The Frogs

First performed, according to the ancient hypothesis, in 405 BC at the Lenaea, an Athenian festival of Dionysus, The Frogs is one of Aristophanes’ comic masterpieces. It was written soon after the deaths of Euripides and Sophocles, and it follows Dionysus (the god of the theatre) and his slave Xanthias on a journey to the Underworld to bring back a good tragic poet, first meant to be Euripides (lines 66–71). The journey is a comic one. A corpse refuses to carry their luggage, Dionysus has to row Charon’s boat himself while a chorus of frogs sings against him, and in the Underworld Dionysus and Xanthias, who have changed clothes, are threatened by Aeacus and the innkeepers and then whipped in turn to find out which of them is a god. Finally they reach Pluto’s house, where Aeschylus and Euripides are quarreling over the chair of tragedy. Dionysus is asked to judge the contest, which is long and inconclusive, and in the end he chooses by his own liking: Aeschylus. Leaving the angry Euripides behind, Dionysus, Xanthias and Aeschylus leave for the upper world, in the hope of saving both tragedy and the city (lines 1417–1421, 1500–1533).

Date and Historical Background

According to the ancient prose synopsis (hypothesis) prefixed to the play in the manuscripts, The Frogs was first performed at the Lenaea, one of the Athenian festivals of Dionysus, in the archonship of Callias (405 BC). The same synopsis says that the original production won first prize, with Phrynichus second with The Muses and Plato Comicus third with Cleophon; the same synopsis says that, unusually, the play was admired so much, because of its parabasis, that it was produced a second time.

The play itself shows the situation in Athens. It treats Euripides as recently dead (line 67), and Sophocles too is already among the dead: Heracles asks Dionysus why he does not bring back Sophocles first (lines 76–77), and later we learn that Sophocles kissed Aeschylus on arriving below and did not claim the throne (lines 786–794). The city is at war: Charon will take only slaves who fought in the sea battle “about the meat” (line 191), which the ancient scholia identify as the battle of Arginusae; the chorus of initiates objects that slaves who have fought in one sea battle have been made citizens, “Plataeans,” and masters at once (lines 693–694); and the chorus asks the citizens to forgive those who had slipped under the “wrestling tricks” of Phrynichus (lines 686–705, compare 689–691) and to stop preferring poor new bronze coins to good old and gold ones (lines 718–737).

Characters and Setting

Characters

• Dionysus, the god of wine, and also patron deity of the theatre
• Xanthias, Dionysus’ slave
• Heracles, the greatest Greek hero, who has been to the Underworld before
• A corpse, an anonymous dead man being carried out for burial
• Charon, the ferryman of the Underworld
• Aeacus, the doorkeeper of the house of Pluto
• A maidservant of Persephone
• Pandokeutria (“the Innkeeper”) and Plathane, two innkeepers
• Pluto, the god of the Underworld
• Aeschylus, the oldest of Athens’ three great tragedians
• Euripides, the youngest of the three (recently deceased)
• First chorus of frogs
• Second (main) chorus of the initiates of the Eleusinian Mysteries

Setting

The prologue is set before the door of Heracles; then, most of the first half of the play takes place on the road to the Underworld, on the lake, and at the door of Pluto’s house; the tragic contest between Aeschylus and Euripides takes place inside the house of Pluto.

Summary of The Frogs

First prologue

(Lines 1–270.) Dionysus, dressed in the lion skin of Heracles and carrying his club over his own saffron gown and boots, enters with his slave Xanthias, who is riding a donkey and carrying the luggage on a pole. They trade complaints about the burden (lines 1–34), and Dionysus knocks on the door of Heracles. Heracles opens it with a shout, “as a centaur” has struck the door (lines 38–39), and cannot stop laughing at the sight of a lion skin over a saffron robe, a club beside a boot (lines 42–48).

