Aristophanes' THESMOPHORIAZUSAE (The Women's Festival) Complete

A Literal Translation, with Notes.

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AGATHON. Old man, old man, I hear the shafts of jealousy whistling by my ears, but they do not hit me. My dress is in harmony with my thoughts. A poet must adopt the nature of his characters. Thus, if he is placing women on the stage, he must contract all their habits in his own person.

MNESILOCHUS. Then you ride the high horse[556] when you are composing a Phaedra.

AGATHON. If the heroes are men, everything in him will be manly. What we don't possess by nature, we must acquire by imitation.

MNESILOCHUS. When you are staging Satyrs, call me; I will do my best to help you from behind with standing tool.

AGATHON. Besides, it is bad taste for a poet to be coarse and hairy. Look at the famous Ibycus, at Anacreon of Teos, and at Alcaeus,[557] who handled music so well; they wore headbands and found pleasure in the lascivious dances of Ionia. And have you not heard what a dandy Phrynichus was[558] and how careful in his dress? For this reason his pieces were also beautiful, for the works of a poet are copied from himself.

MNESILOCHUS. Ah! so it is for this reason that Philocles, who is so hideous, writes hideous pieces; Xenocles, who is malicious, malicious ones, and Theognis,[559] who is cold, such cold ones?

[556] That is, you make love in the posture known as 'the horse,' equus, in other words the woman atop of the man. There is a further joke intended here, inasmuch as Euripides, in his 'Phaedra,' represents the heroine as being passionately addicted to hunting and horses.

[557] Ibycus, a lyric poet of the sixth century, originally from Rhegium in Magna Graecia.--Anacreon, a celebrated erotic poet of the beginning of the fifth century.--Alcaeus, a lyric poet, born about 600 B.C. at Mytilene, in the island of Lesbos, was driven out of his country by a tyrant and sang of his loves, his services as a warrior, his travels and the miseries of his exile. He was a contemporary of Sappho, and conceived a passion for her, which she only rewarded with disdain.

[558] Phrynichus, a disciple of Thespis, improved the dramatic art, when still no more than a child; it was he who first introduced female characters upon the stage and made use of the iambic of six feet in tragedies. He flourished about 500 B.C.

[559] Philocles, Xenocles, and Theognis were dramatic poets and contemporaries of Aristophanes. The two first were sons of Carcinus, the poet and dancer.

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