenations of verse. The characters just
sat there mum.
DIONYSOS
You know, I liked them quiet like that. I'd rather have
them deaf and dumb
than yak yak yak the way they do.
EURIPIDES
That's because you're an idiot too.
DIONYSOS
Oh, by all means, and to be sure, and what was
Aeschylus trying to do?
EURIPIDES
Phony effects. The audience sat and watched the
panorama
breathlessly. "When will Niobe speak?" And that was
half the drama.
DIONYSOS
It's the old shell game. I've been had. Aeschylus, why
this agitation?
You're looking cross and at a loss.
EURIPIDES
He doesn't like investigation.
Then after a lot of stuff like this, and now the play was
half-way through,
the character would grunt and moo a dozen cow-sized
lines or two,
with beetling brows and hairy crests like voodoo goblins
all got up,
incomprehensible, of course.
AESCHYLUS
You're killing me.
DIONYSOS
Will you shut up?
EURIPIDES
Not one word you could understand...
DIONYSOS
No, Aeschylus.
don't grind your teeth...
EURIPIDES
....but battles of Skamandros, barbicans with ditches
underneath,
and hooknosed eagles bronze-enwrought on shields,
verse armed like infantry,
not altogether easy to make out the sense.
DIONYSOS
You're telling me?
Many a night I've lain awake and puzzled on a single
word.
A fulvid roosterhorse is please exactly just what kind
of bird?
AESCHYLUS
It was a symbol painted on the galleys, you illiterate
block.
DIONYSOS
I thought it was Eryxis, or Philoxenos's fighting-cock.
EURIPIDES
Well, should a rooster--vulgah bird!--get into tragedy
at all?
AESCHYLUS
Tell me of your creations, you free-thinker, if you have
the gall.
EURIPIDES
No roosterhorses, bullmoosegoats, nor any of the
millions
of monsters that the Medes and Persians paint on their
pavilions.
When I took over our craft from you, I instantly became
aware
that she was gassy from being stuffed with heavy text
and noisy air,
so I eased her aches and reduced the swelling and took
away the weights and heats
with neat conceits and tripping feets, with parsnips,
radishes, and beets.
gave her mashed and predigested baby-food strained
from my books,
then fed her on solo-arias.
DIONYSOS
Kephisophon* had you in his hooks.
EURIPIDES
My openings were never confused or pitched at random.
They were not
difficult. My first character would give the background
of the plot at once.
DIONYSOS
That's better than giving away your personal
background, eh, what, what?
EURIPIDES
Then, from the opening lines, no person ever was left
with nothing to do.
They all stepped up to speak their piece, the mistress
spoke, the slave spoke too,
the master spoke, the daughter spoke, and grandma
spoke.
AESCHYLUS
And tell me
why
you shouldn't be hanged for daring that.
EURIPIDES
No, cross my heart and hope
to die, I made the drama democratic.
DIONYSOS
To Aeschylus.
You'd better let that one pass, old sport;
you never were such a shining light in that particular line
of thought.*
EURIPIDES
Then I taught natural conversational dialogue.
AESCHYLUS
I'll say you did.
And before you ever taught them that. I wish you could
have split in middle.
EURIPIDES
Going right on.
Taught them delicate tests and verbalized
commensuration,
and squint and fraud and guess and god and loving
application,
and always how to think the worst of everything.
AESCHYLUS
So I believe.
EURIPIDES
I staged the life of everyday, the way we live. I couldn't
deceive
my audience with the sort of stuff they knew as much
about as I.
They would have spotted me right away. I played it
straight and didn't try
to bind a verbal spell and hypnotize and lead them by
the nose
with Memmons and with Kyknoses with rings on their
fingers and bells on their toes.
Judge both of us by our influence on followers. Give
him Manes,
Phormisios* and Megainetos and sundry creeps and
zanies,
the big moustachio bugleboys, the pinetreebenders
twelve feet high,
but Kleitophon is mine, and so's Theramenes, a clever
guy.
DIONYSOS
I'll grant your Theramenes. Falls in a puddle and comes
out dry.
The man is quick and very slick, a true Euripidean.
When Chians are in trouble he's no Chian, he's a Keian
EURIPIDES
So that's what my plays are about,
and these are my contributions,
and I turn everything inside out
looking for new solutions
to the problems of today,
always critical, giving
suggestions for gracious living,
and they come away from seeing a play
in a questioning mood, with "where are we at?"
and "who's got my this?" and "who's took my that?"
