THE ORIGIN OF THE PELOPONNESIAN WAR

B

From The Acharnians': Frere's Translation

DICEOPOLIS

E NOT surprised, most excellent spectators,
If I that am a beggar have presumed

To claim an audience upon public matters,
Even in a comedy; for comedy

Is conversant in all the rules of justice,

And can distinguish betwixt right and wrong.

The words I speak are bold, but just and true.
Cleon at least cannot accuse me now,

That I defame the city before strangers,
For this is the Lenæan festival,

And here we meet, all by ourselves alone;
No deputies are arrived as yet with tribute,
No strangers or allies: but here we sit
A chosen sample, clean as sifted corn,
With our own denizens as a kind of chaff.

First, I detest the Spartans most extremely;
And wish that Neptune, the Tænarian deity,
Would bury them in their houses with his earthquakes,
For I've had losses-losses, let me tell ye,

Like other people; vines cut down and injured.
But among friends (for only friends are here),
Why should we blame the Spartans for all this?
For people of ours, some people of our own,-
Some people from among us here, I mean:
But not the People (pray, remember that);
I never said the People, but a pack
Of paltry people, mere pretended citizens,
Base counterfeits, went laying informations,
And making a confiscation of the jerkins
Imported here from Megara; pigs, moreover,
Pumpkins, and pecks of salt, and ropes of onions,
Were voted to be merchandise from Megara,
Denounced, and seized, and sold upon the spot.

Well, these might pass, as petty local matters.
But now, behold, some doughty drunken youths
Kidnap, and carry away from Megara,

The courtesan, Simætha. Those of Megara,

In hot retaliation, seize a brace

Of equal strumpets, hurried forth perforce
From Dame Aspasia's house of recreation.
So this was the beginning of the war,

All over Greece, owing to these three strumpets.
For Pericles, like an Olympian Jove,

With all his thunder and his thunderbolts,
Began to storm and lighten dreadfully,
Alarming all the neighborhood of Greece;
And made decrees, drawn up like drinking songs,
In which it was enacted and concluded
That the Megarians should remain excluded
From every place where commerce was transacted,
With all their ware—like "old Care" in the ballad:
And this decree, by land and sea, was valid.

Then the Megarians, being all half starved,
Desired the Spartans to desire of us

Just to repeal those laws; the laws I mentioned, Occasioned by the stealing of those strumpets. And so they begged and prayed us several times; And we refused: and so they went to war.

He makes an appeal in his proper defense,
To your voluble humor and temper and sense,
With the following plea:

Namely, that he

Never attempted or ever meant
To scandalize

In any wise

Your mighty imperial government

Moreover he says.

That in various ways

He presumes to have merited honor and praise;
Exhorting you still to stick to your rights,
And no more to be fooled with rhetorical flights;
Such as of late each envoy tries

On the behalf of your allies,

That come to plead their cause before ye,
With fulsome phrase, and a foolish story
Of "violet crowns" and "Athenian glory,"
With "sumptuous Athens" at every word:
"Sumptuous Athens" is always heard;
"Sumptuous" ever, a suitable phrase
For a dish of meat or a beast at graze.
He therefore affirms

In confident terms,

That his active courage and earnest zeal
Have usefully served your common weal:
He has openly shown

The style and tone

Of your democracy ruling abroad,
He has placed its practices on record;
The tyrannical arts, the knavish tricks,
That poison all your politics.
Therefore shall we see, this year,

The allies with tribute arriving here,
Eager and anxious all to behold

Their steady protector, the bard so bold;
The bard, they say, that has dared to speak,
To attack the strong, to defend the weak.
His fame in foreign climes is heard,
And a singular instance lately occurred.
It occurred in the case of the Persian king,
Sifting and cross-examining

The Spartan envoys. He demanded
Which of the rival States commanded
The Grecian seas? He asked them next
(Wishing to see them more perplexed)
Which of the two contending powers
Was chiefly abused by this bard of ours?
For he said, "Such a bold, so profound an adviser

By dint of abuse would render them wiser,

More active and able; and briefly that they

Must finally prosper and carry the day."
Now mark the Lacedæmonian guile!

Demanding an insignificant isle!

"Ægina," they say, "for a pledge of peace,
As a means to make all jealousy cease."
Meanwhile their privy design and plan
Is solely to gain this marvelous man-
Knowing his influence on your fate-
By obtaining a hold on his estate
Situate in the isle aforesaid.

Therefore there needs to be no more said.

You know their intention, and know that you know it:
You'll keep to your island, and stick to the poet.
And he for his part

Will practice his art
With a patriot heart,

With the honest views

That he now pursues,

And fair buffoonery and abuse:

Not rashly bespattering, or basely beflattering,
Not pimping, or puffing, or acting the ruffian;
Not sneaking or fawning;

But openly scorning

All menace and warning,

All bribes and suborning:

He will do his endeavor on your behalf;

He will teach you to think, he will teach you to laugh.
So Cleon again and again may try;

I value him not, nor fear him, I!
His rage and rhetoric I defy.
His impudence, his politics,

His dirty designs, his rascally tricks,
No stain of abuse on me shall fix.
Justice and right, in his despite,

Shall aid and attend me, and do me right:
With these to friend, I ne'er will bend,

Nor descend

To a humble tone

(Like his own),

As a sneaking loon,

A knavish, slavish, poor poltroon.

THE APPEAL OF THE CHORUS

From The Knights': Frere's Translation

F A veteran author had wished to engage

IT

Our assistance to-day, for a speech from the stage,
We scarce should have granted so bold a request:
But this author of ours, as the bravest and best,
Deserves an indulgence denied to the rest,

For the courage and vigor, the scorn and the hate,
With which he encounters the pests of the State;
A thoroughbred seaman, intrepid and warm,
Steering outright, in the face of the storm.

But now for the gentle reproaches he bore
On the part of his friends, for refraining before
To embrace the profession, embarking for life
In theatrical storms and poetical strife.

He begs us to state that for reasons of weight
He has lingered so long and determined so late.
For he deemed the achievements of comedy hard,
The boldest attempt of a desperate bard!
The Muse he perceived was capricious and coy;
Though many were courting her, few could enjoy.
And he saw without reason, from season to season,
Your humor would shift, and turn poets adrift,
Requiting old friends with unkindness and treason,
Discarded in scorn as exhausted and worn.

Seeing Magnes's fate, who was reckoned of late
For the conduct of comedy captain and head;
That so oft on the stage, in the flower of his age,
Had defeated the Chorus his rivals had led;
With his sounds of all sort, that were uttered in sport,
With whims and vagaries unheard of before,
With feathers and wings, and a thousand gay things,
That in frolicsome fancies his Choruses wore-
When his humor was spent, did your temper relent,
To requite the delight that he gave you before?
We beheld him displaced, and expelled and disgraced,
When his hair and his wit were grown aged and hoar.

Then he saw, for a sample, the dismal example
Of noble Cratinus so splendid and ample,

Full of spirit and blood, and enlarged like a flood;

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