AESCHYLUS For boys a teacher at school is found, but we, the poets, are teachers of men. We are bound things honest and pure to speak.
EURIPIDES And to speak great Lycabettuses, pray, And massive blocks of Parnassian rocks, is that things honest and pure to say? In human fashion we ought to speak.
AESCHYLUS Alas, poor witling, and can’t you see That for mighty thoughts and heroic aims, the words themselves must appropriate be? And grander belike on the ear should strike the speech of heroes and godlike powers, Since even the robes that invest their limbs are statelier, grander robes than ours. Such was my plan: but when you began, you spoilt and degraded it all.
EURIPIDES How so?
AESCHYLUS Your kings in tatters and rags you dressed, and brought them on, a beggarly show, To move, forsooth, our pity and ruth.
EURIPIDES And what was the harm, I should like to know.
AESCHYLUS No more will a wealthy citizen now equip for the state a galley of war. He wraps his limbs in tatters and rags, and whines he is poor, too poor by far.
DIONYSUS But under his rags he is wearing a vest, as woolly and soft as a man could wish. Let him gull the state, and he’s off to the mart; an eager, extravagant buyer of fish.
AESCHYLUS Moreover to prate, to harangue, to debate, is now the ambition of all in the state.
AESCHYLUS Each exercise-ground is in consequence found deserted and empty: to evil repute Your lessons have brought our youngsters, and taught our sailors to challenge, discuss, and refute The orders they get from their captains and yet, when I was alive, I protest that the knaves Knew nothing at all, save for rations to call, and to sing “Rhyppapae” as they pulled through the waves. “And bedad to let fly from their sterns in the eye of the fellow who tugged at the undermost oar, ’And a jolly young messmate with filth to besmirch, and to land for a filching adventure ashore; But now they harangue, and dispute, and won’t row, And idly and aimlessly float to and fro.
AESCHYLUS Of what ills is he not the creator and cause?
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