The Frogs

Dionysus to the underworld, dressed as Heracles, to fetch a tragedian who might save the city. Aristophanes’ Frogs is a croaking chorus, a poetry contest, and Athens laughing at its own taste. Comedy as civic medicine. Xanthias as the saner slave; Aeschylus and Euripides weighing lines like cheese. The frogs croak ‘brekekekex’. Under the slapstick, a city asking which poet it deserves. Brekekekex: two dead tragedians weighed like cheese for a city that needs a poet.