Aeschylus: I am indeed angry at the accident, and my entrails are indignant,
Aeschylus: if I must argue against him; so that he may not claim that I am at a loss,
Aeschylus: Answer me, for what reason ought one to wonder at a poet?
Euripides: [for] skill and instruction, in that we make [people] better.
Euripides: the people in the cities.
1010
Aeschylus: then, if you have not done this,
Aeschylus: but from noble and generous men you have shown the most wretched ones,
Aeschylus: What do you say I deserve to suffer?
Dionysus: He is dead. Do not ask him this.
Aeschylus: consider, then, what sort of men he first accepted from me,
Aeschylus: if [they were] noble and broad-chested, and not street-running citizens,
Aeschylus: neither market-going nor cobblers nor cunning ones, as is the case now,
1015
Aeschylus: but breathing spears and lances and white-crested helmets.
Aeschylus: and helmets and greaves and seven-oared shields.
Dionysus: And now this evil is on its way; now a bowl-maker will grind me down.
Euripides: And how did you, by doing this, teach them to be noble?
Dionysus: Aeschylus, speak, and do not find fault while arrogantly puffing yourself up.
1020
Aeschylus: having composed a drama full of Ares.
Dionysus: Which one?
Aeschylus: the Seven Against Thebes.
Aeschylus: 'Whoever sees this falls in love to be a divine man.'
Dionysus: This is a bad thing you have done to me; for you have made the Thebans.
Dionysus: [They are] braver for the war, and for this reason, indeed, I strike.
Aeschylus: But you yourselves were free to practice, but you did not turn to this.
1025
Aeschylus: 'Then, having taught Persians, afterwards I taught them to desire.'
Aeschylus: 'To always defeat the opponents, having adorned a most excellent work.'
Dionysus: At least I rejoiced when I heard that Darius was dead.
Dionysus: The chorus immediately, having struck its hands together in this way, said iaui.
Aeschylus: For these are the things that poets ought to practice. For examine from the beginning.
1030
Aeschylus: 'How useful the noble ones have become among the poets.'
Aeschylus: For Orpheus indeed showed us the rites and to abstain from murders,
Aeschylus: And Musaeus will cure diseases and deliver oracles, and Hesiod too
Aeschylus: the cultivation of the earth, the seasons of the crops, the plowing; but the divine Homer
Aeschylus: he received honor and glory except for this, that he taught useful things,
1035
Aeschylus: ranks, virtues, the arms of men?
Dionysus: And indeed, not Pantaclēs.
Dionysus: nevertheless he taught the most clumsy one; for indeed, the other day, whenever he was sending,
Dionysus: having first bound the helmet, he was about to tie the crest.
Aeschylus: but there were certainly many other good men, of whom Lamachus was also a hero;
Aeschylus: from which my mind, having drawn, made many virtues,
1040
Aeschylus: 'Patroclus, the lion-hearted Teucrians, so that I might lift up a citizen man'
Aeschylus: to stretch himself out before them, whenever he hears a trumpet.
Aeschylus: but, no, by Zeus, I did not write about Phaedra's whores, nor about Sthenboea's,
Aeschylus: Nor has anyone ever made a woman whom I ever loved.
Frogs. Aristophanes. . 2026-09-08.