The

CONTENTS

Introduction
473
The Frogs
479
Notes
585
 Introduction

The Play

The Frogs was produced at the Lenaia of 405 b.c. and won
first prize.1 The Athenians had been at war most of the time
since 431 b.c., and their position now was almost desperate.
Since the failure in Sicily, they had indeed won several naval
battles and had twice been offered peace by Sparta; they were
nevertheless in a position where one defeat would lose the
war (this happened six months after The Frogs was presented).
One great victory might still save them, but only if they used
it wisely, as a bargaining point for permanent peace.
This, at least, seems to have been the view of Aristophanes.
The champion of peace who spoke in The Acharnians, Peace.
and Lysistrata, is still the champion of peace. It was Kleophon
who had forbidden the Athenians to accept Spartan terms,

1 ... “It was presented in the archonship of Kallias ... at the

Lenaia. It was placed first; Phrynichus was second with The Muses;
Plato third, with Cleophon. Our play was so much admired because
of the parabasis that it was actually given again, according to
Dicaearchus.” From the ancient Hypothesis, or Introduction. The
Plato in question is a well-known comic poet, not the philosopher
473
474 ARISTOPHANES
and in this play Aristophanes hates Kleophon as much as ever.
But peace cannot now be simply offered or accepted; it must
be earned. Aristophanes’ program can be summed up as “all
hands save ship.’’ All talents and resources, even the doubtful
and suspect talents of Alkibiades, must be called on to win
one more victory which, if won, must be used as a means to
an honorable peace, not as a means to conquest and empire.
So, at least, I would read the concluding lines of the play.
In the spring of 405, Athenian literature had suffered too.
Aeschylus was dead half a century since, though not forgotten.
Euripides and Sophocles, greatest of the modems, had died
within the year. Dionysos, masked though he may be as the
preposterous hero of comedy, is also Drama, the spirit and
essence of Athenian literature and art. He seeks to bring back
good writing to Athens, and with it, the public wisdom which,
as Aristophanes maintains against Sokrates, will always be
found in the highest poetry.
The first part of The Frogs, therefore, takes the form of the
Comic Journey beyond the limits of the world, reminiscent in
some ways of Peace and The Birds. During its course, as the
Dead are encountered, these are used to speak the poet’s own
views and to plead for political harmony. At the end of the
Journey, a conversation between the two slaves, Xanthias and
Aiakos, introduces the grand final agon between Euripides
and Aeschylus.
This agon is, after suitable introductory exhortation and prep¬
aration, disputed on five issues, or in five rounds, as follows:
1. 907-1098. General style, subject matter, and effect upon
the audiences.
(1099-1118). Choral interlude.
2. 1119-1250. Prologues, including skill at exposition and
the use of iambic metre.
(1251-60). Choral interlude.
3. 1261-1369. Lyrics and lyric prosody.
(1370-77). Choral interlude.
4. 1378-1410. The weighing of lines.
(1411-17). Interlude by Dionysos and Pluto.
5. 1417-65. Advice to the Athenians.
In each round, Euripides attacks first, and in the first three
he scores some hits. Nor is his final advice (1446-50)
 The Frogs 475
contemptible; at least, it is not unlike the spirit of the poet’s
own views spoken at 718-37. But Aeschylus, the ultimate
winner, has the better position for an agon, since the last
word is always his.
Briefly, the arguments, round by round, are as follows:
1. Euripides says that Aeschylus is slow-moving, undrama-
tic, turgid, obscure, and too militaristic. His own plays
are lucid, plausible, and have meaning for all. Aeschylus
retorts that he has always maintained a high heroic
standard and incited the citizens to virtue, while Euripides,
in bringing Tragedy down to earth, has, especially with
his morbid interest in sex, dragged her in the dust, and
in so doing has unmanned the Athenians.
2. Euripides alleges an obscure and repetitious style.
Aeschylus replies with a charge of metrical monotony.
In prologue after prologue of Euripides, the main verb
is delayed and a subordinate clause completed in such a
way that the phrase
lost his little bottle of oil
which scans
«— v — w — Jv h
will now complete both the sentence and the metrical
line.
3. Aeschylus having raised the question of metrical
monotony, Euripides retorts in kind. The lyrics of
Aeschylus are monotonous. For, however he may begin,
he constantly ends with the dactylic phrase

exemplified by his line

o ho what a stroke come you not to the rescue?
In these metrical criticisms, which are penetrating, the
general criticisms of style are repeated, i.e., when Eu¬
ripides makes sense, he is prosy and pedestrian, when
Aeschylus sounds grand, he means little. Aeschylus
counters. Euripides writes vers libre, the lyric metres
lose their form and the sense loses its coherence. The
476 ARISTOPHANES
result is a shoddy, sentimental, drifting sequence, marked
in particular by one special fault which Aristophanes
loves to detect in Euripides: namely, the unassimilating
conjunction of magnificence and homeliness.
4. The weighing of the lines involves a bit of byplay, has
been often dismissed as mere fooling, and is mostly
that, but nevertheless forwards the constant opinion of
Aristophanes (Dionysos): the verse of Aeschylus has
more mass, heft, and force than that of Euripides.
5. What shall Athens do? The speakers might represent
the poet’s own agonizing struggle. Euripides expresses
Aristophanes’ doubts about the good purposes of the
heirs of Perikles, the exponents of naval warfare; but
Aeschylus voices Aristophanes’ unwilling conclusion,
that these men alone have a chance of saving the city.
In this agon, Aristophanes has achieved an unfair but
telling criticism of Euripides. His Aeschylus, even as parody,
fits far less closely the concept which we can form of him
from seven complete plays and a number of fragments.
Aeschylus was not the Colonel Blimp that Aristophanes makes
him. The Persians and The Seven Against Thebes are not
simple glorifications of patriotism and courage. Agamemnon
condemns war-makers and sackers of cities. The woman’s
point of view is eloquently stated in every surviving play.
And Aphrodite did mean a great deal to Aeschylus; one need
only look at the dreaming visions of Helen in Agamemnon, or
at Klytaimnestra’s sadistic ecstasies in the same play. Nor was
Aeschylus a reactionary aristocrat. Prometheus and The
Eumenides speak eloquently for progress and reform.
Aristophanes has picked out and exaggerated certain as¬
pects of Aeschylus, not because he was ignorant or blind, but
perhaps because he was more concerned with the force of his
agon than with the inward coherence and validity of his
historical persons. The attack is on the modems. Euripides is
their spokesman. Whatever Euripides is, Aeschylus must be
the opposite. So, if Euripides is pacific and unmilitary,
Aeschylus must be martial. If Euripides is fascinated by
women and writes of their problems from their point of view,
Aeschylus must despise the sex. And since Euripides was so
plainly popular (though not in the sense that he won prizes
 The Frogs 477
from the judges), Aeschylus must be in a sense unpopular,
that is, haughty and aristocratic
A byproduct of the pattern is the unhappy position in which
Sophocles finds himself: a second-best Aeschylus. Only two
could play this game at once Aeschylus and Euripides were
plainly more fun for the parodist, their peculiarities being a
great deal more obvious
In translating The Frogs, I have found myself surprised
into breaking away from several principles which I always
stuck to when trying to translate serious Greek poetry Let
me, once again, grimly itemize
I Notes I have generally avoided footnotes on the text of
tragedy. But Aristophanes is, as the immortal Stephen Leacock
put it “sally after sally, each sally explained in a foot¬
note calling it a sally "21 have added some notes.
2. Slang The Frogs opens in the manner, though not
altogether in the language, of the vaudeville act or minstrel
show. My English is much worse than Aristophanes' Greek.
But the vernacular seemed to be the only language into which
it would translate itself. Frequently, the translation is in very
bad taste And so is Aristophanes
3. Incongruity Comedy does not cultivate appropriateness
for its own sake
4 Rhymes. Certain metres, such as short iambic lines, and
the long ones in iambic and anapaestic, seemed in English to
come out rather lame and labored without rhyme, perhaps
because English lacks the flexibility and the bold distinction
between long and short of polysyllabic Greek. I have left the
parabasis (354-7 U unrhymed because it seems, in Greek,
rather strained and awkward, and is not funny
5 Cliches In serious verse, these are absolutely obnox¬
ious (in serious prose, too!) Awkwardly enthroned out of
context, the cliche is of the stuff of comedy So I have

'Let me point out that, in accordance with modem convention,

this quotation from Stephen Leacock must be accompanied by a
footnote calling it a quotation from Stephen Leacock See Stephen
Leacock, Behind the Beyond (New York: John Lane Company; London:
John Lane. The Bodlev Head: Toronto: Bell and Cockbum, 1923V
pp 186-8’’
478 ARISTOPHANES
written accordingly. Perhaps the alert readers will find that
they have crept into the introduction too.
I have used the Oxford Classical Text of Hall and Geldart.
I am deeply indebted to Harry Avery for helpful criticism.
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
hostessof the inn
plathane. maid of the inn
EURIPIDES
AESCHYLUS
pluto (or Hades)
various extras {stretcher bearers, dead souls rowing in the
boat, assistants to Aiakos, etc.)