Dionysus explains that he is going to the Underworld to bring back Euripides: he had been reading Euripides’ Andromeda on board ship, and a longing for him struck his heart (lines 52–54, 66–67). The poets who are alive are bad or are no longer there: Iophon is the only good one left, and even he is doubtful (lines 71–75); Heracles asks why he does not fetch Sophocles first, but Dionysus replies that Sophocles was easygoing here and would be easygoing there (lines 76–82); Agathon has gone to the feast of the Blessed (lines 83–85); Dionysus wishes Xenocles dead (line 86), and when Pythangelus is named Xanthias complains that nobody takes any notice of his aching shoulder (lines 87–88). Dionysus praises the daring phrases of Euripides, such as “the dwelling of Zeus, the upper air” or “the foot of time,” while Heracles finds them rubbish (lines 96–106). Dionysus asks his half-brother, who went down for Cerberus, for the names of the inns, harbors and roads (lines 108–115). Heracles offers three quick ways down: to hang oneself from a rope and stool, to take hemlock, or to climb the high tower in the Kerameikos and jump (lines 120–133). Dionysus refuses all of them and asks for the way that Heracles himself took. This goes over a great bottomless lake, crossed in a little boat by an old ferryman for two obols; then come snakes and countless monsters, then a great mire of dung, in which lie those who wronged a guest, beat a parent or swore a false oath (lines 136–151). After that comes a sweet breath of flutes, a beautiful light, myrtle groves, and bands of happy men and women, the initiates, who live nearest to the house of Pluto and will tell Dionysus all he needs (lines 154–164).

Heracles leaves. Xanthias suggests hiring one of the dead on his way to burial to carry the luggage (lines 165–169), and a corpse is passing: Dionysus offers him a fee, but the corpse asks two drachmas, will not take less than that, and finally, when Dionysus offers nine obols, answers that he would rather come back to life (lines 170–177). Xanthias takes the luggage himself (line 179).

At the shore of the lake, Charon calls “Ahoy, bring her in,” and takes Dionysus aboard but refuses Xanthias, since he did not fight in the sea battle “about the meat.” Xanthias, who claims he was suffering from an eye infection, has to go around the lake on foot (lines 180–196). Dionysus is told to take an oar, though he has never rowed, and Charon promises that he will hear fine songs from swans of the frogs (lines 197–207). The chorus of frogs begins their brekekekex koax koax, boasting that they are dear to the Muses, Pan and Apollo (lines 209–234). Dionysus, with blisters and a sore backside, begs them to stop; they only sing louder; in the end he shouts the same koax back at them until he overcomes them (lines 222–267). The boat arrives, Charon demands the fare, and Dionysus is reunited with Xanthias on the dark shore (lines 268–273).

Xanthias claims to see a terrible beast, which changes shape from an ox to a mule to a beautiful woman and then to a dog: it is the Empusa, with a face of fire, one leg of bronze and the other of dung (lines 285–295). Dionysus, in terror, calls on the priest of Dionysus in the front row to protect him (line 297), and only after Xanthias has sworn three times that the Empusa has gone does he admit how pale he turned at the sight of her (lines 305–307). At that point they hear flutes and a song: Xanthias recognizes the initiates (lines 313–320).

Parodos

(Lines 316–459.) The chorus of initiates enters with the cry Iacchus, O Iacchus (lines 316–317), calling on Iacchus to lead their procession and on Demeter, the saving goddess. They call for the exclusion of the impure and of those who do not respect the Muses (lines 354–371). The chorus invites Dionysus and Xanthias, who join the dance (lines 417–419), to make fun of three Athenians: Archedemus, who at seven years old still had not grown his clansmen (a joke on his doubtful citizenship) and is now a leader of the dead above (lines 420–425); the son of Cleisthenes, who is said to tear at his cheeks and his backside in the tombs and to lament for Sebinus (lines 426–431); and Callias, son of Hippobinus, who is said to fight at sea in a lion skin that is a crude joke on his sexual conduct (lines 432–434). Dionysus asks where Pluto lives and is told that he stands at the door (lines 435–440); the chorus then goes off to its flowering meadow, a place where the sun shines only for the initiated (lines 444–459).

Episodes

(Lines 460–673.) Dionysus does not know how to knock, and Xanthias tells him to knock like Heracles, since he has the dress and the temper (lines 460–463). Aeacus opens the door and, taking him for Heracles, pours out threats against the man who dragged off the dog Cerberus, choking him, and ran away: he promises the rock of Styx, the Acherontian crag, the hounds of Cocytus, a hundred-headed viper, a Tartessian moray and the Gorgons of Tithrasus (lines 464–478). Dionysus soils himself with terror (line 479). He tells Xanthias to bring a sponge for his heart, which has crept down into his lower belly (lines 482–485), and then, claiming to be braver than his slave, insists that Xanthias take the club and the lion skin and be Heracles in his turn (lines 494–502).

