In The Frogs, Aristophanes suggests that poetry—and art in general—is more than a mere source of entertainment. Not long after Dionysus and Xanthias arrive in Hades, the audience learns that recently deceased tragedians Euripides and Aeschylus are engaged in an impassioned dispute over which poet will lay claim to a coveted chair in Pluto’s great hall. To settle their dispute, Euripides and Aeschylus compete in a contest to prove which poet writes “weightier” verse and therefore deserves the coveted chair. Upon Dionysus’s arrival, Pluto announces that he will allow the winner of the contest to return to Athens with Dionysus in order to save the struggling, morally debased city. During their contest, Euripides and Aeschylus scathingly critique each other’s poetry while lauding the merits and artistic value of their own. In particular, they argue about what the purpose of poetry should be, and which of them produces poetry that best embodies this purpose. Aeschylus asserts that his plays feature noble, heroic characters who serve as role models for his audience; as a whole, then, his plays serve as models for how to behave. Euripides, when Aeschylus asks him what makes a good poet, replies that good poets “teach people how to be better citizens.” Rather than present an idealized version of how the world ought to be, as Aeschylus claims his poetry does, Euripides asserts that his poetry educates people by teaching them to think: to question everything and engage in debate, and through this, better understand the world the world around them. Though Aeschylus and Euripides criticize each other’s methods, they agree that poetry should teach people how to live virtuously and be good citizens. The play reinforces this position, with Dionysus bringing the winner of their contest (Aeschylus, as it turns out) back to Athens to save the collapsing city from ruin. Thus, Aristophanes uses the play to assert that art is a valuable tool that can instill in people the morals and values a society needs to thrive.
Related Themes from Other Texts
The Value of Art ThemeTracker
The Value of Art Quotes in The Frogs
XANTHIAS Do you mean to say that I’ve been lugging these props around but I’m not allowed to use them to get a laugh? That’s what usually happens. Phrynichus, Lycis, Ameipsias – all the popular playwrights do it. The comic porter scene. There’s one in every comedy.
DIONYSUS Not in this one. Every time I go to a show and have to sit through one of those scintillating routines, I come away more than a year older.
CHORUS-LEADER
We chorus folk two privileges prize:
To amuse you, citizens, and to advise.
CHORUS-LEADER
[…]
These we abuse, and look instead to knaves,
Upstarts, nonentities, foreigners and slaves –
Rascals all! Honestly, what men we choose!
There was a time when you’d have scorned to use
Men so debased, so far beyond the pale,
Even as scapegoats to be dragged from jail
And flogged to death outside the city gates.
Misguided friends, change now, it’s not too late!
Try the good ones again: if they succeed,
You will have shown that you have sense indeed;
And if things don’t go well, if these good men
All fail, and Athens comes to grief, why, then
Discerning folk will murmur (let us hope):
‘She hanged herself, but with a first-rate rope!’
SLAVE Well, Euripides came along and started showing off to all the other people we’ve got down here, you know, cut-throats, highwaymen, murderers, burglars – a right rough lot they are – and of course he soon had them all twisted round his little finger, with all his arguments and clever talking. So they’ve all started saying he’s the best, and he’s decided to lay claim to the chair instead of Aeschylus.
AESCHYLUS My plays have outlived me so I don’t have them to hand down here. His died with him. But never mind. Let’s have a contest, if we must, by all means.
CHORUS
We’re expecting, of course, to pick up a few tips
From these poets so clever and wise,
As elegant utterance falls from their lips
And their temperatures gradually rise.
Since neither is lacking in brains or in grit
It should be a thrilling debate:
While one pins his hopes on his neatly turned wit,
The other relies on his weight.
For shrewd dialectic he cares not a jot;
Though traps be contrived for his fall,
He’ll swoop down like thunder and quell the lot –
Quips, quibbles, his rival and all!
EURIPIDES I taught them how to apply subtle rules, how to turn a phrase neatly. I taught them to observe, to discern, to interpret; to use spin, to massage the facts; to suspect the worst, to take nothing at face value…
DIONYSUS That’s right: whenever an Athenian comes home nowadays, he shouts at the servants and starts asking, ‘Why is the flour jar not in its proper place? Who bit the head off this sprat? What’s happened to that cup I had last year? Where is yesterday’s garlic? Who’s been nibbling at this olive?’ Whereas before Euripides came along they just sat there staring blankly.
EURIPIDES Technical ability. A poet should also teach people how to be better citizens.
AESCHYLUS Well, now, look at the characters I left him. Fine, stalwart figures, larger than life. Men who didn’t shirk their duty. My heroes weren’t like these marketplace loafers, delinquents and rogues they write about nowadays. They were real heroes, breathing spears and lances, white-plumed helmets, breastplates and greaves; heroes with hearts of oxhide, seven layers thick.
AESCHYLUS […] Schoolboys have a master to teach them, adults have poets. We have a duty to see that what we teach them is right and proper.
AESCHYLUS Look, you fool, noble themes and sentiments need to be couched in suitably dignified language. If your characters are demigods, they should sound like demigods – what’s more, they should dress like them. I set an example in this respect, which you totally perverted.
EURIPIDES How?
AESCHYLUS By dressing your kings in rags so that they appear as objects of pity.
EURIPIDES What harm is there in that?
AESCHYLUS Well, these days you can’t get the wealthy to pay their ship levy. They dress up in rags and claim exemption on the grounds of poverty.
AESCHYLUS And look how you’ve encouraged people to babble. The wrestling schools are empty. And where have all the young men gone? Off to these notorious establishments where they practise the art of debating – and that’s not all they practise either! These days even the sailors argue with their officers; in my day the only words they knew were ‘slops’ and ‘heave-ho’!
EURIPIDES [after some thought]
I loathe a citizen who acts so fast
To harm his country and yet helps her last,
Who’s deft at managing his own success,
But useless when the city’s in a mess.
AESCHYLUS
It is not very wise for city states
To rear a lion cub within their gates;
But if they do so, they will find it pays
To tolerate its own peculiar ways.
DIONYSUS I’ll judge between you on this score alone: I shall select the man my soul desires.
CHORUS
[…]
So it’s not smart to sit and chat
With Socrates, tossing aside
Artistic merit, shedding all
That’s best of the tragedian’s art.
To fritter away all one’s time
On quibbling and pretentious talk,
And other such inane pursuits,
Is truly the mark of a fool.
CHORUS
[…]
To the city’s counsels may he wisdom lend;
Then of war and suffering shall there be an end.