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.
m
480 ARISTOPHANES
XANTHIAS

Shall 1 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 1 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.

 The Frogs 481
XANTHIAS

So what did 1 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.
482 ARISTOPHANES
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?
 The Frogs 483
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.

Fm biting my lip to hold it in, but I can’t help it.

DIONYSOS

Come here, dear boy. 1 have a favor to ask of you.

HERAKLES

Wait till 1 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?
484 ARISTOPHANES

DIONYSOS

Well. 1 served aboard a kind of

dreamboat named the Kleisthenes.*

HERAKLES

And did you engage?

DIONYSOS

1 did. We sank
a dozen, a baker’s dozen, of the enemy craft.

HERAKLES

You two?

DIONYSOS

So help me Appolo.

XANTHIAS

And then 1 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?

 The Frogs 485
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.
486 ARISTOPHANES
DIONYSOS

Shall 1 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 1 want is a clever poet

For some of them are gone. The ones who’re left are
bad*

HERAKLES

What? Isn’t lophon* living?

 The Frogs 487
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.

HERAKLES .

Too bad. Where did he go?

DIONYSOS

To join the saints. For dinner.

HERAKLES

What about Xenokles?

DIONYSOS

I only wish he would die.

488 ARISTOPHANES
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?

 The Frogs 489
DIONYSOS

It’s absolutely dreamy, man.

HERAKLES

It’s 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?
490 ARISTOPHANES
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.

 The Frogs 491
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.

492 ARISTOPHANES
The first thing that you’ll come to is a great swampy
lake. It’s bottomless.

dionysqs

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.*
 The Frogs 493
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

494 ARISTOPHANES
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.

 t

The Frogs 495

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.

CORPSE

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

Offstage.
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.
496 ARISTOPHANES
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.

 The Frogs 497
CHARON

Then you can just t,ake 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 1 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.
498 ARISTOPHANES
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.
i

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.
 The Frogs 499
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,
Diony sos-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.
500 ARISTOPHANES
CHORUS

Of course, you fool, you can’t hear anything else,

for the sweet Muses have gifted me with their lyres,
and Pan the homed 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
 The Frogs 501
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, / 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!
502 ARISTOPHANES
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
i

Haven’t you seen them?

 The Frogs 503
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.

504 ARISTOPHANES
DIONYSOS

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 fhe other one is made of dung

I’m not lying
 The Frogs 505
DIONYSOS

Where can I run to'*

XANTHIAS

Where can !'*

DIONYSOS

To the priest of Dionysos sitting in the &ont row

Save me. your reverence' We belong to the same lodge

XANTHIAS

Lord Herakles. we’re lost

DIONYSOS

Dumb-bell, don’t call me that

Don’t give away my name Please

XANTHIAS

Lord Dionysos then

DIONYSOS

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 1 can speak the line now that Hegelochos spoke:
506 ARISTOPHANES
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 1 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?

 The Frogs 507
XANTHIAS

Bright upper air Zeus penthouse ’ Or the foot of Time '

Flute within

DIONYSOS

Hey. you

XANTHIAS

What is it9

DIONYSOS

Did you hear9

XANTHIAS

Did I hear what9

DIONYSOS

Flutes being blown

XANTHIAS

1 heard them too. and there's a crackle

and smell of torches Seems like it's mysteries going on

DIONYSOS

Let’s iust quietly squat where we are. and listen ip

CHORUS

Off
lacchos lacchos*
lacchos o lacchos

XANTHIAS

That’s what 1 inought it was. master The Initiates

Remember, he told us. their playground's hereabouts
508 ARISTOPHANES
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.
Iacchos! Well beloved in these pastures o indwelling
Iacchos 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.
 The Frogs 509
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 1
forbid them a third time.
510 ARISTOPHANES
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
 The Frogs 511
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

lacchos, well-beloved spirit of song, o be

my leader and march along with me
this holy way.
Bring me to Eleusis swift and musically.
To you I pray.
lacchos 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.
lacchos 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.
512 ARISTOPHANES
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.

 The Frogs 513
XANTHIAS

What’s the matter with this guy?

Pick up, pick up, it’s nothing but pick up bundles.

CHORUS

Forward, now
to 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 1 shall go where the girls go and 1 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.

DIONYSOS

Well, tell me, how am 1 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.
514 ARISTOPHANES
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 / 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. '

XANTH1AS

What’s the matter?

DIONYSOS

I can’t hold it. Is there a god in the house?

 The Frogs 515
XANTHIAS

You clown. Don’t disgrace us. Alley oop! On your feet

before somebody sees you.

DIONYSOS

But 1 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 daps 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.

XANTHIAS

You’re the worst coward of all gods and men.

DIONYSOS

Who, me?
Call me a coward? Didn’t 1 ask you for a sponge?
Nobody else would have dared do that.

XANTHIAS

What would they have done?

516 ARISTOPHANES
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

/ 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.
 The Frogs 517
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, //erakles! 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.
518 ARISTOPHANES
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
 The Frogs 519
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.
. <r

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
520 ARISTOPHANES
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 bread0

Plathane the maid, emerges

PLATHANF

Heavens yes
it’s him. it’s him

kanthias

Somebody’s going to be sor-ry

HOSTESS

That’s wasn’t all He made away with twenty pounds

of roast beef too

XANTH1AS

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?
 The Frogs 521
You thought I wouldn’t know you in your tragic boots0
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 l 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.

HOSTESS

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.

522 ARISTOPHANES
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?
 The Frogs 523
DIONYSOS

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
524 ARISTOPHANES
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.
 The Frogs 525
Here, 111 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.

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?

526 ARISTOPHANES
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.
 The Frogs 527
Easy.
Hit 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
l

I did hit you already.

DIONYSOS

Oh? Why didn’t I sneeze?

I do when I’m tickled.
528 ARISTOPHANES
AIAKOS

Dunno. Let’s try this one again.

XANTHIAS

You supposed to be doing something?

Aiakos hits him.

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.

 The Frogs 529
DIONYSOS

Got a whiff of their onion rations

AIAKOS

Didn’t feel anything?

DIONYSOS

Nothing that would bother me.

Aiakos goes hack 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? Thom.

AIAKOS

Where am I getting to? Try this other one again.

Hits Dionysos.

DIONYSOS

Apollo who art lord of Delos and Pytho*

530 ARISTOPHANES
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.
 The Frogs 531
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. 1 quite
agree.
532 ARISTOPHANES
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
 The Frogs 533
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.
534 ARISTOPHANES
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 / 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 nicer0

 The Frogs 535
XANTHIAS

My brother, by Zeus! How about listening at the keyhole

when masters are gossiping?
v

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?

536 ARISTOPHANES
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
 The Frogs 537
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
538 ARISTOPHANES
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?

 The Frogs 539
AIAKOS

That was sort of difficult.

They found the intellectuals pretty hard to find.
Aeschylus didn’t go down so well with the Athenians.

XANTH1AS

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
eye whirl 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
banging plank by plank nailed sections of verse in
stormburst gigantic. v
540 ARISTOPHANES
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 ofHerakles 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.
 The Frogs 541
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
542 ARISTOPHANES
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.
 The Frogs 543
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. 1 have

DIONYSOS

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
544 ARISTOPHANES
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.
4

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, 1 liked them quiet like that. I’d rather have
them deaf and dumb
than yak yak yak the way they do.
 The Frogs 545
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 . . .

546 ARISTOPHANES
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
 The Frogs 547
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.
I 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
548 ARISTOPHANES
why
you shouldn’t be hanged for daring that.

EURIPIDES

No, cross my heart and hope

to die,
/ 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
 The Frogs 549
my audience with the sort of stuff they knew as much
about as 1.
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
550 ARISTOPHANES
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

O 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
 The Frogs 551
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 / 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-comer 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.
552 ARISTOPHANES
EURIPIDES

Just what 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.
 The Frogs 553
DIONYSOS

Oh, yes, I loved that, and I thrilled where I sat when 1

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
554 ARISTOPHANES
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.
 The Frogs 555
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

EURIPIDES

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.
1 set them a standard of purity You’ve corrupted it

EURIPIDES

How did 1 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?
556 ARISTOPHANES
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
 The Frogs 557
or go around murming: “As 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.
558 ARISTOPHANES
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. / have returned.*

DIONYSOS

Find any mistakes there?

 The Frogs 559
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

/ 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?

560 ARISTOPHANES
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.
 The Frogs 561
DIONYSOS

Read the next line. Watch for errors, Euripides.

AESCHYLUS

of my father, be my savior and stand by my claim.

/ 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.

7 have come back, he says, but also I have returned.
/ 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.
562 ARISTOPHANES
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?

 The Frogs 563
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 iwfortunate

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 bom
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.*
564 ARISTOPHANES
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.*

 The Frogs 56 5

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
566 ARISTOPHANES
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 / should buy from him?

DIONYSOS

That’s my advice

EURIPIDES

J refuse to do it. 1 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

 The Frogs 567

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. 1 still have plenty left.

