CALLIDEMUS. Then what, in the name of Bacchus, do you make him say?
SPEUSIPPUS. You shall hear; and, if it be not in the very style of Euripides, call me a fool.
CALLIDEMUS. That is a liberty which I shall venture to take, whether it be or no. But go on.
SPEUSIPPUS. Prometheus begins thus:—
"Coelus begat Saturn and Briareus
Cottus and Creius and Iapetus,
Gyges and Hyperion, Phoebe, Tethys,
Thea and Rhea and Mnemosyne.
Then Saturn wedded Rhea, and begat
Pluto and Neptune, Jupiter and Juno."
CALLIDEMUS. Very beautiful, and very natural; and, as you say, very like Euripides.
SPEUSIPPUS. You are sneering. Really, father, you do not understand these things. You had not those advantages in your youth—
CALLIDEMUS. Which I have been fool enough to let you have. No; in my early days, lying had not been dignified into a science, nor politics degraded into a trade. I wrestled, and read Homer's battles, instead of dressing my hair, and reciting lectures in verse out of Euripides. But I have some notion of what a play should be; I have seen Phrynichus, and lived with Aeschylus. I saw the representation of the Persians.
SPEUSIPPUS. A wretched play; it may amuse the fools who row the triremes; but it is utterly unworthy to be read by any man of taste.
CALLIDEMUS. If you had seen it acted;—the whole theatre frantic with joy, stamping, shouting, laughing, crying. There was Cynaegeirus, the brother of Aeschylus, who lost both his arms at Marathon, beating the stumps against his sides with rapture. When the crowd remarked him—But where are you going?