A maidservant of Persephone welcomes “Heracles” with the news that the goddess is baking loaves, boiling pots of lentil soup, roasting an ox, and has flute-girls and dancers ready (lines 503–518). Xanthias is ready to go in, but Dionysus then changes his mind and demands the lion skin back (lines 522–533). At that, two innkeepers, Pandokeutria and Plathane, run out: Heracles, they say, came once to the inn, ate sixteen loaves, twenty portions of boiled meat at half an obol each, and a lot of garlic and cheese, and left without paying, drawing his sword and looking mad (lines 549–567). They threaten to fetch the politician Cleon and Hyperbolus (lines 569–578). Dionysus begs Xanthias to take the costume once more, swearing never to take it from him again (lines 579–590).

Aeacus comes back with his men to arrest the “dog thief” (lines 605–609). Xanthias, who is now Heracles, swears that he has never been there, and suggests that Aeacus should torture “this slave” of his (that is, Dionysus): “tie him to a ladder, hang him, whip him with a bristle scourge, flay him, twist him, pour vinegar up his nose, pile bricks on him, anything, except to hit him with a leek or a young onion” (lines 616–622). Dionysus declares that he is an immortal god, Dionysus son of Zeus, and that the other is the slave. Xanthias says that in that case he should be flogged all the more, since a god will not feel it (lines 628–634); Dionysus asks that both receive the same blows, and the one who first cries out is no god (lines 635–639). Aeacus strikes each in turn (lines 642–667). Xanthias says he is thinking about the Heracles festival at Diomeia, Dionysus claims that he sees horsemen and that onions made him weep; Dionysus calls on Apollo and then Poseidon, and explains that he was only recalling a line of verse (lines 659–667). Aeacus cannot decide which of them is a god and takes them in to Pluto and Persephone, who are gods and will know (lines 668–671). “I wish you had thought of it before I took the blows,” Dionysus replies (lines 672–673).

Parabasis

(Lines 674–737.) The chorus of initiates steps forward to speak to the audience. They urge that all citizens should be made equal and that fear be taken away: whoever slipped under the wrestling tricks of Phrynichus should be allowed to answer the charge and be forgiven, and no one should remain disenfranchised in the city; it would be shameful if those who fought in one sea battle should at once become “Plataeans” and masters instead of slaves (lines 693–694), but those who fought beside the Athenians should be treated as kin (lines 697–702). They turn to the ape-like Cleigenes the bath attendant (lines 706–716), and then compare the city’s choice of leaders to its coinage: the good old silver and the new gold are not used, while poor bronze coins struck yesterday are; so the fine citizens, trained in the wrestling schools and in music, are rejected, while base men and strangers are used (lines 718–733). They urge the Athenians to change their ways and use the good again (lines 734–737).

Second prologue

(Lines 738–813.) Aeacus and Xanthias come out of the house. Aeacus approves of Xanthias’s master as a gentleman, as he did not beat him when he was found out, and the two exchange the pleasures of slaves: grumbling, listening at doors and gossiping about their masters (lines 738–753). Xanthias asks about the noise inside. Aeacus explains that there is a great quarrel between Aeschylus and Euripides. There is a law in the Underworld that the best of each great craft receives his meals in the town hall and sits on a seat next to Pluto, until someone better arrives in the same craft, when he must give way (lines 761–767). Aeschylus had the throne of tragedy as the best; when Euripides came down, he showed off his skill to the thieves, purse-cutters, parricides and burglars who are the majority below, who were mad with delight at his turns and twists and thought him the wisest, and so he seized the throne (lines 769–778). The crowd called for a contest. Sophocles kissed Aeschylus and gave up his claim, but intends to stand by as a reserve contender (lines 788–794). Aeacus adds that there will be a trial of the two poets, with rulers, measures and scales (lines 797–802). Few wise men could be found to judge, since Aeschylus did not trust the Athenians, and they asked Dionysus, who is the one experienced in the art (lines 805–811).

Agon

(Lines 830–1481.) Euripides refuses to give up the chair, saying he is the better artist (lines 830–831). They abuse each other: Euripides calls Aeschylus “wild, arrogant, unbridled”; Aeschylus calls Euripides a collector of chatter, a maker of beggars and rag-stitcher, and a writer of unholy marriages and Cretan monodies (lines 836–850). Dionysus separates them, and Euripides declares himself ready to bite and be bitten over his words, songs and the sinews of tragedy, and to have his own plays examined, among them Peleus, Aeolus, Meleager and Telephus (lines 860–864). Aeschylus remarks that the contest is unfair, since his poetry did not die with him while Euripides’ died with him, so that he has it with him to quote (lines 866–869). Dionysus calls for incense and fire; Aeschylus prays to Demeter to be worthy of her Mysteries, and Euripides prays instead to his own gods, the air, the twist of the tongue, intelligence and sharp nostrils (lines 871–894).