DIONYSOS
So now the Athenian hears a pome
of yours, and watch him come stomping home
to yell at his servants every one:
"where oh where are my pitchers gone?--
where is the maid who hath betrayed
my heads of fish to the garbage trade?
Where are the pots of yesteryear?
Where's the garlic of yesterday?
Who hath ravished my oil away?"
Formerly they sat like hicks
fresh out of the sticks
with their jaws hung down in a witless way.
CHORUS
To Aeschylus.
See you this, glorious
Achilleus?* What have you got to say?
Don't let your rage
sweep you away,
or you'll never be victorious.
This cynical sage
hits hard. Mind the controls.
Don't lead with your chin.
Take skysails in.
Scud under bare poles.
Easy now. Keep him full in your sights.
When the wind falls, watch him,
then catch him
dead to rights.
DIONYSOS
0 mighty-mouthed inventor of harmonies, grand old
bulwark of balderdash,
frontispiece of Hellenic tragedy, open the faucets and
let 'er splash.
AESCHYLUS
The whole business gives me a pain in the middle, my
rage and resentment are heated
at the idea of having to argue with him. But so he can't
say I'm defeated,
here, answer me, you. What's the poet's duty, and why is
the poet respected?
EURIPIDES
Because he can write, and because he can think, but
mostly because he's injected
some virtue into the body politic.
AESCHYLUS
What if you've broken your trust,
and corrupted good sound right-thinking people and
filled them with treacherous lust?
If poets do that, what reward should they get?
DIONYSOS
The axe. That's what
we should do with 'em.
AESCHYLUS
Then think of the people I gave him, and think of the
people when he got through with 'em.
I left him a lot of heroic six-footers, a grand generation
of heroes,
unlike our new crop of street-corner loafers and
gangsters and decadent queer-os.
Mine snorted the spirit of spears and splendor, of white-
plumed helmets and stricken fields,
of warrior heroes in shining armor and greaves and
sevenfold-oxhide shields.
DIONYSOS
And that's a disease that never dies out. The munition-
makers will kill me.
EURIPIDES
Just whet did you do to make them so noble? Is that
what you're trying to tell me?
DIONYSOS
Well, answer him. Aeschylus, don't withdraw into
injured dignity.
That don't go.
AESCHYLUS
I made them a martial drama.
DIONYSOS
Which?
AESCHYLUS
Seven Against Thebes, if you
want to know.
Any man in an audience sitting through that would
aspire to heroic endeavor.
DIONYSOS
That was a mistake, man. Why did you make the
Thebans more warlike than ever
and harder to fight with? By every right it should mean a
good beating for you.
AESCHYLUS
To the audience.
Well. you could have practiced austerity too. It's exactly
what you wouldn't do.
Then I put on my Persians,* and anyone witnessing that
would promptly be smitten
with longing for victory over the enemy. Best play I ever
have written.
DIONYSOS
Oh, yes. I loved that, and I thrilled where I sat when I
heard old Dareios was dead
and the chorus cried "wahoo' and clapped with their
hands. I tell you. it went to my head.
AESCHYLUS
There. there is work for poets who also are MEN From
the earliest times
incitement to virtue and useful knowledge have come
from the makers of rhymes
There was Orpheus first. He preached against murder.
and showed us the heavenly way.
Musaeus taught divination and medicine; Hesiod. the
day-after-day
cultivation of fields, the seasons. and plowings. Then
Homer. divinely inspired,
is a source of indoctrination to virtue. Why else is he
justly admired
than for teaching how heroes armed them for battle?
DIONYSOS
He didn't teach
Pantakles, though.
He can't get it right. I watched him last night. He was
called to parade, don't you know,
and he put on his helmet and tried to tie on the plume
when the helm was on top of his head.
AESCHYLUS
Ah, many have been my heroic disciples; the last of
them, Lamachos (recently dead).
The man in the street simply has to catch something
from all my heroics and braveries.
My Teucers and lion-hearted Patrokloses lift him right
out of his knaveries
and make him thrill to the glory of war and spring to the
sound of the trumpet
But I never regaled you with Phaidra* the floozie--or
Sthenoboia* the strumpet.
I think I can say that a lovesick woman has never been
pictured by me.
EURIPIDES
Aphrodite never did notice you much.
AESHYLUS
Aphrodite can go climb a tree.
