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The Frogs by Aristophanes

6 min read

The Frogs - Readwise Highlights

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Highlights

  • How can you bear, when you are borne yourself? (View Highlight)
  • Does not the donkey bear the load you’re bearing ? (View Highlight)
  • Which is the quickest way to get to Hades? I want one not too warm, nor yet too cold. (View Highlight)
  • Di. I want a genuine poet, “For some are not, and those that are, are bad.” (View Highlight)
  • But O, my friend, Search where you will, you’ll never find a true Creative genius, uttering startling things. (View Highlight)
  • Age forgets its years and sadness, Aged knees curvet for gladness, (View Highlight)
  • O Lady, over our rites presiding, Preserve and succour thy choral throng, And grant us all, in thy help confiding, To dance and revel the whole day long; And much in earnest, and much in jest, Worthy thy feast, may we speak therein. (View Highlight)
  • All evil thoughts and profane be still far hence, far hence from our choirs depart, Who knows not well what the Mystics tell, or is not holy and pure of heart; Who ne’er has the noble revelry learned, or danced the dance of the Muses high; Or shared in the Bacchic rites which old bull-eating Cratinus’s words supply; Who vulgar coarse buffoonery loves, though all untimely the jests they make; Or lives not easy and kind with all, or kindling faction forbears to slake, But fans the fire, from a base desire some pitiful gain for himself to reap; Or takes, in office, his gifts and bribes, while the city is tossed on the stormy deep; (View Highlight)
    • The chorus lists who should stay away from their sacred rites:
      1. Those who aren’t initiated into the mysteries
      2. Those who haven’t “danced the dance of the Muses” (poetic/artistic education)
      3. Those who enjoy “vulgar coarse buffoonery” at inappropriate times
      4. Those who aren’t peaceable citizens but stir up factional strife
      5. Those who take bribes in public office “while the city is tossed on the stormy deep”
      6. Those who betray military information to enemies
      7. Specifically “vile Thorycion” who illegally exported restricted naval supplies
      8. War profiteers who “procure supplies for the use of the enemy’s armaments”
      9. Poets who insult sacred shrines
      10. Politicians who try to cut the pay of comic poets
  • Di. I’ve done it : call the god. Xa. Get up, you laughing-stock; get up directly, Before you’re seen. Di. What, / get up ? I’m fainting. Please dab a sponge of water on my heart. Xa. Here! Dab it on. Di. Where is it ? Xa. Lies your heart there} Di. Ye golden gods, It got so terrified It fluttered down into my stomach’s pit. (View Highlight)
  • Whichever of us two you first behold Flinching or crying out —he’s not the god. (View Highlight)
  • I only wish you had thought of (View Highlight)
  • that Before you gave me those tremendous whacks. (View Highlight)
  • Often has it crossed my fancy, that the city loves to deal With the very best and noblest members of her commonweal, Just as with our ancient coinage, and the newly-minted gold. (View Highlight)
  • All of workmanship unequalled, proved and valued everywhere Both amongst our own Hellenes and Barbarians far away, (View Highlight)
  • Give your brethren back their franchise. Sin and shame it were that slaves, Who have once with stern devotion fought your battle on the waves, (View Highlight)
  • but the strangers newliest come, Worthless sons of worthless fathers, pinchbeck townsmen, yellowy scum, Whom in earlier days the city hardly would have stooped to use Even for her scapegoat victims, these for every task we choose. (View Highlight)
  • If we cocker up our city, narrowing her with senseless pride, Now when she is rocked and reeling in the cradles of the sea, Here again will after ages deem we acted brainlessly. (View Highlight)
  • But Sophocles, How came not he to claim the tragic chair ? Ae. Claim it ? Not he! When he came down, he kissed With reverence Aeschylus, and clasped his hand, And yielded willingly the chair to him. (View Highlight)
  • Skilled men were hard to find: for with the Athenians Aeschylus, somehow, did not hit it off, (View Highlight)
  • Now then, commence your arguments, and mind you both display True wit, not metaphors, nor things which any fool could say. (View Highlight)
  • My poetry survived me: his died with him: He’s got it here, all handy to recite. (View Highlight)
  • I never used haphazard words, or plunged abruptly in; Who entered first explained at large the drama’s origin And source. (View Highlight)
  • Canons of verse I introduced, and neatlv chiselled wit; To look, to scan: to plot, to plan to twist, to turn, to woo: (View Highlight)
  • I taught them all these knowing ways By chopping logic in my plays, And making all my speakers try To reason out the How and Why. (View Highlight)
  • Shape thy course with a sailor’s art, Reef the canvas, shorten the sails, Shift them edgewise to shun the gales. When the breezes are soft and low, Then, well under control, you’ll go Quick and quicker to strike the foe. (View Highlight)
  • tales of incestuous vice the sacred poet should hide from view, Nor ever exhibit and blazon forth on the public stage to the public ken (View Highlight)
  • For boys a teacher at school is found, but we, the poets, are teachers of men. We are bound things honest and pure to speak. (View Highlight)
  • Fear ye this, that to-day’s spectators lack the grace of artistic lore, Lack the knowledge they need for taking All the points ye will soon be making ? Fear it not: the alarm is groundless: that, be sure, is the case no more. (View Highlight)
  • no longer line by line I’ll maul your phrases: but with heaven to aid I’ll smash your prologues with a bottle of oil. (View Highlight)
  • If we mistrust those citizens of ours Whom now we trust, and those employ whom now We don’t employ, the city will be saved. (View Highlight)
  • When they shall count the enemy’s soil their own, And theirs the enemy’s: when they know that ships Are their true wealth, their so-called wealth delu- sion. (View Highlight)
  • I loathe a townsman who is slow to aid, And swift to hurt, his town : who ways and means Finds for himself, but finds not for the state. (View Highlight)
  • Blest the man who possesses a Keen intelligent mind. This full often we find. He, the bard of renown, Now to earth reascends, Goes, a joy to his town, Goes, a joy to his friends, (View Highlight)

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