Delphi Complete Works of Aristophanes (Illustrated) (Delphi Ancient Classics) (55 page)

DIONYSUS. Come, hither to the scales.

AESCHYLUS AND EURIPIDES. Here we are.

DIONYSUS. Let each one hold one of the scales, recite a verse, and not let go until I have cried, “Cuckoo!”

AESCHYLUS AND EURIPIDES. We understand.

DIONYSUS. Well then, recite and keep your hands on the scales.

EURIPIDES. “Would it had pleased the gods that the vessel Argo had never unfurled the wings of her sails!”

AESCHYLUS. “Oh! river Sperchius! oh! meadows, where the oxen graze!”

DIONYSUS. Cuckoo! let go! Oh! the verse of Aeschylus sinks far the lower of the two.

EURIPIDES. And why?

DIONYSUS. Because, like the wool-merchants, who moisten their wares, he has thrown a river into his verse and has made it quite wet, whereas yours was winged and flew away.

EURIPIDES. Come, another verse! You recite, Aeschylus, and you, weigh.

DIONYSUS. Hold the scales again.

AESCHYLUS AND EURIPIDES. Ready.

DIONYSUS
(to Euripides)
. You begin.

EURIPIDES. “Eloquence is Persuasion’s only sanctuary.”

AESCHYLUS. “Death is the only god whom gifts cannot bribe.”

DIONYSUS. Let go! let go! Here again our friend Aeschylus’ verse drags down the scale; ’tis because he has thrown in Death, the weightiest of all ills.

EURIPIDES. And I Persuasion; my verse is excellent.

DIONYSUS. Persuasion has both little weight and little sense. But hunt again for a big weighty verse and solid withal, that it may assure you the victory.

EURIPIDES. But where am I to find one — where?

DIONYSUS. I’ll tell you one: “Achilles has thrown two and four.”
Come, recite! ’tis the last trial.

EURIPIDES. “With his arm he seized a mace, studded with iron.”

AESCHYLUS. “Chariot upon chariot and corpse upon corpse.”

DIONYSUS
(to Euripides)
There you’re foiled again.

EURIPIDES. Why?

DIONYSUS. There are two chariots and two corpses in the verse; why, ’tis a weight a hundred Egyptians could not lift.

AESCHYLUS. ’Tis no longer verse against verse that I wish to weigh, but let him clamber into the scale himself, he, his children, his wife, Cephisophon and all his works; against all these I will place but two of my verses on the other side.

DIONYSUS. I will
not
be their umpire, for they are dear to me and I will not have a foe in either of them; meseems the one is mighty clever, while the other simply delights me.

PLUTO. Then you are foiled in the object of your voyage.

DIONYSUS. And if I do decide?

PLUTO. You shall take with you whichever of the twain you declare the victor; thus you will not have come in vain.

DIONYSUS. That’s all right! Well then, listen; I have come down to find a poet.

EURIPIDES. And with what intent?

DIONYSUS. So that the city, when once it has escaped the imminent dangers of the war, may have tragedies produced. I have resolved to take back whichever of the two is prepared to give good advice to the citizens. So first of all, what think you of Alcibiades? For the city is in most difficult labour over this question.

EURIPIDES. And what does it think about it?

DIONYSUS. What does it think? It regrets him, hates him, and yet wishes to have him, all at the same time. But tell me your opinion, both of you.

EURIPIDES. I hate the citizen who is slow to serve his country, quick to involve it in the greatest troubles, ever alert to his own interests, and a bungler where those of the State are at stake.

DIONYSUS. That’s good, by Posidon! And you, what is your opinion?

AESCHYLUS. A lion’s whelp should not be reared within the city. No doubt that’s best; but if the lion has been reared, one must submit to his ways.

DIONYSUS. Zeus, the Deliverer! this puzzles me greatly. The one is clever, the other clear and precise. Now each of you tell me your idea of the best way to save the State.

EURIPIDES. If Cinesias were fitted to Cleocritus as a pair of wings, and the wind were to carry the two of them across the waves of the sea …

DIONYSUS. ’Twould be funny. But what is he driving at?

