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Read Ebook: The Frogs by Aristophanes BCE BCE
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Ebook has 688 lines and 21596 words, and 14 pages
Get down, you rascal; I've been trudging on Till now I've reached the portal, where I'm going First to turn in. Boy! Boy! I say there, Boy!
HERACLES.
Who banged the door? How like a prancing Centaur He drove against it! Mercy o' me, what's this?
DIO. Boy.
XAN. Yes.
DIO. Did you observe?
XAN. What?
DIO. How alarmed He is.
XAN. Aye truly, lest you've lost your wits.
HER. O by Demeter, I can't choose but laugh. Biting my lips won't stop me. Ha! ha! ha!
DIO. Pray you, come hither, I have need of you.
HER. I vow I can't help laughing, I can't help it. A lion's hide upon a yellow silk, a club and buskin! What's it all about? Where were you going?
DIO. I was serving lately aboard the--Cleisthenes.
HER. And fought?
DIO. And sank more than a dozen of the enemy's ships.
HER. You two?
DIO. We two.
HER. And then I awoke, and lo!
DIO. There as, on deck, I'm reading to myself The Andromeda, a sudden pang of longing Shoots through my heart, you can't conceive how keenly.
HER. How big a pang.
DIO. A small one, Molon's size.
HER. Caused by a woman?
DIO. No.
HER. A boy?
DIO. No, no.
HER. A man?
DIO. Ah! ah!
HER. Was it for Cleisthenes?
DIO. Don't mock me, brother; on my life I am In a bad way: such fierce desire consumes me.
HER. Aye, little brother? how?
DIO. I can't describe it. But yet I'll tell you in a riddling way. Have you e'er felt a sudden lust for soup?
HER. Soup! Zeus-a-mercy, yes, ten thousand times.
DIO. Is the thing clear, or must I speak again?
HER. Not of the soup: I'm clear about the soup.
DIO. Well, just that sort of pang devours my heart For lost Euripides.
HER. A dead man too.
DIO. And no one shall persuade me not to go after the man.
HER. Do you mean below, to Hades?
DIO. And lower still, if there's a lower still.
HER. What on earth for?
DIO. I want a genuine poet, "For some are not, and those that are, are bad."
HER. What! does not Iophon live?
DIO. Well, he's the sole Good thing remaining, if even he is good. For even of that I'm not exactly certain.
HER. But Agathon, where is he?
DIO. He has gone and left us, A genial poet, by his friends much missed.
HER. Gone where?
DIO. To join the blessed in their banquets.
HER. But what of Xenocles?
DIO. O he be hanged!
HER. Pythangelus?
XAN. But never a word of me, Not though my shoulder's chafed so terribly.
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