Aristophanes, The Clouds 510–626: Parabasis: the poet defends the play and the Clouds complain

Yes! go, and farewell; as your courage is great, So bright be your fate. May all good fortune his steps pursue, Who now, in his life’s dim twilight haze, Is game such venturesome things to do! To steep his mind in discoveries new, To walk, a novice, in wisdom’s ways.

O Spectators, I will utter: honest truths with accents free, Yea! by mighty Dionysus, Him who bred and nurtured me. So may I be deemed a poet, and this day obtain the prize, As till that unhappy blunder I had always held you wise, And of all my plays esteeming this the wisest and the best, Served it up for your enjoyment, which had, more than all the rest, Cost me thought, and time, and labour: then most scandalously treated, I retired in mighty dudgeon, by unworthy foes defeated. This is why I blame your critics, for whose sake I framed the play: Yet the clever ones amongst you even now I won’t betray. No! for ever since from judges unto whom ’tis joy to speak, Brothers Profligate and Modest” gained the praise we fondly seek, When, for I was yet a Virgin, and it was not right to bear, I exposed it, and Another did the foundling nurse with care, But ’twas ye who nobly nurtured, ye who brought it up with skill;— From that hour I proudly cherish pledges of your sure good will. Now then comes its sister hither, like Electra in the Play,

Comes in earnest expectation kindred minds to meet to-day She will recognize full surely, if she find, her brother’s tress. And observe how pure her morals: who, to notice her first dress, Enters not with filthy symbols on her modest garments hung, Jeering bald-heads, dancing ballets, for the laughter of the young. In this play no wretched greybeard with a staff his fellow pokes, So obscuring from the audience all the poorness of his jokes. No one rushes in with torches, no one groans, “Oh, dear! Oh, dear!” Trusting in its genuine merits comes this play before you here. Yet, though such a hero-poet, I, the bald-head, do not grow Curling ringlets: neither do I twice or thrice my pieces show. Always fresh ideas sparkle, always novel jests delight, Nothing like each other, save that all are most exceeding bright. I am he who floored the giant, Cleon, in his hour of pride, Yet when down I scorned to strike him, and I left him when he died! But the others, when a handle once Hyperbolus did lend, Trample down the wretched caitiff, and his mother, without end.

In his Maricas the Drunkard, Eupolis the charge began, Shamefully my “Knights” distorting, as he is a shameful man, Tacking on the tipsy beldame, just the ballet-dance to keep, Phrynichus’s prime invention, eat by monsters of the deep. Then Hermippus on the caitiff opened all his little skill, And the rest upon the caitiff are their wit exhausting still; And my simile to pilfer “of the Eels” they all combine. Whoso laughs at their productions, let him not delight in mine. But for you who praise my genius, you who think my writings clever, Ye shall gain a name for wisdom, yea! for ever and for ever. O mighty God, O heavenly King, First unto Thee my prayer I bring, O come, Lord Zeus, to my choral song;— And Thou, dread Power, whose resistless hand Heaves up the sea and the trembling land, Lord of the trident, stern and strong;— And Thou who sustainest the life of us all Come, Ether, our parent, O come to my call;— And Thou who floodest the world with light, Guiding thy steeds through the glittering sky, To men below and to Gods on high A Potentate heavenly-bright!

O most sapient wise spectators, hither turn attention due, We complain of sad ill-treatment, we’ve a bone to pick with you: We have ever helped your city, helped with all our might and main; Yet you pay us no devotion, that is why we now complain, We who always watch around you. For if any project seems Ill-concocted, then we thunder, then the rain comes down in streams, And, remember, very lately, how we knit our brows together, “Thunders crashing, lightnings flashing,” never was such awful weather; And the Moon in haste eclipsed her, and the Sun in anger swore He would curl his wick within him and give light to you no more, Should you choose that mischief-worker, Cleon, whom the Gods abhor, Tanner, Slave, and Paphlagonian, to lead out your hosts to war. Yet you chose him! yet you chose him! For they say that Folly grows Best and finest in this city, but the gracious Gods dispose Always all things for the better, causing errors to succeed: And how this sad job may profit, surely he who runs may read. Let the Cormorant be convicted, in command, of bribes and theft,

Let us have him gagged and muzzled, in the pillory chained and left, Then again, in ancient fashion, all that ye have erred of late, Will turn out your own advantage, and a blessing to the State. “Phoebus, my king, come to me still.” Thou who holdest the Cynthian hill, The lofty peak of the Delian isle;— And Thou, his sister, to whom each day Lydian maidens devoutly pray In Thy stately gilded Ephesian pile;— And Athene, our Lady, the queen of us all, With the Aegis of God, O come to my call;— And Thou whose dancing torches of pine Flicker, Parnassian glades along, Dionysus, Star of Thy Maenad throng, Come, Reveller most divine!

“Buy no link, my boy, this evening, for the Moon will lend her light.” Other blessings too she sends you, yet you will not mark your days As she bids you, but confuse them, jumbling them all sorts of ways, And, she says, the Gods in chorus shower reproaches on her head, When in bitter disappointment they go supperless to bed, Not obtaining festal banquets duly on the festal day; Ye are badgering in the law-courts when ye should arise and slay! And full oft when we celestials some strict fast are duly keeping, For the fate of mighty Memnon, or divine Sarpedon weeping, Then you feast and pour libations: and Hyperbolus of late Lost the crown he wore so proudly as Recorder of the Gate, Through the wrath of us immortals: so perchance he’ll rather know Always all his days in future by the Lady Moon to go.