Aristophanes: Four Plays

CLOUDS

(Nephelai)

First produced in 423 BCE, subsequently revised

CHARACTERS IN THE PLAY

Strepsiades

Slave

Pheidippides

First Student

Students

Socrates

Chorus of Clouds

Chorus Leader

Right Argument

Wrong Argument

First Creditor

Witness

Second Creditor

Xanthias, a slave

Chaerephon

(The setting is Athens, Greece, during the Peloponnesian War. There is a backdrop with two doors in it. This first scene takes place in front of the backdrop, a space that initially represents the inside of Strepsiades’s house. There is a bed in which Strepsiades and Pheidippides are sleeping. The time is just before dawn. In front of one of the doors—the door to the Thinkery—there are a statue of Hermes, a pedestal holding a jar with a “Vortex” pattern on it, and a variety of astronomical and geometric instruments. Above the door to the Thinkery there is a window. It is very late at night.)

STREPSIADES: (tossing and turning in bed)

Goodness, goodness.

Great Zeus, how long the night is—infinite!

Will morning never come? I swear I heard

the rooster crow a long, long time ago.

My slaves are all still snoring. In the past

they never would have dared to sleep so late.

I say goddamn this war for oh so many

reasons: I can’t even beat the help!^o

(gesturing to Pheidippides)

This fine young man right here, he never wakes up

during the night but simply goes on farting,

five quilts deep. Oh well, since it seems

the thing to do, let’s all just snore away,

wrapped up in blankets.

(Strepsiades lies back on the bed but then continues to toss and turn.)

Oh, I’m miserable!

I can’t sleep. I’m being eaten up

by great expenditures, by horse feed-troughs,

by all my debts,

(gesturing to Pheidippides)

because of this son here!

He, with his long hair, won’t stop riding horses

and driving chariots. He dreams of horses,

and I feel ruined every time I see

the moon has reached the twentieth of the month^o—

the interest on my debts will soon tick up.

(shouting to a Slave offstage)

Bring me a lamp, now, boy! And bring my ledger

so I can look at all my debts and reckon

the interest up.

(A Slave brings the ledger and a lighted lamp.)

Alright, then, let’s just see

how much I owe: To Pasias, twelve minas.^o

To Pasias, twelve minas? Why did I ever

borrow that amount? Oh—when I bought

the thoroughbred. Poor me! I wish a rock had

thoroughly put my eye out first.

PHEIDIPPIDES: (talking in his sleep)

Hey there,

you’re cheating, Philo. Stay in your own lane.

STREPSIADES:

That’s just how I am being ruined: the boy

keeps riding horses even in his sleep!

PHEIDIPPIDES: (talking in his sleep)

How many races will the chariots run?

STREPSIADES:

You’re making me, your father, run a lot

of races. Well, what debt came over me

after my debt to Pasias?

(looking back to the ledger)

To Amynias

three minas for a chariot and wheels.

PHEIDIPPIDES: (talking in his sleep)

Well, let the stallion roll, then bring him in.

STREPSIADES:

Kid, you’ve rolled me out of all I own.

Some creditors have taken me to court;

others insisted that I put up assets

to cover the compounding interest.

PHEIDIPPIDES: (waking up)

Dad,

why are you such a coot? Why do you toss

and turn the whole night through?

STREPSIADES:

A bailiff-bug keeps

biting me right out of all my blankets.

PHEIDIPPIDES:

Come on, now, let me just go back to sleep.

STREPSIADES:

Alright, go back to sleep.

(Pheidippides covers himself in blankets again.)

But know that someday

all my debts will end up landing squarely

on your own head. Goddamn the marriage-maker,

that hag, who introduced me to your mother.

Mine was a country life, a very pleasant,

if dirty and unshaven, life, a life

that lay wherever and was rich in bees

and sheep and olive cakes. Then I, a bumpkin,

took as wife the niece of Megacles

the son of Megacles,^o a city girl—

as spoiled and snobby as that bitch Coesyra.^o

The night I wedded her, I went to bed

smelling of fresh wine, fleeces, figs and great

affluence, and she on her side reeked of

lubricant, saffron seeds, tongue kisses, wealth,

gluttony and the Goddesses of Sex.^o

I won’t say she was lazy, since she wove.

And sometimes, as a pretext, I would show her

this bit of cloth

(lifting his cloak and exposing his strap-on penis)

and say, “Oh you weave well.”

(The lamp goes out.)

