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Euripides
I will never yield the chair, no more advice;
For I claim to be this man's superior in the art.
Dionysus
Why are you silent, Aeschylus? You hear what he says.
Euripides
First he'll put on solemn airs, just as so often
he used to pull those hoaxes in his tragedies.
Dionysus
My good sir, don't talk so high and mighty.
Euripides
I know him well, and have long examined him,
creator of crude characters, stubborn-mouthed,
he's got an unbridled, uncontrolled, ungated mouth
uncircumlocuitous, brag-bundle-voiced.
Aeschylus
Is that right, you child of the garden goddess?
You call me that, you gossip-gathering
beggar-making son of a rag-stitcher?
You'll be sorry for saying that.
Dionysus
Cease, Aeschylus,
Don't heat up your innards with wrath so angrily.
Aeschylus
Oh no, not before I thoroughly expose this
cripple-creator for the braggart that he is.
Dionysus
A sheep, a black sheep, boys, bring one out,
for a typhoon is fixing to let loose!
Aeschylus
You collector of Cretan arias
bringing unholy wedlocks to our art—
Dionysus
Hold on there, much-distinguished Aeschylus:
And you, you rogue Euripides, get out of the way
of this hailstorm, if you are wise,
lest with some heady phrase he crack your skull
in anger and spill out your Telephus.
And you, don't get angry, Aeschylus, but gently
test and be tested; it's just not proper
for poets to abuse each other like fishwives.
But you roar like an oak on fire.
Aristophanes. Frogs. Matthew Dillon.
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