Aristophanes: The Complete Plays

by Aristophanes

  and chuck the mash onto the Deadman’s Dump.

  CARIO: “For bad news cut out the messenger’s tongue.”984 But why does Zeus want to mash us up?

  HERMES: Because you’ve committed the most heinous crime. Ever since Plutus was able to see again no one’s bothered to sacrifice anything at all to any of us divine: no incense, sweet bay, barley cake, slaughtered beast—not a bloody thing.

  CARIO: And about time! Nor will they because in the past you never bothered to care for us.

  HERMES: I’m not so worried about the other gods as for myself. I’m lost.

  CARIO: Shows good sense.

  HERMES: In the old days, as early as dawn, barmaids would bring me

  bites:

  brandy cake, honey, figs—oh lots!—

  all the things that Hermes likes,

  but now I’m sprawled out hangdog and quite ravenous.

  CARIO: Well, it’s because of what you’ve done.

  Didn’t you sometimes come the heavy on these very folk who gave

  you bites?

  HERMES: It’s sad. What a loss! No more ritual cake on the fourth of the moon.985

  CARIO: “You pine for me no longer here. You call for me in vain.”986

  HERMES: I pine for the ham I used to down.

  CARIO: You could ham it up right here in the open air.987

  HERMES: The fried livers and kidneys I used to dispatch.

  CARIO: For which your own kidneys and liver seem to groan.

  HERMES: And the wine, half and half, I used to put down the

  hatch.

  CARIO: [offering a pail of slops] Here, have a sip of this. Then go to hell.

  HERMES: Can’t you help me, your old pal?

  CARIO: Depends what kind of help you want.

  HERMES: How about some bread fresh from the oven

  and a chunk of steak from your sacrifice in there?

  CARIO: Hey, this isn’t a carryout.

  HERMES: Remember

  how I used to help you swipe a platter from your master?

  CARIO: Provided you got your share. Steak and puffed pastry were your delight.

  HERMES: Of which you certainly had a bite.

  CARIO: But you never shared the whipping I got

  when I was caught red-handed in the act.

  HERMES: Can’t you be magnanimous now that you’ve got Phyle?988 For God’s sake let me join your party.

  CARIO: You mean you want to leave Olympus and live here?

  HERMES: Well, you people are certainly sitting pretty.

  CARIO: But don’t you think it ungrateful to desert your country?

  HERMES: One’s country is wherever one does well.989

  CARIO: But will we do well if you come down here to settle?

  HERMES: I can be the lintel god of your front door.

  CARIO: Lintel god? We don’t need a lintel.

  HERMES: Your business god adviser then?

  CARIO: We’re rich. We don’t need a Hermes middleman.

  HERMES: All right, your god of expert trickery.

  CARIO: God of expert trickery? Certainly not. Now that we’ve mended our ways tricks are out.

  HERMES: God of guidance, then?

  CARIO: We have a god who sees again

  and have no need of one to guide.

  HERMES: Then let me be your competition god.

  What’s wrong with that?

  Athletic and artistic contests are right up Plutus’ street.990

  CARIO: [to the audience] Hasn’t he fixed himself up cleverly with tags?

  He’s made a profession of it.

  It’s not surprising that jurymen hype

  themselves onto a similar list of pegs.991

  HERMES: It’s agreed, then, that I may take my place inside?

  CARIO: You may. So go to the sink and wash some tripe

  and install yourself as servant god.

  [HERMES follows CARIO into the house. A PRIEST arrives.]

  PRIEST: Can anybody tell me where Chremylus is?

  CHREMYLUS: [coming out of the house] How goes it, my good man?

  PRIEST: What else but terrible.

  I’m dying of starvation

  ever since Plutus got his sight back again.

  I’ve simply not a thing to eat. I, Zeus the Savior’s priest!

  CHREMYLUS: You don’t say! And what’s the reason?

  PRIEST: Nobody sacrifices. Nobody takes the trouble.

  CHREMYLUS: Why not?

  PRIEST: Because everybody’s rich.