SLAVE:

The lamp has died. And there is no more oil.

STREPSIADES:

Dammit, why did you bring the wasteful lamp?

Get over here.

(threatening to strike the Slave)

Prepare to scream.

SLAVE:

Why scream?

STREPSIADES:

Because you put the thick wick in the lamp.

(He swats at the Slave, who runs off through a stage door.)

Afterwards, when this son was born to me

and my most estimable wife, we squabbled

about his name. She kept on wanting one

with hippos (“horse”) in it somewhere—Xanthippus,

Charippus or Callippides.^o I, though,

wanted to call the boy Pheidonides,

which was my father’s name. We had it out

about the name and then, in time, agreed on

Pheidippides. Then, picking up the baby,

my wife would tell him, “When you are a big boy,

you will put on a rich, soft robe and drive

a chariot to the Acropolis,

just like Megacles your uncle.” Well,

I, on my side, was saying, “When you’re grown up,

you’ll put a simple leather apron on

and drive the goats down from the hills, just like

your father did.” The boy ignored, of course,

all that I said to him and now has spread

his horse disease all over my estate.

That’s why I spent the whole night worrying.

Now, with the gods’ help, I have found a way out,

a great escape route. Now, if I can only

persuade my son to go along with me,

I shall be saved! First, though, I need to wake him.

How can I rouse him in the nicest way?

How? O Pheidippides. O darling little

Pheidippides.

PHEIDIPPIDES: (waking up)

What is it, Dad?

STREPSIADES:

Come here;

give me a kiss and take me by the hand.

(Pheidippides leans over and kisses Strepsiades.)

PHEIDIPPIDES:

Alright. What is it?

STREPSIADES:

Tell me: do you love me?

PHEIDIPPIDES:

Yes, by Poseidon, God of Horsemanship.

STREPSIADES:

100

Leave out Poseidon, God of Horsemanship.

He is the cause of all my troubles. Listen,

if you really love me from your heart,

then, boy, obey me!

PHEIDIPPIDES:

How should I obey you?

STREPSIADES:

Change your ways as quickly as you can

and go and learn the skill I recommend.

PHEIDIPPIDES:

What do you recommend?

STREPSIADES:

Will you obey me?

PHEIDIPPIDES:

By Dionysus, yes, I will obey you.

STREPSIADES: (gesturing to the stage-right door)

Look over this way. Do you see this door?

The little house behind it?

PHEIDIPPIDES:

Yes, I see them,

but Dad, what is this place?

STREPSIADES:

110

A Thinkery^o

for clever souls. Behind that door dwell men

who, when they speak about the sky, persuade

others it is an oven that surrounds us,

and we are coals inside it. For a fee

they also teach a person how to win

an argument no matter whether he

is right or wrong.

PHEIDIPPIDES:

Who are they, though?

STREPSIADES:

I can’t

exactly put a name to them: they are

good, noble and exacting intellectuals.

PHEIDIPPIDES:

120

I know them well and, yuck, they are repulsive.

You mean the shysters, the anemic smarties,

the barefoot fellows in whose number are

Chaerephon^o and that wretched Socrates.

STREPSIADES:

You watch your mouth. Don’t you be talking nonsense.

If you care at all about your father’s

finances, then you will forget your horses

and sign up as a student here.

PHEIDIPPIDES:

I wouldn’t,

by Dionysus, even if you were

to give me all Leogoras’s pheasants.^o

STREPSIADES:

130

O dear son, I beg you. Go. Go learn.

PHEIDIPPIDES:

And what am I to learn?

STREPSIADES:

They say there are

two Arguments in there—the one called “Right,”

whatever that might be, and then the “Wrong” one.

They say that one of these two Arguments,

the Wrong, prevails, although the points it makes

are on the wrong side. If you go and learn

one of these Arguments, the Wrong, for me,

I wouldn’t have to pay back even one

obol^o of all the debts I have accrued

because of you.

PHEIDIPPIDES:

140

I won’t be going there.

I couldn’t bring myself to stand among

the Horsemen^o with my face all drawn and pasty.

STREPSIADES:

Then, by Demeter,^o you shall eat no food

of mine—not you yourself and not your trace horse

and not your thoroughbred. No, I shall drive you

straight out of the house to go to hell!

PHEIDIPPIDES:

Ah, but my uncle Megacles will never

leave me without a horse. I’m going in.

I won’t be listening to you in this.

(Pheidippides exits through the stage-left door in the backdrop.)

