The Complete Plays

by Aristophanes

  STREPSIADES. Ah! how you amuse me with your gods! how ridiculous it seems to a sage to hear Zeus invoked.

  PASIAS. Your blasphemies will one day meet their reward. But, come, will you repay me my money, yes or no? Answer me, that I may go.

  STREPSIADES. Wait a moment, I am going to give you a distinct answer. (Goes indoors and returns immediately with a kneading-trough.)

  PASIAS. What do you think he will do?

  WITNESS. He will pay the debt.

  STREPSIADES. Where is the man who demands money? Tell me, what is this?

  PASIAS. Him? Why he is your kneading-trough.

  STREPSIADES. And you dare to demand money of me, when you are so ignorant? I will not return an obolus to anyone who says him instead of her for a kneading-trough.

  PASIAS. You will not repay?

  STREPSIADES. Not if I know it. Come, an end to this, pack off as quick as you can.

  PASIAS. I go, but, may I die, if it be not to pay my deposit for a summons.

  STREPSIADES. Very well! ‘Twill be so much more to the bad to add to the twelve minae. But truly it makes me sad, for I do pity a poor simpleton who says him for a kneading-trough.

  AMYNIAS. Woe! ah woe is me!

  STREPSIADES. Hold! who is this whining fellow? Can it be one of the gods of Carcinus?

  AMYNIAS. Do you want to know who I am? I am a man of misfortune!

  STREPSIADES. Get on your way then.

  AMYNIAS. Oh! cruel god! Oh Fate, who hath broken the wheels of my chariot! Oh, Pallas, thou hast undone me!

  STREPSIADES. What ill has Tlepolemus done you?

  AMYNIAS. Instead of jeering me, friend, make your son return me the money he has had of me; I am already unfortunate enough.

  STREPSIADES. What money?

  AMYNIAS. The money he borrowed of me.

  STREPSIADES. You have indeed had misfortune, it seems to me.

  AMYNIAS. Yes, by the gods! I have been thrown from a chariot.

  STREPSIADES. Why then drivel as if you had fallen from an ass?

  AMYNIAS. Am I drivelling because I demand my money?

  STREPSIADES. No, no, you cannot be in your right senses.

  AMYNIAS. Why?

  STREPSIADES. No doubt your poor wits have had a shake.

  AMYNIAS. But by Hermes! I will sue you at law, if you do not pay me.

  STREPSIADES. Just tell me; do you think it is always fresh water that Zeus lets fall every time it rains, or is it always the same water that the sun pumps over the earth?

  AMYNIAS. I neither know, nor care.

  STREPSIADES. And actually you would claim the right to demand your money, when you know not a syllable of these celestial phenomena?

  AMYNIAS. If you are short, pay me the interest, at any rate.

  STREPSIADES. What kind of animal is interest?

  AMYNIAS. What? Does not the sum borrowed go on growing, growing every month, each day as the time slips by?

  STREPSIADES. Well put. But do you believe there is more water in the sea now than there was formerly?

  AMYNIAS. No, ’tis just the same quantity. It cannot increase.

  STREPSIADES. Thus, poor fool, the sea, that receives the rivers, never grows, and yet you would have your money grow? Get you gone, away with you, quick! Ho! bring me the ox-goad!

  AMYNIAS. Hither! you witnesses there!

  STREPSIADES. Come, what are you waiting for? Will you not budge, old nag!

  AMYNIAS. What an insult!

  STREPSIADES. Unless you get a-trotting, I shall catch you and prick up your behind, you sorry packhorse! Ah! you start, do you? I was about to drive you pretty fast, I tell you — you and your wheels and your chariot!

  CHORUS. Whither does the passion of evil lead! here is a perverse old man, who wants to cheat his creditors; but some mishap, which will speedily punish this rogue for his shameful schemings, cannot fail to overtake him from to-day. For a long time he has been burning to have his son know how to fight against all justice and right and to gain even the most iniquitous causes against his adversaries every one. I think this wish is going to be fulfilled. But mayhap, mayhap, he will soon wish his son were dumb rather!

  STREPSIADES. Oh! oh! neighbours, kinsmen, fellow-citizens, help! help! to the rescue, I am being beaten! Oh! my head! oh! my jaw! Scoundrel! do you beat your own father!

  PHIDIPPIDES. Yes, father, I do.

  STREPSIADES. See! he admits he is beating me.