Euripides speaks first. He says that Aeschylus was a humbug and a fraud who deceived foolish audiences. He would seat a veiled figure, Achilles or Niobe, silent on the stage, and the chorus would sing four long songs while no one spoke (lines 907–920); halfway through the play he would let loose twelve ox-sized words, with crests and frowns, which the audience could not understand, such as Scamanders, ditches and bronze griffon-eagles on shields (lines 923–930), and the “tawny horse-cock” at which Dionysus had once spent a whole night wondering (lines 931–937). By contrast, he says, he took over an art swollen with boasting and heavy words and slimmed it down with “little verses, walks and white beet,” a juice of chatter strained from books; then he fed it on monodies (lines 939–944). In his plays the wife, the slave, the master, the maiden and the old woman all speak, which he calls democratic (lines 948–952); he taught the audience to talk, to reason and to look at household matters, “things we use and live with” (lines 954–979).

Aeschylus asks what a poet should be admired for. Euripides answers: for cleverness and good counsel, and because he makes people better in their cities (lines 1008–1010). Aeschylus replies that if Euripides has instead turned noble and generous men into base ones, he deserves death (lines 1010–1012). He says that he gave the city men who breathed spears and helmets, and names his Seven against Thebes, which made every man eager to be warlike, and his Persians, which taught the audience to long to defeat their enemies (lines 1013–1029). He points also to the earlier poets: Orpheus showed the rites and abstention from murder, Musaeus cures and oracles, Hesiod farming and the seasons, and Homer won honor by teaching drill, valor and the arming of men (lines 1030–1036). He accuses Euripides of teaching chatter and talk (lines 1069–1073) and of being the cause of many evils (lines 1078–1088).

The contest moves to the prologues (lines 1119–1250). Euripides attacks the opening of Aeschylus’ Libation Bearers, “Hermes of the earth, watching over my father’s power” (lines 1126–1128), claiming that every line has many faults (lines 1129–1131). Aeschylus replies by saying that he can ruin all of Euripides’ prologues with one little oil-flask (lekythion), and demonstrates by finishing Euripides’ prologue lines with the same phrase, “lost his little oil-flask,” whatever line he quotes (lines 1198–1247). Dionysus protests that the little flask has grown on his prologues like a fig on an eye (lines 1245–1247).

They turn to lyrics (lines 1251–1363). Euripides says he will cut all of Aeschylus’ choral songs into one, and sings a parody of them, with a repeated refrain (lines 1261–1295). Aeschylus answers that his own songs went from the good to the good, whereas Euripides collects them from every source, from prostitutes’ songs, drinking songs, Carian flutes and dirges (lines 1298–1303). He summons the Muse of Euripides with a pair of potsherds to clap in time (lines 1304–1307), recites a parody of Euripides’ lyrics (lines 1309–1323), and then a monody in which a spinning woman wakes from a bad dream to find that her neighbor Glyke has run off with her rooster (lines 1331–1363).

Aeschylus proposes the scales (lines 1365–1367). Dionysus takes the balance, and each poet takes hold of it and recites a line. Euripides says, “If only the ship Argo had never flown,” and Aeschylus replies, “River Spercheios and the grazing places of cattle”; Aeschylus’ line sinks, for it has a river in it, wet like wool (lines 1382–1388). Euripides: “Persuasion has no temple but the word.” Aeschylus: “Death alone of the gods does not desire gifts.” Death weighs more than Persuasion (lines 1391–1396). Last comes a line on the club of Euripides and one of Aeschylus, “chariot upon chariot, corpse upon corpse”, which is so heavy that a hundred Egyptians could not lift it (lines 1402–1406). Aeschylus then says that Euripides should climb into the scale himself with his children, his wife and Cephisophon and his books, while he will say only two of his own lines (lines 1407–1410).