But you'll never have to complain that she didn't bestow
her attentions on you.
She got you in person, didn't she?
DIONYSOS
Yes, she did, and your stories came
true.
The fictitious chickens came home to roost.
EURIPIDES
But tell me, o man with-
out pity:
suppose I would write about Sthenoboia. What harm has
she done to our city?
AESCHYLUS
Bellerophon-intrigues, as given by you, have caused the
respectable wives
of respectable men, in shame and confusion, to do away
with their lives.
EURIPIDES
But isn't my story of Phaidra a story that really has
happened?
AESCHYLUS
So be it.
It's true. But the poet should cover up scandal, and not
let anyone see it.
He shouldn't exhibit it out on the stage. For the little boys
have their teachers
to show them example. but when they grow up we poets
must act as their preachers.
and what we preach should be useful and good.
FURIPIDES
But you. with your
massive construction,
huge words and mountainous phrases. is that what you
call useful instruction?
You ought to make people talk like people.
AESCHYLUS
You folksy style's for the
birds.
For magnificent thoughts and magnificent fancies. we
must have magnificent words.
It's appropriate too for the demigods of heroic times to
talk bigger
than we. It goes with their representation as grander in
costumed and figure.
I set them a standard of purity You've corrupted it
EURIPIDES
How did I do it?
AESCHYLUS
By showing a royal man in a costume of rags. with his
skin showing through it.
You played on emotions.
EURIPIDES
But why should it be so wrong to awaken
their pity?
AESCHYLUS
The rich men won't contribute for warships. * You can't
find one in the city
who's willing to give. He appears in his rags, and howls,
and complains that he's broke.
DIONYSOS
But he always has soft and expensive underwear under
the beggarman's cloak.
The liar's so rich and he eats so much that he has to feed
some to the fishes.
AESCHYLUS
You've taught the young man to be disputatious. Each
argues as long as he wishes.
You've emptied the wrestling yards of wrestlers. They
all sit around on their fannies
and listen to adolescent debates. The sailormen gossip
like grannies
and question their officers' orders. In my time, all that
they knew how to do
was to holler for rations, and sing "yeo-ho," and row,
with the rest of the crew.
DIONYSOS
And blast in the face of the man behind, that's another
thing too that they knew how to do.
And how to steal from the, mess at sea, and how to be
robbers ashore.
But now they argue their orders. We just can't send them
to sea any more.
AESCHYLUS
That's what he's begun. What hasn't he done?
His nurses go propositioning others.
His heroines have their babies in church
or sleep with their brothers
or go around murmuring: "Is life life?"*
So our city is rife
with the clerk and the jerk,
the altar-baboon, the political ape,
and our physical fitness is now a disgrace
with nobody in shape
to carry a torch in a race.
DIONYSOS
Be Zeus, you're right. I laughed till I cried
at the Panathenaia* a while ago,
as the torch-relay-runners went by.
Here comes this guy;
he was puffed, he was slow,
he was white, he was fat,
he was left behind,
and he didn't know where he was at,
and the pottery works gang
stood at the gates to give him a bang
in the gut and the groin and the ribs and the rump
till the poor fellow, harried
by one cruel thump
exploded his inward air
and blew out the flare that he carried.
CHORUS
Great is this action, bitter the spite, the situation is ripe
for war.
How shall the onlooker judge between them?
One is a wrestler strong and rough;
quick the other one, deft in defensive throws and the
back-heel stuff.
Up from your places! Into the ring again!
Wit must wrestle wit once more in fall upon fall.
Fight him, wrestle him, throw the book at him.
talk to him, sit on him, skin him alive,
old tricks, new tricks, give him the works.
This is the great debate for the championship. Hazard
all.
Never hold back any attack for fear you may not be
understood.
You have an audience who can follow you,
don't be afraid of being too difficult.
That could once have happened, but now we've changed
all that. They're good
and they're armed for action. Everyone's holding
his little book, so he can follow the subtle allusions.*
Athenian playgoers, best in the world,
bright and sharp and ready for games
waiting for you to begin.
Here's your sophisticated audience. Play it to win.
EURIPIDES
All right, I'll work on your prologues first of all, because
they come at the beginning of every tragedy.
I'll analyse this great man's prologues. Did you know
how murky you were in getting your action under way?
DIONYSOS
How are you going to analyse them?
EURIPIDES
Lots of ways.
