Agon

CHOR. We also are yearning from these to be learningSome stately measure, some majestic grandMovement telling of conflicts nigh.Now for battle arrayed they stand,Tongues embittered, and anger high.Each has got a venturesome will,Each an eager and nimble mind;One will wield, with artistic skill,Clearcut phrases, and wit refined;Then the other, with words defiant,Stern and strong, like an angry giantLaying on with uprooted trees,Soon will scatter a world of theseSuperscholastic subtleties.

DIO. Now then, commence your arguments, and mind you both displayTrue wit, not metaphors, nor things which any fool could say.

EUR. As for myself, good people all, I'll tell you by-and-byMy own poetic worth and claims; but first of all I'll tryTo show how this portentous quack beguiled the silly foolsWhose tastes were nurtured, ere he came, in Phrynichus's schools.He'd bring some single mourner on, seated and veiled, 'twould beAchilles, say, or Niobe--the face you could not see--An empty show of tragic woe, who uttered not one thing.

DIO. Tis true.

EUR. Then in the Chorus came, and rattled off a stringOf four continuous lyric odes: the mourner never stirred.

DIO. I liked it too. I sometimes think that I those mutes preferredTo all your chatterers now-a-days.

EUR. Because, if you must know,You were an ass.

DIO. An ass, no doubt: what made him do it though?

EUR. That was his quackery, don't you see, to set the audience guessingWhen Niobe would speak; meanwhile, the drama was progressing.

DIO. The rascal, how he took me in!'Twas shameful, was it not?(To Aesch.) What makes you stamp and fidget so?

EUR. He's catching it so hot.So when he had humbugged thus awhile, and now his wretched playWas 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.

AESCH. O heavens!

DIO. Be quiet, do.

EUR. But not one single word was clear.

DIO. St! don't your teeth be gnashing.

EUR. 'Twas all Scamanders, moated camps, and griffin-eagles flashingIn burnished copper on the shields, chivalric-precipice-highExpressions, hard to comprehend.

DIO. Aye, by the Powers, and IFull many a sleepless night have spent in anxious thought, becauseI'd find the tawny cock-horse out, what sort of bird it was!

AESCH. It was a sign, you stupid dolt, engraved the ships upon.

DIO. Eryxis I supposed it was, Philoxenus's son.

EUR. Now really should a cock be brought into a tragic play?

AESCH. You enemy of gods and men, what was your practice, pray?

EUR. 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 neatWith wordlets and with exercise and poultices of beet,And next a dose of chatterjuice, distilled from books, I gave her,And monodies she took, with sharp Cephisophon for flavour.I never used haphazard words, or plunged abruptly in;Who entered first explained at large the drama's originAnd source.

DIO. Its source, I really trust, was better than your own.

EUR. Then from the very opening lines no idleness was shown;The mistress talked with all her might, the servant talked as much,The master talked, the maiden talked, the beldame talked.

AESCH. For such an outrage was not death your due?

EUR. No, by Apollo, no: That was my democratic way.

DIO. Ah, let that topic go.Your record is not there, my friend, particularly good.

EUR. Then next I taught all these to speak.

AESCH. You did so, and I wouldThat ere such mischief you had wrought, your very lungs had split.

EUR. Canons of verse I introduced, and neatly chiselled wit;To look, to scan: to plot, to plan: to twist, to turn, to woo:On all to spy; in all to pry.

AESCH. You did: I say so too.

EUR. I showed them scenes of common life, the things we know and see,Where any blunder would at once by all detected be.I never blustered on, or took their breath and wits awayBy Cycnuses or Memnons clad in terrible array,With bells upon their horses' heads, the audience to dismay.Look at his pupils, look at mine: and there the contrast view.Uncouth Megaenetus is his, and rough Phormisius too;Great long-beard-lance-and-trumpet-men, flesh-tearers with the pine:But natty smart Theramenes, and Cleitophon are mine.

DIO. Theramenes? a clever man and wonderfully sly:Immerse him in a flood of ills, he'll soon be high and dry,"A Kian with a kappa, sir, not Chian with a chi."

EUR. I taught them all these knowing waysBy chopping logic in my plays,And making all my speakers tryTo reason out the How and Why.So now the people trace the springs,The sources and the roots of things,And manage all their households tooFar better than they used to do,Scanning and searching What's amiss?And, Why was that? And, How is this?

DIO. Ay, truly, never now a manComes home, but he begins to scan;And to his household loudly cries,Why, where's my pitcher? What's the matter?'Tis dead and gone my last year's platter.Who gnawed these olives? Bless the sprat,Who nibbled off the head of that?And where's the garlic vanished, pray,I purchased only yesterday?--Whereas, of old, our stupid youthsWould sit, with open mouths and eyes,Like any dull-brained Mammacouths.

CHOR. "All this thou beholdest, Achilles our boldest."And what wilt thou reply?Draw tight the reinLest that fiery soul of thineWhirl thee out of the listed plain,Past the olives, and o'er the line.Dire and grievous the charge he brings.See thou answer him, noble heart,Not with passionate bickerings.Shape thy course with a sailor's art,Reef the canvas, shorten the sails,Shift them edgewise to shun the gales.When the breezes are soft and low,Then, well under control, you'll goQuick and quicker to strike the foe.O first of all the Hellenic bards high loftily-towering verse to rear,And tragic phrase from the dust to raise, pour forth thy fountain with right good cheer.

