AEACUS By Zeus the Saviour, quite the g...

Enter AEACUS, XANTHIAS and two attendants.

AEACUS

By Zeus the Saviour, quite the gentleman

Your master is.

XANTHIAS

Gentleman? I believe you.

He's all for wine and women, is my master.

AEACUS

But not to have flogged you, when the truth came out

That you, the slave, were passing off as master!

XANTHIAS

He'd get the worst of that.

AEACUS

Bravo! that's spoken

Like a true slave: that's what I love myself.

XANTHIAS

You love it, do you?

AEACUS

Love it? I'm entranced

When I can curse my lord behind his back.

XANTHIAS

How about grumbling, when you have felt the stick,

And scurry out of doors?

AEACUS

That's jolly too.

XANTHIAS

How about prying?

AEACUS

That beats everything,

XANTHIAS

Great Kin-god Zeus! And what of overhearing

Your master's secrets?

AEACUS

What? I'm mad with joy.

XANTHIAS

And blabbing them abroad?

AEACUS

O heaven and earth!

When I do that, I can't contain myself.

XANTHIAS

Phoebus Apollo! clap your hand in mine,

Kiss and be kissed: and prithee tell me this,

Tell me by Zeus, our rascaldom's own god,

What's all that noise within? What means this hubbub

And row?

AEACUS

That's Aeschylus and Euripides.

XANTHIAS

Eh?

AEACUS

Wonderful, wonderful things are going on.

The dead are rioting, taking different sides.

XANTHIAS

Why, what's the matter?

AEACUS

There's a custom here

With all the crafts, the good and noble crafts,

That the chief master of art in each

Shall have his dinner in the assembly hall,

And sit by Pluto's side.

XANTHIAS

I understand.

AEACUS

Until another comes, more wise than he

In the same art: then must the first give way.

XANTHIAS

And how has this disturbed our Aeschylus?

AEACUS

'Twas he that occupied the tragic chair,

As, in his craft, the noblest.

XANTHIAS

Who does now?

AEACUS

But when Euripides came down, he kept

Flourishing off before the highwaymen,

Thieves, burglars, parricides-these form our mob

In Hades-till with listening to his twists

And turns, and pleas and counterpleas, they went

Mad on the man, and hailed him first and wisest:

Elate with this, he claimed the tragic chair

Where Aeschylus was seated.

XANTHIAS

Wasn't he pelted?

AEACUS

Not he: the populace clamoured out to try

Which of the twain was wiser in his art.

XANTHIAS

You mean the rascals?

AEACUS

Aye, as high as heaven!

XANTHIAS

But were there none to side with Aeschylus?

AEACUS

Scanty and sparse the good,

regards the audience

the same as here.

XANTHIAS

And what does Pluto now propose to do?

AEACUS

He means to hold a tournament, and bring

Their tragedies to the proof.

XANTHIAS

But Sophocles,

How came not he to claim the tragic chair?

AEACUS

Claim it? Not he! When he came down, he kissed

With reverence Aeschylus, and clasped his hand,

And yielded willingly the chair to him.

But now he's going, says Cleidemides,

To sit third-man: and then if Aeschylus win,

He'll stay content: if not, for his art's sake,

He'll fight to the death against Euripides.

XANTHIAS

Will it come off?

AEACUS

O yes, by Zeus, directly.

And then, I hear, will wonderful things be done,

The art poetic will be weighed in scales.

XANTHIAS

What I weigh out tragedy, like butcher's meat?

AEACUS

Levels they'll bring, and measuring-tapes for words,

And moulded oblongs,

XANTHIAS

Is it bricks they are making?

AEACUS

Wedges and compasses: for Euripides

Vows that he'll test the dramas, word by word.

XANTHIAS

Aeschylus chafes at this, I fancy.

AEACUS

Well, He lowered his brows, upglaring like a bull.

XANTHIAS

And who's to be the judge?

AEACUS

There came the rub.

Skilled men were hard to find: for with the Athenians

Aeschylus, somehow, did not hit it off,

XANTHIAS

Too many burglars, I expect, he thought.

AEACUS

And all the rest, he said, were trash and nonsense

To judge poetic wits. So then at last

They chose your lord, an expert in the art.

But we go in for when our lords are bent

On urgent business, that means blows for us.

Aristophanes, The Frogs