First, read me the beginning of your Oresteia.*
DIONYSOS
Silence all. Let no man speak. Aeschylus, read.
AESCHYLUS
Hermes, lord of the dead, who watch over the powers of
my father, be my savior and stand by my claim. I have
come back to my own soil. I have returned.*
DIONYSOS
Find any mistakes there?
EURIPIDES
Yes, a dozen. Maybe more.
DIONYSOS
Why, man the whole passage is only three lines.
EURIPIDES
But each of them has twenty things wrong with it.
Aeschylus growls
DIONYSOS
Aeschylus, as counsel I advise you: keep quiet,
or you'll be mulcted, three lines of blank verse, plus
costs.
AESCHYLUS
I have to keep quiet for him?
DIONYSOS
That's my advice to you.
EURIPIDES
He made one colossal howler, right at the beginning.
AESCHYLUS
To Dionysos
Hear that? You're crazy.
DIONYSOS
Fact has never bothered me much.
AESCHYLUS
What kind of mistake?
EURIPIDES
Take it from the beginning.
AESCHYLUS
Hermes, lord of the dead, who watch over the powers
EURIPIDES
Well, look, you've got Orestes saying this over the tomb
of his father, and his father's dead. That right?
AESCHYLUS
That's right.
EURIPIDES
Let's get this straight. Here is where his father was killed,
murdered in fact, by his own wife, in a treacherous plot.
You make him say Hermes is watching over this.
AESCHYLUS
I don't mean the Hermes you mean. He was talking to
the Kindly Hermes of the world below. He made that
clear when he said he was keeping his inheritance for
him.
EURIPIDES
Why that's a bigger and better blunder than I hoped.
It makes his inheritance an underworld property.
DIONYSOS
Orestes then would have to rob his father's grave?
AESCHYLUS
Dionysos, the wine you're drinking has bouquet. It
stinks.
DIONYSOS
Read the next line. Watch for errors, Euripides.
AESCHYLUS
of my father, be my.savior and stand by my claim.
I have come back to my own soil. I have returned.
EURIPIDES
Ha! The great Aeschylus has said the same thing twice.
DIONYSOS
Twice, how?
EURIPIDES
Look at this sentence. Or better, I'll show you.
I have come back, he says, but also I have returned.
I have come back means the same as I have returned.
DIONYSOS
You're right, by golly. It's like saying to your neighbor:
"Lend me your kneading-trough, your trough to knead
things in."
AESCHYLUS
You two jabberwocks, it is not the same thing at all.
The diction's excellent.
EURIPIDES
Show me. Tell me what you mean, will you, please.
AESCHYLUS
Come back just means getting back home again, arrival
without further context. If he gets there, he arrives.
The exile arriving comes back; but he also returns.
DIONYSOS
That's good, by god. What do you say, Euripides?
EURIPIDES
I say Orestes didn't return, if returned means
restored. It wasn't formal. He sneaked past the guards.
DIONYSOS
By god, that's good. (Except I don't know what you
mean.)
EURIPIDES
Go on. Next line.
DIONYSOS
Yes, Aeschylus, better go on.
Keep at it. You, keep watching for anything wrong.
AESCHYLUS
And by this mounded gravebank I invoked my sire
to hear, to listen. . . .
EURIPIDES
Saying the same thing twice again.
To hear, to listen... Same thing twice. Perfectly clear.
DIONYSOS
Of course, you fool, he has to; he's talking to the dead.
We call to them three times,* and still we don't get
through.
AESCHYLUS
How do you make your prologues, then?
EURIPIDES
I'll give you some,
and if you catch me saying the same thing twice, or
padding my lines, without adding to the sense--spit in my eye.
DIONYSOS
Speak us some lines then, speak them. There's nothing
else for it than to listen to your prologues and criticize
the verse.
EURIPIDES
Oedipus at the outset was a fortunate man . . .*
AESCHYLUS
By god, he was not. He was most unfortunate
from birth. Before birth, since Apollo prophesied
before he was even begotten, that he would kill his
father. How could he have been, at the outset, fortunate?
EURIPIDES
....But then he became the wretched of humankind.
AESCHYLUS
He didn't become the wretchedest. He never stopped.
Look here. First thing that happened after he was born
they put him in a broken pot and laid him out in the
snow so he'd never grow up to be his father's murderer.
