your hide? Has the lash rained an army of its thongs on you and laid your back waste?” After having delivered us from all these wearisome ineptitudes and these low buffooneries, he has built up for us a great art, like a palace with high towers, constructed of fine phrases, great thoughts and of jokes not common on the streets. Moreover ’tis not obscure private persons or women that he stages in his comedies; but, bold as Heracles, ’tis the very greatest whom he attacks, undeterred by the fetid stink of leather or the threats of hearts of mud. He has the right to say, “I am the first ever dared to go straight for that beast with the sharp teeth and the terrible eyes that flashed lambent fire like those of Cynna,[1] surrounded by a hundred lewd flatterers, who spittle-licked him to his heart’s content; it had a voice like a roaring torrent, the stench of a seal, a foul Lamia’s testicles and the rump of a camel.[2]
I did not recoil in horror at the sight of such a monster, but fought him relentlessly to win your deliverance and that of the Islanders. Such are the services which should be graven in your recollection and entitle me to your thanks. Yet I have not been seen frequenting the wrestling school intoxicated with success and trying to tamper with young boys;[3] but I took all my theatrical gear[4] and returned straight home. I pained folk but little and caused them much amusement; my conscience rebuked me for nothing. Hence both grown men and youths should be on my side and I likewise invite the bald[5] to give me their votes; for, if I triumph, everyone will say, both at table and at festivals, “Carry this to the bald man, give these cakes to the bald one, do not grudge the poet whose talent shines as bright as his own bare skull the share he deserves.”
Oh, Muse! drive the War far from our city and come to preside over our dances, if you love me; come and
- ↑ A celebrated Athenian courtesan of Aristophanes’ day.
- ↑ Cleon. These four verses are here repeated from the parabasis of ‘The Wasps,’ produced 423 B.C., the year before this play.
- ↑ Shafts aimed at certain poets, who used their renown as a means of seducing young men to grant them pederastic favours.
- ↑ The poet supplied everything needful for the production of his piece—vases, dresses, masks, etc.
- ↑ Aristophanes was bald himself, it would seem.