Oineus, from his land*

AESCHYLUS

lost his little bottle of oil.

EURIPIDES

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.
568 ARISTOPHANES
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*
 The Frogs 569
oho what a stroke come you not
to the rescue9

DIONYSOS

Another stroke, dear Aeschylus That makes the third

EURIPIDES

Quiet, all O bee-keepers now open the temple of

Artemis nearby*
oho what a stroke come
vou not to the rescue?
I am enabled to sing of the prodigy shown
at the wayside*
oho what a stroke come vou
, 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

ofHela*
di turn di turn di turn di turn
Sends forth the—sphinx who is princess of om
inous hellhounds*
di turn di turn di turn di turn
hand on the—spear and embattled, the bird
of encounter*
570 ARISTOPHANES
di turn di turn di turn di turn
giving assault—there to the hovering hounds
of the airways*
di turn di turn di turn di turn

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 1 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
fmger-wee-hee-heeving embattled
handiwork of your woof-warp-webs,
 The Frogs 571
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 vour arms, o mv child

Breaking off in disgust

Just look at that line

DIONYSOS
/

I’m looking

AESCHYLUS

And look at that one

DIONYSOS

I’m looking

\ESCHYLUS

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 *
O 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
572 ARISTOPHANES
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.
O spirit of the sea
that was it. Heigh-ho housemates
behold, here are portents.
Glyke has stolen my rooster away,
and lo, she is gone.
O 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.

 The Frogs 573
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.
574 ARISTOPHANES
DIONYSOS

Say and lay a line upon the scale.

EURIPIDES

/ 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.
 The Frogs 575
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.*
576 ARISTOPHANES
AESCHYLUS

Chariot piled on chariot and corpse on corpse *

DIONYSOS

Aeschylus fooled you again.

s

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 1 do decide?

PLUTO

Then take the one you want

and go; we must not let your journey be in vain.
 The Frogs 577
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.

578 ARISTOPHANES
[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.
 The Frogs 579
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?*
580 ARISTOPHANES

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.

 The Frogs 581
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.
1 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.
582 ARISTOPHANES
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
once 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
 The Frogs 583
PLUTO

Torches, this way.

With holy illumination light him
and with his own songs and dances delight him
as you escort him away.
4

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.

