Dionysus: By Zeus, just as if someone were to say to a neighbor,
Dionysus: Use a pestle, if you wish, a winnowing fan.
Aeschylus: Not at all, you wretch!
1160
Aeschylus: That is what it is, man, but it is best in its words.
Euripides: How then? For teach me, by what you are saying exactly.
Aeschylus: "It is possible for anyone who has left their homeland to come to the land."
Aeschylus: for he has come without any other misfortune;
Aeschylus: the man comes running and descends.
1165
Dionysus: Well, by Apollo. What are you saying about Euripides?
Euripides: I do not say that Orestes came home.
Euripides: for he came secretly, not persuading the masters.
Dionysus: Well, by Hermes! But what you are saying, I do not understand.
Euripides: Then go on with another.
1170
Dionysus: Go across, you.
Dionysus: Having completed Aeschylus, you look to the bad.
Aeschylus: And I proclaim on this mound of the tomb to my father
Aeschylus: to hear is to listen.
Euripides: He says this again.
Euripides: to hear is to listen, which is clearly the same thing.
Dionysus: "For he said, 'You wretch, you are dead,'"
1175
Dionysus: Even saying it three times, we do not reach it.
Aeschylus: And how do you make the prologues?
Euripides: And if I say the same thing twice somewhere, you will see a heap.
Euripides: Go out from the speech, most despicable one.
Dionysus: Go ahead and speak, for I am not busy, but [I am] ready to listen.
1180
Dionysus: of the correctness of your prologues and of the verses.
Euripides: "Oedipus was at first a happy man—"
Aeschylus: By Zeus, not at all, but [I am] ill-fated by nature,
Aeschylus: whom, indeed, Apollo said he was born before
Aeschylus: to kill his father before even being born;
1185
Aeschylus: 'How was this man originally fortunate?'
Euripides: "And then he again became the most wretched of mortals."
Aeschylus: By Zeus, no, certainly not, he did not stop.
Aeschylus: How so? For when, first of all, he having become
Aeschylus: when winter was on, they abandoned [a child] in an amphora,
1190
Aeschylus: in order that he might not become the murderer of his father.
Aeschylus: 'So, as when he struck Polybus with his swollen feet;'
Aeschylus: 'Then he married an old woman while he himself was young.'
Aeschylus: and, besides these things, his own mother;
Aeschylus: 'Then he blinded himself.'
1195
Dionysus: "Truly he was blessed,"
Dionysus: if he also commanded, by Zeus, with Erasinides.
Euripides: You are talking nonsense; but I make the prologues beautiful.
Aeschylus: And indeed, by Zeus, I will not roast you word for word.
Aeschylus: every word, but with the gods.
Aeschylus: I will corrupt your prologues from a lekythos.
1200
Euripides: from a lekythos [do you bring] my [things]?
Aeschylus: for you do so as to fit everything,
Aeschylus: and a little drum, and a lekythos, and a bag,
Aeschylus: in the iambics. But I will show it right away.
Euripides: Look, will you show it?
1205
Dionysus: And now it is necessary to speak.