Then he went to Polybus, with sore feet, wasn't that luck?
and then he married an old lady, though he was young,
and also the old lady turned out to be his mother,
and then he blinded himself...
DIONYSOS
That would have saved his life
if he'd been a general along with Erasinides.*
EURIPIDES
You're crazy. The prologues that I write are very fine.
AESCHYLUS
By Zeus! I'm not going to savor you, word by word
and line by line, like you, but, with the help of the gods,
I'll ruin your prologues with a little bottle of oil.
EURIPIDES
Ruin my prologues with a bottle of oil?
AESCHYLUS
Just one
bundle of fleece or bottle of oil or packet of goods.
The way you write iambics, always there's just room
for a phrase the length of one of those. I'll demonstrate
EURIPIDES
Demonstrate? Poof.
AESCHYLUS
I say I can.
DIONYSOS
Read us a line.
EURIPIDES
Aigyptos, as the common tale disseminates
with all his sea-armada and his fifty sons
coming to Argos*
AESCHYLUS
lost his little bottle of oil.*
DIONYSOS
A naughty little bottle. It'll be spanked for that.
Give us another line, I want to see what happens.
EURIPIDES
Dionysos, who, with thrysos and in hides of fawns
appareled on Parnassos up among the pines
dances on light feet*
AESCHYLUS
lost his little bottle of oil.
DIONYSOS
Ah me, again, I am struck again,* with a bottle of oil.
EURIPIDES
He hasn't done much to me; here's another prologue
I'll give him, where he can't tag on his bottle of oil.
There's been no man who's had good fortune all his days.
For one was born to fortune, but his goods are gone.
One, born unhappy*
AESCHYLUS
lost his little bottle of oil.
DIONYSOS
Euripides.
EURIPIDES
What?
DIONYSOS
Maybe you'd better strike your sails.
That little bottle of oil is blowing up a storm.
EURIPIDES
Demeter be my witness, it doesn't mean a thing.
Here comes a line to smash his little--uh--property.
DIONYSOS
Go ahead, read another, but look out for that bottle.
EURIPIDES
Kadmos, son of Agenor. once upon a time
sailing from Sidon*
AESCHYLUS
lost his little bottle of oil.
DIONYSOS
My poor dear friend, you'd better buy that bottle of oil
or it'll chew up all our prologues
EURIPIDES
You mean that?
You're saying I should buy from him?
DIONYSOS
That's my advice
EURIPIDES
I refuse to do it. I have lots of prologues left
where he can't tag on any little bottle of oil.
Pelops the son of Tantalos reaching Pisa plain
with his swift horses*
AESCHYLUS
lost his little bottle of oil
DIONYSOS
You see? Once more he makes the little bottle fit.
Now be a good fellow. It isn't too late yet, buy one quick
For only a quarter you can get one, nice and new.
EURIPIDES
Not yet, by god, not yet. I still have plenty left.
Oineus, from his land*
EURIPIDES
lost his little bottle of oil.
AESCHYLUS
Hey, wait a minute. Let me get a whole line out.
Oineus from his land choosing out a store of grain
and sacrificing
AESCHYLUS
lost his little bottle of oil.
DIONYSOS
In the middle of his sacrifice? Who found it for him?
EURIPIDES
Let me alone, please. See what he can say to this:
Zeus, as the most authentic version hath maintained...
DIONYSOS
He'll do you in. Zeus lost his little bottle of oil.
That bottle of oil is in your prologues everywhere
and multiplies like scabs of sickness in the eyes.
For god's sake, change the subject to his lyric lines.
EURIPIDES
Good idea. I've plenty of material to show
he's a bad lyric poet. It all sounds alike.
CHORUS
What can be the meaning of that?
Think as I will, I can not concieve
any thing he can say
against the man who can boast
the loveliest lyrics and the most
of any until today.
Much I wonder, what charge he can, make
good against the great master
of tragic verse. He courts disaster.
I fear for his sake.
EURIPIDES
Wonder is right, if you mean his prosody. You'll see.
One little cut, and his metres all come out the same.
DIONYSOS
The same? Give me a handful of pebbles. I'll keep count.
Flute music off.
EURIPIDES
Phthian A - chilleus as you hear in the slaughter of
heroes
oho what a stroke come you not to the
rescue?*
Hermes ances - tral, oh how we honor you, we of the
lakeside*
oho what a stroke come you not to the
rescue?'
DIONYSOS
There's two strokes scored against you, Aeschylus.