  In the days when people had nothing, the businessman

  safely home from his trip

  would offer a sacrifice in thanks,

  so would the man acquitted in court,

  and the sacrificers would ask me to be the priest.

  But not so now.

  No one offers a thing or sets a foot

  inside the temple except to find a loo,

  and these are numerous, too.

  CHREMYLUS: A loo? Not exactly the place to get your cut!

  PRIEST: So I’m saying goodbye to Zeus the Savior and settling

  here.

  CHREMYLUS: Bear up! God willing, all will be well,

  for Zeus the Savior is here. To come was his own idea.

  PRIEST: So with you everything is hunky-dory?

  CHREMYLUS: Yes, we’re just about to set up Plutus here—

  oh, don’t go!—exactly where he was before he

  stopped being treasurer in residence in the temple of Athena.

  So as soon as someone brings the lighted flares,

  you can lead the god’s parade.

  PRIEST: I’m full of gratitude.

  CHREMYLUS: Somebody go and call Plutus here outside.

  [The OLD WOMAN arrives.]

  OLD WOMAN: And what about me?

  CHREMYLUS: See these vessels we’re using for the installation of the

  god?

  Carry them on your head in solemn style. . . .

  I say, your getup’s good!

  OLD WOMAN: That’s not why I came.

  CHREMYLUS: Not to worry. Everything’s arranged. Your young man will come to you tonight.

  OLD WOMAN: All right,

  since you assure me this is so, I’ll settle to carry these vessels.

  CHREMYLUS: [watching her balancing the vessels on her head]

  How extraordinary, the behavior of these pots is really rum.

  With other pots the scum

  comes to the top, but with these, the pots

  come on top of the scum.

  [To the sound of a gong and triumphal music, PLUTUS is led in by the rest of the household and the PRIEST marches the whole company off in solemn procession to the Acropolis, where PLUTUS will be restored as treasurer in residence in the temple of Pallas Athena. Meanwhile, the members of the CHORUS line up for their own procession as they chant the envoi.]

  CHORUS: Now is not the time to be lagging

  so let us start following,

  Forming up behind them and singing.

  CAUTION: Professionals and amateurs are hereby warned that Paul Roche’s translations of Acharnians, Knights, Clouds, Wasps, Peace, Birds, Lysistrata, Women at Thesmophoria Festival, Frogs, A Parliament of Women, and Plutus (Wealth) are subject to royalty. They are fully protected under the copyright laws of the United States of America, of all countries covered by the International Copyright Union (including the Dominion of Canada and the rest of the British Commonwealth), of all countries covered by the Pan-American Copyright Convention and the Universal Copyright Convention, and of all countries with which the United States has reciprocal copyright relations. All rights, including professional, amateur, motion picture, recitation, lecturing, public reading, radio broadcasting, television, video or sound taping, all other forms of mechanical or electronic reproduction, such as information storage and retrieval systems and photocopying, and the right of translation into foreign languages, are strictly reserved. Particular emphasis is laid upon the questi
on of readings, permission for which must be obtained in writing from the translator, c/o Penguin Group (USA) Inc., 375 Hudson Street, New York, Yew York, 10014.

  1 Moses Hadas in his introduction to The Complete Plays of Aristophanes (Bantam Books, 1981).

  2 “To teach, to show, to please.”

  3 The Knights: an equestrian order. The nature of the incident is obscure.

  4 In other words: your work is eligible for competition. Theognis was a tragic poet despised by Aristophanes.

  5 A lyre player who won a musical contest at the Pythian games. The “calf” tag remains a mystery.

  6 A lyre and flute player often mocked for poor technique: cf. Peace, page 315.

  7 To do with the goddess Artemis.

  8 Those coming late to the Assembly were given a red mark and fined.

  9 Amphitheus means “divine from both parents.”

  10 Both Athens and Sparta sought money from the Persian King, but old soldiers like DICAEOPOLIS would have despised him as a barbarian and as their onetime enemy. (Loeb)

  11 The capital of Media and summer home of the Great Kings of Persia, an El Dorado in the view of ordinary Athenians. (Loeb)

  12 Goulash. The SENIOR AMBASSADOR, who is a snob, uses the French.

  13 A political crony of Cleon’s ridiculed by comic poets as a fat glutton, a coward, and a shield thrower; the latter charge (unique in comedy) evidently refers to Cleonymus’ behavior in the Athenian retreat at Delium in 424 B.C., when his corpulence made him conspicuous and thus a suitable scapegoat. (Loeb)

  14 Sardian dye was one of the many items of luxury exported from the city of Sardis, the capital of the kingdom of Lydia in western Asia Minor.