STREPSIADES:

150

Oh well. Although I’m down, I’m still not out.

No, after praying to the gods, I’ll go

myself and study at the Thinkery.

How, though, will I, a slow, forgetful geezer,

learn all those keen, hairsplitting arguments?

I have to do it, all the same. Why loiter?

Why not try knocking on the door?

(He knocks on the door.)

Boy! Boy!

FIRST STUDENT: (peeking out of the door)

Goddamn that noise! Who’s knocking on the door?

STREPSIADES:

Strepsiades out of the deme Cicynna,^o

the son of Pheidon.

FIRST STUDENT:

You are quite a moron!

160

You pounded on the door so oafishly

that you have caused me to abort

a thought that I was carrying to term.

STREPSIADES:

I’m sorry. I’m from way out in the country.

Tell me, what was this thought that was aborted?

FIRST STUDENT:

We are allowed to speak such secrets only

to fellow students.

STREPSIADES:

Have no fears about that;

you can tell it to me, since I’ve come

to be a student at the Thinkery.

FIRST STUDENT: (stepping outside the door)

I’ll tell you, but you must regard these matters

170

as sacred secrets. Socrates just lately

asked Chaerephon how far a flea could jump

as measured by its own flea-feet. You see,

a flea had bitten Chaerephon’s eyebrow

and then leapt onto Socrates’s head.

STREPSIADES:

How did he gauge the distance of the jump?

FIRST STUDENT:

Quite cleverly. He melted wax, then took

the flea and pressed its feet into the wax.

Then, when the wax had cooled, the flea was wearing

what looked just like a pair of Persian slippers.^o

180

Socrates gently loosened these and used them

to measure out the distance.

STREPSIADES:

Great King Zeus,

what subtlety of thought!

FIRST STUDENT:

What would you say, then,

about this other idea of Socrates’s?

STREPSIADES:

What is it? Please, please tell me.

FIRST STUDENT:

Chaerephon

of Sphettus asked him if he thought the gnat

buzzed through the mouth or through the anus.

STREPSIADES:

Well,

what did that wise man have to say about this?

FIRST STUDENT:

He said the entrails of the gnat are narrow,

and wind goes powerfully through that tight space

190

straight to the anus, and the gnat’s rump, hollow

where it is adjacent to the pinched

intestines, through the violence of the wind,

buzzes.

STREPSIADES:

Gnats have a trumpet for a butt!

The man is thrice blessed for his penetrating

vision. A defendant who has grasped

the entrails of the gnat will get himself

acquitted without any difficulty.

FIRST STUDENT:

A gecko lately cheated Socrates

out of a bright idea.

STREPSIADES:

How’s that? Tell me.

FIRST STUDENT:

200

Well, while he was doing research on

the routes and variations of the moon,

he gaped into the night sky, and a gecko

pooped on him from the roof.

STREPSIADES:

A gecko pooped

on Socrates—I love it!

FIRST STUDENT:

Yes, and last night

we had no dinner.

STREPSIADES:

What did he contrive

for you to eat?

FIRST STUDENT:

He started out by sprinkling

ash on the table, then he bent a skewer,

then went out to the wrestling school and used

this new device to steal somebody’s cloak.^o

STREPSIADES:

210

Why do we wonder at the famous Thales?^o

Hurry now, open up the Thinkery

and show me Socrates quick as you can.

I want to be a student. Open up!

(A wheeled platform is rolled out, on which there are several thin and pale Students. Some are standing with their heads close to the ground and some with their rumps in the air.)

STREPSIADES: (astounded)

By Heracles, what species are these beasts?

FIRST STUDENT:

Why are they shocking? What do they resemble?

STREPSIADES:

The Spartan prisoners of war from Pylos.^o

What are those doing staring at the ground?

FIRST STUDENT:

They’re seeking after things beneath the earth.

STREPSIADES:

Oh, they are seeking after truffles, then.

220

Don’t bother looking for them anymore—

I know where there are big sweet ones. But really,

why are they all hunched over in that way?

FIRST STUDENT:

To grope about in Tartarus’s darkness.

STREPSIADES:

(to the other Students)

Why do these here have butt-holes gaping skyward?

FIRST STUDENT:

Oh, they are learning on their own to do

astronomy.

(to the Students)

All of you, go back in

so that the master doesn’t find you here.

STREPSIADES:

No, let them stay outside. I want to share

a little problem of my own with them.