EURIPIDES. … they could throw vinegar into the eyes of the foe in the event of a sea-fight. But I know something else I want to tell you.

DIONYSUS. Go on.

EURIPIDES. When we put trust in what we mistrust and mistrust what we trust….

DIONYSUS. What? I don’t understand. Tell us something less profound, but clearer.

EURIPIDES. If we were to mistrust the citizens, whom we trust, and to employ those whom we to-day neglect, we should be saved. Nothing succeeds with us; very well then, let’s do the opposite thing, and our deliverance will be assured.

DIONYSUS. Very well spoken. You are the most ingenious of men, a true
Palamedes! Is this fine idea your own or is it Cephisophon’s?

EURIPIDES. My very own, — bar the vinegar, which is Cephisophon’s.

DIONYSUS
(to Aeschylus)
. And you, what have you to say?

AESCHYLUS. Tell me first who the commonwealth employs. Are they the just?

DIONYSUS. Oh! she holds
them
in abhorrence.

AESCHYLUS. What, are then the wicked those she loves?

DIONYSUS. Not at all, but she employs them against her will.

AESCHYLUS. Then what deliverance can there be for a city that will neither have cape nor cloak?

DIONYSUS. Discover, I adjure you, discover a way to save her from shipwreck.

AESCHYLUS. I will tell you the way on earth, but I won’t here.

DIONYSUS. No, send her this blessing from here.

AESCHYLUS. They will be saved when they have learnt that the land of the foe is theirs and their own land belongs to the foe; that their vessels are their true wealth, the only one upon which they can rely.

DIONYSUS. That’s true, but the dicasts devour everything.

PLUTO
(to Dionysus)
. Now decide.

DIONYSUS. ’Tis for you to decide, but I choose him whom my heart prefers.

EURIPIDES. You called the gods to witness that you would bear me through; remember your oath and choose your friends.

DIONYSUS. Yes, “my tongue has sworn.” … But I choose Aeschylus.

EURIPIDES. What have you done, you wretch?

DIONYSUS. I? I have decided that Aeschylus is the victor. What then?

EURIPIDES. And you dare to look me in the face after such a shameful deed?

DIONYSUS. “Why shameful, if the spectators do not think so?”

EURIPIDES. Cruel wretch, will you leave me pitilessly among the dead?

DIONYSUS. “Who knows if living be not dying, if breathing be not feasting, if sleep be not a fleece?”

PLUTO. Enter my halls. Come, Dionysus.

DIONYSUS. What shall we do there?

PLUTO. I want to entertain my guests before they leave.

DIONYSUS. Well said, by Zeus; ’tis the very thing to please me best.

CHORUS. Blessed the man who has perfected wisdom! Everything is happiness for him. Behold Aeschylus; thanks to the talent, to the cleverness he has shown, he returns to his country; and his fellow-citizens, his relations, his friends will all hail his return with joy. Let us beware of jabbering with Socrates and of disdaining the sublime notes of the tragic Muse. To pass an idle life reeling off grandiloquent speeches and foolish quibbles, is the part of a madman.

PLUTO. Farewell, Aeschylus! Go back to earth and may your noble precepts both save our city and cure the mad; there are such, a many of them! Carry this rope from me to Cleophon, this one to Myrmex and Nichomachus, the public receivers, and this other one to Archenomous. Bid them come here at once and without delay; if not, by Apollo, I will brand them with the hot iron. I will make one bundle of them and Adimantus, the son of Leucolophus, and despatch the lot into hell with all possible speed.

AESCHYLUS. I will do your bidding, and do you make Sophocles occupy my seat. Let him take and keep it for me, against I should ever return here. In fact I award him the second place among the tragic poets. As for this impostor, watch that he never usurps my throne, even should he be placed there in spite of himself.

PLUTO
(to the Chorus of the Initiate)
. Escort him with your sacred torches, singing to him as you go his own hymns and choruses.