  15 Cleisthenes is ridiculed elsewhere as a beardless effeminate, and Strato as his lover.

  16 The King of the Odrysai in Thrace, who had aided the Athenians in an abortive invasion of Macedonia four years earlier. (Loeb)

  17 A tragic poet whom Aristophanes despised. His compositions were said to be so lifeless and uninspired that he was called Chion (“Snow”).

  18 The Odomantian tribe in Thrace lived on the eastern banks of the river Stryman, which separated Thrace from Macedonia.

  19 The Greeks were uncircumcised. The Odomantians, being Thracian Greeks, would also be uncircumcised. The fact that these guards are revealed as circumcised makes DICAEOPOLIS suspect that they are not genuine. As to lifting a kilt, this on the Attic stage would not have been necessary. Their long circumcised phalli would have been in full view.

  20 Boeotia is pronounced Bee-o-sha.

  21 Meaning that this outdoor Assembly should be immediately adjourned, and the question of pay for the Thracians thereby scrambled.

  22 A plain between the mountains and the sea about twenty-two miles northeast of Athens, the scene of the defeat of the invading Persians by Miltiades in 490 B.C. This was the occasion when the Athenian runner Phidippides, sent to get help from Sparta, covered the distance of 150 miles in two days.

  23 “Pledges” is the nearest I can get to the Greek spondai, which means both “treaty” and “the pouring of a libation to celebrate it.”

  24 Pitch was used to caulk ships and flavor inferior wines; retsina is still a popular table wine in Greece. (Loeb)

  25 Athens dominated the confederacy of Greek city-states and severely punished those who tried to break away. For instance, when Mytilene on the island of Lesbos revolted in 428 B.C., during the Peloponnesian War, the ringleaders were put to death and the island put under the control of Athenian officials.

  26 This famous athlete from Croton in southern Italy commanded a ship at the battle of Salamis in 480 B.C. (Loeb)

  27 A leading veteran but the reference is obscure.

  28 A personification of the phallus: the symbol of fertility and the fruitfulness of the earth, associated with Dionysus the god of fertility.

  29 A formidable Athenian general.

  30 Cleon, of course, being of the war party, would have supported the war party, but for the moment Aristophanes puts his hatred of Cleon, whose trade was leather, into the mouths of the CHORUS, and at the same time advertises his next play: Knights.

  31 The Spartans on campaign wore scarlet cloaks.

  32 That is, from Mount Parnes, near which the Acharnians collected the wood to make their charcoal.

  33 The comedy was Babylonians (lost), which won first prize at the Dionysia in 426 B.C. In it Aristophanes apparently attacked Cleon personally, and Cleon responded by trying to have Aristophanes indicted on the charge that he had slandered the people of Athens in the presence of foreigners and that he was not a born Athenian. The Council dismissed the charges.

  34 Aristophanes coins the word molunopragmonoumenos.

  35 A long-haired tragic poet.

  36 Sisyphus was a legendary king of Corinth and reputedly the most cunning man on earth. For his misdeeds, he was condemned to spend eternity rolling uphill a heavy rock, which then rolled down again. ‡ A village or deme not far from the Acharnians’.

  37 In Greek the idiom is “clutching your knees”.

  38 In Euripides’ play Oeneus, King of Calydon, when he was deposed by his nephew and became a beggar in exile.

  39 Phoenix was blinded and exiled after being falsely accused of having made a pass at his father’s concubine.

  40 Philoctetes, because of a stinking wound in his foot, was left on a desert island by his comrades on their way to Troy. We have Sophocles’ play on the subject but not Euripides’.

