MUSIC. ’Tis mine to speak, thy part to hear, And therefore lend a willing ear; Much have I suffered, long opprest By Menalippides, that beast; He haled me from Parnassus’ springs, And plagued me with a dozen strings. His rage howe’er sufficed not yet, To make my miseries complete. Cinesias, that cursed Attic, A mere poetical pragmatic, Such horrid strophes in mangled verse Made the unharmonious stage rehearse, That I, tormented with the pains Of cruel dithyrambic strains, Distorted lay, that you would swear The right side now the left side were. Nor did my miseries end here; For Phrynis with his whirlwind brains, Wringing and racking all my veins, Ruined me quite, while nine small wires With harmonies twice six he tires. Yet might not he so much be blamed, From all his errors soon reclaimed; But then Timotheus with his freaks Furrowed my face, and ploughed my cheeks. JUSTICE. Say which of them so vile could be? MUSIC. Milesian Pyrrhias, that was he, Whose fury tortured me much more Than all that I have named before; Where’er I walk the streets alone, If met by him, the angry clown, With his twelve cat-guts strongly bound, He leaves me helpless on the ground.[64] Aristophanes the comic poet, making mention of Philoxenus, complains of his introducing lyric verses among the cyclic choruses, where he brings in Music thus speaking:— He filled me with discordant measures airy, Wicked Hyperbolaei and Niglari; And to uphold the follies of his play, Like a lank radish bowed me every way. Other comedians have since set forth the absurdity of those who have been slicers and manglers of music.