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Heracles
Surely you must have some other youngsters,
At least ten thousand tragic playwrights,
All babbling miles further than Euripides.
Dionysus
These are but stunted offshoots and mere blatherings,
showcases of swallows, banes of The Art,
which disappear at once, if they get a single chorus,
just one chance to piss on tragedy.
You'll not find one creative poet,
if you looked, to bawl a noble sentiment.
Heracles
Creative, how?
Dionysus
Creative like one who utters
some great risky phrase like this:
“The airy hall of Zeus”, or “foot of time”,
or “heart that would not swear by all that's holy”
and “tongue that swears, without consent of mind.”
Heracles
This pleases you?
Dionysus
I'm crazy about it!
Heracles
I think it's trash. I'm sure you think so too.
Dionysus
Don't try to run my mind, mind your own business.
Heracles
Well, I repeat, it just seems completely rubbish.
Dionysus
Teach me how to eat!
Xanthias
No word of me!
Dionysus
But this is why I have come in this getup
to look like you; so you would inform me who they were who took you in, in case I needed them, the ones you found down there when you went after Cerberus:
Describe to me the harbours, bakers' shops,
brothels, rest stops, detours, springs, and roads,
the towns, their customs, and the inns
Where there are fewest bugs.
Xanthias
No word of me!
Aristophanes. Frogs. Matthew Dillon.
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