The Frogs 167substituting gold in its stead. The threat of revenge
afforded some safety in Anglo-Saxon culture, a
world where each member of a tribe had a pre-
calibrated worth. If a clan member was killed, his
particular man-price must be paid, or a blood feud
would go into effect. The 12 winters of Grendel’s
anarchic violence, of hall floors “slick with slaugh-
ter,” is terrible precisely because the monster does
not pay reparations for those he kills. He is violence
itself, all claw and mouth, and destroys the order
represented by Heorot, grinding and consuming and
reducing the human element to gore: “he grabbed
a man and mauled him on his bench, / bit into his
bone-lappings, bolted down his blood / and gorged
on him in lumps, leaving the body / utterly lifeless,
eaten up / hand and foot” (ll. 740–744). Grendel’s
violence erases distinctions and individuality and
threatens a system that sprung from violence in the
first place. And Beowulf is strikingly like Grendel:
He, too, has the strength of 30 in his handgrip; he
fights Grendel (and Dayraven) without weapons,
and in the death match with Grendel, he breaks
bone lappings and dismembers his opponent. He is
heroic because he out-monsters Grendel—outdoes
him in doing violence.
Like Grendel, the dragon is a force of seem-
ingly unstoppable chaos that reduces great halls and
human achievement to indistinguishable rubble and
ash. However perverse this night-flying “wyrm” may
be, though, it is not unlike the hero of the poem. It
guards its treasure in a hall, peacefully, until a cup
is stolen, at which time it ventures out for revenge,
destroying outlying villages and deterring through
terrorism. After Beowulf kills the dragon—this time
with the help of Wiglaf—the dying hero predicts
a new bout of violent incursions from the Swedes.
Beowulf ’s ability to make violence is no longer at
hand to help his nation. Like Hrothgar 50 years
earlier, Beowulf ’s strength is no longer a match for
the brutality of the Anglo-Saxon world.
The audience of Beowulf is treated to particularly
graphic battle scenes, such as Beowulf ’s descrip-
tion of the death of Ongentheow at the hands of
Wulf and Eofor during the battle of Ravenswood
(ll. 2,946–2,984). In fact, the human-on-human
violence in the poem is as devastating as that
wrought by monsters: We are told of Heremod’s and
Unferth’s Cain-like kin killing; the perverse Finn
episode, where retainers are forced to join with their
lord’s slayer, only to have violence reawakened by
the laying of a famous sword in Hengest’s lap; the
future strife to be visited upon Hrothgar’s children
by his nephew, Hrothulf, and so on, on and on. The
violent attack that inevitably comes from the Swedes
makes for a somber ending to the poem. Humans
are the worst monsters, war and hardship are a way
of life, revenge holds groups together, and the only
good king is a strong one willing to decimate his
neighbors. The specter of wyrd, the Old English
word for fate, overshadows Beowulf. Anglo-Saxon
wyrd is stern and implacable: Life is transitory, and
only the glory that springs from violence and battle
can outlast the human bone-house.
Tony PerrelloARISTOPHANES The Frogs
(405 b.c.)
The Frogs is a comedy by the ancient Greek drama-
tist Aristophanes (ca. 450–ca. 388 b.c.), typically
treated by modern translators as a play in two acts.
In act 1, Dionysus—in whose honor drama festivals
were held—journeys to the underworld to find the
great poet Euripides, whose political wisdom he
believes can save Athens, thereby ensuring the city’s
drama festivals will continue. This was a pertinent
search to represent at the time, with Athens suf-
fering internal strife and extreme pressure from the
adversarial Spartans. Act 2 is dominated by a contest
between Aeschylus and Euripides for the honor of
best poet, eventually decided on the merit of their
political advice.
The contemporary political backdrop to The
Frogs is of central importance to its meaning. The
play’s purpose presents striking alignment with its
content, for Aristophanes used it to deliver his own
political message. This message is the very same
political strategy that Dionysus elicits from Hades’
wisest tragedian, whom the contest ultimately
reveals to be Aeschylus: Recall from voluntary exile
the figure Alcibiades.
In Aristophanes’ view, to issue this kind of
instruction to the audience is one of two critical