EURIPIDES
Greatest Achaian. At reus son who art lord over mul-
titudes hear me*
oho what a stroke come you not
to the rescue'
DIONYSOS
Another stroke. dear Aeschylus. That makes the third
EURIPIDES
Quiet. all 0 bee-keepers now open the temple of
Artemis nearby*
oho what a stroke come
you not to the rescue?
I am enabled to sing of the prodigy shown
at the wayside*
oho what a stroke come you not to the rescue?
DIONYSOS
Oh what a mess of strokes, lord Zeus, I'm on the ropes
Stroke upon stroke has got my kidneys black and blue
I think I'd better go and take a soothing bath
EURIPIDES
Wait till you've listened to my next melodic line-up
We will now take up the music written for the lyre
DIONYSOS
Go ahead But leave the strokes out, will you please
EURIPIDES
How the twin-throned--power of Achaia and manhood of
Hela*
di tum di tum di tum di tum
Sends forth the--sphinx who is princess of om-
inous hellhounds*
di tum di tum di tum di tum
hand on the--spear and embattled. the bird
of encounter*
di tum di tum di tum di tum
giving assault--there to the hovering hounds
of the airways*
di tum di tum di tum di tum
DIONYSOS
Where did you get this turn diddy stuff? From
Marathon?*
It sounds like water-pulling-from-the-well-up music.
AESCHYLUS
My source is excellent, if that's what you mean, the
result excellent too. I only tried not to be seen reaping
the same Muse-meadow Phrynichos had reaped. But
this man draws from every kind of source, burlesque,
Meletos'* drinking-ditties, all that Karian jazz,
dirges, folksongs. Here, let me show you. Bring me a lyre
somebody. Wait! No, don't. What's the use of a lyre
for this stuff? Where's that girl who uses oyster shells
for castanets? Hither, Euripidean Muse.
A scantily clad girl comes on. Aeschylus bows to her with
mock ceremony.
To thee, onlie begetter of these melodies.
DIONYSOS
So that's the Tenth Muse is it? Well, she ain't no
Sappho. That's a man's woman if I ever saw one.*
AESCHYLUS
Halycon-birds who in the sea's ever-streaming*
billows twittering
dabble wings in the flying spray
dipping and ducking feathery forms.
you in the angles under the roof
finger-wee-hee-heeving embattled
handiwork of your woof-warp-webs,
singing shuttle's endeavor
where the flute-loving dolphin leaps
next the cutwater's darkened edge
oracular in her pastures.
gleam and joy of the grapevine
where clusters of heart's ease curl and cling.
Circle me in your arms. o my child
Breaking off in disgust
Just look at that line
DIONYSOS
I'm looking
AESCHYLUS
And look at that one
DIONYSOS
I'm looking
AESCHYLUS
And you the writer of lines like that
dare to say that verse is bad
Yours is made like a whore displayed
in all the amorous postures
So much for your choral metres Now I'll demonstrate
the composition of your lyric monodies *
0 darkness of night. shining
in gloom. what vision of dream
bring you poor me
fished from the occult depths.
envoy of Hades
spiritless spirit possessing.
child of the sable night.
ghastly grim apparition
in dark trappings of death
and bloodily bloodily glaring,
and her nails were long they were long.
Help me, my handmaidens, light up the lanterns and
run with your pitchers and fetch from the river and heat
up the water
that I may wash this vision from me.
0 spirit of the sea
that was it. Heigh Ito housemates
behold, here are portents.
Glyke has stolen my rooster away,
and lo, she is gone.
0 ye nymphs of the mountains,
Mania, arrest her.
Soft you now. I was sitting
plying my humble tasks
at the loom filled with its flax
wee-hee-hee-hee-hee-hee-heeving
with my hands, spinning a veil
so I could take it at dawn
to market to market it there,
and he fluttered he fluttered away
on gossamer wings to the air
and sorrows sorrows he left me
and tears tears from my eyes
I shed I shed. Poor me.
But o Kretans, nurselings of Ida,
seize your bows and come to aid me,
prithee, shake your leaping legs and surround me the
house,
with you Diktynna, and Artemis--pretty child--
holding her puppies in leash let her search the premises,
and you, Zeus' daughter, in both hands upholding
your brightest twin torches, appear. o Hekate.
at Glyke's house, that I may
get her with the gods. (My ravished rooster.)
DIONYSOS
That will be all for the lyric verse.
