Aristophanes, Peace 729–816: Parabasis: the Chorus praises its poet

Yes, go, and good fortune escort you, my friend; meanwhile the machines and the wraps, We’ll give to our faithful attendants to guard, for a number of dissolute chaps Are sure to be lurking about on the stage, to pilfer and plunder and steal: Here, take them and watch them and keep them with care, while we to the audience reveal The mind of our Play, and whatever we may By our native acumen be prompted to say.

Were to fill with the praise of himself and his Plays our own anapaestic address. But if ever, O daughter of Zeus, it were fit with honour and praise to adorn Chorus-Instructor, the ablest of men, the noblest that ever was born, Our Poet is free to acknowledge that he is deserving of high commendation: It was he that advancing, unaided, alone, compelled the immediate cessation Of the jokes which his rivals were cutting at rags, and the battles they waged with the lice. It was he that indignantly swept from the stage the paltry ignoble device Of a Heracles needy and seedy and greedy, a vagabond sturdy and stout, Now baking his bread, now swindling instead, now beaten and battered about. And freedom he gave to the lachrymose slave who was wont with a howl to rush in, And all for the sake of a joke which they make on the wounds that disfigure his skin: “Why, how now, my poor knave?” so they bawl to the slave, “has the whipcord invaded your back, Spreading havoc around, hacking trees to the ground, with a savage resistless attack?”

Such vulgar contemptible lumber at once he bade from the drama depart, And then, like an edifice stately and grand, he raised and ennobled the Art. High thoughts and high language he brought on the stage, a humour exalted and rare, Nor stooped with a scurrilous jest to assail some small-man-and-woman affair. No, he at the mightiest quarry of all with the soul of a Heracles flew, And he braved the vile scent of the tan-pit, and went through foul-mouthed revilings for you. And I at the outset came down in the lists with the jaggéd-fanged monster to fight, Whose eyeballs were lurid and glaring with flames of Cynna’s detestable light; And around his forehead the thin forked tongues of a hundred sycophants quiver, And his smell was the smell of a seal, and his voice was a brawling tempestuous River, And his hinder parts like a furnace appeared, and a goblin’s uncleansable liver. But I recked not the least for the look of the beast; I never desponded or quailed, And I fought for the safety of you and the Isles; I gallantly fought and prevailed. You therefore should heed and remember the deed, and afford me my guerdon to-day, For I never went off to make love to the boys in the schools of athletic display

Heretofore when I gained the theatrical prize: but I packed up my traps and departed, Having caused you great joy and but little annoy, and mightily pleased the true-hearted. It is right then for all, young and old, great and small, Henceforth of my side and my party to be, And each bald-headed man should do all that he can That the prize be awarded to me. For be sure if this Play be triumphant to-day, That whene’er you recline at the feast or the wine, Your neighbour will say, “Give this to the bald-head, give that to the bald-head, And take not away That sweetmeat, that cake, but present and bestow it On the man with the brow of our wonderful Poet!” Muse having driven afar this terrible business of war, Join with Me the chorus. Come singing of Nuptials divine and earthly banquets, Singing the joys of the blessed: this of old to Thee belongs. But and if Carcinus coming

Ask thee to join with his sons in choral dances, Hearken not, come not, stand not As an ally beside them, Think of them all as merely Little domestical quails, ballet-dancers with wallet necks, Nipped from the droppings of goats, small, stunted, machinery-hunters. Yea, for their father declared that the drama which Passed all his hopes, in the evening By the cat was strangled.

Which it well beseemeth This poet of wisdom to chant, while softly resting Warbles the swallow of spring; and Morsimus no chorus gains, No, nor Melanthius either. Well I remember his shrill discordant chatter, When the tragedians’ chorus He and his brother tutored, Both of them being merely Gorgons, devourers of sweets, skate-worshippers, and harpies, Pests of old maids, rank fetid as goats, destroyers of fishes,

Thou having spit on them largely and heavily, Join in the festival dances, Heavenly Muse, beside me.