“Ægyptus, as the far-spread story tells, With fifty sons in voyage o’er the deep Landing at Argos....” _Æsch._: (interrupting) ... “lost his flask of oil”. Several other absurd instances follow. This celebrated jest means (i) that Euripides constructs the early sentences of his prologue in such a way that a subordinate clause (usually containing a participle) leads up to a short main clause at the end of the sentence; (ii) that his prologues descend to trivial details; (iii) that the _cæsura_ occurs always in the third foot; (iv) that he is viciously addicted to resolved feet. The tragedian can be defended from these charges, such as they are, but the idea at the back of Aristophanes’ mind is true, namely, that these prologues are often dull performances. Probably the poet did not intend much more. He wishes to put his hearers _au fait_ with the precise legend and the precise point with which he is concerned;[837] as is often said, these passages take the place of a modern play-bill. Later in the _Frogs_ Dionysus produces a huge pair of scales; each is to utter a line into his scale-pan, and the heavier line wins. Euripides declaims into his pan the opening line of the _Medea_, εἴθ’ ὤφελ’ Ἀργοῦς μὴ διαπτάσθαι σκάφος, and his rival Σπερχειὲ ποταμὲ βουνομοί τ’ ἐπιστροφαί. Dionysus absurdly explains that the latter wins because he has put in water like a fraudulent woollen-merchant, while Euripides has offered a “word with wings”. Underlying this nonsense is the truth that the Æschylean line is ponderous and slow, that of Euripides light and rapid; it is like contrasting Marlowe and Fletcher. The difference is not between good and bad, but between old and new. Æschylus’ iambic style is fitted most admirably for his purpose. But Euripides has not the same purpose—that is all. It is one of his most remarkable innovations that he practically invented the prose-drama. A very great deal of his “verse” is simply prose which can be scanned. To compare such a passage[838] as: ἥξει γὰρ αὐτὸς σὴν δάμαρτα καὶ τέκνα, ἕλξων φονεύσων κἄμ’ ἐπισφάξων ἄναξ· μένοντι δ’ αὐτοῦ πάντα σοὶ γενήσεται, τῇ τ’ ἀσφαλείᾳ κερδανεῖς· πόλιν δὲ σὴν μὴ πρὶν ταράξῃς πρὶν τόδ’ εὖ θέσθαι, τέκνον, or a hundred others, with the beacon-speech in _Agamemnon_ or Athena’s charge to the Areopagite court, is to ignore the whole point of a literary revolution. Who would set a page of Hedda Gabler’s conversation against an extract from _Macbeth_, and affirm that Ibsen could not write dialogue?