wrestling and sport. Euripides has done harm by bringing on to the stage things better
kept concealed, like the story of Phaedra. It is the duty of poets to talk of wholesome
things and to be useful in the tradition of Orpheus, Musaeus, Hesiod and Homer.
Though the ponderous lines of Aeschylus easily prevailed in the weighing
ceremony, Dionysus likes both poets equally and finds it difficult to judge between
them. As he wants to bring back a poet to save the city, he asks their advice about
the current critical situation of 405. Shall Alcibiades be recalled from exile? The
gnomic utterances are characteristically clever (Euripides) and obscure (Aeschylus).
Dionysus tries again. What are we to do? Euripides says (as Aristophanes had said
more openly and forcefully in the parabasis) that they must trust new men. Aeschylus,
being out of touch, asks what sort of men the city must put its faith in, the good and
the true? Of course not, says Dionysus. Aeschylus then doubts whether the city can
be saved. Nevertheless, Dionysus finally chooses Aeschylus, a choice endorsed in a
famous ode as follows:
Aeschylus is returning to earth to the joy of the citizens because of his sound
understanding and intelligence. For it is right not to sit beside Socrates indulging
in idle talk, ignoring the Muses and stripping the tragic art of its most essential
aspects. To waste time on solemn arguments and petty quibble is the part of a fool.
(ll. 1491–1499)Is this an aesthetic judgement or a moral criticism, or both? And is it directed against
Euripides or those who are left in Athens and follow his example without his talent?
The jesting at Euripides’ expense seems to be affectionate, and in judging the play
account must be taken of its tone, which is not always easy to pin down. But since
the word used by the chorus for idle talk (lalein) is also used by Euripides when he
claims to have taught people to speak (l. 954), we are doubtless meant to make the
obvious connection, even though it is clear that Aristophanes does not represent
Euripides as any more of a fool than Aeschylus. For the figure of the older poet is
equally comic; he emerges as an irascible old fogey, even if he is the spokesman for
the values of the old world that Aristophanes had wistfully evoked in the wishful
ending of the Knights. That Aristophanes took his didactic office seriously is clear from
the seriousness of the parabasis, though it would be foolish to accredit a sophisticated
and subtle spirit like his with naive views about the ability of poets to reform (or
conversely to corrupt) mankind.
Nevertheless, these words of the chorus have often been taken very seriously
indeed as summing up Aristophanes’ belief in a genuine cultural malaise that had
spread through Athens with dire political consequences. Written as they were just
after the death of the last great tragic poet and just before the defeat of Athens in 404,
from which she never recovered her former preeminence, they have sometimes been
LITERATURE 167