Dionysus hesitates: he says he does not wish to judge either one, since he is not hostile to either and he thinks one wise and likes the other (lines 1411–1413). Pluto arrives and tells him to choose, and to take with him the one he picks (lines 1414–1416). Dionysus announces that he came down for a poet so that the city may be saved and keep its choruses, and that he will take the one who gives the better advice to the city (lines 1417–1421). He asks both about Alcibiades, whom the city “longs for, hates, and wants to have”; Euripides says he hates a citizen who is slow to help his country and quick to harm it, and Aeschylus that one should not raise a lion cub in a city, but if it has been raised one should serve its ways (lines 1422–1432). Asked how the city can be saved, Euripides gives some comic proposals (lines 1437–1441) and then proposes that the city distrust those whom it now trusts and use those whom it now ignores (lines 1443–1450). Aeschylus replies by asking whom the city now uses; when the answer is that it hates the good and uses the bad by force, he says that the city will be saved when it considers the enemy’s land to be its own and its own land the enemy’s, and the ships to be its wealth (lines 1454–1465). Dionysus finally chooses “the man my soul desires.” When Euripides reminds him of the oath he swore to take him home, Dionysus answers with a parody of Euripides’ own Hippolytus: “My tongue swore, but I will choose Aeschylus” (lines 1467–1471). To Euripides’ reproaches he answers: “Who knows if to live is to be dead, to breathe to dine, and to sleep a sheepskin?” (lines 1472–1478). Pluto then invites them both in to a farewell dinner (lines 1479–1481).

Exodos

(Lines 1482–1533.) The chorus praises the man of intelligence who goes home for the good of his citizens, and condemns those who sit chattering beside Socrates and neglect the art of tragedy (lines 1482–1499). Pluto sends Aeschylus up to save the city “with good counsels” and to educate the foolish, and gives him messages for Cleophon, for the financiers Myrmex and Nicomachus, and for Archenomus: if they do not come down quickly, he will brand them, bind their feet and send them below the earth with Adeimantus (lines 1500–1514). Aeschylus agrees, and asks that his chair be kept by Sophocles, whom he judges second in skill, and that the clever liar and buffoon Euripides never sit on it, not even by accident (lines 1515–1523). Pluto has the initiates light the sacred torches and sing Aeschylus on his way, and the chorus ends with a prayer that the poet will have a good journey and that the city will have good thoughts and be released from its sorrows and the strife of battle, and that Cleophon and any others who wish may fight in their own native fields (lines 1524–1533).

A Brief Analysis

The two questions of the play are how to save Athenian tragedy and how to save the city. Dionysus links the two himself: he went down, he tells Pluto, to find a poet so that the city may be saved and keep its choruses, and the poet who gives the better advice to the city will be taken back (lines 1417–1421). The contest is therefore not only about style but about what a poet is for. Aeschylus argues that a poet is valued for teaching and cites Orpheus, Musaeus, Hesiod and Homer (lines 1008–1010, 1030–1036). Euripides, who also grants that a poet should make people better in their cities, defends his clever reasoning and his portrayal of ordinary things (lines 939–979, 1009–1010).

The contest is carried out with comic instruments of measurement. The poets are measured with rulers, wedges and scales (lines 797–802, 1378–1410); Aeschylus can spoil any Euripidean prologue with the same phrase (lines 1198–1247); and the weights of the lines are decided by jokes: a river is wet, and Death outweighs Persuasion (lines 1384–1394). Dionysus himself changes his judgment at every turn, and in the end chooses “whom my soul wishes” (line 1468). The play also gives its own verdict on the audiences: the dead majority are thieves and burglars, who applauded Euripides (lines 771–778), and the closing chorus condemns idle chatter beside Socrates, at the expense of the great matters of tragic art (lines 1491–1499).

The play is also political. The parabasis asks that citizens who had lost their rights be restored (lines 686–705), compares the bad bronze coinage with the new leaders, and the good old coins with the old good citizens (lines 718–737), and the final scenes send Pluto’s warnings to Cleophon and others (lines 1504–1514) and ask the city’s two poets about Alcibiades (lines 1422–1432). The questions about Alcibiades and about the city’s salvation are put to both poets in turn (lines 1422–1466), so that the poets, not Pluto or the dead, are made to speak on the city’s affairs.

The Frogs Sources

Aristophanes, Frogs, lines 1–1533, for all scenes, speakers and quotations in this article; the ancient hypothesis printed with the play for the date, festival, prizes and second production; the ancient scholia for the identification of the sea battle with Arginusae; Euripides, Hippolytus 612, for the line parodied at Frogs 1471. The Greek text can be read on Perseus.

See Also: Aristophanes, Euripides, Aeschylus, Dionysus