/
Notes

page 481. Phrynichos. Lykis, Ameipsias: Comic poets, rivals

of Aristophanes.
482. sea battle: The battle of Arginousai, fought in 406
b.c, the summer before this play. Slaves were then
used in the Athenian navy for the first time, and
these slaves were set free after the victory.
484. Kleisthenes: Aristophanes makes him a synonym
for effeminacy and homosexuality throughout his
plays (see also page 512 in this play) and uses him
as a character in The Thesmophoriazusae.
484. Molon: An actor apparently, who was either very
little or very large.
486. For some . . . are bad: From the lost Oeneus of
Euripides.
486. lophon: The son of Sophocles. The point here and
in the following lines was that the younger man
had been helped by his father. <
487. Agathon: A tragic poet whose works are lost but
who had a good reputation as a poet and seems to
have been personally very well liked. There are
portraits of him in Plato’s Symposium and Aris¬
tophanes’ Thesmophoriazusae, and though the latter
58 5
586 ARISTOPHANES
teases him for a ladylike manner and appearance,
the teasing is done without Aristophane’s usual
cruelty. The reader would think Agathon had died.
He had not. At some time not long before this
play, he left Athens and joined a group of celebri¬
ties at the court of King Archelaos in Macedonia.
The thought is, that for Athenian audiences he
might just as well have quitted this world for
the Islands of the Blest at the end of the world.
Little is known about Xenocles and nothing about
Pythangelos.
page 488. Bright upper air, Zeus’ penthouse: All these lines
are Euripidean. “Bright upper air, Zeus’ penthouse”
seems to be adapted from a phrase in the lost
Clever Melanippe. “The foot of Time” is from the
lost Alexander. The heart that would . . . and
Tongue that was ... are an adaptation from
Hippolytus 612.
489. Rule thou it: This line is Euripidean, but the
scholiast’s ascription of it to Andromache is wrong.
491. the deathless way: As the Greeks conceived it,
death is the separation of the soul or psyche (life,
breath, ghost, or image) from the body. The body
decays. The soul, such as it is, goes to the house
or realm of Hades, or to Hades (Hades is Plouton
or Pluto, a person rather than a place). Usually,
but not always, Hades is imagined to be under the
ground. An alternate thought is to put the land of
the dead, sometimes of the blessed dead only, at
the end of the world. So certain special heroes pass
to the other world merely by going further than
natural means could have taken anyone: they do
not go underground, their psyche is not tom out of
their body, they do not die. Odysseus makes a long
voyage and returns. Herakles went, and came ba.k
alive, so he must have gone by the roundabout
way (Tainaron, land’s end of the Peloponnese, the
jumping-off place). In The Metamorphoses (The
Golden Ass) of Apuleius (6. 17-18), Psyche must
do an errand in Hades and return. She climbs a
 The Frogs 587
high tower and is about to jump. But the tower
tells her not to, for if her spirit is broken out of her
body she will go to the deepest place and never
come back. Instead, she should go the long way,
via Tainaron, Apuleius wrote in the second century
a.d., but he helps to show what Dionysos is here
talking about. In this play, the ferryboat on the
Styx is combined perhaps with the far-voyaging
ship, such a one as carried Odysseus. But one
should not go too far in quest of intelligibility,
since this is a funny play, not theology.
page 492. two bits: Literally, two obols. The diobelia or
“two-obol payment” was a notorious but mysteri¬
ous payment, probably some kind of dole, insti¬
tuted by the demagogue Kleophon.
492. Theseus: The Athenian hero also made the trip to
Hades and back.
492. Morsimos: A tragic poet, great-nephew of Aeschylus.
492. Kinesias: A writer of dithyrambs.
493. Initiates: Those initiated in the Eleusinian Myster¬
ies expected a blissful life after death.
494. bucks: Literally, drachmas.
496. carry me home: The Greek here has a punning
sequence only a little less idiotic than the translation.
496. sea battle: See the note to page 482.
497. Stone of Parching Thirst: (Auainou lithos). This
would be a landmark in the country of the dead.
Refreshing water from the Well of Memory stands
for immortality (“may Isis give you cold water”
on many Greek-Egyptian epitaphs): so being dried
out would be a preliminary torment.
498. First Crew: Literally “I am asalaminious.” This
could mean, “I am not a Salamis man.” that is,
“I didn’t fight at the battle of Salamis.” But it
could also mean “I am not a Salaminia man.” The
“Salaminia” was a consecrated ship, used for sa¬
cred and special missions. Its crew would doubt¬
less be picked men. Since the sea fight of seventy-
five years earlier is quite remote from this part of
the play’s action, I prefer the second interpretation
588 ARISTOPHANES
page 504. Empousa: A bogey to frighten children with.
506. the clam has stilled the waves: In Euripides Orestes
279 the line runs:
4k KO|xdT(ov yap atiOis ah ya\f|v(a) 6p<I).
The storm is over and the calm has stilled the
waves.
But the actor, Hegelochos, spoke it:
4k kv|ju7T(dv yap ai)0i<; ah ya\f|v 6pa>.
The storm is over and the cat has stilled the waves.
Since “cat” (or “weasel”?) makes no plausible
confusion in English, I have taken a slight liberty.
In this, I find I have been anticipated by Mr.
Dudley Fitts.
506. all in yellow: This seems the likeliest interpretation,
though it is difficult to have the donkey on stage
for so long.
507. Iacchos: Both Dionysos and the companion of
Demeter and Persephone (that the god is eavesdrop¬
ping on his own rituals is part of the fun). In the
choral passage to come, and in the parabasis, the
features of the Mysteries are combined with the
worship of the Muses—which is drama.
508. Diagoras: A poet notorious for his atheism.
508. Roasting pigs!: Pigs were sacrificed at the Mysteries.
509. Kratinos: A distinguished comic poet, older contem¬
porary (no longer living at the time of this play) of
Aristophanes.
509. Thorykion: A tax-collector, evidently. Nothing is
known about him except what is alleged here.
509. shrine as a blackhouse: This seems to mean
Kinesias. See page 492.
512. Archedemos: The demagogue who instituted pro¬
ceedings against the generals after the battle of
Arginousai (see the note on page 519). Non-Athenian
birth is a frequent charge brought against dema¬
gogues by the comic poets.
512. Kleisthenes: See page 484. He is supposed to be
mourning for a lost boy friend, like a wife for a
husband killed in the war. Mourners tore out their
hair (from their heads) and beat their faces.
 The Frogs 589
page 512. Kallias: Member of a very rich family in Athens.
Then as now only the rich raced horses.
514. Aiakos:.In epic and saga a great hero, grandfather
of Achilleus, head of that heroic line, the Aiakidai.
so dear to the Aiginetans and Pindar and, accord¬
ing to some, made for his uprightness a judge of
the dead in the underworld. Here he is a slave,
plainly the janitor or porter.
514. Styx, Acheron, Kokytos: The rivers of the under¬
world. But Styx, often personified, is here hinted
at in her true and ancient form, a waterfall drib¬
bling off a huge black cliff on the northern face of
Mount Chelmos, between Arkadia and Achaia.
516. / cannot but obey thee: This sounds like a tragic
tag, but 1 cannot place it.
517. Mistress: Persephone.
519. Theramenes: A well-known politician of the time.
Having in mind his own schemes for reform, he
would join whatever party seemed temporarily to
be most likely to further them, and then change
sides at discretion. He showed the same kind of
“adaptability” after the victory at Arginousai (see
page 482). Bad weather prevented the victorious
Athenians from picking up many survivors and
floating corpses after the battle. The assembly was
out of blood, and things looked bad for the cap¬
tains of the ships, of whom Theramenes was one.
He saved himself by adding his voice to the clamor,
but putting the blame on the admirals of the fleet,
who were condemned to death. Such maneuvers
won Theramenes the nickname kothornos, which
means “tragic buckskin,” or a military boot, or,
more important for our purpose here, any boot
which would fit either foot. The nickname is at¬
tested by Xenophon Hellenica 2. 3. 31. It does not
appear in our text. I apologize for crowding it in; it
seemed to me to make clear the well-known charac¬
ter of the man Aristophanes was attacking.
521. Kleon: If you have read the early plays, especially
590 ARISTOPHANES
The Knights, you know all about Kleon. Hyperbolos
was his successor, and of the same sort.
page 523. my wife: He hasn’t any.
523. my kiddies: He hasn’t any.
523. the kind of god: Herakles, as brother of Dionysos,
is treated mostly as a god in this play.
523. braver herbs: Oregano. It was supposed to put one
in a fighting mood.
525. gentlemanly: Athenian law permitted the torture of
slaves in order to make them give evidence. This
could not be done to free men, or “gentlemen,”
so it is a “generous” and “gentlemanly” gesture
on the part of Xanthias when he offers his slave to
be tortured for evidence concerning himself.
525. or leeks: A master might ask that his slave be
excused for tortures too injurious or painful, either
for the slave’s own sake, or with thoughts of his
future uses.
528. Diomeia: This feast of Herakles was held outside
the walls and could not be celebrated while the
enemy occupied Attica.
529. Apollo . . . Pytho: A line of verse by Hipponax,
the iambic poet.
530. Who . . . green waters: The lyric is said to be
from the lost Laocoon of Sophocles.
531. Kleophon: Politician, leader of the popular party,
which was also the war party, detested by the
comic poets, and attacked as being of non-Athenian
(Thracian) birth. See the last lines of this play.
Swallow and nightingale (Philomela and Prokne)
are associated with Thrace (see The Birds), and the
twittering of birds is often used to describe barbar¬
ian speech. The point is apparently something like
this: Kleophon must stand trial at some time, and
though in Attic law even ballots mean acquittal,
Kleophon is so awful that an exception ought to be
made.
531. fears be taken away: What follows is a plea for
amnesty, and the restoration of full citizens’ rights
to all those who had lost them for political reasons.
 The Frogs 591
particularly for supporting Phrynichos in the revolu¬
tion of 411 B.C.
page 531. Plataian status: Plataia, a city of Boiotia, had been
the most steadfast and devoted of the allies of
Athens. When in 427 b.c. the city was destroyed
by the Spartans and Thebans, the survivors were
granted Athenian citizenship (with a few limitations).
532. Kleigenes: This bathman was doubtless also a
politician but we know nothing more about him.
533. currency: The Spartan occupation of part of Attica
had cut off access to the silver mines at Laurion.
This resulted in a debasing of the coinage.
533. scapegoat: Or pharmakos. This was a condemned
criminal on whom was loaded all the accumulated
guilt of the city. His execution, therefore, amounted
to an act of public sacrifice and expiation.
538. Kleidemidas: Perhaps a son of Sophocles, perhaps
only a friend.
540. cabbage patch: Aristophanes is fond of saying that
Euripides’ mother maintained a truck garden.
544. Phrynichus: The earliest of the great tragic poets,
active in the first decades of the fifth century (not
to be confused with the comic poet mentioned on
page 481).
544. Achilleus: References are to lost plays. The Phry¬
gians (or The Ransoming of Hector) and Niobe.
547. Kephisophon: Euripides’ secretary, supposed, here,
to have done some ghostwriting for him.
548. line of thought: Aristophanes portrays Aeschylus
as a haughty patrician who disliked the common
people. See the Introduction.
549. Phormisios: A “reactionary” politician. Of Me-
gainetos and Manes (this may be a nickname) noth¬
ing is known. Kleitophon, who appears in the
dialogue of Plato which bears his name, seems to
have belonged with Phormisios, as does Theramenes
(see note 515 on page 585). Euripides’ disciples
seem to be distinguished from those of Aeschylus
not so much for their views as for their character
and methods.
592 ARISTOPHANES
page 550. See you . . . Achilleus?: The opening of the lost
Myrmidons of Aeschylus.
552. Persians: This seems to be a slip of memory on
the part of Aristophanes. The Persians is reliably
dated 472 b.c., The Seven Against Thebes 467 b.c.
554. Phaidra: See Euripides, Hippolytus.
554. Sthenoboia: The heroine of a lost play named after
her. Her story is similar to that of Phaidra, insofar
as she made advances to Bellerophon, her husband’s
guest, was refused, and told her husband that
Bellerophon had tried to seduce her.
556. warships:No one is willing to be a trierarch. The
trierarchy, a special duty of liturgy imposed on
rich citizens, involved the outfitting and upkeep of
trireme (war galley), as well as the nominal com¬
mand of the vessel on active service.
556. His nurses . . . life?: The nurse-procuress could
be Phaidra’s nurse in Hippolytus. In Auge, the
heroine gave birth in the temple of Athene. In
Aeolus, Makareus and Kanake, brother and sister,
are involved in a love affair. For musings on life,
see the fragment from the lost Polyeidus:
Who knows if life be not thought death, or death
be life in the world below?
There is a similar thought in the lost Phrixus.
557. Panathenaia: The pan-Athenian festival.
558. subtle allusions: We are told that The Frogs was
so well received that a second performance was
given during the poet’s lifetime. This stanza may
conceivably have been written for this second
performance, when “the book was out.’’ But an
annotated edition, by which the audience could
identify allusions, is something absolutely unexam¬
pled for this date.
558. Oresteia: The title is here used for the play we call
The Choephori, or The Libation Bearers.
558. Hermes, . . . I have returned: These lines are miss¬
ing from our mss. of Aeschylus. I have discarded
my previous translation for a more literal one, in
 The Frogs 593
order to make the use of synonymous phrases, real
or apparent, more obvious.
page 562. three times: At the last rites for the dead, the name
was called three times.
563. Oedipus . . . man: This and the fifth line below
are the first two lines of Euripides’ lost Antigone.
.563. Erasinides: A general at the time of the battle of
Arginousai. Had one of these generals lost his
sight, he would have been excused from military
service, and so would have escaped the fate that
befell Erasinides and his colleagues. See the note
on Theramenes on page 589.
564. Aigyptos . . . Argos: Said to have been the first
lines of the lost Archelaus, but the opening of this
play is also given in another form.
564. little bottle of oil: The lekythion, or little oil bottle,
was part of the traveler’s regular luggage.
565. Dionysos . . . feet: Opening of the lost Hypsipyle.
565. Ah me, . . . again: This line combines the two
death cries of Agamemnon, Aeschylus Agamemnon,
1343, 1345.
565. There’s been . . . born unhappy: Opening of the
lost Sthenoboia.
566. Kadmos . . . Sidon: Opening of the lost Phrixus.
566. Pelops . . . horses: Opening of Iphigeneia in Tauris.
567. Oineus, from his land: Opening of the lost Meleager.
567. Zeus . . . maintained: Opening of the lost Clever
Melanippe.
568. Phthian . . . rescue?: Two lines from the lost
Myrmidons, the second repeated as a refrain by
Aristophanes.
568. Hermes . . . lakeside: From the lost Psychagogi.
568. Greatest Achaian . . . hear me: From either
Telephus or Iphigeneia (both lost).
569. Quiet, all. . . nearby: From The Priestesses (lost).
569. / am ... at the wayside: Agamemnon 104.
569. How the .. . of Hellas: Agamemnon 108.
569. Sends forth . . . hellhounds: From the lost Sphinx.
569. hand on ... of encounter: Agamemnon 111.
570. giving assault . . . airways: Provenance unknown.
594 ARISTOPHANES
page 570. From Marathon: The next Aeschylean line, which
leaning on Aias, is meaningless here, since un-
metrical, and I have omitted it.
570. Meletos’: A poet of indifferent reputation, better
known as the accuser of Socrates.
570. That’s a man’s woman . . . one: Literally, Dionysos
says: “This Muse was never a Lesbian, not at
all.” Rogers, reading the Greek so as to obtain
“The Muse herself” instead of “This Muse,”
translates: “The Muse herself can’t be a wanton?
No!” I do not find this convincing. Outraged indig¬
nation does not suit Dionysos, and the expression
“be a Lesbian” should not mean “be a wanton”
in any general sense. If Sappho had ever, at this
time, been called “The tenth Muse,” the point
would be perfect. She was so called, but I do not
find it earlier than Palatine Anthology 9. 506. This
is attributed to Plato, and therefore could, by an
exceedingly strenuous stretch of the imagination,
have been current before The Frogs was written.
But attributions in the Anthology are frequently
suspect, and this epigram does not sound Platonic
to me. Still, “Tenth Muse” could have been a tag
already applied to Sappho, and the allusion to
Lesbos ought to be accounted for in the translation.
570. sea’s ever-streaming: This sequence seems to be a
patchwork of Euripidean passages, but not all can
be identified. The first four lines are said to be
from Iphigeneia, but do not appear in our extant
texts for either of the plays so called. Other identifi¬
cations are: the eighth line, Meleager, ninth and
tenth, Electra\ eleventh to fourteenth, Hypsipyle.
571. monodies: The monody is a solo for the female
character (played of course by a male actor). Unlike
the patchwork demonstration of “Euripidean lyric”
above, this is a true parody, done “in the manner
of Euripides” but without (apparently) direct
quotations.
574. / wish . . . her way: The opening line of Medea.
574. River . . . near: From the lost Philoctetes.
 The Frogs 595
Pa8e 575. Persuasion . . . the word: From the lost Antigone.
575. Death . . . by fits: From the lost Niobe.
575. His right hand . . . steel: From the lost Meleager
576. Chariot . . . on corpse: From the lost Glaucus.
578. [Lions . . . all]: The authenticity of this line, omit¬
ted by two good mss., is highly doubtful, so I have
left it in square brackets. The allusion to the lion’s
cub may be to Agamemnon 716-36, but there is no
direct quotation. Lions are constantly associated
with kingship. There would be a hint at Alkibiades’
suspected ambitions toward tyranny. I have read
this thought into my translation. To the question,
what shall we do about Alkibiades, the answers
may be paraphrased thus: Euripides: He is selfish
and therefore unreliable: Aeschylus: True, but he
is our only promising leader, and we should put
ourselves in his hands.
578. Kleokritos and Kinesias: see The Birds 877, 1372.
579. will serve?: I hope I am right this interpretation.
Neither the mantle of the rich nor the sack-cloth of
the poor is satisfactory. These articles of clothing
are, I believe, thought of as emergency life
preservers. Cf. Odyssey 5. 346-50.
580. My tongue . . . heart: See Hippolytus 612.
581. What’s shameful? . . . audience?: Adapted from
the lost Aeolus. It should read: “What’s shameful,
unless it seems so to those who do it?”
581. Who knows . . . life: See note 556 on page 592.
582. Sokrates: The word sophia stands sometimes for
literary skill, sometimes for wisdom. The ambigu¬
ity shows that the Greeks did not always distin¬
guish between the two as sharply as we do.
Aristophanes, acknowledging perhaps that the clever
Sokrates does possess some kind of sophia, rejects
it as the wrong kind. The objection is based, clearly,
on certain antiliterary yiews of Sokrates which are
attested again and again in the works of Plato.
582. Archenomos: They were involved in the collection
of taxes.
■\
 Glossary

