CHORUS Then the other, with words defiant, Stern and strong, like an angry giant Laying on with uprooted trees, Soon will’scatter a world of these Superscholastic subtleties.
DIONYSUS Now then, commence your arguments, and mind you both display True wit, not metaphors, nor things which any fool could say.
EURIPIDES As for myself, good people all, I’ll tell you by-and-by My own poetie worth and claims; but first of all I’ll try To show how this portentous quack beguiled the silly fools Whose tastes were nurtured, ere he came, in Phrynichus’s schools. He’d bring some single mourner on, seated and veiled, ’twould be Achilles, say, or Niobe—the face you could not see—
EURIPIDES An empty show of tragic woe, who uttered not one thing.
DIONYSUS ’Tis true.
EURIPIDES Then in the Chorus came, and rattled off a string Of four continuous lyric odes: the mourner never stirred.
DIONYSUS I liked it too. I sometimes think that I those mutes preferred To all your chatterers now-a-days.
EURIPIDES Because, if you must know, You were an ass.
DIONYSUS An ass, no doubt: what made him do it though?
EURIPIDES That was his quackery, don’t you see, to set the audience guessing When Niobe would speak; meanwhile, the drama was progressing.
DIONYSUS The rascal, how he took me in!’ T was shameful, was it not? (To Aesch.) What makes you stamp and fidget so?
EURIPIDES He’s catching it so hot. So when he had humbugged thus awhile, and now his wretched play Was halfway through, a dozen words, great wild-bull words, he’d say, Fierce Bugaboos, with bristling crests, and shaggy eyebrows too, Which not a soul could understand.
AESCHYLUS O heavens!
DIONYSUS Be quiet, do
EURIPIDES But not one single word was clear,
DIONYSUS St! don’t your teeth be gnashing
EURIPIDES ’Twas all Scamanders, moated camps, and griffin-eagles flashing In burnished copper on the shields, chivalric-precipice-high Expressions, hard to comprehend.
DIONYSUS Aye, by the Powers, and I Full many a sleepless night have spent in anxious thought, because
DIONYSUS I’d find the tawny cock-horse out, what sort of bird it was!
AESCHYLUS It was a sign, you stupid dolt, engraved the ships upon.
DIONYSUS Eryxis I supposed it was, Philoxenus’s son.
EURIPIDES Now really should a cock be brought into a tragic play?
AESCHYLUS You enemy of gods and men, what was your practice, pray?
EURIPIDES No cock-horse in my plays, by Zeus, no goat-stag there you’ll see, Such figures as are blazoned forth in Median tapestry. When first I took the art from you, bloated and swoln, poor thing, With turgid gasconading words and heavy dieting, First I reduced and toned her down, and made her slim and neat With wordlets and with exercise and poultices of beet,
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