AESCHYLUS
I've had enough.
I want to bring him out and put him to the scales,
for that alone will show our poetry's true weight.
Weigh phrase with phrase, for their specific gravity.
DIONYSOS
Bring out the scales then, if my duty is to judge
two master poets like a grocer selling cheese.
CHORUS
Devious is the great intellect.
Here is a portent of poetry
beyond what anyone could expect.
Who could have thought of this, but he?
Had anyone else proceeded
to such invention
I would have said he needed medical attention.
Scales are brought. As each poet speaks one of the lines of
verse, he drops, I think. a scrap of papyrus into the scale
pan.
DIONYSOS
Now take your places by the weighing pans.
AESCHYLUS AND EURIPIDES
Ready.
DIONYSOS
Each of you hold his line while he is speaking it.
Don't drop it in the pan until I say "cuckoo."
AESCHYLUS AND EURIPIDES
We have them.
DIONYSOS
Say and lay a line upon the scale.
EURIPIDES
I wish the Argo's hull had never winged her way.*
AESCHYLUS
River Spercheios with your cattle-pastures near. *
DIONYSOS
Cuckoo! Let go.
The slips drop, and the scale of Aeschylus descends.
Aha. The scale of Aeschylus
is far the heavier.
EURIPIDES
What can be the cause of that?
DINOYSOS
He put a river in it, the wool-merchant's trick,
and soaked his words in water as they do their wool.
But you put in a winged word, a feathery line.
EURIPIDES
Have him speak another one. Match us again.
DIONYSOS
Take your next lines.
AESCHYLUS AND EURIPIDES
We're ready.
DIONYSOS
Speak them.
Same business as before.
EURIPIDES
Persuasion has no shrine except within the word.*
AESCHYLUS
Death is the only god who is not moved by gifts.*
DIONYSOS
Let go, let go. Aeschylus has the weight again.
He put Death in. There's nothing more depressing than
that.
EURIPIDES
But I put in Persuasion. That's a handsome word.
DIONYSOS
Persuasion she's a scatterbrain, a featherweight.
Better see if you can't turn up a heavier line,
something massive and bulky, that will give you heft.
Euripides frantically rummages through a pile of papers.
muttering to himself.
EURIPIDES
Now where on earth did I put my lines like that?
DIONYSOS
Here's one.
"Achilleus threw the dice, and shot a deuce and a four."
All right, ready with your lines. This is the final test.
EURIPIDES
His right hand seized the spear heavily shod with steel.*
AESCHYLUS
Chariot piled on chariot and corpse on corpse. *
DIONYSOS
Aeschylus fooled you again.
EURIPIDES
How?
DIONYSOS
Threw in a couple of chariots and two dead men.
A hundred Egyptian coolies couldn't lift that load.
AESCHYLUS
Don't do it line by line, now. Let him climb in the scale
with his children and his wife, I mean Kephisophon,
and all his books, and hold them in his lap. I'll speak
only two lines of verse, and still I'll sink the scale.
DIONYSOS
Gentlemen, my friends. I can not judge them any more.
I must not lose the love of either one of them.
One of them's a great poet. I like the other one.
PLUTO
You mean, you won't do what you came down here
to do?
DIONYSOS
And if I do decide?
PLUTO
Then take the one you want
and go; we must not let your journey be in vain.
DIONYSOS
To Pluto.
Bless your heart.
To the poets.
Very well, then. Answer me this.
I came down here to get a poet. Why? To help
our city survive, so it can stage my choruses.
The one of you who has the best advice to give
for saving the city is the one that I'll take back.
Alkibiades is a baby who's giving
our state delivery-pains. What shall we do with him?
That's the first question.
EURIPIDES
How does the state feel about him?
DIONYSOS
It longs for him, it hates him, and it wants him back.
Speak your minds both, and tell us what we are to do.
EURIPIDES
I hate the citizen who, by nature well endowed,
is slow to help his city, swift to do her harm,
to himself useful, useless to the community.
DIONYSOS
Good answer, by Poseidon.
To Aeschylus.
Now, what about you?
AESCHYLUS
We should not rear a lion's cub within the state.
[Lions are lords. We should not have them here at all.]*
But if we rear one, we must do as it desires.
DIONYSOS
By Zeus the savior, I still can't make up my mind.
One answer was so clever. The other was so clear.
Give me one more opinion, each of you.
How can we save the city?