^charnai: Largest of the rural demes of Attika, located

about seven miles north of the city of Athens

adonis: Mythical youth of marvelous beauty, beloved of

Aphrodite, early cut off by a boar. His death was regularly
bewailed by women of Greece and the East at summer
festivals.

aeschylus, aischylos: The great Athenian tragedian (525-456

B-C ).

aesop, aisopos: A writer of fables, perhaps legendary himself.

He was reputed a native of Samos who flourished in the
sixth century b.c

agamemnon: In mythology, commander-in-chief of the Greek

forces at the siege of Troy.

aischines: An indigent Athenian braggart, much given to

boasting about his fabulous estates, as imaginary as
Cloud-cuckooland.

ajax, aias: Greek hero of the Trojan War, son of Telamon

of Salamis.
599
600 ARISTOPHANES
akademe, academy: Originally a precinct sacred to the hero
Akademos and afterward used as a gymnasium and recre¬
ation area. The general Kimon planted it with groves of
olives and plane trees. Only in the fourth century, after
becoming the haunt of the philosopher Plato and his
followers, did the once athletic Academy become academic
in the modem sense of the word
akestor: An Athenian tragic poet. See sakas.

akropolis, acropolis: The citadel of Athens.

alkibiades: An Athenian politician (ca. 450-404) of great
ability and brilliance. Of aristocratic Alkmaionid descent,
he was related to Perikles and was, for some time, a
devoted disciple of Sokrates. Distinguished by wealth, birth,
and spectacular personal beauty, he spent his youth in
lavish display and debauchery (Pheidippides in The Clouds
has been thought to be a caricature of Alkibiades). After
the death of Kleon in 422, Alkibiades became chief of the
belligerent anti-Spartan party in Athens in opposition to the
more conservative Nikias and was one of the primary
advocates of the disastrous Sicilian expedition.
alkmeme: Wife of Amphitryon and mistress of Zeus by whom
she became the mother of Herakles.
alope: Mortal woman beloved by Poseidon.
amazons: The mythical race of warrior-women, said to have
invaded Attika in heroic times to avenge the theft of their
queen’s sister, Antiope, by Theseus of Athens.
ammon: A celebrated shrine and oracle of Zeus and Libya.
amphion: Musician and husband of Niobe; at the touch of
his lyre the stones rose from the ground and formed them¬
selves together to make the ramparts of Thebes.
amyklai: A Lakedaimonian town, traditional birthplace of
Kastor (q.v.) and Pollux, site of a temple of Apollo
amynias: Son of Pronapes and one of Strepsiades’ creditors
in The Clouds He was not. however, a professional money-
 Glossary 601
lender but a notorious effeminate- and wastrel, probably
addicted to gambling.

antimachos: A homosexual on a prodigious scale

aphrodite: Goddess of beauty and sexual love.
apollo: God of prophecy, music, healing, and light; his two
chief shrines were at Delphoi (q.v.) and Delos (q.v.)
ares: God of War.

aristogeiton: Athenian hero who, with Harmodios, assassi¬

nated the tyrant Hipparchos in 514 and was put to death.
With the expulsion of Hipparchos’ brother Hippias four
years later, the tyranny of the Peisistratids came to an end.
Statues to Harmodios and Aristogeiton were erected in the
Athenian Agora.
aristokrates: Son of Skellias; a prominent Athenian politi¬
cian of conservative persuasion. In 421 b.c. he was one of
the signers of the Peace of Nikias between Athens and
Sparta. In 411 he joined the moderate conservative Thera-
menes in setting up the government of the Four Hundred,
but later withdrew.
artemis: Goddess of chastity, childbirth, and the hunt; sister
of Apollo.
artemisia: Queen of Halikamassos, who, as an ally of
the Persian King Xerxes in his invasion of Greece, fought
with particular distinction at the sea battle of Salamis
in 480.
artemision: Site on the northern coast of Euboia, off which
the Athenians defeated the Persians in a sea battle in 480.
athamas: King of Orchomenos and the legendary subject of
a (lost) play by Sophokles. Having attempted to murder his
son Phrixos (q.v.), Athamas was sentenced to be sacrificed
He was crowned with a sacrificial wreath and dragged
before the altar, but just before being dispatched, was
saved by the sudden intervention of Herakles.
602 ARISTOPHANES
athena, Athene: Goddess of wisdom and war and patroness
of Athens. On her breast she wore the aegis, a goatshin
plated with scales and a Gorgon’s head in the center.
Babylon: Ancient capital of Mesopotamia, situated on the
Euphrates River. It was one of the largest cities of the
ancient world, and among its wonders were its great brick
walls, described by the historian Herodotos.
bacchos: Dionysos, the god of vineyards, wine and dra¬
matic poetry, celebrated at Athens in a series of festivals,
among them the Lenaia (January-February) and the City
Dionysia (March-April).
bakis: A famous prophet of Boiotia, whose oracles were
delivered in hexameter verse. In Aristophanes’ comedies,
the seers who cite Bakis are usually charlatans.
basileia: The personification of Empire and Sovereign Power;
in the present version she appears as Miss Universe.
boiotia: A plentifully supplied state directly northeast of
Attika, allied with Sparta during the Peloponnesian War.
byzantion: A city on the Bosporos and a subject-city of the
Athenian Empire. Its siege by the Athenians under Kimon
in 469 was celebrated.
chairephon: Friend and disciple of the philosopher Sokrates.
His utter devotion to philosophy and the studious life and his
striking pallor and emaciation made him a popular image
of The Philosopher. Hence his nickname, The Bat or The
Vampire.
chaos: The nothingness or vacancy which existed before the
creation of the world. In mythology Chaos was the mother
of Erebos and Night.
charon: A minor deity in charge of ferrying the souls of the
dead to Hades.
chians: Inhabitants of the island of Chios, a state closely
allied to Athens during the early Peloponnesian War
and whose fidelity to the Athenian cause was rewarded
 Glossary 603
by inclusion in the Athenian prayers for prosperity and
success.
darius, dareios: King of Persia (ruled 521-486 b.c.).

