Aristophanes
The Clouds
423 BC
Translation by Ian Johnston
Historical Note
The Clouds was first produced in the drama festival in Athens—the City Dionysia—in 423 BC, where it placed third. Subsequently the play was revised, but the revisions were never completed. The text which survives is the revised version, which was apparently not performed in Aristophanes’ time but which circulated in manuscript form. This revised version does contain some anomalies which have not been fully sorted out (e.g., the treatment of Cleon, who died between the original text and the revisions). At the time of the first production, the Athenians had been at war with the Spartans, off and on, for a number of years.
Dramatis Personae
STREPSIADES:
a middle-aged Athenian
PHEIDIPPIDES: a young Athenian, son of Strepsiades
XANTHIAS: a slave serving Strepsiades
STUDENT: one of Socrates’ pupils in the Thinkery
SOCRATES: chief teacher in the Thinkery
CHORUS OF CLOUDS
THE BETTER ARGUMENT: an older man
THE WORSE ARGUMENT: a young man
PASIAS: one of Strepsiades’ creditors
WITNESS: a friend of Pasias
AMYNIAS: one of Strepsiades’ creditors
STUDENTS OF SOCRATES
[Scene:
In the centre of the stage area is a house with a door to Socrates’
educational establishment, the Thinkery.
And then there’s him—
this fine young man, who never once
wakes up,
but farts the night away, all snug in
bed,
wrapped up in five wool coverlets. Ah
well,
10 [10]
I guess I should snuggle down and
snore away.
[Strepsiades lies down again and tries to sleep. Pheidippides farts again. Strepsiades finally gives up trying to sleep]
STREPSIADES:
I can’t sleep. I’m just too miserable,
what with being eaten up by all this
debt—
thanks to this son of mine, his
expenses,
his racing stables. He keeps his hair
long
and rides his horses—he’s
obsessed with it—
his chariot and pair. He dreams of
horses.*
And I’m dead when I see the
month go by—
with the moon’s cycle now at twenty
days,
as interest payments keep on piling
up.*
20
[Calling to a slave]
Hey, boy! Light the lamp. Bring me my accounts.
[Enter the slave Xanthias with light and tablets]
Let me take these and check my creditors.
How many are there? And then the
interest—
[20]
I’ll have to work that out. Let me
see now . . .
What do I owe? “Twelve minai to
Pasias?”
Twelve minai to Pasias! What’s that
for?
Oh yes, I know—that’s
when I bought that horse,
the pedigree nag. What a fool I am!
I’d sooner have a stone knock out
my eye.*
PHEIDIPPIDES:
[talking in his sleep]
Philon, that’s unfair! Drive your
chariot
straight.
30
STREPSIADES:
That there’s my problem—that’s
what’s killing me.
Even fast asleep he dreams of horses!
PHEIDIPPIDES:
[in his sleep] In this war-chariot race how many times
do we drive round the track?
STREPSIADES:
You’re driving me,
your father, too far round the bend.
Let’s see,
after Pasias, what’s the next debt
I
owe?
[30]
“Three minai to Amynias.” For
what?
A small chariot board and pair of
wheels?
PHEIDIPPIDES: [in his sleep] Let the horse have a roll. Then take him home.
STREPSIADES:
You, my lad, have been rolling in my
cash.
40
Now I’ve lost in court, and other
creditors
are going to take out liens on all my
stuff
to get their interest.
PHEIDIPPIDES:
[waking up]
What’s the matter, dad?
You’ve been grumbling and tossing
around there
all night long.
STREPSIADES:
I keep getting bitten—
some bum bailiff in the bedding.
PHEIDIPPIDES:
Ease off, dad.
Let me get some sleep.
STREPSIADES:
All right, keep sleeping.
Just bear in mind that one fine day
these
debts
[40]
will all be your concern.
[Pheidippides rolls over and goes back to sleep]
Damn it, anyway.
I wish that matchmaker had died in
pain—
50
the one who hooked me and your mother
up.
I’d had a lovely time up to that
point,
a crude, uncomplicated, country life,
lying around just as I pleased, with
honey bees,
and sheep and olives, too. Then I
married—
the niece of Megacles—who
was the son
of Megacles. I was a country man,
and she came from the town—a
real snob,
extravagant, just like Coesyra.*
When I married her and we both
went to
bed,
60
I stunk of fresh wine, drying figs,
sheep’s wool—
[50]
an abundance of good things. As for
her,
she smelled of perfume, saffron, long
kisses,
greed, extravagance, lots and lots of
sex.*
Now, I’m not saying she was a
lazy bones.
She used to weave, but used up too
much wool.
To make a point I’d show this cloak
to her
and say, “Woman, your weaving’s
far too thick.”*
[The lamp goes out]
XANTHIAS: We’ve got no oil left in the lamp.
STREPSIADES:
Damn it!
Why’d you light such a thirsty
lamp? Come
here.
70
I need to thump you.
XANTHIAS: Why should you hit me?
STREPSIADES: Because you stuck too thick a wick inside.
[The slave ignores Strepsiades and walks off into the house]
After that, when this son was born to us—
[60]
I’m talking about me and my good
wife—
we argued over what his name should
be.
She was keen to add -hippos to
his name,
like Xanthippos, Callipedes, or
Chaerippos.*
Me, I wanted the name
Pheidonides,
his grandpa's name. Well, we fought
about it,
and then, after a while, at last
agreed.
80
And so we called the boy
Pheidippides.
She used to cradle the young lad and
say,
”When you’re grown up, you’ll
drive your chariot
to the Acropolis, like Megacles,
in a full-length robe . . .” I’d
say, “No—
[70]
you’ll drive your goat herd back
from Phelleus,
like your father, dressed in leather
hides . . .”
He never listened to a thing I said.
And now he’s making my finances
sick—
a racing fever. But I’ve spent all
night
90
thinking of a way to deal with this
whole mess,
and I’ve found one route, something
really good—
it could work wonders. If I could
succeed,
if I could convince him, I’d be all
right.
Well, first I’d better wake him up.
But how?
What would be the gentlest way to do
it?
[Strepsiades leans over and gently nudges Pheidippides]
Pheidippides . . . my little Pheidippides . . .
PHEIDIPPIDES: [very sleepily] What is it, father? [80]
STREPSIADES:
Give me a kiss—
then give me your right hand.
[Pheidippides sits up, leans over, and does what his father has asked]
PHEIDIPPIDES:
All right. There.
What’s going on?
STREPSIADES: Tell me this—do you love me? 100
PHEIDIPPIDES: Yes, I do, by Poseidon, lord of horses.
STREPSIADES:
Don’t give me that lord of horses stuff—
he’s the god who’s causing all my
troubles.
But now, my son, if you really love
me,
with your whole heart, then follow
what I say.
PHEIDIPPIDES: What do you want to tell me I should do?
STREPSIADES:
Change your life style as quickly as you can,
then go and learn the stuff I
recommend.
PHEIDIPPIDES: So tell me—what are you asking me?
STREPSIADES: You’ll do just what I say?
PHEIDIPPIDES:
Yes, I’ll do it—
110 [90]
I swear by Dionysus.
STREPSIADES:
All right then.
Look over there—you
see that little door,
there on that little house?
PHEIDIPPIDES:
Yes, I see it.
What are you really on about, father?
STREPSIADES:
That’s the Thinkery—for
clever minds.
In there live men who argue and
persuade.
They say that heaven’s an oven
damper—
it’s all around us—we’re
the charcoal.
If someone gives them cash, they’ll
teach him
how to win an argument on any
cause,
120
just or unjust.
PHEIDIPPIDES: Who are these men?
STREPSIADES:
I’m not
sure
[100]
just what they call themselves, but
they’re good men,
fine, deep-thinking intellectual
types.
PHEIDIPPIDES:
Nonsense! They’re a worthless bunch. I know them—
you’re talking about pale-faced
charlatans,
who haven’t any shoes, like those
rascals
Socrates and Chaerephon.*
STREPSIADES:
Shush, be quiet.
Don’t prattle on such childish
rubbish.
If you care about your father’s
daily food,
give up racing horses and, for my
sake,
130
join their company.
PHEIDIPPIDES:
By Dionysus, no!
Not even if you give me as a gift
pheasants raised by Leogoras.*
STREPSIADES:
Come on, son—
[110]
you’re the dearest person in the
world to me.
I’m begging you. Go there and learn
something.
PHEIDIPPIDES: What is it you want me to learn?
STREPSIADES:
They say
that those men have two kinds of
arguments—
the Better, whatever that may mean,
and the Worse. Now, of these two
arguments,
the Worse can make an unjust case and
win.
140
So if, for me, you’ll learn to
speak like this,
to make an unjust argument, well
then,
all those debts I now owe because of
you
I wouldn’t have to pay—no
need to give
an obol’s worth to anyone.*
PHEIDIPPIDES:
No way.
I can’t do that. With no colour in
my cheeks
I wouldn’t dare to face those rich
young Knights.*
[120]
STREPSIADES:
Then, by Demeter, you won’t be eating
any of my food—not
you, not your yoke horse,
nor your branded thoroughbred. To
hell with you—
150
I’ll toss you right out of this
house.*
PHEIDIPPIDES:
All right—
but Uncle Megacles won’t let me
live
without my horses. I’m going in the
house.
I don’t really care what you're
going to do.
[Pheidippides stands up and goes inside the house. Strepsiades gets out of bed]
STREPSIADES:
Well, I’ll not take this set back lying down.
I’ll pray to the gods and then go
there myself—
I’ll get myself taught in that
Thinkery.
Still, I’m old and slow—my
memory’s shot.
How’m I going to learn
hair-splitting
arguments,
[130]
all that fancy stuff? But I have to
go.
160
Why do I keep hanging back like this?
I should be knocking on the door.
[Strepsiades marches up to the door of the Thinkery and knocks]
Hey, boy . . . little boy.
STUDENT [from inside] Go to Hell!
[The door opens and the student appears]
Who’s been knocking on the door?
STREPSIADES:
I’m Strepsiades, the son of Pheidon,
from Cicynna.
STUDENT:
By god, what a stupid man,
to kick the door so hard. You just
don’t think.
You made a newly found idea miscarry!
STREPSIADES:
I’m sorry. But I live in the country,
far away from here. Tell me what’s
happened.
What’s miscarried?
STUDENT:
It’s not right to mention
it,
170 [140]
except to students.
STREPSIADES:
You needn’t be concerned—
you can tell me. I’ve come here as
a student,
to study at the Thinkery.
STUDENT:
I’ll tell you, then.
But you have to think of these as
secrets,
our holy mysteries. A while ago,
a flea bit Chaerephon right on the
eye brow,
and then jumped onto Socrates’
head.
So Socrates then questioned
Chaerephon
about how many lengths of its own
feet
a flea could jump.
STREPSIADES: How’d he measure that? 180
STUDENT:
Most ingeniously. He melted down some wax,
then took the flea and dipped two
feet in
it.
[150]
Once that cooled, the flea had
Persian slippers.
He took those off and measured out
the space.
STREPSIADES: By Lord Zeus, what intellectual brilliance!
STUDENT:
Would you like to hear more of Socrates,
another one of his ideas? What do you
say?
STREPSIADES: Which one? Tell me . . .
[The student pretends to be reluctant
I’m begging you.
STUDENT:
All right.
Chaerephon of Sphettus once asked
Socrates
whether, in his opinion, a gnat
buzzed
190
through its mouth or through its anal
sphincter.
STREPSIADES: What did Socrates say about the gnat?
STUDENT:
He said that the gnat’s intestinal
tract
[160]
was narrow—therefore
air passing through it,
because of the constriction, was
pushed with force
towards the rear. So then that
orifice,
being a hollow space beside a narrow
tube,
transmits the noise caused by the
force of air.
STREPSIADES:
So a gnat’s arse hole is a giant trumpet!
O triply blessed man who could do
this,
200
anatomize the anus of a gnat!
A man who knows a gnat’s guts
inside out
would have no trouble winning law
suits.
STUDENT:
Just recently he lost a great idea—
a lizard stole it!
STREPSIADES: How’d that happen? Tell me. [170]
STUDENT:
He was studying movements of the moon—
its trajectory and revolutions.
One night, as he was gazing up, open
mouthed,
staring skyward, a lizard on the roof
relieved itself on him.
STREPSIADES:
A lizard crapped on
Socrates!
210
That’s good!
STUDENT: Then, last night we had no dinner.
STREPSIADES:
Well, well. What did Socrates come up with,
to get you all some food to eat?
STUDENT:
He spread some ashes thinly on the table,
then seized a spit, went to the
wrestling school,
picked up a queer, and robbed him of
his cloak,
then sold the cloak to purchase
dinner.*
STREPSIADES:
And we still admire Thales after that?*
[180]
Come on, now, open up the Thinkery—
let me see Socrates without
delay.
220
I’m dying to learn. So open up the
door.
[The doors of the Thinkery slide open to reveal Socrates’ students studying on a porch (not inside a room). They are in variously absurd positions and are all very thin and pale]
By Hercules, who are all these creatures!
What country are they from?
STUDENT:
You look surprised.
What do they look like to you?
STREPSIADES:
Like prisoners—
those Spartan ones from Pylos.*
But tell me—
Why do these ones keep staring at the earth?
STUDENT: They’re searching out what lies beneath the ground.
STREPSIADES:
Ah, they’re looking for some bulbs. Well now,
you don’t need to worry any longer,
not about that. I know where bulbs
are
found,
230 [190]
lovely big ones, too. What about
them?
What are they doing like that, all
doubled up?
STUDENT: They’re sounding out the depths of Tartarus.
STREPSIADES: Why are their arse holes gazing up to heaven?
STUDENT: Directed studies in astronomy.
[The Student addresses the other students in the room]
Go inside. We don’t want Socrates
to find you all in here.
STREPSIADES:
Not yet, not yet.
Let them stay like this, so I can
tell them
what my little problem is.
STUDENT:
It’s not allowed.
They can’t spend too much time
outside,
240
not in the open air.
[The students get up from their studying positions and disappear into the interior of the Thinkery. Strepsiades starts inspecting the equipment on the walls and on the tables]
STREPSIADES:
My goodness,
what is this thing? Explain it to
me.
[200]
STUDENT: That there’s astronomy.
STREPSIADES: And what’s this?
STUDENT: That’s geometry.
STREPSIADES: What use is that?