AESCH. My wrath is hot at this vile mischance, and my spirit revolts at the thought that IMust bandy words with a fellow like him: but lest he should vaunt that I can't reply--Come, tell me what are the points for which a noble poet our praise obtains.

EUR. For his ready wit, and his counsels sage, and because the citizen folk he trainsTo be better townsmen and worthier men.

AESCH. If then you have done the very reverse,Found noble-hearted and virtuous men, and altered them, each and all, for the worse,Pray what is the need you deserve to get?

DIO. Nay, ask not him. He deserves to die.

AESCH. For just consider what style of men he received from me, great six-foot-highHeroical souls, who never would blench from a townsman's duties in peace or war;Not idle loafers, or low buffoons, or rascally scamps such as now they are.But men who were breathing spears and helms, and the snow-white plume in its crested prideThe greave, and the dart, and the warrior's heart in its seven-fold casing of tough bull-hide.

DIO. He'll stun me, I know, with his armoury-work; this business is going from bad to worse.

EUR. And how did you manage to make them so grand, exalted, and brave with your wonderful verse?

DIO. Come, Aeschylus, answer, and don't stand mute in your self-willed pride and arrogant spleen.

AESCH. A drama I wrote with the War-god filled.

DIO. Its name?

AESCH. 'Tis the "Seven against Thebes" that I mean.Which who so beheld, with eagerness swelled to rush to the battlefield there and then.

DIO. O that was a scandalous thing you did! You have made the Thebans mightier men,More eager by far for the business of war.Now, therefore, receive this punch on the head.

AESCH. Ah, ye might have practised the same yourselves, but ye turned to other pursuits instead.Then next the "Persians" I wrote, in praise of the noblest deed that the world can show,And each man longed for the victor's wreath, to fight and to vanquish his country's foe.

DIO. I was pleased, I own, when I heard their moan for old Darius, their great king, dead;When they smote together their hands, like this, and Evir alake the Chorus said.

AESCH. Aye, such are the poet's appropriate works: and just consider how all alongFrom the very first they have wrought you good, the noble bards, the masters of song.First, Orpheus taught you religious rites, and from bloody murder to stay your hands:Musaeus healing and oracle lore; and Hesiod all the culture of lands,The time to gather, the time to plough. And gat not Homer his glory divineBy singing of valour, and honour, and right, and the sheen of the battle-extended line,The ranging of troops and the arming of men?

DIO. O ay, but he didn't teach that, I opine,To Pantacles; when he was leading the show I couldn't imagine what he was at,He had fastened his helm on the top of his head, he was trying to fasten his plume upon that.

AESCH. But others, many and brave, he taught, of whom was Lamachus, hero true;And thence my spirit the impress took, and many a lion-heart chief I drew,Parocluses, Teucers, illustrious names; for I fain the citizen-folk would spurTo stretch themselves to their measure and height, when-ever the trumpet of war they hear.But Phaedras and Stheneboeas? No! no harlotry business deformed my plays.And none can say that ever I drew a love sick woman in all my days.

EUR. For you no lot or portion had got in Queen Aphrodite.

AESCH. Thank Heaven for that.But ever on you and yours, my friend, the mighty goddess mightily sat;Yourself she cast to the ground at last.

DIO. O ay, that came uncommonly pat.You showed how cuckolds are made, and lo, you were struck yourself by the very same fate.

EUR. But say, you cross-grained censor of mine, how my Stheneboeas could harm the state.

AESCH. Full many a noble dame, the wife of a noble citizen, hemlock took,And died, unable the shame and sin of your Bellerophonscenes to brook.

EUR. Was then, I wonder, the tale I told of Phaedra's passionate love untrue?

AESCH. Not so: but tales of incestuous vice the sacred poet should hide from view,Nor ever exhibit and blazon forth on the public stage to the public ken.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.

EUR. 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.

AESCH. Alas, poor witling, and can't you seeThat 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.

EUR. How so?

AESCH. Your kings in tatters and rags you dressed, and brought them on, a beggarly show,To move, forsooth, our pity and ruth.

EUR. And what was the harm, I should like to know.

AESCH. 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.

DIO. 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.

AESCH. Moreover to prate, to harangue, to debate, is now the ambition of all in the state.Each exercise-ground is in consequence found deserted and empty: to evil reputeYour lessons have brought our youngsters, and taught our sailors to challenge, discuss, and refuteThe orders they get from their captains and yet, when I was alive, I protest that the knavesKnew nothing at all, save for rations' to call, and to sing "Rhyppapae" as they pulled through the waves.

DIO. 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.

AESCH. Of what ills is he NOT the creator and cause?Consider the scandalous scenes that he draws,His bawds, and his panders, his women who giveGive birth in the sacredest shrine,Whilst others with brothers are wedded and bedded,And others opineThat "not to be living" is truly "to live."And therefore our city is swarming to-dayWith clerks and with demagogue-monkeys, who playTheir jackanape tricks at all times, in all places,Deluding the people of Athens; but noneHas training enough in athletics to runWith the torch in his hand at the races.

DIO. By the Powers, you are right! At the PanathenaeaI laughed till I felt like a potsherd to see aPale, paunchy young gentleman pounding along,With his head butting forward, the last of the throng,In the direst of straits; and behold at the gates,The Ceramites flapped him, and smacked him, and slapped him,In the ribs, and the loin, and the flank, and the groin,And still, as they spanked him, he puffed and he panted,Till at one mighty cuff, he discharged such a puffThat he blew out his torch and levanted.