delos: Small Aegean island sacred to Apollo.

delphoi, Delphi: A town in Phokis, celebrated for its great
temple and oracle of Apollo.
demeter: The Earth Mother; goddess of grain, agriculture,
and the harvest, worshipped at her shrine at Eleusis in
Attika.
demostratos: A choleric Athenian demagogue, first to pro¬
pose the disastrous Sicilian Expedition of 415-413.
diagoras: Poet and philosopher of Melos. Charged with
atheism in Athens and condemned to death, he fled the
city.
dieitrephes: A notorious social climber. Of doubtful Athenian
origin, he began his public career as a worker in wicker
and a basketmaker, and gradually made his way upward in
the military hierarchy. In 413 a detachment of Thracians
under his command went amok and massacred a school full
of children at Mykalessos.
dionysos: God of vineyards, wine, and dramatic poetry:
also called Bacchos, Evios, Bromios, etc.
dodona: An ancient oracle of Zeus in the mountains of
Epiros.
elektra: Daughter of Agamemnon and Klytaimnestra; with
her brother Orestes she murdered her mother for having
killed her father. In the parabasis of The Clouds, Aristopha¬
nes alludes to the famous scene in Aischylos’ Choephoroe.
when Elektra recognized that her brother Orestes had re¬
turned to Argos from the lock of hair left on Agamemnon’s
tomb.
ephesos: A city in Asia Minor (Ionia), site of a famous
temple of Artemis.
604 ARISTOPHANES
epops: The Hoopoe, Tereus (q.v.).
eros: God of sensual love, son of Aphrodite.
etna, aitna: A city situated on a spur of the Sicilian moun¬
tain of the same name, founded by Hiero of Syracuse
euboia: A large and fertile island northeast of Attica. In 457
Perikles planted an Athenian colony on the island and
otherwise exploited it. As a result the island revolted in
445 and had to be resubjugated. This time, however, Perikles’
treatment of the island was so severe that it was commonly
said (at least by his enemies) that he had “stretched Euboia
on the rack of torture.”
eupolis: An Athenian poet of the Old Comedy and a rival of
Aristophanes. Eupolis claimed that Aristophanes had imi¬
tated him in The Knights, and Aristophanes countered by
charging the Eupolis’ Marikas was a plagiarism of his own
The Knights.

euripides: Athenian tragedian (480-406 b.c.) whose charac¬

ter and plays were constantly ridiculed by Aristophanes.
Euripides’ mother may have been (though this is uncertain)
a market woman who sold chervil, and Aristophanes never
tires of twitting the tragedian about his mother’s vegetables.
eurotas: A river in Laconia, on which is located the city of
Sparta.
exekestides: Evidently a foreign slave of Karian extraction
who succeeded in passing himself off as an Athenian citizen,
i.e., the sort of man who would be at home anywhere.
gorgias: Of Leontini, a noted sophist and teacher of rhetoric.
harmodios: Athenian hero; assassin, with Aristogeiton (q.v.),
of the tyrant Hipparchos.
hebros: A river of Thrace.

hekate: Goddess of the moon, night, childbirth, and the

underworld.

Helen: Daughter of Led a and Tyndaros, wife of Menelaos

 Glossary 605
of Sparta. Her abduction by Paris of Troy furnished a casus
belli for the Trojan War.
hera: Consort of Zeus
herakles: Hero and demigod, son of Zeus and Alkmene.
renowned for his great labors, prodigious strength, and
equally prodigious appetite. Because Herakles is par excel
lence the monster-killer, it is particularly appropriate to
swear by him when confronted by the monstrous, prodigious,
freakish, or strange
hermes: God of messengers and thieves; in Athens in every-
doorway stood a statue of Hermes (i.e., a herm, usually a
bust of the god surmounting an ithyphallic pillar), protector
of the door and guardian against thieves—it takes one to
know one. The wholesale mutilation of these statues by
persons unknown, just before the sailing of the Sicilian
expedition in 415, led to the recall of Alkibiades—and
thus, perhaps, to the loss of the expedition and ultimately
of the war.
hestia: Goddess of the hearth (and among Birds, goddess of
the nest).
hiero: Famous tyrant of Syracuse in Sicily, celebrated by
the poet Pindar.
hieronymos: A dithyrambic poet and tragedian, notorious
for his extraordinary shagginess, bestial appearance, and
pederasty.

hippokrates: Athenian general and nephew of Perikles; his

three sons, it seems, were all distinguished for their stupid¬
ity and were popularly nicknamed “The Pigs/’
hipponax: A satirical iambic poet of Ephesos (fl. 540 b.c.).
noted for his limping meter and his touchy temper.
hipponikos: A common name in a wealthy and aristocratic
Athenian family.
1 •

homer: The great epic poet of Greece, author of the Iliad

and Odyssey.
606 ARISTOPHANES
hyperbolos: An Athenian demagogue, successor to Kleon
on the latter’s death in 422 Of servile origins, he seems to
have been a peddler of lamps and then to have studied with
the Sophists in order to advance himself politically. (At
least these are the charges made against him by Aristophanes.)
He was later ostracized and finally murdered by the oligar¬
chical leaders in Samos.
hymen: God of marriage

ikaros: Son of the craftsman Daidalos, who escaped from

Krete with his father by means of homemade wings of wax
and feathers. But when Ikaros flew too high, the sun
melted the wax, his wings dissolved, and he fell to his
death in the sea
iris: Messenger of the gods; in the earlier poets represented
as a virgin.
ms The son of Tereus and Prokne (q.v. <, murdered by his
mother in revenge for Tereus’ rape and mutilation of
Philomela. To the Greek ear, the name Itys seemed to
form part of the refrain of the mourning nightingale
kallias: Common name in a wealthy and aristocratic Athenian
family. The Kallias singled out here was a notorious profli¬
gate and spendthrift.
karkinos: An Athenian tragic poet whose poetry and three
sons are all ridiculed by Aristophanes Karkinos' name
means “Crab."

karystian: From Karystos, a town in Euboia allied to Athens,

whose male inhabitants enjoyed a seemingly deserved repu¬
tation for lechery

kastor: Divinity, son of Leda and Tyndaros, or of Leda and

Zeus; twins of Polydeukes (Pollux), with whom he consti¬
tutes the Dioskouroi. These twin gods were particularly
honored by their native state of Sparta

kekrops, cecrops. Legendary first king of Attika and re¬

puted founder of Athens Hence “country of Kekrops” is
 Glossary 607
equivalent to “Athens” and “son of Kekrops” to “Athen¬
ian.” He is usually represented as twi-form, i.e., with the
head and upper trunk of a man, but serpent-shaped below
(symbolizing this earthbom origin).
kikynna: An Athenian deme of the tribe of Akamantis.
kimon: One of Athens’ greatest generals (died 449 b.c.); in
the years following the Persian Wars, principal architect of
the Athenian Empire—an activity abruptly interrupted by
his ostracism in 461.
kinesias: A clubfooted dithyrambic poet of great pretensions
but little ability.

