Mark your calendar!
The Frogs
CHARON. Now stretch your arms full length before you.
DIONYSUS. So?
CHAR. Come, don’t keep fooling; plant your feet, and now
Pull with a will.
DIO. Why, how am I to pull? I’m not an oarsman, seaman,
Salaminian. I can’t!
CHAR. You can. Just dip your oar in once, You’ll hear the loveliest timing songs.
DIO. What from?
CHAR. Frog-swans, most wonderful.
DIO. Then give the word.
CHAR. Heave ahoy! heave ahoy!
FROGS. Brekekekex, ko-ax, ko-ax! Brekekekex, ko-ax, ko-ax!
We children of the fountain and the lake,
Let us wake
Our full choir-shout, as the flutes are ringing out,
Our symphony of clear-voiced song.
The song we used to love, in the
Marshland up above, In praise of
Dionysus to produce,
Of Nysaean Dionysus, son of Zeus,
When the revel-tipsy throng, all crapulous and gay,
To our precinct reeled along on the holy Pitcher day.
Brekekekex, ko-ax, ko-ax.
DIO. O, dear! O, dear! now I declare I’ve got a bump upon my rump.
FR. Brekekekex, ko-ax, ko-ax.
— Aristophanes (c.448 B.C.–c.388 B.C.). “The Frogs” in The Harvard Classics
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