  PHIDIPPIDES. Undoubtedly I do.

  STREPSIADES. You villain, you parricide, you gallows-bird!

  PHIDIPPIDES. Go on, repeat your epithets, call me a thousand other names, an it please you. The more you curse, the greater my amusement!

  STREPSIADES. Oh! you infamous cynic!

  PHIDIPPIDES. How fragrant the perfume breathed forth in your words.

  STREPSIADES. Do you beat your own father?

  PHIDIPPIDES. Aye, by Zeus! and I am going to show you that I do right in beating you.

  STREPSIADES. Oh, wretch! can it be right to beat a father?

  PHIDIPPIDES. I will prove it to you, and you shall own yourself vanquished.

  STREPSIADES. Own myself vanquished on a point like this?

  PHIDIPPIDES. ’Tis the easiest thing in the world. Choose whichever of the two reasonings you like.

  STREPSIADES. Of which reasonings?

  PHIDIPPIDES. The Stronger and the Weaker.

  STREPSIADES. Miserable fellow! Why, ’tis I who had you taught how to refute what is right, and now you would persuade me it is right a son should beat his father.

  PHIDIPPIDES. I think I shall convince you so thoroughly that, when you have heard me, you will not have a word to say.

  STREPSIADES. Well, I am curious to hear what you have to say.

  CHORUS. Consider well, old man, how you can best triumph over him. His brazenness shows me that he thinks himself sure of his case; he has some argument which gives him nerve. Note the confidence in his look! But how did the fight begin? tell the Chorus; you cannot help doing that much.

  STREPSIADES. I will tell you what was the start of the quarrel. At the end of the meal you wot of, I bade him take his lyre and sing me the air of Simonides, which tells of the fleece of the ram. He replied bluntly, that it was stupid, while drinking, to play the lyre and sing, like a woman when she is grinding barley.

  PHIDIPPIDES. Why, by rights I ought to have beaten and kicked you the very moment you told me to sing!

  STREPSIADES. That is just how he spoke to me in the house, furthermore he added, that Simonides was a detestable poet. However, I mastered myself and for a while said nothing. Then I said to him, ‘At least, take a myrtle branch and recite a passage from Aeschylus to me.’— ‘For my own part,’ he at once replied, ‘I look upon Aeschylus as the first of poets, for his verses roll superbly; ’tis nothing but incoherence, bombast and turgidness.’ Yet still I smothered my wrath and said, ‘Then recite one of the famous pieces from the modern poets.’ Then he commenced a piece in which Euripides shows, oh! horror! a brother, who violates his own uterine sister. Then I could no longer restrain myself, and attacked him with the most injurious abuse; naturally he retorted; hard words were hurled on both sides, and finally he sprang at me, broke my bones, bore me to earth, strangled and started killing me!

  PHIDIPPIDES. I was right. What! not praise Euripides, the greatest of our poets!

  STREPSIADES. He the greatest of our poets! Ah! if I but dared to speak! but the blows would rain upon me harder than ever.

  PHIDIPPIDES. Undoubtedly, and rightly too.

  STREPSIADES. Rightly! oh! what impudence! to me, who brought you up! when you could hardly lisp, I guessed what you wanted. If you said broo, broo, well, I brought you your milk; if you asked for mam mam, I gave you bread; and you had no sooner said, caca, than I took you outside and held you out. And just now, when you were strangling me, I shouted, I bellowed that I would let all go; and you, you scoundrel, had not the heart to take me outside, so that here, though almost choking, I was compelled
to ease myself.

  CHORUS. Young men, your hearts must be panting with impatience. What is Phidippides going to say? If, after such conduct, he proves he has done well, I would not give an obolus for the hide of old men. Come, you, who know how to brandish and hurl the keen shafts of the new science, find a way to convince us, give your language an appearance of truth.

  PHIDIPPIDES. How pleasant it is to know these clever new inventions and to be able to defy the established laws! When I thought only about horses, I was not able to string three words together without a mistake, but now that the master has altered and improved me and that I live in this world of subtle thought, of reasoning and of meditation, I count on being able to prove satisfactorily that I have done well to thrash my father.

  STREPSIADES. Mount your horse! By Zeus! I would rather defray the keep of a four-in-hand team than be battered with blows.

  PHIDIPPIDES. I revert to what I was saying when you interrupted me. And first, answer me, did you beat me in my childhood?

  STREPSIADES. Why, assuredly, for your good and in your own best interest.