CHORUS. Ye deities of the nether world, grant a pleasant journey to the poet who is leaving us to return to the light of day; grant likewise wise and healthy thoughts to our city. Put an end to the fearful calamities that overwhelm us, to the awful clatter of arms. As for Cleophon and the likes of him, let them go, an it please them, and fight in their own land.

Anonymous translation for the
Athenian Society, London, 1912

The Ἐκκλησιάζουσαι dates from 391 BC and like
Lysistrata
involves the theme of women and politics. The comedy concerns a group of women led by Praxagora, who has decided that the women must convince the men to give them control of Athens, because they could rule it better than has been done already. The women, disguised as men, sneak into the assembly and vote the measure, convincing some of the men to vote for it because it is the only thing they have not tried before. The women then institute a government where the state feeds, houses and generally takes care of every Athenian. They enforce an idea of equality by allowing every man to sleep with every woman, though the man must sleep with an ugly woman before he may sleep with a beautiful one.

The enforced equality presented in the play is something of a political statement in addition to being a social one. Following the oligarchy put in place after the war, Athenians asserted their democracy and equality very strongly, to the point that, while it was a clear exaggeration, the play surely made its position on excessive democracy clear. Therefore Aristophanes uses this drama to make fun of the socialist-like ideals in the form of the abolition of private property, abolition of the family and purely material prosperity.

CONTENTS

INTRODUCTION

DRAMATIS PERSONAE

THE ECCLESIAZUSAE

INTRODUCTION

The ‘Ecclesiazusae, or Women in Council,’ was not produced till twenty years after the preceding play, the ‘Thesmophoriazusae’
(at the Great Dionysia of 392 B.C.)
, but is conveniently classed with it as being also largely levelled against the fair sex. “It is a broad, but very amusing, satire upon those ideal republics, founded upon communistic principles, of which Plato’s well-known treatise is the best example. His ‘Republic’ had been written, and probably delivered in the form of oral lectures at Athens, only two or three years before, and had no doubt excited a considerable sensation. But many of its most startling principles had long ago been ventilated in the Schools.”

Like the ‘Lysistrata,’ the play is a picture of woman’s ascendancy in the State, and the topsy-turvy consequences resulting from such a reversal of ordinary conditions. The women of Athens, under the leadership of the wise Praxagora, resolve to reform the constitution. To this end they don men’s clothes, and taking seats in the Assembly on the Pnyx, command a majority of votes and carry a series of revolutionary proposals — that the government be vested in a committee of women, and further, that property and women be henceforth held in common. The main part of the comedy deals with the many amusing difficulties that arise inevitably from this new state of affairs, the community of women above all necessitating special safeguarding clauses to secure the rights of the less attractive members of the sex to the service of the younger and handsomer men. Community of goods again, private property being abolished, calls for a regulation whereby all citizens are to dine at the public expense in the various public halls of the city, the particular place of each being determined by lot; and the drama winds up with one of these feasts, the elaborate menu of which is given in burlesque, and with the jubilations of the women over their triumph.

“This comedy appears to labour under the very same faults as the ‘Peace.’ The introduction, the secret assembly of the women, their rehearsal of their parts as men, the description of the popular assembly, are all handled in the most masterly manner; but towards the middle the action stands still. Nothing remains but the representation of the perplexities and confusion which arise from the new arrangements, especially in connection with the community of women, and from the prescribed equality of rights in love both for the old and ugly and for the young and beautiful. These perplexities are pleasant enough, but they turn too much on a repetition of the same joke.”

We learn from the text of the play itself that the ‘Ecclesiazusae’ was drawn by lot for first representation among the comedies offered for competition at the Festival, the Author making a special appeal to his audience not to let themselves be influenced unfavourably by the circumstance; but whether the play was successful in gaining a prize is not recorded.

DRAMATIS PERSONAE

PRAXAGORA.
BLEPYRUS, husband of Praxagora.
WOMEN.
A MAN.
CHREMES.
TWO CITIZENS.
HERALD.
AN OLD MAN.
A GIRL.
A YOUNG MAN.
THREE OLD WOMEN.
A SERVANT MAID.
HER MASTER.
CHORUS OF WOMEN.