The Frogs Part 10

When first I took the art from you, bloated and swoln, poor thing, With turgid gasconading words and heavy dieting, First I reduced and toned her down, and made her slim and neat With wordlets and with exercise and poultices of beet, And next a dose of chatterjuice, distilled from books, I gave her, And monodies she took, with sharp Cephisophon for flavour.

I never used haphazard words, or plunged abruptly in; Who entered first explained at large the drama's origin And source.

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

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

AESCH. For such an outrage was not death your due?

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

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

EUR. Then next I taught all these to speak.

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

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

AESCH. You did: I say so too.

EUR. I showed them scenes of common life, the things we know and see, Where any blunder would at once by all detected be.

I never bl.u.s.tered on, or took their breath and wits away By Cycnuses or Memnons clad in terrible array, With bells upon their horses' heads, the audience to dismay.

Look at his pupils, look at mine: and there the contrast view.

Uncouth Megaenetus is his, and rough Phormisius too; Great long-beard-lance-and-trumpet-men, flesh-tearers with the pine: But natty smart Theramenes, and Cleitophon are mine.

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

EUR. I taught them all these knowing ways By chopping logic in my plays, And making all my speakers try To reason out the How and Why.

So now the people trace the springs, The sources and the roots of things, And manage all their households too Far better than they used to do, Scanning and searching What's amiss?

And, Why was that? And, How is this?

DIO. Ay, truly, never now a man Comes home, but he begins to scan; And to his household loudly cries, Why, where's my pitcher? What's the matter?

'Tis dead and gone my last year's platter.

Who gnawed these olives? Bless the sprat, Who nibbled off the head of that?

And where's the garlic vanished, pray, I purchased only yesterday?

-Whereas, of old, our stupid youths Would sit, with open mouths and eyes, Like any dull-brained Mammacouths.

CHOR. "All this thou beholdest, Achilles our boldest."

And what wilt thou reply?

Draw tight the rein Lest that fiery soul of thine Whirl thee out of the listed plain, Past the olives, and o'er the line.

Dire and grievous the charge he brings.

See thou answer him, n.o.ble heart, Not with pa.s.sionate bickerings.

Shape thy course with a sailor's art, Reef the canvas, shorten the sails, s.h.i.+ft them edgewise to shun the gales.

When the breezes are soft and low, Then, well under control, you'll go Quick and quicker to strike the foe.

O first of all the h.e.l.lenic bards high loftily-towering verse to rear, And tragic phrase from the dust to raise, pour forth thy fountain with right good cheer.

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

EUR. For his ready wit, and his counsels sage, and because the citizen folk he trains To be better townsmen and worthier men.

AESCH. If then you have done the very reverse, Found n.o.ble-hearted and virtuous men, and altered them, each and all, for the worse, Pray what is the need you deserve to get?

DIO. Nay, ask not him. He deserves to die.

AESCH. For just consider what style of men he received from me, great six-foot-high Heroical souls, who never would blench from a townsman's duties in peace or war; Not idle loafers, or low buffoons, or rascally scamps such as now they are.

But men who were breathing spears and helms, and the snow-white plume in its crested pride The greave, and the dart, and the warrior's heart in its seven-fold casing of tough bull-hide.

DIO. He'll stun me, I know, with his armoury-work; this business is going from bad to worse.

EUR. And how did you manage to make them so grand, exalted, and brave with your wonderful verse?

DIO. Come, Aeschylus, answer, and don't stand mute in your self-willed pride and arrogant spleen.

AESCH. A drama I wrote with the War-G.o.d filled.

DIO. Its name?

AESCH. 'Tis the "Seven against Thebes" that I mean. Which who so beheld, with eagerness swelled to rush to the battlefield there and then.

DIO. O that was a scandalous thing you did! You have made the Thebans mightier men, More eager by far for the business of war.

Now, therefore, receive this punch on the head.

AESCH. Ah, ye might have practised the same yourselves, but ye turned to other pursuits instead.