  PHIDIPPIDES. Tell me, is it not right, that in turn I should beat you for your good? since it is for a man’s own best interest to be beaten. What! must your body be free of blows, and not mine? am I not free-born too? the children are to weep and the fathers go free?

  STREPSIADES. But…

  PHIDIPPIDES. You will tell me, that according to the law, ’tis the lot of children to be beaten. But I reply that the old men are children twice over and that it is far more fitting to chastise them than the young, for there is less excuse for their faults.

  STREPSIADES. But the law nowhere admits that fathers should be treated thus.

  PHIDIPPIDES. Was not the legislator who carried this law a man like you and me? In those days he got men to believe him; then why should not I too have the right to establish for the future a new law, allowing children to beat their fathers in turn? We make you a present of all the blows which were received before this law, and admit that you thrashed us with impunity. But look how the cocks and other animals fight with their fathers; and yet what difference is there betwixt them and ourselves, unless it be that they do not propose decrees?

  STREPSIADES. But if you imitate the cocks in all things, why don’t you scratch up the dunghill, why don’t you sleep on a perch?

  PHIDIPPIDES. That has no bearing on the case, good sir; Socrates would find no connection, I assure you.

  STREPSIADES. Then do not beat at all, for otherwise you have only yourself to blame afterwards.

  PHIDIPPIDES. What for?

  STREPSIADES. I have the right to chastise you, and you to chastise your son, if you have one.

  PHIDIPPIDES. And if I have not, I shall have cried in vain, and you will die laughing in my face.

  STREPSIADES. What say you, all here present? It seems to me that he is right, and I am of opinion that they should be accorded their right. If we think wrongly, ’tis but just we should be beaten.

  PHIDIPPIDES. Again, consider this other point.

  STREPSIADES. ‘Twill be the death of me.

  PHIDIPPIDES. But you will certainly feel no more anger because of the blows I have given you.

  STREPSIADES. Come, show me what profit I shall gain from it.

  PHIDIPPIDES. I shall beat my mother just as I have you.

  STREPSIADES. What do you say? what’s that you say? Hah! this is far worse still.

  PHIDIPPIDES. And what if I prove to you by our school reasoning, that one ought to beat one’s mother?

  STREPSIADES. Ah! if you do that, then you will only have to throw yourself along with Socrates and his reasoning, into the Barathrum. Oh! Clouds! all our troubles emanate from you, from you, to whom I entrusted myself, body and soul.

  CHORUS. No, you alone are the cause, because you have pursued the path of evil.

  STREPSIADES. Why did you not say so then, instead of egging on a poor ignorant old man?

  CHORUS. We always act thus, when we see a man conceive a passion for what is evil; we strike him with some terrible disgrace, so that he may learn to fear the gods.

  STREPSIADES. Alas! oh Clouds! ’tis hard indeed, but ’tis just! I ought not to have cheated my creditors…. But come, my dear son, come with me to take vengeance on this wretched Chaerephon and on Socrates, who have deceived us both.

  PHIDIPPIDES. I shall do nothing against our masters.

  STREPSIADES. Oh! show some reverence for ancestral Zeus!

  PHIDIPPIDES. Mark him and his ancestral Zeus! What a fool you are! Does any such being as Zeus exist?

  STREPSIADES. Why, assuredly.

  PHIDIPPIDES. No, a thousand times no! The ruler of the world is the

  Whirlwind, that has unseated Zeus.

  STREPSIADES. He has not dethroned him. I believed it, because of this whirligig here. Unhappy wretch that I am! I have taken a piece of clay to be a god.

  PHIDIPPIDES. Very well! Keep your stupid nonsense for your own consumption. (Exit.)

  STREPSIADES. Oh! what madness! I had lost my reason when I threw over the gods through Socrates’ seductive phrases. Oh! good Hermes, do not destroy me in your wrath. Forgive me; their babbling had driven me crazy. Be my councillor. Shall I pursue them at law or shall I…? Order and I obey. — You are right, no law-suit; but up! let us burn down the home of those praters. Here, Xanthias, here! take a ladder, come forth and arm yourself with an axe; now mount upon the school, demolish the roof, if you love your master, and may the house fall in upon them, Ho! bring me a blazing torch! There is more than one of them, arch-impostors as they are, on whom I am determined to have vengeance.

  A DISCIPLE. Oh! oh!