STUDENT: It’s used to measure land.
STREPSIADES:
You mean those lands
handed out by lottery.*
STUDENT:
Not just that—
it’s for land in general.
STREPSIADES:
A fine idea—
useful . . . democratic, too.
STUDENT:
Look over here—
here’s a map of the entire world.
See?
Right there, that’s Athens.
STREPSIADES:
What do you
mean?
250
I don’t believe you. There are no
jury men—
I don’t see them sitting on their
benches.
STUDENT: No, no—this space is really Attica.*
STREPSIADES:
Where are the citizens of
Cicynna,
[210]
the people in my deme?*
STUDENT:
They’re right here.
This is Euboea, as you can see,
beside us, really stretched a long
way out.
STREPSIADES:
I know—we
pulled it apart, with Pericles.*
Where abouts is Sparta?
STUDENT: Where is it? Here.
STREPSIADES:
It’s close to us. You must rethink the place—
260
shift it—put
it far away from us.
STUDENT: Can’t do that.
STREPSIADES: [threatening] Do it, by god, or I’ll make you cry!
[Strepsiades notices Socrates descending from above in a basket suspended from a rope]
Hey, who’s the man in the basket—up there?
STUDENT: The man himself.
STREPSIADES: Who’s that?
STUDENT: Socrates.
STREPSIADES:
Socrates! Hey, call out to him for me—
[220]
make it loud.
STUDENT:
You’ll have to call to him yourself.
I’m too busy now.
[The Student exits into the interior of the house]
STREPSIADES:
Oh, Socrates . . .
my dear little Socrates . . . hello .
. .
SOCRATES: Why call on me, you creature of a day?
STREPSIADES: Well, first of all, tell me what you’re doing. 270
SOCRATES: I tread the air, as I contemplate the sun.
STREPSIADES:
You’re looking down upon the gods up there,
in that basket? Why not do it from
the ground,
if that’s what you’re doing?
SOCRATES:
Impossible!
I’d never come up with a single
thing
about celestial phenomena,
if I did not suspend my mind up high,
to mix my subtle thoughts with what’s
like them—
[230]
the air. If I turned my mind to lofty
things,
but stayed there on the ground, I’d
never
make
280
the least discovery. For the earth,
you see,
draws moist thoughts down by force
into itself—
the same process takes place with
water cress.
STREPSIADES:
What are you talking about? Does the mind
draw moisture into water cress? Come
down,
my dear little Socrates, down here to
me,
so you can teach me what I’ve come
to learn.
[Socrates’ basket slowly descends]
SOCRATES: Why have you come?
STREPSIADES:
I want to learn to argue.
I’m being pillaged—ruined
by
interest
[240]
and by creditors I can’t pay off—
290
they’re slapping liens on all my
property.
SOCRATES:
How come you got in such a pile of debt
without your knowledge?
STREPSIADES:
I’ve been ravaged
by disease—I’m
horse sick. It’s draining me
in the most dreadful way. But please
teach me
one of your two styles of arguing,
the one
which never has to discharge any
debt.
Whatever payment you want me to make,
I promise you I’ll pay—by
all the gods.
SOCRATES:
What gods do you intend to swear
by?
300
To start with, the gods hold no
currency with us.
STREPSIADES:
Then, what currency do you use to swear?
Is it iron coin, like in Byzantium?
SOCRATES:
Do you want to know the truth of things
divine,
[250]
the way they really are?
STREPSIADES:
Yes, by god, I do,
if that’s possible.
SOCRATES:
And to commune and talk
with our own deities the Clouds?
STREPSIADES: Yes, I do.
SOCRATES: Then sit down on the sacred couch.
STREPSIADES:
All right.
I’m sitting down.
SOCRATES: Take this wreath.
STREPSIADES:
Why a wreath?
Oh dear, Socrates, don’t offer me
up
310
in sacrifice, like Athamas.*
SOCRATES:
No, no.
We go through all this for everyone—
it’s their initiation.
STREPSIADES: What do I get?
SOCRATES:
You’ll learn to be a clever
talker,
[260]
to rattle off a speech, to strain
your words
like flour. Just keep still.
[Socrates sprinkles flour all over Strepsiades]
STREPSIADES:
By god, that’s no lie!
I’ll turn into flour if you keep
sprinkling me.
SOCRATES: Old man, be quiet. Listen to the prayer.
[Socrates shuts his eyes to recite his prayer]
O Sovereign Lord, O Boundless Air,
who keeps the earth suspended here in
space,
320
O Bright Sky, O Sacred Goddesses—
the Thunder-bearing Clouds—arise,
you holy ladies, issue forth on high,
before the man who holds you in his
mind.
STREPSIADES:
[lifting his cloak to cover his head]
Not yet, not yet. Not ‘til I wrap
this cloak
like this so I don’t get soaked.
What bad luck,
to leave my home without a cap on.
SOCRATES:
[ignoring Strepsiades]
Come now, you highly honoured Clouds,
come—
manifest yourselves to this man here—
whether you now sit atop
Olympus,
330 [270]
on those sacred snow-bound mountain
peaks,
or form the holy choruses with nymphs
in gardens of their father Ocean,
or gather up the waters of the Nile
in golden flagons at the river’s
mouths,
or dwell beside the marsh of Maeotis
or snowy rocks of Mimas—hear
my call,
accept my sacrifice, and then rejoice
in this holy offering I make.
CHORUS [heard
offstage]
Everlasting
Clouds—
340
let us arise,
let us reveal
our moist and
natural radiance—
moving from
the roaring deep
of father
Ocean to the tops
of tree-lined
mountain
peaks,
[280]
where we see
from far away
the lofty
heights, the sacred earth,
whose fruits
we feed with water,
the murmuring
of sacred rivers,
the roaring
of the deep-resounding
sea.
350
For the
unwearied eye of heaven
blazes forth
its glittering beams.
Shake off
this misty shapelessness
from our
immortal form and gaze upon
the earth
with our far-reaching
eyes.
[290]
SOCRATES:
Oh you magnificent and holy Clouds,
you’ve clearly heard my call.
[To Strepsiades]
Did you hear that voice
intermingled with the awesome growl
of thunder?
STREPSIADES:
Oh you most honoured sacred goddesses,
in answer to your thunder call I’d
like to fart—
360
it’s made me so afraid—if
that’s all right . . .
[Strepsiades pull down his pants and farts loudly in the direction of the offstage Chorus]
Oh, oh, whether right nor not, I need to shit.
SOCRATES:
Stop being so idiotic, acting like
a stupid damn comedian. Keep quiet.
A great host of deities is coming
here—
they’re going to sing.
CHORUS: [still
offstage]
Oh you
maidens bringing rain—
let’s move
on to that brilliant
place,
[300]
to gaze upon
the land of Pallas,
where such
noble men
inhabit
370
Cecrops’
lovely native home,*
where
they hold those sacred rites
no one may
speak about,
where the
temple of the mysteries
is opened up
in holy festivals,*
with
gifts for deities in heaven,
what lofty
temples, holy statues,
most sacred
supplication to the gods,
with garlands
for each holy sacrifice,
and festivals
of every
kind
380 [310]
in every
season of the year,
including,
when the spring arrives,
that joyful
Dionysian time,
with rousing
choruses of song,
resounding
music of the pipes.
STREPSIADES:
By god, Socrates, tell me, I beg you,
who these women are who sing so
solemnly.
Are they some special kind of
heroines?
SOCRATES:
No—they’re
heavenly Clouds, great goddesses
for lazy men—from
them we get our
thoughts,
390
our powers of speech, our
comprehension,
our gift for fantasy and endless
talk,
our power to strike responsive chords
in speech
and then rebut opponents’
arguments.
STREPSIADES:
Ah, that must be why, as I heard their voice,
my soul took wing, and now I’m
really keen
to babble on of trivialities,
to argue smoke and mirrors, to
deflate
[320]
opinions with a small opinion of my
own,
to answer someone’s reasoned
argument
400
with my own counter-argument. So now,
I’d love to see them here in front
of me,
if that’s possible.
SOCRATES:
Just look over there—
towards Mount Parnes. I see them
coming,
slowly moving over here.*
STREPSIADES: Where? Point them out.
SOCRATES:
They’re coming down here through the valleys—
a whole crowd of them—there
in the thickets,
right beside you.
STREPSIADES: This is weird. I don’t see them.
SOCRATES:
[pointing into the wings of the theatre]
There—in
the entrance way.
STREPSIADES:
Ah, now I see—
but I can barely make them out.
[The Clouds enter from the wings]
SOCRATES:
There—
410
surely you can see them now, unless
your eyes
are swollen up like pumpkins.
STREPSIADES: I
see them.
My god, what worthy noble presences!
They’re taking over the entire
space.
SOCRATES:
You weren’t aware that they are goddesses?
You had no faith in them?
STREPSIADES:
I’d no idea.
I thought clouds were mist and dew
and
vapour.
[330]
SOCRATES:
You didn’t realize these goddesses
support a multitude of charlatans—
prophetic seers from Thurium,
quacks
420
who specialize in books on medicine,
lazy long-haired types with onyx
signet rings,
poets who produce the twisted choral
music
for dithyrambic songs, those with
airy minds—
all such men so active doing nothing
the Clouds support, since in their
poetry
these people celebrate the Clouds.
STREPSIADES:
Ah ha, so that’s why they poeticize
”the whirling radiance of watery
clouds
as they advance so ominously,”
430
”waving hairs of hundred-headed
Typho,”*
with “roaring tempests,” and
then “liquid breeze,”
or ”crook-taloned, sky-floating
birds of prey,”
”showers of rain from dewy clouds”—and
then,
as a reward for this, they stuff
themselves
on slices carved from some huge tasty
fish
or from a thrush.*
SOCRATES:
Yes, thanks to these
Clouds.
[340]
Is that not truly just?
STREPSIADES:
All right, tell me this—
if they’re really clouds, what’s
happened to them?
They look just like mortal human
women.
440
The clouds up there are not the least
like that.
SOCRATES: What are they like?
STREPSIADES:
I don’t know exactly.
They look like wool once it’s been
pulled apart—
not like women, by god, not in the
least.
These ones here have noses.
SOCRATES:
Let me ask you something.
Will you answer me?
STREPSIADES:
Ask me what you want.
Fire away.
SOCRATES:
Have you ever gazed up there
and seen a cloud shaped like a
centaur,
or a leopard, wolf, or bull?
STREPSIADES:
Yes, I have.
So what?
SOCRATES:
They become anything they
want.
450
So if they see some hairy savage
type,
one of those really wild and wooly
men,
like Xenophantes’ son, they mock
his moods,
transforming their appearance into
centaurs.*
[350]
STREPSIADES:
What if they glimpse a thief of public funds,
like Simon? What do they do then?*
SOCRATES:
They expose
just what he’s truly like—they
change at once,
transform themselves to wolves.
STREPSIADES:
Ah ha, I see.
So that’s why yesterday they
changed to deer.
They must have caught sight of
Cleonymos—
460
the man who threw away his battle
shield—
they knew he was fearful coward.*
SOCRATES:
And now it’s clear they’ve seen Cleisthenes—
that’s why, as you can see, they’ve
changed to women.*
STREPSIADES:
[to the Chorus of Clouds]
All hail to you, lady goddesses.
And now, if you have ever spoken out
to other men, let me hear your voice,
you queenly powers.
CHORUS
LEADER: Greetings to you, old man born long ago,
hunter in love with arts of argument—
470
you, too, high priest of subtlest
nonsense,
tell us what you want. Of all the
experts
[360]
in celestial matters at the present
time,
we take note of no one else but you—
and Prodicus*—because
he’s sharp and wise,
while you go swaggering along the
street,
in bare feet, shifting both eyes back
and forth.
You keep moving on through many
troubles,
looking proud of your relationship
with us.
STREPSIADES:
By the Earth, what voices these Clouds have—
480
so holy, reverent, and marvelous!
SOCRATES:
Well, they’re the only deities we have—
the rest are just so much hocus
pocus.
STREPSIADES:
Hang on—by
the Earth, isn’t Zeus a god,
the one up there on Mount Olympus?
SOCRATES:
What sort of god is Zeus? Why spout such rubbish?
There’s no such being as Zeus.
STREPSIADES:
What do you mean?
Then who brings on the rain? First
answer that.
SOCRATES:
Why, these women do. I’ll prove that to you
with persuasive evidence. Just tell
me—
490 [370]
where have you ever seen the rain
come down
without the Clouds being there? If
Zeus brings rain,
then he should do so when the sky is
clear,
when there are no Clouds in view.
STREPSIADES:
By Apollo, you’ve made a good point there—
it helps your argument. I used to
think
rain was really Zeus pissing through
a sieve.
Tell me who causes thunder? That
scares me.
SOCRATES: These Clouds do, as they roll around.
STREPSIADES:
But how?
Explain that, you who dares to know
it
all.
500
SOCRATES:
When they are filled with water to the brim
and then, suspended there with all
that rain,
are forced to move, they bump into
each other.
They’re so big, they burst with a
great boom.
STREPSIADES:
But what’s forcing them to move at all?
Doesn’t Zeus do that?
SOCRATES: No—that’s the aerial Vortex.*
STREPSIADES:
Vortex? Well, that’s something I didn’t
know.
[380]
So Zeus is now no more, and Vortex
rules
instead of him. But you still have
not explained
a thing about those claps of
thunder.
510
SOCRATES:
Weren’t you listening to me? I tell you,
when the Clouds are full of water and
collide,
they’re so thickly packed they make
a noise.
STREPSIADES: Come on now—who’d ever believe that stuff?
SOCRATES:
I’ll explain, using you as a test case.
Have you ever gorged yourself on stew
at the Panathenaea and later
had an upset stomach—then
suddenly
some violent movement made it rumble?*
STREPSIADES:
Yes, by Apollo! It does weird things—
520
I feel unsettled. That small bit of
stew
rumbles around and makes strange
noises,
just like thunder. At first it’s
quite quiet—
[390]
”pappax pappax”—then
it starts getting louder—
”papapappax”—and
when I take a shit,
it really thunders “papapappax”—
just like these Clouds.
SOCRATES:
So think about it—
if your small gut can make a fart
like that,
why can’t the air, which goes on
for ever,
produce tremendous thunder. Then
there’s this—
530
consider how alike these phrases
sound,
”thunder clap” and “fart and
crap.”
