The Eleven Comedies Vol 2 Part 50

PLUTO. Enter my halls. Come, Dionysus.

DIONYSUS. What shall we do there?

PLUTO. I want to entertain my guests before they leave.

DIONYSUS. Well said, by Zeus; 'tis the very thing to please me best.

CHORUS. Blessed the man who has perfected wisdom! Everything is happiness for him. Behold Aeschylus; thanks to the talent, to the cleverness he has shown, he returns to his country; and his fellow-citizens, his relations, his friends will all hail his return with joy. Let us beware of jabbering with Socrates and of disdaining the sublime notes of the tragic Muse. To pa.s.s an idle life reeling off grandiloquent speeches and foolish quibbles, is the part of a madman.

PLUTO. Farewell, Aeschylus! Go back to earth and may your n.o.ble precepts both save our city[538] and cure the mad; there are such, a many of them!

Carry this rope from me to Cleophon, this one to Myrmex and Nichomachus, the public receivers, and this other one to Archenomous.[539] Bid them come here at once and without delay; if not, by Apollo, I will brand them with the hot iron.[540] I will make one bundle of them and Adimantus,[541] the son of Leucolophus,[542] and despatch the lot into h.e.l.l with all possible speed.

AESCHYLUS. I will do your bidding, and do you make Sophocles occupy my seat. Let him take and keep it for me, against I should ever return here.

In fact I award him the second place among the tragic poets. As for this impostor, watch that he never usurps my throne, even should he be placed there in spite of himself.

PLUTO (_to the Chorus of the Initiate_). Escort him with your sacred torches, singing to him as you go his own hymns and choruses.

CHORUS. Ye deities of the nether world, grant a pleasant journey to the poet who is leaving us to return to the light of day; grant likewise wise and healthy thoughts to our city. Put an end to the fearful calamities that overwhelm us, to the awful clatter of arms. As for Cleophon and the likes of him, let them go, an it please them, and fight in their own land.[543]

FINIS OF "THE FROGS"

Footnotes:

[382] These were comic poets contemporary with Aristophanes. Phrynichus, the best known, gained the second prize with his 'Muses' when the present comedy was put upon the stage. Amipsias had gained the first prize over our author's first edition of 'The Clouds' and again over his 'Birds.'

Aristophanes is ridiculing vulgar and coa.r.s.e jests, which, however, he does not always avoid himself.

[383] Instead of the expected "son of Zeus," he calls himself the "son of a wine-jar."

[384] At the sea-fight at Arginusae the slaves who had distinguished themselves by their bravery were presented with their freedom. This battle had taken place only a few months before the production of 'The Frogs.' Had Xanthias been one of these slaves he could then have treated his master as he says, for he would have been his equal.

[385] The door of the Temple of Heracles, situated in the deme of Melite, close to Athens. This temple contained a very remarkable statue of the G.o.d, the work of Eleas, the master of Phidias.

[386] A fabulous monster, half man and half horse.

[387] So also, in 'The Thesmophoriazusae,' Agathon is described as wearing a saffron robe, which was a mark of effeminacy.

[388] A woman's foot-gear.

[389] He speaks of him as though he were a vessel. Clisthenes, who was scoffed at for his ugliness, was completely beardless, which fact gave him the look of a eunuch. He was accused of prost.i.tuting himself.

[390] Heracles cannot believe it. Dionysus had no repute for bravery. His cowardice is one of the subjects for jesting which we shall most often come upon in 'The Frogs.'

[391] A tragedy by Euripides, produced some years earlier, some fragments of which are quoted by Aristophanes in his 'Thesmophoriazusae.'

[392] An actor of immense stature.

[393] The gluttony of Heracles was a byword. See 'The Birds.'

[394] Euripides, weary, it is said, of the ridicule and envy with which he was a.s.sailed in Athens, had retired in his old age to the court of Archelaus, King of Macedonia, where he had met with the utmost hospitality. We are a.s.sured that he perished through being torn to pieces by dogs, which set upon him in a lonely spot. His death occurred in 407 B.C., the year before the production of 'The Frogs.'

[395] This is a hemistich, the Scholiast says, from Euripides.

[396] The son of Sophocles. Once, during his father's lifetime, he gained the prize for tragedy, but it was suspected that the piece itself was largely the work of Sophocles himself. It is for this reason that Dionysus wishes to try him when he is dependent on his own resources, now that his father is dead. The death of the latter was quite recent at the time of the production of 'The Frogs,' and the fact lent all the greater interest to this piece.

[397] Agathon was a contemporary of Euripides, and is mentioned in terms of praise by Aristotle for his delineation of the character of Achilles, presumably in his tragedy of 'Telephus.' From the fragments which remain of this author it appears that his style was replete with ornament, particularly ant.i.thesis.

[398] Son of Caminus, an inferior poet, often made the b.u.t.t of Aristophanes' jeers.

[399] A poet apparently, unknown.

[400] Expressions used by Euripides in different tragedies.

[401] Parody of a verse in Euripides' 'Andromeda,' a lost play.

[402] Heracles, being such a glutton, must be a past master in matters of cookery, but this does not justify him in posing as a dramatic critic.

[403] Xanthias, bent double beneath his load, gets more and more out of patience with his master's endless talk with Heracles.

[404] The mortar in which hemlock was pounded.

[405] An allusion to the effect of hemlock.

[406] A quarter of Athens where the Lampadephoria was held in honour of Athene, Hephaestus, and Prometheus, because the first had given the mortals oil, the second had invented the lamp, and the third had stolen fire from heaven. The princ.i.p.al part of this festival consisted in the _lampadedromia_, or torch-race. This name was given to a race in which the compet.i.tors for the prize ran with a torch in their hand; it was essential that the goal should be reached with the torch still alight.

The signal for starting was given by throwing a torch from the top of the tower mentioned a few verses later on.

[407] Theseus had descended into Hades with Pirithous to fetch away Persephone. Aristophanes doubtless wishes to say that in consequence of this descent Pluto established a toll across Acheron, in order to render access to his kingdom less easy, and so that the poor and the greedy, who could not or would not pay, might be kept out.

[408] Morsimus was a minor poet, who is also mentioned with disdain in 'The Knights,' and is there called the son of Philocles. Aristophanes jestingly likens anyone who helps to disseminate his verses to the worst of criminals.

[409] The Pyrrhic dance was a lively and quick-step dance. Cinesias was not a dancer, but a dithyrambic poet, who declaimed with much gesticulation and movement that one might almost think he was performing this dance.

[410] Those initiated into the Mysteries of Demeter, who, according to the belief of the ancients, enjoyed a kind of beat.i.tude after death.

[411] Xanthias, his strength exhausted and his patience gone, prepares to lay down his load. a.s.ses were used for the conveyance from Athens to Eleusis of everything that was necessary for the celebration of the Mysteries. They were often overladen, and from this fact arose the proverb here used by Xanthias, as indicating any heavy burden.

[412] The Ancients believed that meeting this or that person or thing at the outset of a journey was of good or bad omen. The superst.i.tion is not entirely dead even to-day.

[413] Dionysus had seated himself _on_ instead of _at_ the oar.

[414] One of the t.i.tles given to Dionysus, because of the wors.h.i.+p accorded him at Nysa, a town in Ethiopia, where he was brought up by the nymphs.

[415] This was the third day of the Anthesteria or feasts of Dionysus.

All kinds of vegetables were cooked in pots and offered to Dionysus and Athene. It was also the day of the dramatic contests.