  STREPSIADES. Come, torch, do your duty! Burst into full flame!

  DISCIPLE. What are you up to?

  STREPSIADES. What am I up to? Why, I am entering upon a subtle argument with the beams of the house.

  SECOND DISCIPLE. Hullo! hullo! who is burning down our house?

  STREPSIADES. The man whose cloak you have appropriated.

  SECOND DISCIPLE. But we are dead men, dead men!

  STREPSIADES. That is just exactly what I hope, unless my axe plays me false, or I fall and break my neck.

  SOCRATES. Hi! you fellow on the roof, what are you doing up there?

  STREPSIADES. I traverse the air and contemplate the sun.

  SOCRATES. Ah! ah! woe is upon me! I am suffocating!

  CHAEREPHON. Ah! you insulted the gods! Ah! you studied the face of the moon! Chase them, strike and beat them down! Forward! they have richly deserved their fate — above all, by reason of their blasphemies.

  CHORUS. So let the Chorus file off the stage. Its part is played.

  THE WASPS

  Anonymous translation for the Athenian Society, London, 1912

  The Wasps was produced at the Lenaia festival in 422 BC, at a time when Athens was enjoying a brief respite from The Peloponnesian War following a one year truce with Sparta. As in his other early plays, Aristophanes pokes satirical fun at the demagogue Cleon, but this time he also ridicules the law-courts, which was one of the Athenian institutions that provided Cleon with his power-base.

  Two years before the performance of The Wasps, Athens had obtained a significant victory against its rival, Sparta, in the Battle of Sphacteria. Most Athenians credited Cleon with this victory and he was then at the height of his power. Constitutionally, supreme power lay with the demos as voters in the assembly and as jurors in the courts, but they could be manipulated by demagogues like Cleon, who were skilled in oratory and supported by networks of informers. Cleon had succeeded Pericles as the dominant speaker in the assembly and increasingly he was able to manipulate the courts for political and personal ends, especially in the prosecution of public officials for mismanagement of their duties. Jurors had to be citizens over the age of thirty and a corps of six thousand was enrolled at the beginning of each year, forming a conspicuous presence about town in their short brown cloaks, with wooden staves in their hands. Juror
s came under the sway of litigious politicians like Cleon who provided them with cases to try and who were influential in persuading the assembly to keep up their pay. However it is not necessarily true that Cleon was exploiting the system for venal or corrupt reasons, as argued in The Wasps. Aristophanes’ plays promote conservative values and they support an honourable peace with Sparta whereas Cleon was a radical democrat and a leader of the pro-war faction.

  The play begins with a strange scene, where a large net has been spread over a house, the entry is barricaded and two slaves are sleeping in the street outside. A third man is positioned at the top of an exterior wall with a view into the inner courtyard, but he too is asleep. The two slaves wake and we learn from their banter that they are keeping guard over a ‘monster’. The man asleep above them is their master and the monster is his father, who has an unusual disease of being addicted to the law court. His name is Philocleon (which suggests that he might be addicted to Cleon) and his son’s name is the very opposite of this — Bdelycleon. The symptoms of the old man’s addiction are described for us and they include irregular sleep, obsessional thinking, paranoia, poor hygiene and hoarding.

  A Roman bust of the playwright

  CONTENTS

  INTRODUCTION

  DRAMATIS PERSONAE

  THE WASPS

  INTRODUCTION

  “This Comedy, which was produced by its Author the year after the performance of ‘The Clouds,’ may be taken as in some sort a companion picture to that piece. Here the satire is directed against the passion of the Athenians for the excitement of the law-courts, as in the former its object was the new philosophy. And as the younger generation — the modern school of thought — were there the subjects of the caricature, so here the older citizens, who took their seats in court as jurymen day by day, to the neglect of their private affairs and the encouragement of a litigious disposition, appear in their turn in the mirror which the satirist holds up.”

  There are only two characters of any importance to the action — Philocleon (‘friend of Cleon’) and his son Bdelycleon (‘enemy of Cleon’). The plot is soon told. Philocleon is a bigoted devotee of the malady of litigiousness so typical of his countrymen and an enthusiastic attendant at the Courts in his capacity of ‘dicast’ or juryman. Bdelycleon endeavours to persuade his father by every means in his power to change this unsatisfactory manner of life for something nobler and more profitable; but all in vain. As a last resource he keeps his father a prisoner indoors, so that he cannot attend the tribunals.