Dionysus: Come, then, stand beside the two scales,
Aeschylus and Euripides: behold.
Dionysus: 'And once each of you has taken hold of the line, say it.'
Dionysus: And do not let go of me before I cackle at you both.
1380
Aeschylus and Euripides: We follow.
Dionysus: Now speak the words into the stable.
Euripides: If only the Argos had not sailed.
Aeschylus: Spercheius, river, and the mountainous winding-turns.
Dionysus: cuckoo, let me go; and far, very far below.
Dionysus: Let him go, this one.
1385
Euripides: And what, pray, is the cause of this?
Dionysus: because he introduced a river, in a wool-seller's manner.
Dionysus: Having made the speech moist, like the sheep,
Dionysus: but you have put this word on wings.
Euripides: But let someone else speak something and take a stand against it.
Dionysus: then take it again.
1390
Aeschylus and Euripides: behold them.
Euripides: There is no other sacred thing of Persuasion except speech.
Aeschylus: For Death alone among the gods does not love gifts.
Dionysus: Let go, let go; and that one too is tipping now.
Dionysus: For he introduced the very heaviest evil, death.
Euripides: But I have spoken a very persuasive word.
1395
Dionysus: Persuasion is indeed light and without understanding.
Dionysus: but seek another thing from those heavy-weighted again,
Dionysus: Whatever he drags down, both strong and great.
Euripides: Where is such a thing? Where?
Dionysus: Achilles has thrown a two and a four with the dice.
1400
Dionysus: He would say that this is the only argument left for you two.
Euripides: and he took a club heavy with iron in his right hand.
Aeschylus: For a chariot meets a chariot, and a dead man meets a dead man.
Dionysus: He has deceived you again, and now as well.
Euripides: "In what way?"
Dionysus: He has brought in four wagons and two corpses,
1405
Dionysus: Those whom not even the hundred Egyptians would praise.
Aeschylus: and not anymore to me word by word, but according to the standard.
Aeschylus: 'The child itself, his wife Kephisophon.'
Aeschylus: let him get on and sit down, having taken the books;
Aeschylus: I, however, will speak only two lines from my own works.
1410
Dionysus: Friends, I myself will not judge them.
Dionysus: For I shall not become an enemy to either side out of hatred.
Dionysus: For I consider the one wise, but I take pleasure in the other.
