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?

SPEUSIPPUS.