kleisthenes: A notorious homosexual; on that account, one

of Aristophanes’ favorite targets for at least twenty years.
kleomenes: Sixth-century king of Sparta, whose two Athenian
expeditions had rather different results: The first, in 510,
materially assisted in the expulsion of the tyrant Hippias;
the second, in 508, failed to establish the power of the
aristocratic party led by Isagoras
kleon: Son of Kleainetos: the most notorious and powerful of
all Athenian demagogues After the death of Perikles in
429 b.c. , Kleon became, until his own death in 422, the
leader of the radical democracy and the anti-Spartan extrem¬
ists in Athens An impressive speaker and a thoroughly
unscrupulous and venal politician, he was bitterly loathed
and attacked by Aristophanes In 424 b.c., thanks to his
coup in capturing the Spartan hoplites at Sphakteria. he
reached the height of his power; so unchallengeable was
his position that he was able to persuade the Athenians not
to accept the handsome terms offered by Sparta in an
attempt to recover her imprisoned hoplites. Filled with
confidence in his military ability and tempted by the hope
of further glory, Kleon took command of an Athenian army
in Thrace, where, in 422. he was defeated and killed by the
Spartan forces under Brasidas
In Aristophanes' The Knights. Kleon is only slightly
masked under the name of Paphlagon (q.v.).
608 ARISTOPHANES
kleonymos: A corpulent glutton and part-time informer;
Aristophanes’ commonest butt for cowardice (i.e., throwing
one’s shield away).
kolonos: Small town on a hill near Athens; here the astrono¬
mer Meton (q.v.) had evidently constructed a complicated
piece of engineering or clockwork.
kordax: A salacious dance commonly used in Athenian Old
Comedy.
korinth: Greek city allied to Sparta during the Peloponnesian
War; situated on the strategic Isthmus of Korinth.
korkyra: Modem Corfu, a large island off the western coast
of Greece. “Korkyrean wings” means “whip.”
kronos: Father of Zeus, Hera, and Poseidon. Deprived of
his rule by Zeus. Synonymous with “old fogy.”
kybele: A Phrygian Mother Goddess, worshipped as The
Great Mother, “mother of gods and men.”
kynthos: A mountain on the island of Delos, sacred to
Apollo.
kypros: A large Greek island in the eastern Mediterranean,
especially associated with the goddess Aphrodite, said to
have stepped ashore there after her birth from the sea-foam.
lakonia: The southernmost state on the Greek mainland,
Athens’ principal opponent in the Peloponnesian War. Its
capital city is Sparta.
laurium, laureion: In southeastern Attika, famous for its
silver mines. Athenian silver coins, stamped with the owl
of Athena, were commonly called “owls of Laureion.”
lenaia: An Athenian Dionysiac festival, celebrated in
January-February.
leogoras: A wealthy Athenian gourmet, addicted to horse
raising (or possibly to pheasant-breeding). Father of the
orator Andokides.
leonidas: Spartan king and general, who led his 300 troops
 Glossary 609
against Xerxes’ Persian army at Thermopylae in Thessaly
(480).
leotrophides: An extremely fragile, delicate, and-unsubstan-
tial poet.
lepreus, lepreum: A town in Elis; it recovered its indepen¬
dence from Elis during the Peloponnesian War.
leto: Mother of Artemis and Apollo.
lydia: A district of Asia Minor; under its greatest king,
Kroisos (Croesus), it included almost all of Asia Minor
from the river Halys to the Ionian coast. Its wealth and
effeminacy were proverbial among Greeks.
lykourgos: An Athenian of sufficient distinction and/or odd¬
ity of appearance to have won the nickname of The Ibis. In
this translation, however, he appears as The Lame Duck.
maenads: The frenzied female worshippers (Bacchantes) of
Dionysos (q.v.).
maiotis: An inland sea (the modem Sea of Azov), northern
arm of the Black Sea.
manes: A lazy slave.
manodoros: A slave.

marathon: A plain in the eastern part of Attika; site of the

famous battle (490 b.c.) in which the Athenian forces
under Miltiades crushingly defeated the first Persian inva¬
sion of Hellas.
megakles: A name belonging to the Alkmaionid family, one
of the proudest and most distinguished families of Athens.
megara: The Greek state immediately to the west of Attika;
also, its capital city.
meidias: A venal and corrupt Athenian informer, evidently
also a quail-breeder in his own right, whence his nickname,
The Quail. For Aristophanes the propriety of the name is
confirmed by Meidias’ habitually dazed expression, like
that of a freshly stunned quail.
610 ARISTOPHANES
melanion: A mighty hunter, evidently proverbial for his
chastity. Probably not to be identified with Meilanion
(Milanion), victorious suitor of the huntress Atalante.
melanthios: Son of Philokles and, like his father, an atro¬
cious tragedian. Afflicted with leprosy, he seems to have
been also a noted glutton (cf. Peace, 804).
memnon: Famous hero, son of Tithonos and Eos (Dawn);
killed in the Trojan War at the hands of Achilleus.
menelaos: Mythological king of Sparta and brother of
Agamemnon; husband of Helen.
menippos: An Athenian horse-raiser, nicknamed The Swal¬
low (from a pun on the word chelidon which means both
“swallow” and the tender “hollow” in a horse’s hoof).
messenia: The western half of Lakedaimon in the Peloponnese;
in spite of revolutions, held by Sparta from ca. 730 b.c.
until her defeat by Thebes at Leuktra in 371 b.c.
meton: An Athenian astronomer, geometrician, and city-
planner of considerable notoriety (see kolonos). According
to Plutarch, Meton objected to the Sicilian expedition and
pretended madness in order to keep his son at home.
mikon: A famous Athenian painter of murals, who flour¬
ished between the Persian and Peloponnesian Wars.
milesian: From Miletos, a city in Karia in Asia Minor,
which had broken off its alliance with Athens in mid-412,
following the Sicilian disaster.
mimas: A mountain on the coast of Ionia.
myronides: Athenian general in the period between the Wars;
his best-known victory was over the Boiotians at Oinophyta
(456).
nestor: King of Pylos and a hero of the Trojan War, fa¬
mous for his wisdom and eloquence.
nikias:Prominent Athenian general during the Peloponnesian
War. Enormously respected at Athens during his lifetime.
 Glossary 611
Nikias’ caution, slowness to move, stiffness, and super¬
stitious piety were among the chief causes for the defeat
of the Sicilian expedition. But as a cautious strategist
and tactician, he had no equal among the Athenian
generals.
odysseus: Hero of the Odyssey of Homer.
olophyxians: Inhabitants of Olophyxos, a small town on the
peninsula of Akte in Thrace.
olympos: Mountain (app. 9700 feet, alt.) in Thessaly, cov¬
ered at the summit with perpetual snow and reputed by the
Greeks to be the abode of the gods.
opountios: A notorious one-eyed sycophant nicknamed The
Crow.
opous: A town in Lokris, whose inhabitants were called the
Opuntian Lokrians.
orestes: A notorious burglar and highwayman; not to be
confused with the heroic son of Agamemnon.
paian: Manifestation of Apollo as god of healing.
pallas: The goddess Athena (Pallus Athene).
pan: Rural Arkadian god of the flocks and woodlands; his
cult at Athens was instituted by way of thanks for his help
to the Athenians at the battle of Marathon.
panathenaia: The great Athenian festival in honor of Athena.
pandaletos: A professional informer.

pandora: Mother Earth, the giver of all gifts (pan, all;

dora, gifts); not to be confused with the mythological
mischief-maker and her box of human troubles.
paphlagon: Aristophanes’ (and presumably Athens’) nick¬
name for the demagogue Kleon (q.v.). The name is in¬
tended to suggest: (1) that Kleon came of slavish and
foreign stock—i.e., was not an Athenian but a Paphlagonian—
and (2) the sheer volume and violence of Kleon’s rhetorical
assaults (from Greek paphlazein, to froth, bluster, storm).
612 ARISTOPHANES
Paris: Prince of Troy; in the famous judgment of Paris,
he was offered the most beautiful woman in the world
by Aphrodite in return for awarding her the prize for
beauty.
parnassos: A high mountain to the north of Delphoi (q.v.);
one of the chief haunts of Apollo and the Muses, but fre¬
quented also by Dionysos.
parnes: A mountain in the northeast of Attika, forming part
of the boundary between Attika and Boiotia. Near its foot
was situated the deme of Achamai.
pasias: One of Strepsiades* creditors; evidently a grotesquely
fat man and probably a drunkard to boot.
pegasos: The famous winged horse of mythology.
peisandros: Engineer of the oligarchic revolt which over¬
threw the Athenian constitution in May 411 and set up the
Council of Four Hundred.
peisias: Otherwise unknown, but evidently a noted traitor in
his day.
peleus: Hero of mythology, husband of Thetis and father of
Achilleus. According to legend, Astydamia, wife of Akastos,
fell in love with Peleus but was rejected by him. Angered,
she denounced him to her husband for having attempted to
seduce her. Akastos thereupon invited Peleus to a hunting
expedition on Mt. Pelion, stripped him of his weapons, and
left him to be tom to pieces by the wild animals. When
Peleus was almost on the point of death, however, the god
Hermes brought him a sword.
perikleidas: The ambassador sent by Sparta to beg Athenian
aid in putting down the Messenian revolt of 464.
perikles: Greatest of Athenian statesmen of the fifth century,
and from 461 b.c. until his death in 429, the almost
unchallenged leader of the radical Athenian democracy. Of
one of Athens’ most aristocratic families (the Alkmaionids),
he was nonetheless the politician most responsible for the
 Glossary 613
creation of the extreme democracy of the late fifth century.
To Aristophanes’ critical and conservative eyes, it was
Perikles who was responsible for the corruption of Athens,
and Aristophanes never tires of contrasting the Athens of
the Persian War period with the Athens of Perikles—corrupt,
effete, cruelly imperialistic, avaricious, at the mercy of
Sophists, clever orators, and impostors, cursed with a sys¬
tem (e.g., the law courts) which practically guaranteed
further excesses and injustices. Worst of all in Aristophanes’
eyes was Perikles’ belligerent war policies (e.g., the fa¬
mous Megarian Decree of 432) and the fact that, after 429,
Athens was left to the mercies of men like Kleon and
Hyperbolos who lacked Perikles’ restraint and political
genius. Like almost all the comic dramatists, Aristophanes
was a conservative (not an oligarch), and although he
distinguishes clearly between Perikles and his corrupt
successors, he nonetheless holds Perikles responsible for
creating the political system in which men like Kleon could
thrive.
philokles: Athenian tragic poet and nephew of Aischylos;
among his lost plays was one which treated the story of
Tereus and was evidently plagiarized from Sophokles’ play
of the same name. His nickname was The Lark because,
according to the Scholiast, his head tapered like the pointed
crest of that bird.
philokrates: An Athenian bird-seller.
phlegra: A plain in Thrace said to have been the site of the
great battle between the Gods and the Giants.
phoibos: Apollo (q.v.).
phormion: Athenian admiral, noted for his victory over the
Korinthians at Naupaktos in 429.
phrixos: Son of Athamas (q.v.); on the point of being sacri¬
ficed to Zeus, he was rescued by his mother Nephele.
phrygia: A country in central Asia Minor.
phrynichos: The famous early Athenian tragedian.
614 ARISTOPHANES
phrynis: Of Mytilene, a famous citharist and musician of
the fifth century; his innovations shocked and angered
contemporary conservatives.
pindar: Great lyric poet of Thebes (518-438 b.c.).

porphyrion: Name of one of the Titans who fought against

Zeus in the Battle of the Gods and the Giants; it is also the
name of a bird, the Purple Waterhen.
poseidon: Brother of Zeus and god of the sea. As god of the
sea, he girdles the earth and has it in his power, as Poseidon
the Earthshaker, to cause earthquakes. In still another
manifestation, he is Poseidon Hippios, patron god of horses
and horsemen.
priam: King of Troy.
prodikos: Of Keos, the famous Sophist and friend of
Sokrates.
prokne: The nightingale, wife of Tereus (q.v.).