STREPSIADES:
All right, but then explain this to me—
Where does lightning come from, that
fiery blaze,
which, when it hits, sometimes burns
us up,
sometimes just singes us and lets us
live?
Clearly Zeus is hurling that at
perjurers.
SOCRATES:
You stupid driveling idiot, you stink
of olden times, the age of Cronos!*
If Zeus
is really striking at the
perjurers,
540
how come he’s not burned Simon down
to ash,
or else Cleonymos or Theorus?
They perjure themselves more than
anyone.
[400]
No.
Instead he strikes at his own temple
at Sunium, our Athenian headland,
and at his massive oak trees there.
Why?
What’s his plan? Oak trees can’t
be perjured.
STREPSIADES:
I don’t know. But that argument of yours
seems good. All right, then, what’s
a lightning bolt?
SOCRATES:
When a dry wind blows up into the
Clouds
550
and gets caught in there, it makes
them inflate,
like the inside of a bladder. And
then
it has to burst them all apart and
vent,
rushing out with violence brought on
by dense compression—its
force and friction
cause it to consume itself in fire.
STREPSIADES:
By god, I went through that very thing myself—
at the feast for Zeus. I was cooking
food,
a pig’s belly, for my family. I
forgot
to slit it open. It began to swell—
560
[410]
then suddenly blew up, splattering
blood
in both my eyes and burning my whole
face.
CHORUS
LEADER: Oh you who seeks from us great wisdom,
how happy you will be among
Athenians,
among the Greeks, if you have memory,
if you can think, if in that soul of
yours
you’ve got the power to persevere,
and don't get tired standing still or
walking,
nor suffer too much from the freezing
cold,
with no desire for breakfast, if you
abstain
570
from wine, from exercise, and other
foolishness,
if you believe, as all clever people
should,
the highest good is victory in
action,
in deliberation and in verbal wars.
STREPSIADES:
Well, as for a stubborn soul and a
mind
[420]
thinking in a restless bed, while my
stomach,
lean and mean, feeds on bitter herbs,
don’t worry.
I’m confident about all that—I’m
ready
to be hammered on your anvil into
shape.
SOCRATES:
So now you won’t acknowledge any
gods
580
except the ones we do—Chaos,
the Clouds,
the Tongue—just
these three?
STREPSIADES:
Absolutely—
I’d refuse to talk to any other
gods,
if I ran into them—and
I decline
to sacrifice or pour libations to
them.
I’ll not provide them any incense.
CHORUS
LEADER: Tell us then what we can do for you.
Be brave—for
if you treat us with respect,
if you admire us, and if you’re
keen
to be a clever man, you won’t go
wrong.
590
STREPSIADES:
Oh you sovereign queens,
from you I ask one really tiny favour—
to be the finest speaker in all
Greece,
[430]
within a hundred miles.
CHORUS
LEADER:
You’ll get that from us.
From now on, in time to come, no one
will win
more votes among the populace than
you.
STREPSIADES:
No speaking on important votes for me!
That’s not what I’m after. No,
no. I want
to twist all legal verdicts in my
favour,
to evade my creditors.
CHORUS
LEADER:
You’ll get
that,
600
just what you desire. For what you
want
is nothing special. So be confident—
give yourself over to our agents
here.
STREPSIADES:
I’ll do that—I’ll
place my trust in you.
Necessity is weighing me down—the
horses,
those thoroughbreds, my marriage—all
that
has worn me out. So now, this body of
mine
[440]
I’ll give to them, with no strings
attached,
to do with as they like—to
suffer blows,
go without food and drink, live like
a
pig,
610
to freeze or have my skin flayed for
a pouch—
if I can just get out of all my debt
and make men think of me as bold and
glib,
as fearless, impudent, detestable,
one who cobbles lies together, makes
up words,
a practised legal rogue, a statute
book,
a chattering fox, sly and needle
sharp,
a slippery fraud, a sticky rascal,
foul whipping boy or twisted
villain,
[450]
troublemaker, or idly prattling
fool.
620
If they can make those who run into
me
call me these names, they can do what
they want—
no questions asked. If, by Demeter,
they’re keen,
they can convert me into sausages
and serve me up to men who think deep
thoughts.
CHORUS:
Here’s a man whose mind’s now smart,
no holding
back—prepared
to start
When you have
learned all this from
me
[460]
you know your
glory will arise
among all men
to heaven’s
skies.
630
STREPSIADES: What must I undergo?
CHORUS:
For all time, you’ll live with me
a life most
people truly envy.
STREPSIADES: You mean I’ll really see that one day?
CHORUS:
Hordes will sit outside your door
wanting your
advice and more—
[470]
to talk, to
place their trust in you
for their
affairs and lawsuits, too,
things which
merit your great mind.
They’ll
leave you lots of cash
behind.
640
CHORUS
LEADER: [to Socrates]
So get started with this old man’s
lessons,
what you intend to teach him first of
all—
rouse his mind, test his intellectual
powers.
SOCRATES:
Come on then, tell me the sort of man you are—
once I know that, I can bring to bear
on you
my latest batteries with full
effect.
[480]
STREPSIADES: What’s that? By god, are you assaulting me?
SOCRATES:
No—I
want to learn some things from you.
What about your memory?
STREPSIADES:
To tell the truth
it works two ways. If someone owes me
something,
650
I remember really well. But if it’s
poor me
that owes the money, I forget a lot.
SOCRATES: Do you have any natural gift for speech?
STREPSIADES: Not for speaking—only for evading debt.
SOCRATES: So how will you be capable of learning?
STREPSIADES: Easily—that shouldn’t be your worry.
SOCRATES:
All right. When I throw out something wise
about celestial matters, you make
sure
you snatch it right
away.
[490]
STREPSIADES:
What’s that about?
Am I to eat up wisdom like a
dog?
660
SOCRATES:
[aside] This man’s an ignorant barbarian!
Old man, I fear you may need a
beating.
[to Strepsiades] Now, what
do you do if someone hits you?
STREPSIADES:
If I get hit, I wait around a while,
then find witnesses, hang around some
more,
then go to court.
SOCRATES: All right, take off your cloak.
STREPSIADES: Have I done something wrong?
SOCRATES:
No. It’s our custom
to go inside without a cloak.
STREPSIADES:
But I don’t want
to search your house for stolen
stuff.*
SOCRATES: What are you going on about? Take it off. 670
STREPSIADES:
[removing his cloak and his shoes]
So tell me this—if
I pay
attention
[500]
and put some effort into learning,
which of your students will I look
like?
SOCRATES:
In appearance there’ll be no difference
between yourself and Chaerephon.
STREPSIADES:
Oh, that’s bad.
You mean I’ll be only half alive?
SOCRATES:
Don’t talk such rubbish! Get a move on
and follow me inside. Hurry up!
STREPSIADES:
First, put a honey cake here in my
hands.
680
I’m scared of going down in there.
It’s like
going in Trophonios’ cave.*
SOCRATES:
Go inside.
Why keep hanging round this doorway?
[Socrates picks up Strepsiades’ cloak and shoes. Then Strepsiades and Socrates exit into the interior of the Thinkery]
CHORUS
LEADER: Go. And may you enjoy good
fortune,
[510]
a fit reward for all your bravery.
CHORUS:
We hope this man
thrives in his plan.
For at his stage
of great old
age
690
he’ll take a dip
in new affairs
to act the sage.
CHORUS
LEADER [stepping forward to address the audience directly]
You spectators, I’ll talk frankly
to you now,
and speak the truth, in the name of
Dionysus,
who has cared for me ever since I was
a child.
So may I win and be considered a wise
man.*
[520]
For I thought you were a discerning
audience
and this comedy the most intelligent
of all my plays. Thus, I believed it
worth my
while
700
to produce it first for you, a work
which cost me
a great deal of effort. But I left
defeated,
beaten out by vulgar men—which
I did not deserve.
I place the blame for this on you
intellectuals,
on whose behalf I went to all that
trouble.
But still I won’t ever willingly
abandon
the discriminating ones among you
all,
not since that time when my play
about two men—
one was virtuous, the other one
depraved—
was really well received by certain
people
here,
710
whom it pleases me to mention now. As
for me,
I was still unmarried, not yet fully
qualified
[530]
to produce that child. But I exposed
my offspring,
and another woman carried it away.
In your generosity you raised and
trained it.*
Since then I’ve had sworn
testimony from you
that you have faith in me. So now,
like old Electra,
this comedy has come, hoping she can
find,
somewhere in here, spectators as
intelligent.
If she sees her brother’s hair, she’ll
recognize it.*
720
Consider how my play shows natural
restraint.
First, she doesn't have stitched
leather dangling down,
with a thick red knob, to make the
children giggle.*
She hasn’t mocked bald men or
danced some drunken
reel.
[540]
There’s no old man who talks and
beats those present
with a stick to hide bad jokes. She
doesn’t rush on stage
with torches or raise the cry “Alas!”
or “Woe is me!”
No—she’s
come trusting in herself and in the script.
And I’m a poet like that. I don’t
preen myself.
I don’t seek to cheat you by
re-presenting
here
730
the same material two or three times
over.
Instead I base my art on framing new
ideas,
all different from the rest, and each
one very deft.
When Cleon was all-powerful, I went
for him.
I hit him in the gut. But once he was
destroyed,
I didn’t have the heart to kick at
him
again.
[550]
Yet once Hyperbolos let others seize
on him,
they’ve not ceased stomping on the
miserable man—
and on his mother, too.*
The first was Eupolis—
he dredged up his Maricas, a
wretched
rehash
740
of my play The Knights—he’s
such a worthless poet—
adding an aging female drunk in that
stupid dance,
a woman Phrynichos invented years
ago,
the one that ocean monster tried to
gobble up.*
Then Hermippos wrote again about
Hyperbolos,
Now all the rest are savaging the man
once more,
copying my images of eels. If anyone
laughs at those plays, I hope mine
don’t amuse
him.
[560]
But if you enjoy me and my
inventiveness,
then future ages will commend your
worthy
taste.
750
CHORUS:
For my dance I first here call
on Zeus, high-ruling king of all
among the gods—and
on Poseidon,
so great and powerful—the
one
who with his trident wildly heaves
the earth and all the brine-filled seas,
and on our famous father Sky,
the most revered, who can
supply
[570]
all things with life. And I invite
the Charioteer whose dazzling
light
760
fills this wide world so mightily
for every man and deity.
CHORUS
LEADER: The wisest in this audience should here take note—
you’ve done us wrong, and we
confront you with the blame.
We confer more benefits than any
other god
upon your city, yet we’re the only
ones
to whom you do not sacrifice or pour
libations,
though we’re the gods who keep
protecting you.
If there’s some senseless army
expedition,
[580]
then we respond by thundering or
bringing
rain.
770
And when you were selecting as your
general
that Paphlagonian tanner hated by the
gods,*
we frowned and then complained
aloud—our
thunder pealed
among the lightning bursts, the moon
moved off her course,
the sun at once pulled his wick back
inside himself,
and said if Cleon was to be your
general
then he’d give you no light.
Nonetheless, you chose him.
They say this city likes to make
disastrous choices,
but that the gods, no matter what
mistakes you make,
convert them into something better.
If you
want
780
your recent choice to turn into a
benefit,
I can tell you how—it’s
easy. Condemn the man—
[590]
that seagull Cleon—for
bribery and theft.*
Set him in the stocks, a wooden
yoke around his neck.
Then, even if you’ve made a really
big mistake,
for you things will be as they were
before your vote,
and for the city this affair will
turn out well.
CHORUS:
Phoebus Apollo, stay close by,
lord of Delos, who sits on high,
by lofty Cynthos mountain
sides;
790
and holy lady, who resides
in Ephesus, in your gold shrine,
where Lydian girls pray all the
time;
[600]
Athena, too, who guards our home,
her aegis raised above her own,
and he who holds Parnassus peaks
and shakes his torches as he leaps,
lord Dionysus, whose shouts call
amid the Delphic bacchanal.*
CHORUS
LEADER: When we were getting ready to move over
here, 800
Moon met us and told us, first of
all, to greet,
on her behalf, the Athenians and
their allies.
Then she said she was upset—the
way you treat
her
[610]
is disgraceful, though she brings you
all benefits—
not just in words but in her deeds.
To start with,
she saves you at least one drachma
every
month
for torchlight—
in the evening, when you go outside,
you all can say, “No need to buy a
torch, my boy,
Moon’s light will do just fine.”
She claims she helps you all
in other ways, as well, but you don’t
calculate
810
your calendar the way you should—no,
instead
you make it all confused, and that’s
why, she says,
the gods are always making threats
against her,
when they are cheated of a meal and
go back home
because their celebration has not
taken place
according to a proper count of all
the days.*
And then, when you should be
making
sacrifice,
[620]
you’re torturing someone or have a
man on trial.
And many times, when we gods
undertake a fast,
because we’re mourning Memnon or
Sarpedon,*
820
you’re pouring out libations,
having a good laugh.
That’s the reason, after his choice
by lot this year
to sit on the religious council,
Hyperbolos
had his wreath of office snatched off
by the gods.
That should make him better
understand the need
to count the days of life according
to the moon.*
[Enter
Socrates from the interior of the Thinkery]
SOCRATES: By Respiration, Chaos, and the
Air,
I’ve never seen a man so crude,
stupid,
clumsy, and forgetful. He tries to
learn
the tiny trifles, but then he
forgets
830 [630]
before he’s even learned them.
Nonetheless,
I’ll call him outside here into the
light.
[Socrates calls back into the interior of the Thinkery]
Strepsiades, where are you? Come on out—
and bring your bed.
STREPSIADES:
[from inside] I can’t
carry it out—
the bugs won’t let me.
SOCRATES: Get a move on. Now!
[Strepsiades enters carrying his bedding]
SOCRATES: Put it there. And pay attention.
STREPSIADES: [putting the bed down] There!
SOCRATES:
Come now, of all the things you never learned
what to you want to study first? Tell
me.
[Strepsiades is very puzzled by the question]
SOCRATES: Poetic measures? Diction? Rhythmic verse?
STREPSIADES:
I’ll take measures. Just the other
day
840
the man who deals in barley cheated
me—
[640]
about two quarts.
SOCRATES:
That’s not what I mean.
Which music measure is most beautiful—
the triple measure or quadruple
measure?
STREPSIADES: As a measure nothing beats a gallon.
SOCRATES: My dear man, you’re just talking nonsense.
STREPSIADES:
Then make me a bet—I
say a gallon
is made up of quadruple measures.
SOCRATES:
Oh damn you—you’re
such a country bumpkin—
so slow! Maybe you can learn more
quickly
850
if we deal with rhythm.
STREPSIADES:
Will these rhythms
help to get me food?
SOCRATES:
Well, to begin with,
they’ll make you elegant in company—
and you’ll recognize the different
rhythms,
[650]
the enoplian and the dactylic,
which is like a digit.*
STREPSIADES:
Like a digit!
By god, that’s something I do know!
SOCRATES: Then tell me.
STREPSIADES: When I was a lad a digit meant this!
[Strepsiades sticks his middle finger straight up under Socrates’ nose]
SOCRATES: You’re just a crude buffoon!
STREPSIADES:
No, you’re a fool—
I don’t want to learn any of that
stuff.
860
SOCRATES: Well then, what?
STREPSIADES:
You know, that other thing—
how to argue the most unjust cause.
SOCRATES:
But you need to learn these other matters
before all that. Now, of the
quadrupeds
which one can we correctly label
male?
STREPSIADES:
Well, I know the males, if I’m not witless—
[660]
the ram, billy goat, bull, dog, and
fowl.
SOCRATES: And the females?
STREPSIADES:
The ewe, nanny goat,
cow, bitch and fowl.*
SOCRATES:
You see what you’re doing?
You’re using that word “fowl”
for both of
them,
870
Calling males what people use for
females.
STREPSIADES: What’s that? I don’t get it.
SOCRATES:
What’s not to get?
”Fowl” and “Fowl” . . .
STREPSIADES:
By Poseidon, I see your point.
All right, what should I call them?
SOCRATES:
Call the male a “fowl”—
and call the other one “fowlette.”
STREPSIADES:
“Fowlette?”
By the Air, that’s good! Just for
teaching that
I’ll fill your kneading basin up
with flour,
right to the brim.*
SOCRATES:
Once again, another
error!
[670]
You called it basin—a
masculine word—
when it’s feminine.
STREPSIADES:
How so? Do I
call
880
the basin masculine?
SOCRATES:
Indeed you do.
It’s just like Cleonymos.*
STREPSIADES:
How’s that?
Tell me.
SOCRATES:
You treated the word basin
just as you would treat Cleonymos.
STREPSIADES:
[totally bewildered by the conversation]
But my dear man, he didn’t have a
basin—
not Cleonymos—not
for kneading flour.
His round mortar was his prick—the
wanker—
he kneaded that to masturbate.
[680]
SOCRATES:
You’ve still got to learn about people’s names—
which ones are male and which are
female.
STREPSIADES: I know which ones are feminine.
SOCRATES: Go on.
STREPSIADES:
Lysilla, Philinna, Cleitagora,
Demetria . . .
SOCRATES: Which names are masculine?
STREPSIADES:
There are thousands of them—Philoxenos,
Melesias, Amynias . . .
SOCRATES:
You
fool,
900
those names are not all masculine.*
STREPSIADES:
What?
You don’t think of them as men?
SOCRATES:
Indeed I don’t.
If you met Amynias, how would you
greet him?
STREPSIADES: How? Like this, “Here, Amynia, come here.”* [690]
SOCRATES: You see? You said "Amynia," a woman’s name.
STREPSIADES:
And that’s fair enough, since she’s unwilling
to do army service. But what’s the
point?
Why do I need to learn what we all
know?
SOCRATES:
That’s irrelevant, by god. Now lie down—
[indicating the bed]
right here.
STREPSIADES: And do what?
SOCRATES:
You should contemplate—
910
think one of your own problems
through.
STREPSIADES:
Not here,
I beg you—no.
If I have to do it,
let me do my contemplating on the
ground.
SOCRATES: No—you’ve got no choice.
STREPSIADES:
[crawling very reluctantly into the bedding]
Now I’m done for—
these bugs are going to punish me
today.
[Socrates exits back into the Thinkery]
CHORUS:
Now ponder and
think,
[700]
focus this way and that.
Your mind turn and toss.
And if you’re at a loss,
then quickly go
find
920
a new thought in your mind.
From your eyes you must keep
all soul-soothing sleep.
STREPSIADES: Oh, god . . . ahhhhh . . .
CHORUS: What’s wrong with you? Why so distressed?
STREPSIADES:
I’m dying a miserable death in here!
These Corinthian crawlers keep biting
me.*
[710]
gnawing on my ribs,
slurping up my blood,
yanking off my
balls,
930
tunneling up my arse hole—
they’re killing me!
CHORUS: Don’t complain so much.
STREPSIADES:
Why not? When I’ve lost my goods,
lost the colour in my cheeks, lost my
blood,
lost my shoes, and, on top of all
these
troubles,
[720]
I’m here like some night watchman
singing out—
it won’t be long before I’m done
for.
{Enter Socrates from inside the Thinkery]
SOCRATES: What are you doing? Aren’t you thinking something?
STREPSIADES: Me? Yes I am, by Poseidon.
SOCRATES: What about? 940
STREPSIADES:
Whether there’s going to be any of me
left
once these bugs have finished.
SOCRATES:
You imbecile,
why don’t you drop dead!
[Socrates exits back into the Thinkery]
STREPSIADES:
But my dear man,
I’m dying right now.
CHORUS
LEADER: Don’t get soft. Cover
up—
get your whole body underneath the
blanket.
You need to find a good idea for
fraud,
a sexy way to cheat.
STREPSIADES:
Damn it all—
instead of these lambskins here, why
won’t someone
throw over me a lovely larcenous
scheme?
[730]
[Strepsiades covers his head with the wool blankets. Enter Socrates from the Thinkery and looks around thinking what to do]
SOCRATES:
First, I’d better check on what he’s
doing.
950
You in there, are you asleep?
STREPSIADES: [uncovering his head] No, I’m not.
SOCRATES: Have you grasped anything?
STREPSIADES: No, by god, I haven’t.
SOCRATES: Nothing at all?
STREPSIADES:
I haven’t grasped a thing—
except my right hand’s wrapped
around my cock.
SOCRATES:
Then cover your head and think up something—
get a move on!
STREPSIADES:
What should I think about?
Tell me that, Socrates.
SOCRATES:
First you must formulate
what it is you want. Then tell me.
STREPSIADES:
You’ve heard
what I want a thousand times—I
want to know
about interest, so I’ll not have to
pay
960
a single creditor.
SOCRATES:
Come along now,
cover up.
[Strepsiades covers his head again, and Socrates speaks to him through the blanket]
Now, carve your slender
thinking
[740]
into tiny bits, and think the matter
through,
with proper probing and analysis.
STREPSIADES: Ahhh . . . bloody hell!
SOCRATES:
Don’t shift around.
If one of your ideas is going
nowhere,
let it go, leave it alone. Later on,
start it again and weigh it one more
time.
STREPSIADES: My dear little Socrates . . .
SOCRATES:
Yes, old man,
what is it?
STREPSIADES:
I’ve got a lovely
scheme
970
to avoid paying interest.
SOCRATES: Lay it out.
STREPSIADES: All right. Tell me now . . .
SOCRATES: What is it?
STREPSIADES:
What if I purchased a Thessalian witch
and in the night had her haul down
the moon—
[750]
then shut it up in a circular box,
just like a mirror, and kept watch on
it.
SOCRATES: How would that provide you any help?
STREPSIADES:
Well, if no moon ever rose up anywhere,
I’d pay no interest.
SOCRATES: And why is that?
STREPSIADES: Because they lend out money by the month. 980
SOCRATES:
That’s good. I’ll give you another problem—
it’s tricky. If in court someone
sued you
to pay five talents, what would you
do
to get the case discharged.
STREPSIADES:
How? I don’t know.
I’ll have to
think.
[760]
SOCRATES:
These ideas of yours—
don’t keep them wound up all the
time inside you.
Let your thinking loose—out
into the air—
with thread around its foot, just
like a bug.*
STREPSIADES:
Hey, I’ve devised a really clever way
to make that lawsuit disappear—it’s
so
good,
990
you’ll agree with me.
SOCRATES: What’s your way?
STREPSIADES:
At the drug seller’s shop have you seen
that beautiful stone you can see
right through,
the one they use to start a fire?
SOCRATES: You mean glass?
STREPSIADES: Yes.
SOCRATES: So what?
STREPSIADES:
What if I took that glass,
and when the scribe was writing out
the
charge,
[770]
I stood between him and the sun—like
this—
some distance off, and made his
writing melt,
just the part about my case?*
SOCRATES:
By the Graces,
that’s a smart idea!
STREPSIADES:
Hey, I’m happy—
1000
I’ve erased my law suit for five
talents.
SOCRATES: So hurry up and tackle this next problem.
STREPSIADES: What is it?
SOCRATES:
How would you evade a charge
and launch a counter-suit in a
hearing
you’re about to lose without a
witness?
STREPSIADES: No problem there—it’s easy.
SOCRATES: So tell me.
STREPSIADES:
I will. If there was a case still pending,
another one before my case was
called,
I’d run off and hang
myself.
[780]
SOCRATES: That’s nonsense.
STREPSIADES:
No, by the gods, it’s not. If I were
dead,
1010
no one could bring a suit against me.
SOCRATES:
That’s rubbish. Just get away from here.
I’ll not instruct you any more.
STREPSIADES:
Why not?
Come on, Socrates, in god’s name.
SOCRATES:
There’s no point—
as soon as you learn anything, it’s
gone,
you forget it right away. Look, just
now,
what was the very first thing you
were taught?
STREPSIADES:
Well, let’s see . . . The first thing—what
was it?
What was that thing we knead the
flour in?
Damn it all, what was it?
SOCRATES:
To hell with
you!
1020
You’re the most forgetful,
stupidest old man . .
.
[790]
Get lost!
STREPSIADES:
Oh dear! Now I’m in for it.
What going to happen to me? I’m
done for,
if I don’t learn to twist my words
around.
Come on, Clouds, give me some good
advice.
CHORUS
LEADER: Old man, here’s our advice: if you’ve a son
and he’s full grown, send him in
there to learn—
he’ll take your place.
STREPSIADES:
Well, I do have a son—
a really good and fine one, too—trouble
is
he doesn’t want to learn. What
should I
do?
1030
CHORUS LEADER: You just let him do that?
STREPSIADES:
He’s a big lad—
and strong and proud—his
mother’s family
are all high-flying women like
Coesyra.
[800]
But I’ll take him in hand. If he
says no,
then I’ll evict him from my house
for sure.
[to Socrates] Go
inside and wait for me a while.
[Strepsiades moves back across the stage to his own house]
CHORUS: [to
Socrates]
Don’t you see you’ll quickly
get
from us all sorts of lovely things
since we’re your only god?
This man here is now all
set
1040
to follow you in anything,
you simply have to prod.
You know the man is in a daze.
He’s clearly keen his son should
learn.
So lap it up—make
haste—
get everything that you can
raise.
[810]
Such chances tend to change and turn
into a different case.
[Socrates exits into the Thinkery. Strepsiades and Pheidippides come out of their house. Strepsiades is pushing his son in front of him]
STREPSIADES:
By the foggy air, you can’t stay here—
not one moment longer! Off with you—
1050
go eat Megacles out of house and
home!
PHEIDIPPIDES:
Hey, father—you
poor man, what’s wrong with you?
By Olympian Zeus, you’re not
thinking straight.
STREPSIADES:
See that—“Olympian
Zeus”! Ridiculous—
to believe in Zeus—and
at your age!
PHEIDIPPIDES: Why laugh at that?
STREPSIADES:
To think you’re such a child—
and your views so out of date. Still,
come here,
so you can learn a bit. I’ll tell
you things.
When you understand all this, you’ll
be a man.
But you mustn’t mention this to
anyone.
1060
PHEIDIPPIDES: All right, what is it?
STREPSIADES: You just swore by Zeus.
PHEIDIPPIDES: That’s right. I did.
STREPSIADES:
You see how useful learning is?
Pheidippides, there’s no such thing
as Zeus.
PHEIDIPPIDES: Then what is there?
STREPSIADES:
Vortex now is king—
he’s pushed out Zeus.
PHEIDIPPIDES: Bah, that’s nonsense!
STREPSIADES: You should know that’s how things are right now.
PHEIDIPPIDES: Who says that?
STREPSIADES:
Socrates of Melos*
[830]
and Chaerephon—they
know about fleas’ footprints.
PHEIDIPPIDES:
Have you become so crazy you believe
these fellows? They’re disgusting!
STREPSIADES:
Watch your
tongue.
1070
Don’t say nasty things about such
clever men—
men with brains, who like to save
their money.
That’s why not one of them has ever
shaved,
or oiled his skin, or visited the
baths
to wash himself. You, on the other
hand,
keep on bathing in my livelihood,
as if I’d died.*
So now get over there,
as quickly as you can. Take my place
and learn.
PHEIDIPPIDES:
But what could anyone learn from those men
that’s any use at
all?
[840]
STREPSIADES:
You have to
ask?
1080
Why, wise things—the
full extent of human thought.
You’ll see how thick you are, how
stupid.
Just wait a moment here for me.
[Strepsiades goes into his house]
PHEIDIPPIDES:
Oh dear,
What will I do? My father’s lost
his wits.
Do I haul him off to get committed,
on the ground that he’s a lunatic,
or tell the coffin-makers he’s gone
nuts.
[Strepsiades returns with two birds, one in each hand. He holds out one of them]
STREPSIADES: Come on now, what do you call this? Tell me.
PHEIDIPPIDES: It’s a fowl.
STREPSIADES: That’s good. What’s this?
PHEIDIPPIDES: That’s a fowl.
STREPSIADES:
They’re both the same? You’re being
ridiculous.
1090
From now on, don’t do that. Call
this one “fowl,”
[850]
and this one here “fowlette.”
PHEIDIPPIDES:
“Fowlette”? That’s it?
That’s the sort of clever stuff you
learned in there,
by going in with these Sons of Earth?*
STREPSIADES:
Yes, it is—
and lots more, too. But everything I
learned,
I right away forgot, because I’m
old.
PHEIDIPPIDES: That why you lost your cloak?
STREPSIADES:
I didn’t lose it—
I gave it to knowledge—a
donation.
PHEIDIPPIDES:
And your sandals—what
you do with them,
you deluded man?
STREPSIADES:
Just like
Pericles,
1100
I lost them as a “necessary
expense.”*
But come on, let’s go. Move it.
If your
dad
[860]
asks you to do wrong, you must obey
him.
I know I did just what you wanted
long ago,
when you were six years old and had a
lisp—
with the first obol I got for jury
work,
at the feast of Zeus I got you a toy
cart.
PHEIDIPPIDES: You’re going to regret this one fine day.
STREPSIADES: Good—you’re doing what I ask.
[Strepsiades calls inside the Thinkery]
Socrates,
come out here . . .
[Enter Socrates from inside the Thinkery]
Here—I’ve
brought my son to
you.
1110
He wasn’t keen, but I persuaded
him.
SOCRATES: He’s still a child—he doesn’t know the ropes.
PHEIDIPPIDES:
Go hang yourself up on some
rope,
[870]
and get beaten like a worn-out cloak.
STREPSIADES: Damn you! Why insult your teacher?
SOCRATES:
Look how he says “hang yourself”—it
sounds
like baby talk. No crispness in his
speech.*
With such a feeble tone how will
he learn
to answer to a charge or summons
or speak persuasively? And yet it’s
true
1120
Hyperbolos could learn to master that—
it cost him one talent.*
STREPSIADES:
Don’t be concerned.
Teach him. He’s naturally
intelligent.
When he was a little boy—just
that tall—
even then at home he built small
houses,
carved out ships, made chariots from
leather,
[880]
and fashioned frogs from pomegranate
peel.
You can’t imagine! Get him to learn
those two forms of argument—the
Better,
whatever that may be, and the
Worse.
1130
If not both, then at least the unjust
one—
every trick you’ve got.
SOCRATES:
He’ll learn on his own
from the two styles of reasoning. I’ll
be gone.
STREPSIADES:
But remember this—he
must be able
to speak against all just arguments.
[Enter the Better Argument from inside the Thinkery, talking to the Worse Argument who is still inside]
BETTER
ARGUMENT: Come on. Show yourself to the people here—
I guess you’re bold enough for
that.
[890]
[The Worse Argument emerges from the Thinkery]
WORSE
ARGUMENT:
Go where you please.
The odds are greater I can wipe you
out
with lots of people there to watch us
argue.
BETTER ARGUMENT: You’ll wipe me out? Who’d you think you are? 1140
WORSE ARGUMENT: An argument.
BETTER ARGUMENT: Yes, but second rate.
WORSE
ARGUMENT: You claim that you’re more powerful than me,
but I’ll still conquer you.
BETTER
ARGUMENT:
What clever tricks
do you intend to use?
WORSE
ARGUMENT:
I’ll formulate
new principles.
BETTER
ARGUMENT: [indicating the audience] Yes, that’s
in fashion now,
thanks to these idiots.
WORSE ARGUMENT: No, no. They’re smart.
BETTER ARGUMENT: I’ll destroy you utterly.
WORSE
ARGUMENT:
And how?
Tell me that.
BETTER ARGUMENT: By arguing what’s just. [900]
WORSE
ARGUMENT: That I can overturn in my response,
by arguing there’s no such thing as
Justice.
1150
BETTER ARGUMENT: It doesn’t exist? That’s what you maintain?
WORSE ARGUMENT: Well, if it does, where is it?
BETTER ARGUMENT: With the gods.
WORSE
ARGUMENT: Well, if Justice does exist, how come Zeus
hasn’t been destroyed for chaining
up his dad.*
BETTER
ARGUMENT: This is going from bad to worse. I feel sick.
Fetch me a basin.
WORSE
ARGUMENT:
You silly old man—
you’re so ridiculous.
BETTER
ARGUMENT:
And you’re quite shameless,
you bum fucker.
WORSE ARGUMENT: Those words you speak—like roses!
BETTER ARGUMENT: Buffoon! [910]
WORSE ARGUMENT: You adorn my head with lilies.
BETTER ARGUMENT: You destroyed your father!
WORSE
ARGUMENT:
You don’t mean
to,
1160
but you’re showering me with gold.
BETTER
ARGUMENT:
No, not gold—
before this age, those names were
lead.
WORSE
ARGUMENT:
But now,
your insults are a credit to me.
BETTER ARGUMENT: You’re too obstreperous.
WORSE ARGUMENT: You’re archaic.
BETTER
ARGUMENT: It’s thanks to you that none of our young men
is keen to go to school. The day will
come
when the Athenians will all realize
how you teach these silly fools.
WORSE
ARGUMENT:
You’re dirty—
it’s disgusting.
BETTER
ARGUMENT: But you’re doing
very well—
[920]
although in earlier days you were a
beggar,
1170
claiming to be Telephos from Mysia,
eating off some views of Pandeletos,
which you kept in your wallet.*
WORSE
ARGUMENT:
That was brilliant—
you just reminded me . . .
BETTER
ARGUMENT:
It was lunacy!
Your own craziness—the
city’s, too.
It fosters you while you corrupt the
young.
WORSE ARGUMENT: You can’t teach this boy—you’re old as Cronos.
BETTER
ARGUMENT: Yes, I must—if
he’s going to be
redeemed
[930]
and not just prattle empty verbiage.
WORSE
ARGUMENT: [to Pheidippides]
Come over here—leave
him to his
foolishness.
1180
BETTER ARGUMENT: You’ll regret it, if you lay a hand on him.
CHORUS LEADER: Stop this fighting, all these abusive words.
[addressing first the Better Argument and then the Worse Argument]
Instead, explain the things you used to teach
to young men long ago—then
you lay out
what’s new in training now. He can
listen
as you present opposing arguments
and then decide which school he
should attend.
BETTER ARGUMENT: I’m willing to do that.
WORSE ARGUMENT: All right with me.
CHORUS LEADER: Come on then, which one of you goes first? [940]
WORSE
ARGUMENT: I’ll grant him that right. Once he’s said his piece, 1190
I’ll shoot it down with brand-new
expressions
and some fresh ideas. By the time I’m
done,
if he so much as mutters, he’ll get
stung
by my opinions
on his face and eyes—
like so many hornets—he’ll
be destroyed.
CHORUS:
Trusting their skill in argument,
their phrase-making
propensity,
[950]
these two men here are now intent
to show which one will prove to be
the better man in
oratory.
1200
For wisdom now is being hard pressed—
my friends, this is the crucial test.
CHORUS
LEADER: [addressing the Better Argument]
First, you who crowned our men in
days gone by
with so much virtue in their
characters,
let’s hear that voice which brings
you such delight—
explain to us what makes you what you
are.
[960]
BETTER
ARGUMENT: All right, I’ll set out how we organized
our education in the olden days,
when I talked about what’s just and
prospered,
when people wished to practise
self-restraint.
1210
First, there was a rule—children
made no noise,
no muttering. Then, when they went
outside,
walking the streets to the music
master’s house,
groups of youngsters from the same
part of town
went in straight lines and never wore
a cloak,
not even when the snow fell thick as
flour.
There he taught them to sing with
thighs apart.*
They had memorize their songs—such
as,
”Dreadful Pallas Who Destroys Whole
Cities,”
and “A Cry From Far Away.” These
they
sang
1220
in the same style their fathers had
passed down.
If any young lad fooled around or
tried
to innovate with some new flourishes,
like the contorted sounds we have
today
from those who carry on the Phrynis
style,*
[970]
he was beaten, soundly thrashed, his
punishment
for tarnishing the Muse. At the
trainer’s house,
when the boys sat down, they had to
keep
their thighs stretched out, so they
would not expose
a thing which might excite erotic
torments
1230
in those looking on. And when they
stood up,
they smoothed the sand, being careful
not to leave
imprints of their manhood there for
lovers.
Using oil, no young lad rubbed his
body
underneath his navel—thus
on his sexual parts
there was a dewy fuzz, like on a
peach.
He didn’t make his voice all soft
and sweet
to talk to lovers as he walked along,
or with his glances coyly act the
pimp.
[980]
When he was eating, he would not just
grab
1240
a radish head, or take from older men
some dill or parsley, or eat dainty
food.
He wasn’t allowed to giggle, or sit
there
with his legs crossed.
WORSE
ARGUMENT:
Antiquated rubbish!
Filled with festivals for Zeus
Polieus,
cicadas, slaughtered bulls, and
Cedeides.*
BETTER
ARGUMENT: But the point is this—these
very features
in my education brought up those men
who fought at Marathon. But look at
you—
you teach these young men now right
from the
start
1250
to wrap themselves in cloaks. It
enrages me
when the time comes for them to do
their dance
at the Panathenaea festival
and one of them holds his shield
low down,
over his balls, insulting
Tritogeneia.*
And so, young man, that’s why
you should choose
me,
[990]
the Better Argument. Be resolute.
You’ll find out how to hate the
market place,
to shun the public baths, to feel
ashamed
of shameful things, to fire up your
heart
1260
when someone mocks you, to give up
your chair
when older men come near, not to
insult
your parents, nor act in any other
way
which brings disgrace or which could
mutilate
your image as an honourable man.
You’ll learn not to run off to
dancing girls,
in case, while gaping at them, you
get hit
with an apple thrown by some little
slut,
and your fine reputation’s done
for,
and not to contradict your
father,
1270
or remind him of his age by calling
him
Iapetus—not
when he spent his years
in raising you from infancy.*
WORSE
ARGUMENT: My boy, if you’re persuaded by this
man,
[1000]
then by Dionysus, you’ll finish up
just like Hippocrates’ sons—and
then
they’ll all call you a sucker of
the tit.*
BETTER
ARGUMENT: You’ll spend your time in the gymnasium—
your body will be sleek, in fine
condition.
You won’t be hanging round the
market
place,
1280
chattering filth, as boys do
nowadays.
You won’t keep on being hauled away
to court
over some damned sticky fierce
dispute
about some triviality. No, no.
Instead you’ll go to the Academy,*
to race under the sacred olive
trees,
with a decent friend the same age as
you,
wearing a white reed garland, with no
cares.
You’ll smell yew trees, quivering
poplar leaves,
as plane trees whisper softly to the
elms,
1290
rejoicing in the spring. I tell you
this—
if you carry out these things I
mention,
if you concentrate your mind on
them,
[1010]
you’ll always have a gleaming
chest, bright skin,
broad shoulders, tiny tongue, strong
buttocks,
and a little prick. But if you take
up
what’s in fashion nowadays, you’ll
have,
for starters, feeble shoulders, a
pale skin,
a narrow chest, huge tongue, a tiny
bum,
and a large skill in framing long
decrees.*
1300
And that man there will have you
believing
what’s bad is good and what’s
good is
bad.
[1020]
Then he’ll give you Antimachos’
disease—
you’ll be infected with his
buggery.*
CHORUS: O
you whose wisdom stands so tall,
the most illustrious of all.
The odour of your words is sweet,
the flowering bloom of modest ways—
happy who lived in olden days!
[to the Worse Argument]
Your rival’s made his case extremely
well,
1310
so you who have such nice artistic
skill.
must in reply give some new
frill.
[1030]
CHORUS
LEADER: If you want to overcome this man
it looks as if you’ll need to bring
at him
some clever stratagems —unless
you want
to look ridiculous.
WORSE
ARGUMENT:
It’s about time!
My guts have long been churning with
desire
to rip in fragments all those things
he said,
with counter-arguments. That’s why
I’m called
Worse Argument among all thinking
men,
1320
because I was the very first of them
to think of coming up with reasoning
against our normal ways and just
decrees.
[1040]
And it’s worth lots of money—more,
in fact,
than drachmas in six figures
BETTER
ARGUMENT: That’s it, the very things which our young men
are always babbling on about these
days—
crowding in the bath house, leaving
empty
all the wrestling schools.
WORSE
ARGUMENT:
Next, you’re not happy
when they hang around the market
place—
but I think that’s good. If it were
shameful,
Homer would not have labelled Nestor—
and all his clever men—great
public speakers.*
1350
Now, I’ll move on to their tongues,
which this man
says the young lads should not train.
I say they should.
He also claims they should be
self-restrained.
These two things injure them in major
ways.
[1060]
Where have you ever witnessed
self-restraint
bring any benefit to anyone?
Tell me. Speak up. Refute my
reasoning.
BETTER
ARGUMENT: There are lots of people. For example,
Peleus won a sword for his restraint.*
WORSE
ARGUMENT: A sword! What a magnificent
reward
1360
the poor wretch received! While
Hyperbolos,
who sells lamps in the market, is
corrupt
and brings in lots of money, but, god
knows,
he’s never won a sword.
BETTER
ARGUMENT:
But his virtue
enabled Peleus to marry Thetis.*
WORSE
ARGUMENT: Then she ran off, abandoning the man,
because he didn’t want to spend all
night
having hard sweet sex between the
sheets—
that rough-and-tumble love that women
like.
You’re just a crude old-fashioned
Cronos.
1370 [1070]
Now, my boy, just think off all those
things
that self-restraint requires—you’ll
go without
all sorts of pleasures—boys
and women,
drunken games and tasty delicacies,
drink and riotous laughter. What’s
life worth
if you’re deprived of these? So
much for that.
I’ll now move on to physical
desires.
You’ve strayed and fallen in love—had
an affair
with someone else’s wife. And then
you’re caught.
You’re dead, because you don’t
know how to
speak.
1380
But if you hang around with those
like me,
you can follow what your nature
urges.
You can leap and laugh and never
think
of anything as shameful. If, by
chance,
you’re discovered screwing a man’s
wife,
just tell the husband you’ve done
nothing wrong.
Blame Zeus—alleging
even he’s
someone
[1080]
who can’t resist his urge for sex
and women.
And how can you be stronger than a
god?
You’re just a mortal man.
BETTER
ARGUMENT:
All right—but
suppose
1390
he trusts in your advice and gets a
radish
rammed right up his arse, and his
pubic hairs
are burned with red-hot cinders. Will
he have
some reasoned argument to demonstrate
he’s not a loose-arsed bugger?*
WORSE
ARGUMENT:
So his asshole's large—
why should that in any way upset him?
BETTER
ARGUMENT: Can one suffer any greater harm
than having a loose asshole?
WORSE
ARGUMENT:
What will you say
if I defeat you on this point?
BETTER
ARGUMENT:
I’ll shut up.
What more could a man say?
WORSE
ARGUMENT:
Come on, then—
1400
Tell me about our legal advocates.
Where are they from?
BETTER ARGUMENT: They come from loose-arsed buggers.
WORSE
ARGUMENT: I grant you that. What’s next? Our tragic
poets, [1090]
where they from?
BETTER ARGUMENT: They come from major assholes.
WORSE
ARGUMENT: That’s right. What about our politicians—
where do they come from?
BETTER ARGUMENT: From gigantic assholes!
WORSE
ARGUMENT: All right then—surely
you can recognize
how you’ve been spouting rubbish?
Look out there—
at this audience—what
sort of people
are most of them?
BETTER ARGUMENT: All right, I’m looking at them. 1410
WORSE ARGUMENT: Well, what do you see?
BETTER
ARGUMENT:
By all the gods,
almost all of them are men who spread
their cheeks.
It’s true of that one there, I know
for sure . . .
and that one . . . and the one there
with long hair.
[1100]
WORSE ARGUMENT: So what do you say now?
BETTER
ARGUMENT:
We’ve been defeated.
Oh you fuckers, for gods’ sake take
my cloak—
I’m defecting to your ranks.
[The Better Argument takes off his cloak and exits into the Thinkery]
WORSE
ARGUMENT: [to Strepsiades]
What now?
Do you want to take your son away?
Or, to help you out, am I to teach
him
how to argue?
STREPSIADES:
Teach him—whip
him into
shape.
1420
Don’t forget to sharpen him for me,
one side ready to tackle legal
quibbles.
On the other side, give his jaw an
edge
for more important
matters.
[1110]
WORSE
ARGUMENT:
Don’t worry.
You’ll get back a person skilled in
sophistry.
PHEIDIPPIDES: Someone miserably pale, I figure.
CHORUS
LEADER:
All right. Go in.
I think you may regret this later on.
[Worse Argument and Pheidippides go into the Thinkery, while Strepsiades returns into his own house]
CHORUS
LEADER: We’d like to tell the judges here the benefits
they’ll get, if they help this
chorus, as by right they should.
First, if you want to plough your
lands in season,
1430
we’ll rain first on you and on the
others later.
Then we’ll protect your fruit, your
growing vines,
so neither drought nor too much rain
will damage
them.
[1120]
But any mortal who dishonours us as
gods
should bear in mind the evils we will
bring him.
From his land he’ll get no wine or
other harvest.
When his olive trees and fresh young
vines are budding,
we’ll let fire with our sling
shots, to smash and break them.
If we see him making bricks, we’ll
send down rain,
we’ll shatter roofing tiles with
our round
hailstones.
1440
If ever there’s a wedding for his
relatives,
or friends, or for himself, we’ll
rain all through the night,
so he’d rather live in Egypt than
judge this
wrong.
[1130]
[Strepsiades comes out of his house, with a small sack in his hand]
STREPSIADES:
Five more days, then four, three, two—and
then
the day comes I dread more than all
the rest.
It makes me shake with fear—the
day that stands
between the Old Moon and the New—the
day
when any man I happen to owe money to
swears on oath he’ll put down his
deposit,
take me to court.*
He says he’ll finish
me,
1450
do me in. When I make a modest plea
for something fair, “My dear man,
don’t demand
this payment now, postpone this one
for me,
discharge that one,” they say the
way things are
they’ll never be repaid—then
they go at
me,
[1140]
abuse me as unfair and say they’ll
sue.
Well, let them go to court. I just
don’t care,
not if Pheidippides has learned to
argue.
I’ll find out soon enough.
Let's knock here,
at the thinking school.
[Strepsiades knocks on the door of the Thinkery]
Boy . . . Hey, boy . . . boy! 1460
[Socrates comes to the door]
SOCRATES: Hello there, Strepsiades.
STREPSIADES:
Hello to you.
First of all, you must accept this
present.
[Strepsiades hands Socrates the small sack]
It’s proper for a man show respect
to his son’s teacher in some way.
Tell me—
has the boy learned that style of
argument
you brought out here just now?
SOCRATES: Yes, he has.
STREPSIADES:
In the name of Fraud, queen of everything,
that’s splendid news!
SOCRATES:
You can defend yourself
in any suit you like—and
win.
STREPSIADES:
I can?
Even if there were witnesses
around
1470
when I took out the loan?
SOCRATES:
The more the better—
even if they number in the thousands.
STREPSIADES:
[in a parody of tragic style]
Then I will roar aloud a mighty
shout—
Ah ha, weep now you petty money men,
wail for yourselves, wail for your
principal,
wail for your compound interest. No
more
will you afflict me with your evil
ways.
On my behalf there’s growing in
these halls
a son who’s got a gleaming
two-edged tongue—
[1160]
he’s my protector, saviour of my
home,
1480
a menace to my foes. He will remove
the mighty tribulations of his sire.
Run off inside and summon him to me.
[Socrates goes back into the Thinkery]
My son, my boy, now issue from the house—
and hearken to your father’s words.
[Socrates and Pheidippides come out of the Thinkery. Pheidippides has been transformed in appearance, so that he now looks, moves, and talks like the other students in the Thinkery]
SOCRATES: Here’s your young man.
STREPSIADES: Ah, my dear, dear boy.
SOCRATES: Take him and go away.
[Socrates exits back into the Thinkery]
STREPSIADES:
Ah ha, my lad—
what joy. What sheer delight for me
to
gaze,
[1170]
first, upon your colourless
complexion,
to see how right away you’re well
prepared
1490
to deny and contradict—with
that look
which indicates our national
character
so clearly planted on your
countenance—
the look which says, “What do you
mean?”—the
look
which makes you seem a victim, even
though
you’re the one at fault, the
criminal.
I know that Attic stare stamped on
your face.
Now you must rescue me—since
you’re the one
who’s done me in.
PHEIDIPPIDES: What are you scared about?
STREPSIADES: The day of the Old Moon and the New. 1500
PHEIDIPPIDES: You mean there’s a day that’s old and new?
STREPSIADES:
The day they say they’ll make deposits
to charge me in the
courts!
[1180]
PHEIDIPPIDES:
Then those who do that
will lose their cash. There’s
simply no way
one day can be two days.
STREPSIADES: It can’t?
PHEIDIPPIDES:
How?
Unless it’s possible a single woman
can at the same time be both old and
young.
STREPSIADES: Yet that seems to be what our laws dictate.
PHEIDIPPIDES:
In my view they just don’t know the law—
not what it really means.
STREPSIADES: What does it mean? 1510
PHEIDIPPIDES: Old Solon by his nature loved the people.*
STREPSIADES:
But that’s got no bearing on the Old Day—
or the New.
PHEIDIPPIDES:
Well, Solon set up two
days
[1190]
for summonses—the
Old Day and the New,
so deposits could be made with the
New Moon.*
STREPSIADES: Then why did he include Old Day as well?
PHEIDIPPIDES:
So the defendants, my dear fellow,
could show up one day early, to
settle
by mutual agreement, and, if not,
they should be very worried the next
day
1520
was the start of a New Moon.
STREPSIADES:
In that case,
why do judges not accept deposits
once the New Moon comes but only on
the day
between the Old and New?
PHEIDIPPIDES:
It seems to me
they have to act like those who check
the food—
[1200]
they want to grab as fast as possible
at those deposits, so they can nibble
them
a day ahead of time.
STREPSIADES:
That’s wonderful!
[to the audience] You
helpless fools! Why do you sit there—
1530
so idiotically, for us wise types
to take advantage of? Are you just
stones,
ciphers, merely sheep or stacked-up
pots?
This calls for a song to me and my
son here,
to celebrate good luck and victory.
[He sings]
O Strepsiades is truly blessed
for
cleverness the very best,
what a brainy
son he’s raised.
So friends
and townsfolk sing his praise.
Each time you
win they’ll envy me—
1540 [1210]
you’ll
plead my case to victory.
So let’s go
in—I
want to treat,
and first
give you something to eat.
[Strepsiades and Pheidippides go together into their house. Enter one of Strepsiades’ creditors, Pasias, with a friend as his witness]
PASIAS:
Should a man throw away his money?
Never! But it would have been much
better,
back then at the start, to forget the
loan
and the embarrassment than go through
this—
to drag you as a witness here today
in this matter of my money. I’ll
make
this man from my own deme my enemy.*
1550
But I’ll not let my country down—never—
[1220]
not as long as I’m alive. And so .
. .
[raising his voice]
I’m summoning Strepsiades . . .
STREPSIADES: Who is it?
PASIAS: . . . on this Old Day and the New.
STREPSIADES:
I ask you here
to witness that he’s called me for
two days.
What’s the matter?
PASIAS:
The loan you got, twelve minai,
when you bought that horse—the
dapple grey.
STREPSIADES:
A horse? Don’t listen to him. You all know
how I hate horses.
PASIAS:
What’s more, by Zeus,
you swore on all the gods you’d pay
me
back.
1560
STREPSIADES:
Yes, by god, but Pheidippides back then
did not yet know the iron-clad
argument
on my behalf.
PASIAS:
So now, because of that,
you’re intending to deny the
debt?
[1230]
STREPSIADES:
If I don’t, what advantage do I gain
from everything he’s learned?
PASIAS:
Are you prepared
to swear you owe me nothing—by
the gods—
in any place I tell you?
STREPSIADES: Which gods?
PASIAS: By Zeus, by Hermes, by Poseidon.
STREPSIADES:
Yes, indeed, by Zeus—and
to take that
oath
1570
I’d even pay three extra obols.*
PASIAS: You’re shameless—may that ruin you some day!
STREPSIADES:
[patting Pasias on the belly]
This wine skin here would much
better off
if you rubbed it down with salt.*
PASIAS:
Damn you—
you’re
ridiculing me!
STREPSIADES:
[still patting Pasias’
paunch] About four gallons,
that’s what it should hold.
PASIAS:
By mighty Zeus,
by all the gods, you’ll not make
fun of me
and get away with it!
STREPSIADES:
Ah, you and your gods—
[1240]
that’s so incredibly funny. And
Zeus—
to swear on him is quite
ridiculous
1580
to those who understand.
PASIAS:
Some day, I swear,
you’re going to have to pay for all
of this.
Will you or will you not pay me my
money?
Give me an answer, and I’ll leave.
STREPSIADES:
Calm down—
I’ll give you a clear answer right
away.
[Strepsiades goes into his house, leaving Pasias and the Witness by themselves]
PASIAS:
Well, what do you think he’s going to do?
Does it strike you he’s going to
pay?
[Enter Strepsiades carrying a kneading basin]
STREPSIADES:
Where’s the man who’s asking me for money?
Tell me—what’s
this?
PASIAS: What’s that? A kneading basin.
STREPSIADES:
You’re demanding money when you’re such a
fool? 1590
I wouldn’t pay an obol back to
anyone
[1250]
who called a basinette a basin.
PASIAS: So you won’t repay me?
STREPSIADES:
As far as I know,
I won’t. So why don’t you just
hurry up
and quickly scuttle from my door.
PASIAS:
I’m off.
Let me tell you—I’ll
be making my deposit.
If not, may I not live another day!
[Pasias exits with the Witness]
STREPSIADES:
[calling after them]
That’ll be more money thrown
away—
on top of the twelve minai. I don’t
want
you going thorough that just because
you’re
foolish
1600
and talk about a kneading basin.
[Enter Amynias, another creditor, limping He has obviously been hurt in some way]
AMYNIAS: Oh, it’s bad. Poor me!
STREPSIADES:
Hold on. Who’s this
who’s chanting a lament? Is that
the
cry
[1260]
of some god perhaps—one
from Carcinus?*
AMYNIAS:
What’s that? You wish to know who I am?
I’m a man with a miserable fate!
STREPSIADES: Then go off on your own.
AMYNIAS: [in
a grand tragic manner]
“O cruel god,
O fortune fracturing my chariot
wheels,
O Pallas, how you’ve annihilated
me!”*
STREPSIADES: How’s Tlepolemos done nasty things to you?* 1610
AMYNIAS:
Don’t laugh at me, my man—but
tell your son
to pay me back the money he received,
especially when I’m going through
all this pain.
STREPSIADES: What money are you talking about?
AMYNIAS: The loan he got from me. [1270]
STREPSIADES:
It seems to me
you’re having a bad time.
AMYNIAS:
By god, that’s true—
I was driving in my chariot and fell
out.
STREPSIADES:
Why then babble on such utter nonsense,
as if you’d just fallen off a
donkey?
AMYNIAS:
If I want him to pay back my
money
1620
am I talking nonsense?
STREPSIADES:
I think it’s clear
your mind’s not thinking straight.
AMYNIAS: Why’s that?
STREPSIADES:
From your behaviour here, it looks to me
as if your brain’s been shaken up.
AMYNIAS:
Well, as for you,
by Hermes, I’ll be suing you in
court,
if you don’t pay the money.
STREPSIADES:
Tell me this—
do you think Zeus always sends fresh
water
each time the rain comes down, or
does the
sun
[1280]
suck the same water up from down
below
for when it rains again?
AMYNIAS:
I don’t know which—
1630
and I don’t care.
STREPSIADES:
Then how can it be just
for you to get your money reimbursed,
when you know nothing of celestial
things?
AMYNIAS:
Look, if you haven’t got the money now,
at least repay the interest.
STREPSIADES:
This “interest”—
What sort of creature is it?
AMYNIAS:
Don’t you know?
It’s nothing but the way that money
grows,
always getting larger day by day
month by month, as time goes by.
STREPSIADES:
That’s right.
What about the sea? In your
opinion,
1640 [1290]
is it more full of water than before?
AMYNIAS:
No, by Zeus—
it’s still the same. If it grew,
that would violate all natural order.
STREPSIADES:
In that case then, you miserable rascal,
if the sea shows no increase in
volume
with so many rivers flowing into it,
why are you so keen to have your
money grow?
Now, why not chase yourself away from
here?
[calling inside the
house] Bring me the cattle prod!
AMYNIAS: I have witnesses!
[The slave comes out of the house and gives Strepsiades a cattle prod. Strepsiades starts poking Amynias with it]
STREPSIADES:
Come on! What you waiting for? Move
it,
1650
you pedigree nag!
AMYNIAS: This is outrageous!
STREPSIADES:
[continuing to poke Amynias away]
Get a move on—or
I’ll shove this
prod
[1300]
all the way up your horse-racing
rectum!
[Amynias runs off stage]
You running off? That’s what I meant to do,
get the wheels on that chariot of
yours
really moving fast.
[Strepsiades goes back into his house]
CHORUS:
Oh, it’s so nice
to worship vice.
This old man here
adores it
so
1660
he will not clear
the debts he owes.
But there’s no way
he will not fall
some time today,
done in by all
his trickeries,
he’ll quickly fear
depravities
he’s started
here.
1670
It seems to me
he’ll soon will see
his clever son
put on the show
he wanted done
so long ago—
present a case
against what’s true
and beat all those
he runs
into
1680
with sophistry.
He’ll want his son
(it may well be)
to be struck
dumb.
[1320]
[Enter Strepsiades running out of his house with Pheidippides close behind him hitting him over the head]
STREPSIADES:
Help! Help! You neighbours, relatives,
fellow citizens, help me—I’m
begging you!
I’m being beaten up! Owww, I’m in
such pain—
my head . . . my jaw. [To
Pheidippides] You good for nothing,
are you hitting your own father?
PHEIDIPPIDES: Yes, dad, I am.
STREPSIADES: See that! He admits he’s beating me. 1690
PHEIDIPPIDES: I do indeed.
STREPSIADES:
You scoundrel, criminal—
a man who abuses his own father!
PHEIDIPPIDES:
Go on—keep
calling me those very names—
the same ones many times. Don’t you
realize
I just love hearing streams of such
abuse?
STREPSIADES: You perverted asshole!
PHEIDIPPIDES:
Ah, some
roses!
[1330]
Keep pelting me with roses!!
STREPSIADES: You’d hit your father?
PHEIDIPPIDES:
Yes, and by the gods I’ll now demonstrate
how I was right to hit you.
STREPSIADES:
You total wretch,
how can it be right to strike one’s
father?
1700
PHEIDIPPIDES: I'll prove that to you—and win the argument.
STREPSIADES: You’ll beat me on this point?
PHEIDIPPIDES:
Indeed, I will.
It’s easy. So of the two arguments
choose which one you want.
STREPSIADES: What two arguments?
PHEIDIPPIDES: The Better or the Worse.
STREPSIADES:
By god, my lad,
I really did have you taught to argue
against what’s just, if you succeed
in this—
and make the case it’s fine and
justified
for a father to be beaten by his son.
PHEIDIPPIDES:
Well, I think I’ll manage to convince
you,
1710
so that once you’ve heard my
arguments,
you won’t say a word.
STREPSIADES:
Well, to tell the truth,
I do want to hear what you have to
say.
CHORUS:
You’ve some work to do, old man.
Think how to get the upper hand.
He’s got something he thinks will
work,
or he’d not act like such a jerk.
There’s something makes him
confident—
his arrogance is
evident.
[1350]
CHORUS
LEADER: [addressing Strepsiades]
But first you need to tell the
Chorus
here
1720
how your fight originally started.
That’s something you should do in
any case.
STREPSIADES:
Yes, I’ll tell you how our quarrel first began.
As you know, we were having a fine
meal.
I first asked him to take up his lyre
and sing a lyric by Simonides*—
the one about the ram being shorn.
But he immediately refused—saying
that playing the lyre while we were
drinking
was out of date, like some woman
singing
1730
while grinding barley.
PHEIDIPPIDES:
Well, at that point,
you should have been ground up and
trampled on—
asking for a song, as if you were
feasting
[1360]
with cicadas.
STREPSIADES:
The way he's talking now—
that’s just how he was talking
there before.
He said Simonides was a bad poet.
I could hardly stand it, but at first
I did.
Then I asked him to pick up a myrtle
branch
and at least recite some Aeschylus
for me.*
He replied at once, “In my
opinion,
1740
Aeschylus is first among the poets
for lots of noise, unevenness, and
bombast—
he piles up words like mountains.”
Do you know
how hard my heart was pounding after
that?
But I clenched my teeth and kept my
rage inside,
and said, “Then recite me something
recent,
from the newer poets, some witty
verse.”
[1370]
So he then right off started to
declaim
some passage from Euripides in which,
spare me this, a brother was enjoying
sex
1750
with his own sister—
from a common mother.
I couldn’t keep my temper any more—
so on the spot I verbally attacked
with all sorts of nasty, shameful
language.
Then, as one might predict, we went
at it—
hurling insults at each other back
and forth.
But then he jumped up, pushed me,
thumped me,
choked me, and started killing me.
PHEIDIPPIDES:
Surely I was entitled to do that
to a man who will not praise
Euripides,
1760
the cleverest of all.
STREPSIADES:
Him? The cleverest? Ha!
What do I call you? No, I won’t say—
I’d just get beaten one more time.
PHEIDIPPIDES:
Yes, by Zeus,
you would—and
with justice, too.
STREPSIADES:
How would that be just? You shameless man,
I brought you up. When you lisped
your words,
I listened ‘til I recognized each
one.
If you said “waa,” I understood
the word
and brought a drink; if you asked for
“foo foo,”
I’d bring you bread. And if you
said “poo poo”
1770
I’d pick you up and carry you
outside,
and hold you up. But when you
strangled me
just now, I screamed and yelled I had
to shit—
but you didn’t dare to carry me
outside,
you nasty brute, you kept on
throttling me,
until I crapped myself right where I
was.
[1390]
CHORUS: I
think the hearts of younger spry
are pounding now for his reply—
for if he acts in just this way
and yet his logic wins the
day
1780
I’ll not value at a pin
any older person’s skin.
CHORUS
LEADER: Now down to work, you spinner of words,
you explorer of brand new
expressions.
Seek some way to persuade us, so it
will appear
that what you’ve been saying is
right.
PHEIDIPPIDES:
How sweet it is to be conversant with
things which are new and clever,
capable
[1400]
of treating with contempt established
ways.
When I was only focused on my
horses,
1790
I couldn’t say three words without
going wrong.
But now this man has made me stop all
that,
I’m well acquainted with the
subtlest views,
and arguments and frames of mind. And
so,
I do believe I’ll show how just it
is
to punish one’s own father.
STREPSIADES:
By the gods,
keep on with your horses then—for
me
caring for a four-horse team is
better
than being beaten to a pulp.
PHEIDIPPIDES:
I’ll go back
to where I was in my
argument,
1800
when you interrupted me. First, tell
me this—
Did you hit me when I was a child?
STREPSIADES:
Yes.
But I was doing it out of care for
you.
PHEIDIPPIDES:
Then tell me this: Is it not right for me
to care for you in the same way—to
beat you—
since that’s what caring means—a
beating?
Why must your body be except from
blows,
while mine is not? I was born a free
man, too.
”The children howl—you
think the father
should not howl as well?” You’re
going to
claim
1810
the laws permit this practice on our
children.
To that I would reply that older men
are in their second childhood. More
than that—
it makes sense that older men should
howl
before the young, because there’s
far less chance
their natures lead them into errors.
STREPSIADES: There’s no law that fathers have to suffer this. [1420]
PHEIDIPPIDES:
But surely some man first brought in the law,
someone like you and me? And way back
then
people found his arguments
convincing.
1820
Why should I have less right to make
new laws
for future sons, so they can take
their turn
and beat their fathers? All the blows
we got
before the law was brought in we’ll
erase,
and we’ll demand no payback for our
beatings.
Consider cocks and other animals—
they avenge themselves against their
fathers.
And yet how are we different from
them,
except they don’t propose decrees?
STREPSIADES:
Well
then,
[1430]
since you want to be like cocks in
all you
do,
1830
why not sleep on a perch and feed on
shit?
PHEIDIPPIDES:
My dear man, that’s not the same at all—
not according to what Socrates would
think.
STREPSIADES:
Even so, don’t beat me. For if you do,
you’ll have yourself to blame.
PHEIDIPPIDES: Why’s that?
STREPSIADES:
Because I have the right to chastise you,
if you have a son, you’ll have that
right with him.
PHEIDIPPIDES:
If I don’t have one, I’ll have cried for nothing,
and you’ll be laughing in your
grave.
STREPSIADES:
[addressing the audience]
All you men out there my age, it
seems to
me
1840
he’s arguing what’s right. And in
my view,
we should concede to these young sons
what’s fair.
It’s only right that we should cry
in pain
when we do something wrong.
PHEIDIPPIDES: Consider now another point.
STREPSIADES:
No, no.
It’ll finish
me!
[1440]
PHEIDIPPIDES:
But then again
perhaps you won’t feel so miserable
at going through what you’ve
suffered.
STREPSIADES:
What’s that?
Explain to me how I benefit from
this.
PHEIDIPPIDES: I’ll thump my mother, just as I hit you. 1850
STREPSIADES:
What’s did you just say? What are you claiming?
This second point is even more
disgraceful.
PHEIDIPPIDES:
But what if, using the Worse Argument,
I beat you arguing this proposition—
that it’s only right to hit one’s
mother?
STREPSIADES:
What else but this—if
you do a thing like that,
then why stop there? Why not throw
yourself
and Socrates and the Worse
Argument
[1450]
into the execution pit?
[Strepsiades turns towards the Chorus]
It’s your fault,
you Clouds, that I have to endure all
this.
1860
I entrusted my affairs to you.
CHORUS
LEADER:
No.
You’re the one responsible for
this.
You turned yourself toward these
felonies.
STREPSIADES:
Why didn’t you inform me at the time,
instead of luring on an old country
man?
CHORUS:
That’s what we do each time we see someone
who falls in love with evil
strategies,
until we hurl him into
misery,
[1460]
so he may learn to fear the gods.
STREPSIADES:
Oh dear. That’s harsh, you Clouds, but fair
enough. 1870
I shouldn’t have kept trying not to
pay
that cash I borrowed. Now, my dearest
lad,
come with me—let’s
exterminate those men,
the scoundrel Chaerephon and
Socrates,
the ones who played their tricks on
you and me.
PHEIDIPPIDES: But I couldn't harm the ones who taught me.
STREPSIADES: Yes, you must. Revere Paternal Zeus.*
PHEIDIPPIDES:
Just listen to that—Paternal
Zeus.
How out of date you are! Does Zeus
exist?
STREPSIADES: He does.
PHEIDIPPIDES:
No, no, he doesn’t—there's
no
way,
1880 [1470]
for Vortex has now done away with
Zeus
and rules in everything.
STREPSIADES: He hasn’t killed him.
[He points to a small statue of a round goblet which stands outside Thinkery]
I thought he had because that statue there,
the cup, is called a vortex.*
What a fool
to think this piece of clay could be
a god!
PHEIDIPPIDES: Stay here and babble nonsense to yourself.
[Pheidippides exits]*
STREPSIADES:
My god, what lunacy. I was insane
to cast aside the gods for Socrates.
[Strepsiades goes up and talks to the small statue of Hermes outside his house]
But, dear Hermes, don’t vent your rage on me,
don’t grind me down. Be merciful to
me.
1890
Their empty babbling made me lose my
mind.
[1480]
Give me your advice. Shall I lay a
charge,
go after them in court. What seems
right to you?
[He looks for a moment at the statue]
You counsel well. I won’t launch a law suit.
I’ll burn their house as quickly as
I can,
these babbling fools.
[Strepsiades calls into his house]
Xanthias, come here.
Come outside—bring
a ladder—a
mattock, too.
then climb up on top of that Thinkery
and, if you love your master, smash
the roof,
until the house collapses in on
them.
1900
[Xanthias comes out with ladder and mattock, climbs up onto the Thinkery and starts demolishing the roof]
Someone fetch me a flaming torch out here.
They may brag all they like, but here
today
[1490]
I’ll make somebody pay the penalty
for what they did to me.
[Another slave comes out and hands Strepsiades a torch. He joins Xanthias on the roof and tries to burn down the inside of the Thinkery]
STUDENT: [from inside the Thinkery] Help! Help!
STREPSIADES: Come on, Torch, put your flames to work.
[Strepsiades sets fire to the roof of the Thinkery. A student rushes outside and looks at Strepsiades and Xanthias on the roof]
STUDENT: You there, what are you doing?
STREPSIADES:
What am I doing?
What else but picking a good argument
with the roof beams of your house?
[A second student appears at a window as smoke starts coming out of the house]
STUDENT: Help! Who’s setting fire to the house?
STREPSIADES:
It’s the man
whose cloak you stole.
STUDENT: We’ll die. You’ll kill us all! 1910
STREPSIADES:
That’s what I want—unless
this mattock
disappoints my hopes or I fall
through
somehow
[1500]
and break my neck.
[Socrates comes out of the house in a cloud of smoke. He is coughing badly]
SOCRATES: What are you doing up on the roof?
STREPSIADES: I walk on air and contemplate the sun.
SOCRATES: [coughing] This is bad—I’m going to suffocate.
STUDENT: [still at the window] What about poor me? I’ll be burned up.
[Strepsiades and Xanthias come down from the roof]
STREPSIADES:
[to Socrates] Why were you so insolent with gods
in what you studied and when you
explored
the moon’s abode? Chase them off,
hit them,
throw things at them—for
all sorts of reasons,
but most of all for their
impiety.
1920
[Strepsiades and Xanthias chase Socrates and the students off the stage and exit after them]
CHORUS
LEADER: Lead us on out of here. Away!
We’ve had enough of song and dance
today.
[The Chorus exits]
Notes on The Clouds
*Thinkery: The Greek word phrontisterion (meaning school or academy) is translated here as Thinkery, a term borrowed from William Arrowsmith's translation of The Clouds. [Back to Text]
*During the war it was easy for slaves to run away into enemy territory, so their owners had to treat them with much more care. [Back to Text]
*wearing one’s hair long and keeping race horses were characteristics of the sons of very rich families. [Back to Text]
*the interest on Strepsiades’ loans would increase once the lunar month came to an end. [Back to Text]
*twelve minai is 100 drachmas, a considerable sum. The Greek reads “the horse branded with a koppa mark.” That brand was a guarantee of its breeding. [Back to Text]
*Megacles was a common name in a very prominent aristocratic family in Athens. Coesyra was the mother of a Megacles from this family, a woman well known for her wasteful expenditures and pride. [Back to Text]
*The Greek has “of Colias and Genetyllis” names associated with festivals celebrating women’s sexual and procreative powers. [Back to Text]
*Packing the wool tight in weaving uses up more wool and therefore costs more. Strepsiades holds up his cloak which is by now full of holes. [Back to Text]
*-hippos means “horse.” The mother presumably wanted her son to have the marks of the aristocratic classes. Xanthippos was the name of Pericles’ father and his son. The other names are less obviously aristocratic or uncommon. [Back to Text]
*Chaerephon: a well-known associate of Socrates. [Back to Text]
*pheasants were a rich rarity in Athens. Leogoras was a very wealthy Athenian. [Back to Text]
*an obol was a relatively small amount, about a third of a day’s pay for a jury member. [Back to Text]
*Knights is a term used to describe the affluent young men who made up the cavalry. Pheidippides has been mixing with people far beyond his father’s means. [Back to Text]
*A yoke horse was part of the four-horse team which was harnessed to a yoke on the inside. [Back to Text]
*I adopt Sommerstein’s useful reading of this very elliptical passage, which interprets the Greek word diabetes as meaning a passive homosexual (rather than its usual meaning, “a pair of compasses”—both senses deriving from the idea of spreading legs apart). The line about selling the cloak is added to clarify the sense. [Back to Text]
*Thales was a very famous thinker from the sixth century BC. [Back to Text]
*The Athenians had captured a number of Spartans at Pylos in 425 and brought them to Athens where they remained in captivity. [Back to Text]
*Athenians sometimes apportioned land by lot outside the state which they had appropriated from other people. [Back to Text]
*Attica is the territory surrounded by and belonging to Athens. [Back to Text]
*A deme was a political unit in Athens. Membership in a particular deme was a matter of inheritance from one’s father. [Back to Text]
*In 446 BC the Athenians under Pericles put down a revolt in Euboea, a large island just off the coast of Attica. [Back to Text]
*Athamas, a character in one of Sophocles’ lost plays who was prepared for sacrifice. He was rescued by Hercules. [Back to Text]
*Cecrops: a legendary king of Athens. Pallas is Pallas Athena, patron goddess of Athens. [Back to Text]
*holy festivals: the Eleusinian mysteries, a traditionally secret and sacred festival for those initiated into the band of cult worshippers. [Back to Text]
*Mount Parnes: a mountain range to the north of Athens. [Back to Text]
*Typho: a monster with a hundred heads, father of the storm winds (hence, our word typhoon). [Back to Text]
*thrush: meat from a thrush was considered a delicacy, something that might be given to the winner of a public competition. These lines are mocking the dithyrambic poets (perhaps in comparison with the writers of comic drama). [Back to Text]
*Xenophantes’ son: a reference to Hieronymos, a dithyrambic and tragic poet. A centaur was known for its savage temper and wild appearance. [Back to Text]
*Simon: an allegedly corrupt Athenian public official. [Back to Text]
*Cleonymos: an Athenian accused of dropping his shield and running away from a battle. [Back to Text]
*Cleisthenes: a notorious homosexual whom Aristophanes never tires of holding up to ridicule. [Back to Text]
*Prodicus: a well-known Athenian intellectual, who wrote on a wide variety of subjects. Linking Socrates and Prodicus as intellectual equals would strike many Athenians as quite absurd. [Back to Text]
*Vortex: the Greek word is dinos meaning a whirl or eddy. I adopt Sommerstein’s suggestion for this word here. [Back to Text]
*Panathenaea: a major annual festival in Athens. [Back to Text]
*Cronos: the divine father of Zeus, the age of Cronos is part of the mythic past. [Back to Text]
*Legally an Athenian who believed someone had stolen his property could enter the suspect’s house to search. But he first had to remove any garments in which he might conceal something which he might plant in the house. [Back to Text]
*Trophonios’ cave was a place people went to get prophecies. A suppliant carried a honey cake as an offering to the snakes in the cave. [Back to Text]
*win: this is a reference to the fact that the play is part of a competition. The speech obviously is part of the revisions made after the play failed to win first prize in its initial production. The speaker may have been Aristophanes himself or the Chorus Leader speaking on his behalf. [Back to Text]
*trained it: This passage is a reference to Aristophanes’ first play, The Banqueters, and to those who helped him get the work produced. The child mentioned is a metaphorical reference to that work or to his artistic talent generally. The other woman is a metaphorical reference to Callistratos, who produced The Banqueters. [Back to Text]
*Electra was the sister of Orestes and spent a long time waiting to be reunited with him. That hope kept her going. When she saw her brother’s lock of hair on their father’s tomb, she was overjoyed that he had come back. The adjective “old” refers to the story, which was very well known to the audience. [Back to Text]
*These lines may indicate that in The Clouds the male characters did not wear the traditional phalluses or that the phalluses they did wear were not of a particular kind. [Back to Text]
*Cleon was a very powerful Athenian politician after Pericles. Aristophanes savagely attacked him in Knights. Cleon was killed in battle (in 422). Hyperbolos became a very influential politician after Cleon’s death. [Back to Text]
*Eupolis, Phrynichos, and Hermippos were comic playwrights, rivals of Aristophanes. [Back to Text]
*Paphlagonian tanner is a reference to Cleon, who earned his money from tanneries. Paphlagonia is an area in Asia Minor. The word here implies that Cleon was not a true Athenian. [Back to Text]
*seagull was a bird symbolic of thievery and greed. The contradiction in these speeches in the attitude to Cleon (who died the year following the original production) may be accounted for by the incomplete revision of the script. [Back to Text]
*holy lady is a reference to the goddess Artemis. The aegis is a divine cloak which has invincible powers to strike fear into the god’s enemies. Here it is invoked as a protection for Athens, Athena’s city. Dionysus lived in Delphi when Apollo was absent from the shrine during the winter. [Back to Text]
*Athenians followed a lunar calendar, but there were important discrepancies due to a very careless control over inserting extra days. [Back to Text]
*Memnon or Sarpedon: Memnon, the son of Dawn, was killed at Troy, as was Sarpedon, a son of Zeus, and leader of the Lycian allies of the Trojans. [Back to Text]
*religious council: the Amphictyonic Council, which controlled some important religious shrines, was made up of delegates from different city states. In Athens the delegate was chosen by lot. It’s not clear how the gods could have removed the wreath in question. [Back to Text]
*the dactyl is named from the Greek word for finger because it consists of one long stress followed by two short stresses, like the structure of bones in a finger. The phrase “which is like a digit” has been added to make the point clearer. [Back to Text]
*I adopt Sommerstein’s suggested insertion of this line and a half in order to clarify what now follows in the conversation, which hinges on the gender of words (masculine, feminine, or neuter) and the proper ascription of a specific gender to words which describe male and female objects. The word “fowl” applies to both male and females and therefore is not, strictly speaking masculine. This whole section is a satire on the “nitpicking” attention to language attributed to the sophists. [Back to Text]
*kneading basin: a trough for making bread. [Back to Text]
*Cleonymos was an Athenian politician who allegedly ran away from the battle field, leaving his shield behind. [Back to Text]
*to masturbate: the Greek here says literally “Cleonymos didn’t have a kneading basin but kneaded himself with a round mortar [i.e., masturbated].” [Back to Text]
*The point of this very laboured joke seems to be making Cleonymos feminine, presumably because of his cowardice (running away in battle). [Back to Text]
*The three names mentioned belong to well known Athenians, who may have all been famous for their dissolute life style. Socrates is taking issue with the spelling of the last two names which (in some forms) look like feminine names. Strepsiades, of course, thinks Socrates is talking about the sexuality of the people. [Back to Text]
*Amynia: in Greek (as in Latin) the name changes when it is used as a direct form of address-in this case the last letter is dropped, leaving a name ending in -a, normally a feminine ending. [Back to Text]
*Corinthian is obviously a reference to bed bugs, but the link with Corinth is unclear (perhaps it was a slang expression). [Back to Text]
*bug: children sometimes tied a thread around the foot of a large flying bug and played with it. [Back to Text]
*the scribe would be writing on a wax tablet which the heat would melt. [Back to Text]
*Melos: Strepsiades presumably is confusing Socrates with Diagoras, a well known materialistic atheist, who came from Melos (whereas Socrates did not). [Back to Text]
*died: part of the funeral rituals in a family required each member to bathe thoroughly. [Back to Text]
*Sons of Earth: a phrase usually referring to the Titans who warred against the Olympian gods. Here it also evokes a sense of the materialism of Socrates’ doctrine in the play and, of course, ironically ridicules the Thinkery. [Back to Text]
*”necessary expense”: refers to the well-known story of Pericles who in 445 BC used this phrase in official state accounts to refer to an expensive but secret bribe he paid to a Spartan general to withdraw his armies from Athenian territories around Athens. No one asked any embarrassing questions about the entry. [Back to Text]
*speech: the Greek says “with his lips sagging [or loosely apart].” Socrates is criticizing Pheidippides’ untrained voice. [Back to Text]
*talent: an enormous fee to pay for lessons in rhetoric. Socrates is, of course, getting Strepsiades ready to pay a lot for his son’s education. [Back to Text]
*Zeus overthrew his father, Cronos, and the Titans and imprisoned them deep inside the earth. [Back to Text]
*Telephos from Mysia was a hero in a play by Euripides in which a king was portrayed as a beggar. Pandeletos was an Athenian politician. The imputation here is that the Worse Argument once did very badly, barely surviving on his wits and borrowed ideas. [Back to Text]
*thighs apart: keeping the thighs together was supposed to enable boys to stimulate themselves sexually. [Back to Text]
*Phrynis style: Phrynis was a musician who introduced certain innovations in music around 450 BC. [Back to Text]
*Cedeides: a dithyrambic poet well known for his old-fashioned style. The other references are all too ancient customs and rituals (like the old tradition of wearing a cicada broach or the ritual killing of oxen). [Back to Text]
*Marathon: a battle in 490 BC in which a small band of Greeks, mainly Athenians, defeated the Persian armies which had landed near Athens. The Panathenaea was a major religious festival in Athens. Tritogeneia was one of Athena’s titles. [Back to Text]
*Iapetus was a Titan, a brother of Cronos, and hence very ancient. [Back to Text]
*Hippocrates was an Athenian, a relative of Pericles. He had three sons who had a reputation for childishness. [Back to Text]
*Academy: this word refers, not to Plato’s school (which was not in existence yet) but to a public park and gymnasium in Athens. [Back to Text]
*long decrees: The Greek says “and a long decree,” which makes little sense in English. The point of the joke is to set the audience up to expect “and a long prick” (which was considered a characteristic of barbarians). [Back to Text]
*Antimachos was satirized in comedy as a particularly effeminate man. [Back to Text]
*drachmas: the Greek has “more than ten thousand staters.” A stater was a general term for non-Athenian coins, usually of high value. The idea, of course, is equivalent to “a ton of money.” [Back to Text]
*bath of Hercules was a term commonly applied to thermal hot springs. [Back to Text]
*This part of the argument is impossible to render quickly in English. Homer’s word is agoretes, meaning “speaking in the assembly.” The Worse Argument is implying that, since the word agora means market place, Homer is commending these men for “talking the market place.” [Back to Text]
*Peleus once refused the sexual advances of the wife of his host. She accused him of immoral activity, and her husband set Peleus unarmed on a mountain. The gods admired Peleus’ chastity and provided him a sword so he could defend himself against the wild animals. [Back to Text]
*Peleus, a mortal king, married Thetis, a sea goddess, with the blessing of the gods. Their child was the hero Achilles. She later left him to return to her father (but not for the reason given in the lines following). [Back to Text]
*asshole: Someone caught in the act of adultery was punished by having a radish shoved up his anus and his pubic hair singed with hot ash. The various insults here ("loose-arsed bugger," "gigantic asshole," and so on) stand for the Greek perjorative phrase "wide arsed," which, in addition to meaning "lewd" or "disgusting," also carries the connotation of passive homosexuality, something considered ridiculous in mature men. Terms like "bum fucker" are too active to capture this sense of the insult. [Back to Text]
*The person making the charge in court had to make a cash deposit which was forfeit if he lost the case. [Back to Text]
*Solon: was a very famous Athenian law maker. In the early sixth century he laid down the basis for Athenian laws. [Back to Text]
*Pheidippides’ hair-splitting argument which follows supposedly establishes that the law suits against Strepsiades are illegal and should be tossed out because (in brief) the court had taken the deposit, which the creditor had to make to launch the suit, on the wrong day (the last day of the month instead of the first day of the new month). The case rests on a misinterpretation of the meaning of the term Old and New Day—which was single day between the old and the new moon. The passage is, of course, a satire on sophistic reasoning and legal quibbling for self-interest. [Back to Text]
*my own deme: the deme was the basic political unit in Athens. Membership in it passed down from one’s father. [Back to Text]
*three extra obols: Strepsiades means here that swearing the oath will be such fun he’s prepared to pay for the pleasure—an obvious insult to Pasias. [Back to Text]
salt*: leather was rubbed down as part of the tanning process. The phrase “wine skin” has been added to clarify the sense. [Back to Text]
*Carcinus: an Athenian writer of tragic drama. [Back to Text]
*Amynias is here quoting from a tragedy written by Carcinus’ son Xenocles. [Back to Text]
*Tlepolemos is a character in the tragedy mentioned in the previous note. [Back to Text]
*Simonides: was a well-known lyric poet of the previous century. [Back to Text]
*myrtle branch: traditionally a person singing at a drinking party held a myrtle branch unless he was playing a musical instrument. [Back to Text]
*Paternal Zeus: This seems to be an appeal to Zeus as the guardian of the father’s rights and thus a way or urging Pheidippides to go along with what his father wants. The line may be a quote from a lost tragedy. [Back to Text]
Vortex: the Greek word dinos, meaning “whirl,” “eddy,” or “vortex,” also means a round goblet. The statue of such a goblet outside the Thinkery represents the presiding deity of the house. [Back to Text]
*It’s not clear whether Pheidippides goes back into his house or back into the school. If he does the latter, then the comic violence at the end of the play takes on a much darker tone, since Strepsiades’ murderous anger includes his son. In fact, the loss of his son might be the key event which triggers the intensity of the final destruction. [Back to Text]
Translator’s Note
This translation, prepared by Ian Johnston of Malaspina University-College, Nanaimo, BC, Canada, is in the public domain and may be used by anyone, without permission and without charge, provided the source is acknowledged, released August 2003.
In the text below the numbers in square brackets refer to the Greek text. The asterisks (*) indicate links to explanatory notes, which appear together at the end.
The translator would like to acknowledge the valuable help provided by K. J. Dover’s commentary on the play (Oxford University Press, 1968) and by Alan H. Sommerstein’s notes in his edition of Clouds (Aris & Phillips, 1982).
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