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AESCHYLUS. Why, miserable man, the expression must always rise to the height of great maxims and of noble thoughts. Thus as the garment of the demi-gods is more magnificent, so also is their language more sublime. I ennobled the stage, while you have degraded it.

EURIPIDES. And how so, pray?

AESCHYLUS. Firstly you have dressed the kings in rags,[494] so that they might inspire pity.

EURIPIDES. Where's the harm?

AESCHYLUS. You are the cause why no rich man will now equip the galleys, they dress themselves in tatters, groan and say they are poor.

DIONYSUS. Aye, by Demeter! and he wears a tunic of fine wool underneath; and when he has deceived us with his lies, he may be seen turning up on the fish-market.[495]

AESCHYLUS. Moreover, you have taught boasting and quibbling; the wrestling schools are deserted and the young fellows have submitted their arses to outrage,[496] in order that they might learn to reel off idle chatter, and the sailors have dared to bandy words with their officers.[497] In my day they only knew how to ask for their ship's-biscuit and to shout "Yo ho! heave ho!"

[494] An allusion to Oeneus, King of Aetolia, and to Telephus, King of Mysia; characters put upon the stage by Euripides.

[495] It was only the rich Athenians who could afford fresh fish, because of their high price; we know how highly the gourmands prized the eels from the Copaic lake.

[496] If Aristophanes is to be believed, the orators were of depraved habits, and exacted infamous complaisances as payment for their lessons in rhetoric.

[497] Aristophanes attributes the general dissoluteness to the influence of Euripides; he suggests that the subtlety of his poetry, by sharpening the wits of the vulgar and even of the coarsest, has instigated them to insubordination.
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