Prometheus: The great Titan who championed the cause of

mankind against Zeus. Because he stole fire from heaven
and gave it to men, he was regarded by the gods as a traitor
to Olympos. His name means Foresight and his cleverness
and philanthropy were both proverbial.
proxenides: An Athenian braggart and blowhard.
pylos: Town of the southwestern coast of Messina whose
siege and capture, along with the neighboring island of
Sphakteria in 425-24, became a cause celebre of the
Peloponnesian War and the major source of Kleon’s pres¬
tige and power in Athens. As a result of their defeat at
Pylos and the capture of their hoplites, the Spartans were
forced to sue for peace; every overture, however, was met
by the determined refusal of Kleon, eager for the war to
continue.
sakas: The nickname of the Athenian tragic poet Akestor
(q.v.). The word Sakas seems to be a pejorative for
“Skyth” and presumably Akestor, like Exekestides. was
 Glossary 615
a foreigner who had managed, or was reputed to have
managed, to get his name entered on the citizenship rolls
of Athens.
salamis: An island in the Saronic Gulf, between Megara
and Attika. Subject to Athens, it is divided from the shore
by a narrow strait, site of the famous sea battle of 480
which saw the defeat of Xerxes’ Persians by Themistokles’
Athenians.
samos: A large Aegean island lying off the coast of
Ionia. At the beginning of 411, the effective headquarters
of the Athenian forces, who had just aided a democratic
revolution there. Other Athenians, especially Peisandros.
were already fomenting an oligarchic counterrevolution.
sarpedon: Legendary hero, son of Zeus and Europa; killed
by Patroklos during the Trojan War.
semele: Daughter of Kadmos of Thebes and mistress of
Zeus, by whom she became the mother of Dionysos.
sicily: Scene of Athens’ most disastrous undertaking during
the war, the Sicilian Expedition of 415-413, which ended in
the annihilation of the Athenian forces.
sikyon: Greek city situated on the northeast of the Pelo-
ponnesos, adjacent to Korinth.
simon: A swindler, the details of whose peculations are
unknown.
simonides: Of Keos, a lyric and elegiac poet (ca. 556-468
B.C.).

skythians: Barbarians who lived in the region northeast of

Thrace. Skythian archers were imported to Athens for use as
police.
sokrates: (Ca. 469-399 b.c.) The great Athenian philoso¬
pher and teacher of Plato. In appearance he was almost
grotesquely ugly; with his bulging eyes, fat lips, and a
round paunch, he looked like nothing so much as a Satyr or
616 ARISTOPHANES
Silenos. This, combined with his practice of strolling about
the marketplace and accosting citizens with questions about
truth, justice, beauty, etc., made him an apt target for
ridicule, all the more since it is doubtful whether the
majority of Athenians could, in fact, distinguish between
Sokrates and the average Sophist. That this is the case can
be inferred from The Clouds and Aristophanes’ extremely
sophistic presentation of Sokrates.
sophokles: The Athenian tragedian (495-404 b.c.).

solon: Famous Athenian legislator (ca. 638-588 b.c.), whose

achievement it was to have ended debt-slavery in Athens.
sparta: Capital city of Lakonia, principal opponent of Ath¬
ens during the Peloponnesian War.
syrakosios: An extremely garrulous Athenian orator whose
loquacity earned him the sobriquet of The Jaybird.
tartaros: The great abyss which opened underneath Hades
in the classical underworld.
taygetos: A high mountain in central Lakedaimon that sepa¬
rates Lakonia from Messenia.
telamon: Legendary king of Salamis; father of Aias.
teleas: Flighty and irresponsible Athenian bureaucrat;
secretary to the Committee in charge of the Parthenon
treasury.
telephos: Legendary king of Mysia and the subject of trage¬
dies by Aischylos, Sophokles, and Euripides. Wounded by
Achilleus while defending his country, Telephos was in¬
formed by an oracle that only the weapons which had given
him his wound would'Cure him. Thereupon, disguised as a
beggar, he made his way to Argos where, with the conniv¬
ance of Klytaimnestra, he covertly took the young Orestes
hostage. When the gathered Greeks were condemning
Telephos for his hostility to their cause, the disguised hero
made a speech in his own defense, but with such warmth
and eloquence that the Greeks recognized him. When
 Glossary 617
Achilleus demanded his death. Telephos threatened to kill
the infant Orestes. Finally, Achilleus relented and agreed
to give Telephos the weapon which had wounded him and
which would cure him
tereus: In mythology, a son of Ares and king of the Daulians
in Thrace. According to the legend, Pandion. king of
Athens, had two daughters. Prokne and Philomela. Prokne
was married to Tereus, by whom she became the mother of
a son, Itys. Tereus, however, became infatuated with
Prokne’s sister Philomela, raped her. and cut out her tongue
to keep her from informing Prokne But Philomela man¬
aged to embroider her story in needlework and sent it to
Prokne who, in retaliation against her husband, murdered
her son Itys and served him up to Tereus for dinner When
he discovered the truth, Tereus pursued Prokne and Philomela
but, before he could catch them, he was transformed into a
Hoopoe, Prokne into a Nightingale, and Philomela into the
Swallow. (In the better known but less appropriate Latin
version of the myth, Philomela is the nightingale and Prokne
the swallow).
The story of Tereus was tragically treated by both
Sophokles and Philokles.
thales: Of Miletos, one of the Seven Sages of antiquity,
renowned for his scientific genius and for having predicted
an eclipse of the sun (ca. 636-546 b.c.)
thasian: From Thasos, a volcanic island in the northern
Aegean, celebrated for the dark, fragrant wine produced by
its vineyards.
thebes: The principal city of Boiotia; during the Peloponnesian
War an ally of Sparta.
theogenes: An Athenian braggart; probably took part with
Kleon in the blockade of Sphakteria and was one of the
signers of the Peace of Nikias in 421 b.c
theoros: Flatterer, perjurer, sycophant of Kleon
thessaly: A large district in northern Greece.1 renowned
throughout antiquity for its abundant supply of witches
618 ARISTOPHANES
raETis: The sea nymph, mother of Achilleus by Peleus (q.v.).
Courted against her wishes by Peleus, she changed herself
successfully into a bird, a tree, and a tigress. But Peleus,
acting on the instructions of the centaur Cheiron, countered
by holding her fast until she assumed human form and
consented to marry him.
thrace: The eastern half of the Balkan peninsula.
timon; The famous Athenian misanthrope, a contemporary
of Aristophanes; a legend during his own lifetime
tutans: The race of pre-Olympian deities, bom of Heaven
and Earth. After the coming of the Olympians, the Titans
rebelled against Zeus and were vanquished in the Battle of
the Gods and the Giants at Phlegra.
tlepolemos: Hero and son of Herakles, the subject of a
tragedy by the dramatist Xenokles, one of the sons of
Karkinos (q.v.). In the play one of the characters describes
how his brother was killed by Tlepolemos

triballoi: A savage people of Thrace. The name Triballos

is merely an eponym of this people.

trophonios: King of Orchomenos, worshipped as a hero

after his death. His oracle in a cave in Boiotia was cele¬
brated throughout Hellas, and those who consulted him
made it their practice to take honeycakes with which to
appease the snakes who frequented the cavern.
rvPHO, typhon: A fire-breathing giant, frequently represented
as a hurricane.

xanthias: A common servile name.

xenokles: An Athenian tragedian, son of Karkinos (q.v.).

xenophantes: Father of Hieronymos (q.v.).

zakynthos: A large island in the Ionian Sea, south of

Kephallenia and west of Elis; during the Peloponnesian
War, an ally of Athens.
 Glossary 619
zeus: Chief god of the Olympian pantheon: son of Kronos,
brother of Poseidon, father of Athene As supreme ruler of
the world, he is armed with thunder and lightning and
creates storms and tempests