Racine: Phaedra

THE KNIGHTS 197
Epirrhema.*
To revile the vile, has ever been accounted just and right,
The business of the comic bard, his proper office, his
delight.
On the villainous and base, the lashes of invective fall
While the virtuous and the good are never touched or
harmed at all.
Thus, without oflfence, to mark a profligate and wicked
brother,
For the sake of explanation, I proceed to name another
One is wicked and obscure, the brother unimpeached and
glorious,
Eminent for taste and art, a person famous and notorious.
Arignotus—when I name him, you discern at once, with
ease.
The viler and obscurer name, the person meant—Ariph-
rades.
If he were a rascal only we should let the wretch alone.
He's a rascal, and he knows it, and desires it to be
known.
Still we should not have consented to lampoon him into
vogue.
As an ordinary rascal, or a villain, or a rogue
But the wretch is grown inventive, eager to descend and
try
Undiscovered, unattempted depths of filth and infamy
With his nastiness and lewdness, going on from bad to
worse.
With his verses and his music, and his friend Oionychus.
Jolly friends and mates of mine, when with me you
quench your thirst.
Spit before you taste the wine—spit upon the fellow first
Meditating on my bed,
Strange perplexities are bred
In my weary, restless head.
I contemplate and discuss
•An attempt is here made to express crs is a piece of dry irony. In other
what the Scholiast points out; namely, respects the original is hardly capable
that the contrast between the two broth- of translation.