Is Polite Society Polite? and Other Essays

by Julia Ward Howe

Before its door, Bacchus is seized with such a fit of timidity that, instead of knocking, he asks his servant to tell him how the native inhabitants of the region knock at doors. Reproved by the servant, he knocks, and announces himself as the valiant Hercules. Æacus, the porter, now rushes out upon him with violent abuse, reviling him for having stolen, or attempted to steal, the watch-dog, Cerberus, and threatening him with every horror which Hell can inflict. Æacus departs, and Bacchus persuades his servant to don the borrowed garb of Hercules, while he loads himself with the baggage which the other was carrying. Proserpine, however, sends her maid to invite the supposed Hercules to a feast of dainties. Xanthias now assumes the manners befitting the hero, at which Bacchus orders him to change dresses with him once more, and assume his own costume, which he does. Hardly have they done this, when Bacchus is again set upon by two frantic women, who shriek in his ears the deeds of gluttony committed by Hercules in Hades, and not paid for.

There; that's he

That came to our house, ate those nineteen loaves.

Aye; sure enough. That's he, the very man;

And a dozen and a half of cutlets and fried chops,

At a penny ha' penny apiece. And all the garlic,

And the good green cheese that he gorged at once.

And then, when I called for payment, he looked fierce

And stared me in the face, and grinned and roared.

The women threaten the false Hercules with the pains and penalties of swindling. He now pretends to soliloquize: "I love poor Xanthias dearly; that I do."

"Yes," says Xanthias, "I know why; but it's of no use. I won't act Hercules." Xanthias, however, allows himself to be persuaded, and when Æacus, appearing with a force, cries: "Arrest me there that fellow that stole the dog," Xanthias contrives to make an effectual resistance. Having thus gained time, he assures Æacus that he never stole so much as a hair of his dog's tail; but gives him leave to put Bacchus, his supposed slave, to the torture, in order to elicit from him the truth. Æacus, softened by this proposal, asks in which way the master would prefer to have his slave tortured. Xanthias replies:

In your own way, with the lash, with knots and screws,

With the common, usual, customary tortures,

With the rack, with the water torture, any sort of way,

With fire and vinegar—all sorts of ways.

Bacchus, thus driven to the wall, proclaims his divinity, and claims Xanthias as his slave. The latter suggests that if Bacchus is a divinity, he may be beaten without injury, as he will not feel it. Bacchus retorts, "If you are Hercules, so may you." Æacus, to ascertain the truth, impartially belabors them both. Each, in turn, cries out, and pretends to have quoted from the poets. Æacus, unable to decide which is the god and which the impostor, brings them both before Proserpine and Pluto.

In the course of a delicious dialogue between the two servants, Æacus and Xanthias, it is mentioned that Euripides, on coming to the shades, had driven Æschylus from the seat of honor at Pluto's board, holding himself to be the worthier poet. Æschylus has objected to this, and the matter is now to be settled by a trial of skill in which Bacchus is to be the umpire.

The shades of Euripides and Æschylus appear in the next scene, with Bacchus between them. Æschylus wishes the trial had taken place elsewhere. Why? Because while his tragedies live on earth, those of Euripides are dead, and have descended with him to bear him company in Hell. The encounter of wits between the two is of the grandiose comic, each taunting the other with his faults of composition. Euripides says of Æschylus:

He never used a simple word

But bulwarks and scamanders and hippogriffs and Gorgons,

Bloody, remorseless phrases.

Æschylus rejoins: