The scene shows the house of HERACLES in the background. There enter two travellers: DIONYSUS on foot, in his customary yellow robe and buskins but also with the club and lion's skin of Heracles, and his servant XANTHIAS on a donkey, carrying the luggage on a pole over his shoulder.

XANTHIAS

Shall I crack any of those old jokes, master,

At which the audience never fail to laugh?

DIONYSUS

Aye, what you will, except "I'm getting crushed":

Fight shy of that: I'm sick of that already.

XANTHIAS

Nothing else smart?

DIONYSUS

Aye, save "my shoulder's aching."

XANTHIAS

Come now, that comical joke?

DIONYSUS

With all my heart.

Only be careful not to shift your pole,

And-

XANTHIAS

What?

DIONYSUS

And vow that you've a belly-ache.

XANTHIAS

May I not say I'm overburdened so

That if none ease me, I must ease myself?

DIONYSUS

For mercy's sake, not till I'm going to vomit.

XANTHIAS

What! must I bear these burdens, and not make

One of the jokes Ameipsias and Lycis

And Phrynichus, in every play they write,

Put in the mouths of their burden-bearers?

DIONYSUS

Don't make them; no! I tell you when I see

Their plays, and hear those jokes, I come away

More than a twelvemonth older than I went.

XANTHIAS

O thrice unlucky neck of mine, which now

Is getting crushed, yet must not crack its joke!

DIONYSUS

Now is not this fine pampered insolence

When I myself, Dionysus, son of-Pipkin,

Toil on afoot, and let this fellow ride,

Taking no trouble, and no burden bearing?

XANTHIAS

What, don't I bear?

DIONYSUS

How can you when you're riding?

XANTHIAS

Why, I bear these.

DIONYSUS

How?

XANTHIAS

Most unwillingly.

The Frogs is a comedy written by the Ancient Greek playwright Aristophanes. It was performed at the Lenaia, one of the Festivals of Dionysus in Athens, in 405 BC, and received first place.

Aristophanes (c. 446 BC – c. 386 BC), son of Philippus, of the deme Cydathenaus, was a comic playwright of ancient Athens. Eleven of his thirty plays survive virtually complete. These, together with fragments of some of his other plays, provide the only real examples of a genre of comic drama known as Old Comedy, and they are used to define the genre Also known as the Father of Comedy and the Prince of Ancient Comedy, Aristophanes has been said to recreate the life of ancient Athens more convincingly than any other author. His powers of ridicule were feared and acknowledged by influential contemporaries; Plato singled out Aristophanes' playThe Clouds as slander that contributed to the trial and subsequent condemning to death of Socrates although other satirical playwrights had also caricatured the philosopher. His second play, The Babylonians (now lost), was denounced by the demagogue Cleon as a slander against the Athenian polis. It is possible that the case was argued in court but details of the trial are not recorded and Aristophanes caricatured Cleon mercilessly in his subsequent plays, especially The Knights, the first of many plays that he directed himself. "In my opinion," he says through the Chorus in that play, "the author-director of comedies has the hardest job of all."