FIRST STUDENT:

230

It is forbidden to them to remain

out in the open air for very long.

(The wheeled platform is rolled back inside. Strepsiades turns to a range of instruments displayed in front of the school.)

STREPSIADES: (pointing to a group of instruments)

Tell me, then, what are all these instruments?

FIRST STUDENT:

They’re for astronomy.

STREPSIADES: (pointing to another group of instruments)

And what are these?

FIRST STUDENT:

They’re for geometry.

STREPSIADES: (pointing to a third group of instruments)

And these ones here?

FIRST STUDENT:

They measure Earth.

STREPSIADES:

They mark off plots of land?

FIRST STUDENT:

No, the entire Earth.

STREPSIADES:

That’s very clever—

a useful tool, and democratic, too.

FIRST STUDENT:

This is a map of everything on Earth.

Here’s Athens. Do you see it?

STREPSIADES:

What, that’s Athens?

240

I don’t believe you, since I can’t make out

the courts in session.

FIRST STUDENT:

No, this really is

the land of Attica.

STREPSIADES:

Where are my fellow

residents of Cicynna?

FIRST STUDENT:

Here they are.

And here’s Euboea, as you see, stretched out

this very long, long distance right beside it.^o

STREPSIADES:

Yes, Pericles and us have stretched it out

like that. But where is Sparta?

FIRST STUDENT:

Sparta? Here.

STREPSIADES:

That’s much too close to us. Now pay attention—

push Sparta very very far away.

FIRST STUDENT:

It simply can’t be done.

STREPSIADES:

250

You will regret it.

(Socrates enters suspended in a basket.)

Who is this man suspended in a basket?

FIRST STUDENT:

That is the man himself.

STREPSIADES:

What man himself?

FIRST STUDENT:

That’s Socrates.

STREPSIADES: (calling to Socrates)

O Socrates!

(to the First Student)

Come on, now;

call out to him for me.

FIRST STUDENT:

Call out to him

yourself, since I have no more time for this.

(The First Student exits into the Thinkery.)

STREPSIADES:

Socrates! O darling Socrates!

SOCRATES:

Why, creature of a day, dost thou address me?

STREPSIADES:

First what I want to know is, what are you doing?

SOCRATES:

Walking on air and pondering the sun.

STREPSIADES:

260

So is it from a basket that you look

down on the gods, not from the earth?

SOCRATES:

I never

would have properly investigated

celestial affairs if I had not

lifted my intellect aloft and mixed

my cerebrations with their kindred air.

If I had stayed on earth and scanned the heavens

from below, I never would have made

discoveries. Here is the reason: earth

forcibly draws thought’s moisture to itself.

270

Watercress operates in much the same way.

STREPSIADES:

What are you saying? Thought draws moisture toward

the watercresses? Dear, dear Socrates,

come down and join me so that I might learn

what I have come to learn.

(The basket is set down, and Socrates steps out of it.)

SOCRATES:

Why have you come?

STREPSIADES:

I want to learn to argue. I am being

drawn and quartered by my interest payments

and all my irritable creditors,

and I am soon to have my assets seized.

SOCRATES:

How did you not perceive your mounting debt?

STREPSIADES:

280

An all-consuming horse disease assailed me.

Come, now, and teach one of your arguments

to me, the one that never pays out fines,

and I will swear by all the gods that I

will lay down any fee that you require.

SOCRATES:

Who are these “gods” that you will swear by? First off,

the gods aren’t any kind of currency

among us here.

STREPSIADES:

What do you swear your oaths by?

Iron coins like in Byzantium?^o

SOCRATES:

Do you desire to fathom, truly fathom,

celestial matters?

STREPSIADES:

290

If I can, then yes,

by Zeus.

SOCRATES:

And with the Clouds, our deities,

to have a conversation?

STREPSIADES:

Yes, I do.

SOCRATES: (gesturing to a chair)

Seat thyself, then, upon the sacred chair.

STREPSIADES:

Alright, I’m seated.

SOCRATES: (handing Strepsiades a garland)

Take this garland also.

STREPSIADES:

A garland? Why? Oh no, don’t sacrifice me,

Socrates. I don’t want to play Athamas.^o

SOCRATES:

No, no, all of you who are inducted

into the Thinkery go through the same

initiation.

STREPSIADES:

What will I gain by it?

SOCRATES:

300

You will become an ace, a real rattle,

the very flower of verbosity.

But hush up, now.

