EURIPIDES. Cruel wretch, will you leave me pitilessly among the dead?
DIONYSUS. "Who knows if living be not dying,[536] if breathing be not
feasting, if sleep be not a fleece?"[537]
PLUTO. Enter my halls. Come, Dionysus.
DIONYSUS. What shall we do there?
PLUTO. I want to entertain my guests before they leave.
DIONYSUS. Well said, by Zeus; 'tis the very thing to please me best.
CHORUS. Blessed the man who has perfected wisdom! Everything is happiness
for him. Behold Aeschylus; thanks to the talent, to the cleverness he has
shown, he returns to his country; and his fellow-citizens, his relations,
his friends will all hail his return with joy. Let us beware of jabbering
with Socrates and of disdaining the sublime notes of the tragic Muse. To
pass an idle life reeling off grandiloquent speeches and foolish
quibbles, is the part of a madman.
PLUTO. Farewell, Aeschylus! Go back to earth and may your noble precepts
both save our city[538] and cure the mad; there are such, a many of them!
Carry this rope from me to Cleophon, this one to Myrmex and Nichomachus,
the public receivers, and this other one to Archenomous.[539] Bid them
come here at once and without delay; if not, by Apollo, I will brand them
with the hot iron.[540] I will make one bundle of them and
Adimantus,[541] the son of Leucolophus,[542] and despatch the lot into
hell with all possible speed.
AESCHYLUS. I will do your bidding, and do you make Sophocles occupy my
seat. Let him take and keep it for me, against I should ever return here.
In fact I award him the second place among the tragic poets. As for this
impostor, watch that he never usurps my throne, even should he be placed
there in spite of himself.
PLUTO (_to the Chorus of the Initiate_). Escort him with your sacred
torches, singing to him as you go his own hymns and choruses.
CHORUS. Ye deities of the nether world, grant a pleasant journey to the
poet who is leaving us to return to the light of day; grant likewise wise
and healthy thoughts to our city. Put an end to the fearful calamities
that overwhelm us, to the awful clatter of arms. As for Cleophon and the
likes of him, let them go, an it please them, and fight in their own
land.[543]
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