CHORUS. I do honour to the divine Latona and to the lyre, the mother of songs of male and noble strains. The eyes of the goddess sparkle while listening to our enthusiastic chants. Honour to the powerful Phoebus! Hail! thou blessed son of Latona!
MNESILOCHUS. Oh! ye venerable Genetyllides,[553] what tender and voluptuous songs! They surpass the most lascivious kisses in sweetness; I feel a thrill of delight pass up my rectum as I listen to them. Young man, whoever you are, answer my questions, which I am borrowing from Aeschylus' 'Lycurgeia.'[554] Whence comes this effeminate? What is his country? his dress? What contradictions his life shows! A lyre and a hair-net! A wrestling school oil flask and a girdle![555] What could be more contradictory? What relation has a mirror to a sword? And you yourself, who are you? Do you pretend to be a man? Where is the sign of your manhood, your penis, pray? Where is the cloak, the footgear that belong to that sex? Are you a woman? Then where are your breasts? Answer me. But you keep silent. Oh! just as you choose; your songs display your character quite sufficiently.
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?
AGATHON. Yes, necessarily and unavoidably; and 'tis because I knew this that I have so well cared for my person.
MNESILOCHUS. How, in the gods' name?