STREPSIADES:

By Zeus, you won’t deceive me.

When I get sprinkled on, I’ll be the flour.

SOCRATES:

You now should sit, old man, in holy silence

and listen to my prayer:

(addressing the sky)

O King, immeasurable Air,

who hold the earth suspended, and you, ever-gleaming Aether,

and you high goddesses, the Clouds, who send the thunder and lightning,

O Queens, arise, show yourselves, floating, to your contemplator.

STREPSIADES: (holding his cloak over his head)

Hold off and let me wrap this cloak around my head or else

310

the rain will get me. Sad. I didn’t think to bring a cap.

SOCRATES:

Come now, you venerable Clouds, appear unto this man.

Whether you now are sitting on the sacred snowcapped peaks

of Mount Olympus, or in Father Ocean’s groves performing

holy dances with the Nymphs, or drawing off the flowing

streams of the Nile in golden pitchers, or inhabiting

Lake Maeotis or the snowy rock of Mimas,^o hear me,

accept my sacrifice and be propitious to these rites.

(The Chorus of Clouds is heard singing offstage.)

CHORUS:

Strophe

Let us, the deathless Clouds, arise to human vision

out of the roaring fathoms of our father Ocean

320

and fly above the forest-laden mountaintops

so that we may behold the towers on the peaks,

the sacred-soil-fomented crops,

the holy rivers’ roaring flux

and the loud-sounding sea.

The Aether’s never-sleeping eye

glints with glittering rays.

Come, let us shake the water drops

off our immortal beauty and survey

the earth with telescopic gaze.

SOCRATES:

330

O most holy Clouds, you clearly heard me when I called.

(to Strepsiades)

Did you make out their voices and the awesome roaring thunder?

STREPSIADES: (to the Clouds, still invisible to him)

I, too, revere you, highly honored gods, and want to thunder

in answer (that’s how much they scared and shocked me). Whether

or not it be allowed, I really need to poop right now.

SOCRATES: (to Strepsiades)

No cracking jokes. Don’t do what all those wretched comics do.

No, utter favorable words instead, because there is

a whole great hive of deities approaching with their songs.

CHORUS:

Antistrophe

Come, rainy maidens, to the fruitful country of

Pallas and Cecrops,^o to a man-rich land we love,

340

where none divulge the sacred secrets, and a house

welcomes initiates to holy things, where gods

have high-roofed temples, offerings, sacred images,

and there are many blessed and sublime parades,

and sacrifices crowned

with coronals go on year-round;

in spring the Bacchic rites^o

take place, and the melodious

choruses do their dancing, and the sound

echoes, the trill of double flutes.

STREPSIADES:

350

Please tell me, Socrates, who are these females who have chanted

so august a song? Surely they must be demigods?

SOCRATES:

No, they are skyborne Clouds, great goddesses to layabouts.

They fill us up with thoughts and quibbles, mindfulness and nonsense,

circumlocution and deceptiveness and comprehension.

STREPSIADES:

That’s why my soul began to flutter when it heard them sing.

It yearns already to be splitting hairs and quibbling over

vapor and arguing the opposite of some old saying

it skewered with a little thought. I burn to see these powers

face-to-face, if seeing them that way is possible.

(The Chorus of Clouds enter through the side aisles.)

SOCRATES:

360

Look that way toward Mount Parnes. That is where I now can see them

gently descending.

STREPSIADES:

Where, now? Show me.

SOCRATES:

Look right over there.

Yes, quite a few of them are coming through the groves and hollows,

moving sideways.

STREPSIADES:

What is wrong with me? I still can’t see them.

SOCRATES:

There by the gateway.

STREPSIADES:

Now at last I almost make them out.

SOCRATES:

Now you should see them very vividly, unless your eyes

are stuffed with styes as big as pumpkins.

STREPSIADES:

Yes, by Zeus, I see them.

O most honored Clouds! They now are covering everything.

SOCRATES:

You really mean to say you never thought the Clouds were gods?

STREPSIADES:

That’s news to me. I thought that they were mist and dew and smoke.

SOCRATES:

370

You never knew, then, that the Clouds nourish the many sophists,

Thurii prophets,^o doctors, lazy longhairs wearing onyx rings,

song-twisters for the cyclic contests and the weather wizards.

They nourish all these kinds of reprobates because such men

write poetry about them.