EURIPIDES
Give Kleokritos Kinesias* to serve as wings;
let him be airborne over the vast sea's expanse.
DIONYSOS
Well, that would be amusing. Would there be some
point?
EURIPIDES
They could be armed with vinegar-jars, and bomb
the enemy at sea with vinegar in their eyes.
Embarrassed pause.
No, really, I do know what to do. Let me speak.
DIONYSOS
Speak.
EURIPIDES
When that we trust not now, we trust, and trust no more
what now we do trust--we shall win.
DIONYSOS
How's that again?
Please be a bit more stupid, so I'll understand.
EURIPIDES
If we mistrust those citizens whom now we trust,
and use those citizens whom we do not use now,
we might be saved.
If we are losing using what we use, will it
not follow we might win by doing the opposite?
DIONYSOS
Ingenious, o my Palamedes, soul of wit.
Did you think that up yourself, or was it Kephisophon?
EURIPIDES
All by myself. The vinegar was Kephisophon.
DIONYSOS
Well, Aeschylus, what is your view?
AESCHYLUS
First tell me this.
Which men is Athens using? Her best?
DIONYSOS
Her best? Where've you been?
She hates them like poison.
AESCHYLUS
Does she really like her worst men?
DIONYSOS
She doesn't like them. Uses them because she has to.
AESCHYLUS
How can you pull a city like that out of the water
When neither the fine mantle nor coarse cloak will
serve?*
DIONYSOS
Better find something, or she'll sink and never come up.
AESCHYLUS
I'd rather tell you up there. I don't want to down here.
DIONYSOS
Oh please, yes. Send your blessings up from under-
ground.
AESCHYLUS
They shall win--
when they think of their land as if it were their enemies',
and think of their enemies' land as if it were their own,
that ships are all their wealth, and all their wealth, de-
spair.
DIONYSOS
Good! But the jurymen will eat up all that wealth.
PLUTO
Decide.
DIONYSOS
Out of their own mouths have they spoken it.
For I?shall choose the poet that my soul desires.
EURIPIDES
Do not forget the vows you swore by all the gods,
to take me home with you. Choose him who loves you
best.
DIONYSOS
My tongue swore, not my heart.* I'm taking Aeschylus.
EURIPIDES
Can you do this, and look me in the face for shame?
DIONYSOS
What's shameful?--unless it seems so to the audience?*
EURIPIDES
And wilt thou leave me thus for dead? Say nay, say nay.
DIONYSOS
Who knows if life be death indeed or death be life,*
or breath be breakfast, sleep in fleece be comforter?
PLUTO
Go all inside now, Dionysos.
DIONYSOS
Why, what for?
PLUTO
So I can feast you before you sail away.
DIONYSOS
Good news.
I am not discontented with my morning's work.
CHORUS
Blessed he
who has such wisdom and wit.
Many can learn from it.
Through good counsel he won the right
to return home again
for the good of the cause and state,
for the good of his fellow men,
to help them fight the good fight
with his great brain.
Better not to sit at the feet
of Sokrates* and chatter.
nor cast out of the heart
the high serious matter
of tragic art.
Better not to compete
in the no-good lazy
Sokratic dialogue.
Man, that is crazy.
PLUTO
Go forth rejoicing. Aeschylus, go.
save us our city
by your good sense and integrity
Instruct the foolish majority.
Here is a rope to give Kleophon.
here's one for the revenuers.
Myrmex and Nikomachos. this for Archenomos.*
tell them their hour
has come; they are waited for here, today.
and if they delay
I, in person, will go brand them. sting them,
sling them each in a thong
and bring them
here to Hades' where they belong
AESCHYLUS
All this I will do. Here is my Chair
of Tragedy. Give it to Sophocles there
to keep for me until I come down
nce more, for I judge him to be
the greatest of poets--after me.
But mind; never give My Chair over to the vile uses
of this pseudo-poet, this lying clown
Not even if he refuses
PLUTO
Torches, this way.
With holy illumination light him
and with his own songs and dances delight him
as you escort him away.
CHORUS
First, o divinities under the ground indwelling, we pray
you,
grant fair journey to the poet as he goes back to the
daylight:
grant him success in all the thoughts that will prosper
our city.
So at last may we find surcease from sorrows we suffer
through war's encounters. Let Kleophon and all similar
aliens
who love to fight go home and fight--in the lands of
their fathers.
(405 B.C.)