Aristophanes, Frogs 668–731: Parabasis: the Chorus urges Athens to restore its citizens' rights

AEACUS Being gods themselves, will soon find out the truth.

DIONYSUS Right! right! I only wish you had thought of that Before you gave me those tremendous whacks.

CHORUS Come, Muse, to our Mystical Chorus, O come to the joy of my song, O see on the benches before us that countless and wonderful throng, Where wits by the thousand abide, with more than a Cleophon’s pride— On the lips of that foreigner base, of Athens the bane and disgrace,

There is shrieking, his kinsman by race, The garrulous swallow of Thrace; From that perch of exotic descent, Rejoicing her sorrow to vent, She pours to her spirit’s content, a nightingale’s woful lament, That e’en though the voting be equal, his ruin will soon be the sequel.

To exhort and teach the city: this we therefore now advise— End the townsmen’s apprehensions; equalize the rights of all; If by Phrynichus’s wrestling’s some perchance sustained a fall, Yet to these ’tis surely open, having put away their sin, For their slips and vacillations pardon at your hands to win. Give your brethren back their franchise. Sin and shame it were that slaves, Who have once with stern devotion fought your battle on the waves, Should be straightway lords and masters, yea Plataeans fully blown— Not that this deserves our censure; there I praise you; there alone Has the city, in her anguish, policy and wisdom shown— Nay but these, of old accustomed on our ships to fight and win, (They, their fathers too before them), these our very kith and kin, You should likewise, when they ask you, pardon for their single sin. O by nature best and wisest, O relax your jealous ire, Let us all the world as kinsfolk and as citizens acquire,

All who on our ships will battle well and bravely by our side. If we cocker up our city, narrowing her with senseless pride, Now when she is rocked and reeling in the cradles of the sea, Here again will after ages deem we acted brainlessly. And O if I’m able to scan the habits and life of a man Who shall rue his iniquities soon! not long shall that little baboon, That Cleigenes shifty and small, the wickedest bathman of all Who are lords of the earth—which is brought from the isle of Cimolus, and wrought With nitre and lye into soap— Not long shall he vex us, I hope.

And this the unlucky one knows, Yet ventures a peace to oppose, And being addicted to blows he carries a stick as he goes, Lest while he is tipsy and reeling, some robber his cloak should be stealing. Often has it crossed my fancy, that the city loves to deal With the very best and noblest members of her commonweal, Just as with our ancient coinage, and the newly-minted gold.

Yea for these, our sterling pieces, all of pure Athenian mould, All of perfect die and metal, all the fairest of the fair, All of workmanship unequalled, proved and valued everywhere Both amongst our own Hellenes and Barbarians far away, These we use not: but the worthless pinchbeck coins of yesterday, Vilest die and basest metal, now we always use instead. Even so, our sterling townsmen, nobly born and nobly bred, Men of worth and rank and mettle, men of honourable fame, Trained in every liberal science, choral dance and manly game, These we treat with scorn and insult, but the strangers newliest come, Worthless sons of worthless fathers, pinchbeck townsmen, yellowy scum, Whom in earlier days the city hardly would have stooped to use Even for her scapegoat victims, these for every task we choose.