thanks. Yet I have not been seen frequenting the wrestling
school intoxicated with success and trying to tamper with young boys;(4)
but I took all my theatrical gear(5) and returned straight home. I
pained folk but little and caused them much amusement; my conscience
rebuked me for nothing. Hence both grown men and youths should be on my
side and I likewise invite the bald(6) to give me their votes; for, if I
triumph, everyone will say, both at table and at festivals, "Carry this
to the bald man, give these cakes to the bald one, do not grudge the
poet whose talent shines as bright as his own bare skull the share he
deserves."

Oh, Muse! drive the War far from our city and come to preside over our
dances, if you love me; come and celebrate the nuptials of the gods, the
banquets of us mortals and the festivals of the fortunate; these are the
themes that inspire thy most poetic songs. And should Carcinus come to
beg thee for admission with his sons to thy chorus, refuse all traffic
with them; remember they are but gelded birds, stork-necked dancers,
mannikins about as tall as a pat of goat dung, in fact machine-made
poets.(7) Contrary to all expectation, the father has at last managed
to finish a piece, but he owns himself that a cat strangled it one fine
evening.(8)

Such are the songs(9) with which the Muse with the glorious hair
inspires the able poet and which enchant the assembled populace, when
the spring swallow twitters beneath the foliage;(10) but the god spare
us from the chorus of Morsimus and that of Melanthius!(11) Oh! what a
bitter discordancy grated upon my ears that day when the tragic
chorus was directed by this same Melanthius and his brother, these two
Gorgons,(12) these two harpies, the plague of the seas, whose gluttonous
bellies devour the entire race of fishes, these followers of old women,
these goats with their stinking arm-pits. Oh! Muse, spit upon them
abundantly and keep the feast gaily with me.

f(1) In spite of what he says, Aristophanes has not always
disdained this sort of low comedy--for instance, his
Heracles in 'The Birds.'

f(2) A celebrated Athenian courtesan of Aristophanes' day.

f(3) Cleon. These four verses are here repeated from the
parabasis of 'The Wasps,' produced 423 B.C., the year before
this play.

f(4) Shafts aimed at certain poets, who used their renown as
a means of seducing young men to grant them pederastic
favo