  41 Bellerephon, grandson of Sisyphus, tried to fly to heaven on the winged horse, Pegasus, but was thrown and crippled.

  42 Telephus of Mysia (in Asia Minor) was exposed as a baby on Mount Parthenius and nursed by a goat. He was a Trojan and later wounded in the foot by Achilles. Euripides wrote a play about him (lost).

  43 Thyestes and Ino are lost plays by Euripides. Thyestes seduced the wife of his brother, Atreus. When Atreus discovered her infidelity, he killed Thyestes’ two sons and served them to Thyestes for dinner, and Thyestes cursed Atreus’ house. Ino was the sister of Semele, mother of Dionysus by Zeus.

  44 One must realize that the list of items that DICAEOPOLIS proceeds to ask for are all burlesques of incidents in Euripides’ plays.

  45 The line, in tragic style, is probably taken from Telephus, a lost play of Euripides’. (Loeb)

  46 Tribute payments from Athens’ subject allies were presented at the Greater Dionysia in the spring, when allied troops would be mustered for the campaign season. (Loeb)

  47 Taenarum was a promontory at the most southwesterly tip of Sparta, the most southerly point of Europe, where Poseidon had a temple.

  48 The little we know about cottabus makes it sound extremely silly. According to H. G. Liddell and R. Scott’s Greek-English Lexicon, cottabus was “a Sicilian game, much in vogue at the drinking parties of young men at Athens. The simplest mode was when each threw the wine left in his cup smartly into a metal basin; if all fell inside the basin and the sound was clear, it was a favourable sign. The game was played in various ways.”

  49 Reputedly the lover of Alcibiades (the “golden boy”).

  50 Aspasia was the partner of Pericles. Rumor had it that she organized his affairs with other women, even that she trained prostitutes.

  51 An insignificant island in the Cyclades and an insignificant ally of Athens.

  52 The point of DICAEOPOLIS’ argument seems to be that Telephus, wounded by Achilles and told by an oracle that rust from Achilles’ spear would heal him, did not disdain from approaching Achilles, though Achilles was a Greek and he was a Trojan. Similarly, the Athenians shouldn’t expect the Spartans, who supported the Megarians, not to respond vigorously to what the Athenians did to them in the marketplace. The whole picture, of course, is a metaphor for the cause of the Peloponnesian War.

  53 Lamachus was the intrepid Athenian general killed in 414 B.C. at the siege of Syracuse.

  54 The snake-headed Gorgon, Medusa, depicted on the shield.

 
55 Names reflecting the Greek Gela, Catagela, and Camarina.

  56 This and the following names are as near as I can get to Aristophanes’ Marilades, Anthracyllus, Euphorides, and Prinides—all punning on the fact that the Acharnians were charcoal burners.

  57 A mountainous region between Macedonia and Greece.

  58 An extravagant and aristocratic women.

  59 The Parabasis was composed in anapests. As may be noted above, the anapest (”-) and the dactyl (-”) are interchangeable.

  60 Darius, King of Persia. He made an alliance with the Spartans.

  61 The island of Aegina lay at almost equal distance in the Saronic Gulf from the coasts of Attica and Argolis in the Peloponnese. In 429 B.C. the Athenians expelled the inhabitants and installed their own settlers. Aristophanes seems to have had a house there.

  62 Tithonus was so beautiful a young man that Aurora (goddess of dawn) fell in love with him and obtained for him immortality but forgot to ask for eternal youth. So Tithonus went on living long after he was old and decrepit.

  63 Not Thucydides the historian. This one was banished in 443 B.C. by Pericles. He was now eighty years old.

  64 Scythia was a vast unknown territory stretching from Asia through Russia into Siberia. It was famous for its archers, who became employed in Athens as policemen. ‡ Euathlus: a keen prosecutor whom Aristophanes is equating with a common archer policeman. §A huge and stentorian Persian nobleman who had accompanied Xerxes on his invasion of Greece. (Loeb) ¶ Euathlus’s relations.