Aristophanes' FROGS Complete

A Literal Translation, with Notes.

Aristophanes Bilingual Anthology  Studies  Aristophanes in Print

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EURIPIDES. No, no, you have never known Aphrodite.

AESCHYLUS. And I am proud of it. Whereas with you and those like you, she appears everywhere and in every shape; so that even you yourself were ruined and undone by her.[491]

DIONYSUS. That's true; the crimes you imputed to the wives of others, you suffered from in turn.

EURIPIDES. But, cursed man, what harm have my Sthenoboeas done to Athens?

AESCHYLUS. You are the cause of honest wives of honest citizens drinking hemlock, so greatly have your Bellerophons made them blush.[492]

EURIPIDES. Why, did I invent the story of Phaedra?

AESCHYLUS. No, the story is true enough; but the poet should hide what is vile and not produce nor represent it on the stage. The schoolmaster teaches little children and the poet men of riper age. We must only display what is good.

EURIPIDES. And when you talk to us of towering mountains--Lycabettus and of the frowning Parnes[493]--is that teaching us what is good? Why not use human language?

[491] Cephisophon, Euripides' friend, is said to have seduced his wife.

[492] Meaning, they have imitated Sthenoboea in everything; like her, they have conceived adulterous passions and, again like her, they have poisoned themselves.

[493] Lycabettus, a mountain of Attica, just outside the walls of Athens, the "Arthur's Seat" of the city. Parnassus, the famous mountain of Phocis, the seat of the temple and oracle of Delphi and the home of the Muses. The whole passage is, of course, in parody of the grandiloquent style of Aeschylus.

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