Then next the "Persians" I wrote, in praise of the n.o.blest deed that the world can show, And each man longed for the victor's wreath, to fight and to vanquish his country's foe.

DIO. I was pleased, I own, when I heard their moan for old Darius, their great king, dead; When they smote together their hands, like this, and Evir alake the Chorus said.

AESCH. Aye, such are the poet's appropriate works: and just consider how all along From the very first they have wrought you good, the n.o.ble bards, the masters of song.

First, Orpheus taught you religious rites, and from b.l.o.o.d.y murder to stay your hands: Musaeus healing and oracle lore; and Hesiod all the culture of lands, The time to gather, the time to plough. And gat not Homer his glory divine By singing of valour, and honour, and right, and the sheen of the battle-extended line, The ranging of troops and the arming of men?

DIO. O ay, but he didn't teach that, I opine, To Pantacles; when he was leading the show I couldn't imagine what he was at, He had fastened his helm on the top of his head, he was trying to fasten his plume upon that.

AESCH. But others, many and brave, he taught, of whom was Lamachus, hero true; And thence my spirit the impress took, and many a lion-heart chief I drew, Parocluses, Teucers, ill.u.s.trious names; for I fain the citizen-folk would spur To stretch themselves to their measure and height, when-ever the trumpet of war they hear.

But Phaedras and Stheneboeas? No! no harlotry business deformed my plays.

And none can say that ever I drew a love sick woman in all my days.

EUR. For you no lot or portion had got in Queen Aphrodite.

AESCH. Thank Heaven for that.

But ever on you and yours, my friend, the mighty G.o.ddess mightily sat; Yourself she cast to the ground at last.

DIO. O ay, that came uncommonly pat. You showed how cuckolds are made, and lo, you were struck yourself by the very same fate.

EUR. But say, you cross-grained censor of mine, how my Stheneboeas could harm the state.

AESCH. Full many a n.o.ble dame, the wife of a n.o.ble citizen, hemlock took, And died, unable the shame and sin of your Bellerophonscenes to brook.

EUR. Was then, I wonder, the tale I told of Phaedra's pa.s.sionate love untrue?

AESCH. Not so: but tales of incestuous vice the sacred poet should hide from view, Nor ever exhibit and blazon forth on the public stage to the public ken.

For boys a teacher at school is found, but we, the poets, are teachers of men.

We are BOUND things honest and pure to speak.

EUR. And to speak great Lycabettuses, pray, And ma.s.sive blocks of Parna.s.sian rocks, is that things honest and pure to say?

In human fas.h.i.+on we ought to speak.

AESCH. Alas, poor witling, and can't you see That for mighty thoughts and heroic aims, the words themselves must appropriate be?

And grander belike on the ear should strike the speech of heroes and G.o.dlike powers, Since even the robes that invest their limbs are statelier, grander robes than ours.

Such was my plan: but when you began, you spoilt and degraded it all.

EUR. How so?

AESCH. Your kings in tatters and rags you dressed, and brought them on, a beggarly show, To move, forsooth, our pity and ruth.

EUR. And what was the harm, I should like to know.

AESCH. No more will a wealthy citizen now equip for the state a galley of war. He wraps his limbs in tatters and rags, and whines he is poor, too poor by far.

DIO. But under his rags he is wearing a vest, as woolly and soft as a man could wish.

Let him gull the state, and he's off to the mart; an eager, extravagant buyer of fish.

AESCH. Moreover to prate, to harangue, to debate, is now the ambition of all in the state.

Each exercise-ground is in consequence found deserted and empty: to evil repute Your lessons have brought our youngsters, and taught our sailors to challenge, discuss, and refute The orders they get from their captains and yet, when I was alive, I protest that the knaves Knew nothing at all, save for rations' to call, and to sing "Rhyppapae"

as they pulled through the waves.

DIO. And bedad to let fly from their sterns in the eye of the fellow who tugged at the undermost oar, And a jolly young messmate with filth to besmirch, and to land for a filching adventure ash.o.r.e; But now they harangue, and dispute, and won't row, And idly and aimlessly float to and fro.