Miscellaneous Writings and Speeches Volume I Part 5

SPEUSIPPUS. No, no. I may perhaps figure at the dramatic representations before long; but in a very different way.

CALLIDEMUS. What do you mean?

SPEUSIPPUS. What say you to a tragedy?

CALLIDEMUS. A tragedy of yours?

SPEUSIPPUS. Even so.

CALLIDEMUS. Oh Hercules! Oh Bacchus! This is too much. Here is an universal genius; sophist,--orator,--poet. To what a three-headed monster have I given birth! a perfect Cerberus of intellect! And pray what may your piece be about? Or will your tragedy, like your speech, serve equally for any subject?

SPEUSIPPUS. I thought of several plots;--Oedipus,--Eteocles and Polynices,--the war of Troy,--the murder of Agamemnon.

CALLIDEMUS. And what have you chosen?

SPEUSIPPUS. You know there is a law which permits any modern poet to retouch a play of Aeschylus, and bring it forward as his own composition. And, as there is an absurd prejudice, among the vulgar, in favour of his extravagant pieces, I have selected one of them, and altered it.

CALLIDEMUS. Which of them?

SPEUSIPPUS. Oh! that ma.s.s of barbarous absurdities, the Prometheus. But I have framed it anew upon the model of Euripides. By Bacchus, I shall make Sophocles and Agathon look about them. You would not know the play again.

CALLIDEMUS. By Jupiter, I believe not.

SPEUSIPPUS. I have omitted the whole of the absurd dialogue between Vulcan and Strength, at the beginning.

CALLIDEMUS. That may be, on the whole, an improvement. The play will then open with that grand soliloquy of Prometheus, when he is chained to the rock.

"Oh! ye eternal heavens! ye rus.h.i.+ng winds! Ye fountains of great streams! Ye ocean waves, That in ten thousand sparkling dimples wreathe Your azure smiles! All-generating earth! All-seeing sun! On you, on you, I call." (See Aeschylus; Prometheus, 88.)

Well, I allow that will be striking; I did not think you capable of that idea. Why do you laugh?

SPEUSIPPUS. Do you seriously suppose that one who has studied the plays of that great man, Euripides, would ever begin a tragedy in such a ranting style?

CALLIDEMUS. What, does not your play open with the speech of Prometheus?

SPEUSIPPUS. No doubt.

CALLIDEMUS. Then what, in the name of Bacchus, do you make him say?

SPEUSIPPUS. You shall hear; and, if it be not in the very style of Euripides, call me a fool.

CALLIDEMUS. That is a liberty which I shall venture to take, whether it be or no. But go on.

SPEUSIPPUS. Prometheus begins thus:--

"Coelus begat Saturn and Briareus Cottus and Creius and Iapetus, Gyges and Hyperion, Phoebe, Tethys, Thea and Rhea and Mnemosyne.

Then Saturn wedded Rhea, and begat Pluto and Neptune, Jupiter and Juno."

CALLIDEMUS. Very beautiful, and very natural; and, as you say, very like Euripides.

SPEUSIPPUS. You are sneering. Really, father, you do not understand these things. You had not those advantages in your youth--

CALLIDEMUS. Which I have been fool enough to let you have. No; in my early days, lying had not been dignified into a science, nor politics degraded into a trade. I wrestled, and read Homer's battles, instead of dressing my hair, and reciting lectures in verse out of Euripides. But I have some notion of what a play should be; I have seen Phrynichus, and lived with Aeschylus. I saw the representation of the Persians.

SPEUSIPPUS. A wretched play; it may amuse the fools who row the triremes; but it is utterly unworthy to be read by any man of taste.

CALLIDEMUS. If you had seen it acted;--the whole theatre frantic with joy, stamping, shouting, laughing, crying. There was Cynaegeirus, the brother of Aeschylus, who lost both his arms at Marathon, beating the stumps against his sides with rapture. When the crowd remarked him--But where are you going?

SPEUSIPPUS. To sup with Alcibiades; he sails with the expedition for Sicily in a few days; this is his farewell entertainment.

CALLIDEMUS. So much the better; I should say, so much the worse. That cursed Sicilian expedition! And you were one of the young fools (See Thucydides, vi. 13.) who stood clapping and shouting while he was gulling the rabble, and who drowned poor Nicias's voice with your uproar. Look to it; a day of reckoning will come. As to Alcibiades himself--

SPEUSIPPUS. What can you say against him? His enemies themselves acknowledge his merit.

CALLIDEMUS. They acknowledge that he is clever, and handsome, and that he was crowned at the Olympic games. And what other merits do his friends claim for him? A precious a.s.sembly you will meet at his house, no doubt.

SPEUSIPPUS. The first men in Athens, probably.

CALLIDEMUS. Whom do you mean by the first men in Athens?

SPEUSIPPUS. Callicles. (Callicles plays a conspicuous part in the Gorgias of Plato.)

CALLIDEMUS. A sacrilegious, impious, unfeeling ruffian!

SPEUSIPPUS. Hippomachus.

CALLIDEMUS. A fool, who can talk of nothing but his travels through Persia and Egypt. Go, go. The G.o.ds forbid that I should detain you from such choice society!

[Exeunt severally.]

II.

SCENE--A Hall in the house of ALCIBIADES.

ALCIBIADES, SPEUSIPPUS, CALLICLES, HIPPOMACHUS, CHARICLEA, and others, seated round a table feasting.

ALCIBIADES. Bring larger cups. This shall be our gayest revel. It is probably the last--for some of us at least.

SPEUSIPPUS. At all events, it will be long before you taste such wine again, Alcibiades.

CALLICLES. Nay, there is excellent wine in Sicily. When I was there with Eurymedon's squadron, I had many a long carouse. You never saw finer grapes than those of Aetna.

HIPPOMACHUS. The Greeks do not understand the art of making wine. Your Persian is the man. So rich, so fragrant, so sparkling! I will tell you what the Satrap of Caria said to me about that when I supped with him.

ALCIBIADES. Nay, sweet Hippomachus; not a word to-night about satraps, or the great king, or the walls of Babylon, or the Pyramids, or the mummies. Chariclea, why do you look so sad?

CHARICLEA. Can I be cheerful when you are going to leave me, Alcibiades?