STREPSIADES:

That must be the reason why

the poets sing about “the dreaded onrush of the moist,

bright-whirling Clouds” and “curls of Typhon with his hundred heads”

and “blowhard squalls” and “aerial soddenness” and “crooked-clawed,

sky-riding birds” and “showers from dewy Clouds.” In compensation,

the poets get “fillet of good fine trout” and “thrush-bird cutlets.”^o

SOCRATES:

380

Isn’t it perfect that the poets get their food from Clouds?

STREPSIADES:

Say, now, if they are really clouds, what has gone wrong with them

that they resemble mortal women? Clouds don’t look like this.

SOCRATES:

But of what nature are the clouds?

STREPSIADES:

Well, I can’t say for sure.

Clouds look like spread-out fleeces, not like women. These have noses.

SOCRATES:

Answer, now, what I ask you.

STREPSIADES:

Alright, ask me anything.

SOCRATES:

When looking skyward, have you ever seen a cloud look like a centaur?

A panther? Like a wolf? A bull?

STREPSIADES:

Of course I have. So what?

SOCRATES:

Clouds can assume whatever shape they wish. Say that they see

a man with long locks, an obscene and hairy fellow like

390

the son of Xenophantes.^o They, then, take the form of centaurs

to ridicule the fellow’s wildness.

STREPSIADES:

What if they see Simon,^o

a plunderer of public property? What do they do?

SOCRATES:

They turn to wolves to comment on his nature.

STREPSIADES:

Oh, that’s why,

just yesterday the clouds resembled deer—it was because

they saw Cleonymus,^o a very cowardly sort of fellow.

SOCRATES:

Now they have turned to women, since they looked at Cleisthenes.^o

(The Chorus of Clouds have now reached the stage area.)

STREPSIADES: (to the Clouds)

Greetings, regal powers, queens of all. If you have ever

shared your lofty voice with humans, please do so with me.

CHORUS LEADER: (to Strepsiades)

Greetings to you, old man, seeker of educated words,

(to Socrates)

400

and you, high priest of subtle blather. What do you desire?

Know we do not pay heed to any other of the current

astral philosophers except for Prodicus^o (that wise

and learned man) and you, because you swagger through the streets

and cast your eyes askance and, barefoot, suffer much discomfort

and seem so arrogant because you put such faith in us.

STREPSIADES:

Wow, what a voice—holy and venerable and awe-inspiring.

SOCRATES:

Yes, the Clouds alone are goddesses; the rest is nonsense.

STREPSIADES:

What about Zeus? Don’t say Olympian Zeus is not a god.

SOCRATES:

What Zeus? Stop talking nonsense. There’s no Zeus.

STREPSIADES:

What are you saying?

410

Who does the raining, then? Explain that to me first of all.

SOCRATES:

The Clouds make rain, of course. I will convince you of it thusly:

Have you ever seen your Zeus make rain when there are no clouds?

He should be capable of raining when the clouds are gone.

STREPSIADES:

That argument has won me over. Still, before today,

I really did believe Zeus pissed the rain. But tell me this:

Who is the one that makes the thunder (and that makes me tremble)?

SOCRATES:

The Clouds do also, when they roll around.

STREPSIADES:

How do you mean,

you crazy-talker?

SOCRATES:

When they are suspended in the sky

and full of great amounts of water, they, compelled to move

420

and stuffed with rain, collide with one another. Then they burst

open and, owing to their great weight, make a thunderclap.

STREPSIADES:

Who is it, though, that makes them start to move? That must be Zeus!

SOCRATES:

No, it’s ethereal Vortex.

STREPSIADES:

Vortex? No one told me Zeus is gone

and Vortex now is ruling in his place. But you have yet

to teach me of the reason for the thunderclap.

SOCRATES:

Didn’t you hear me?

I said the Clouds, when stuffed with moisture, smash against each other

and, owing to their density, create a sound.

STREPSIADES:

Come on,

who would believe that?

SOCRATES:

I will teach you out of your own body:

Haven’t you, say, at the Panathenaea,^o eaten too much soup

430

and got a queasy stomach, and a sudden breath of wind

has set you rumbling down there?

STREPSIADES:

I have. The soup makes lots

of trouble for me, sloshes, rumbles and at last explodes

like thunder. First there is a soft pa-pax, pa-pax, and then

a loud pa-pax! pa-pax! And then the clap, pa-pa-pa-PAX!

SOCRATES:

Think how immense a fart then issued from your little belly.

Isn’t it likely that the boundless air could make a giant

crap of thunder?

STREPSIADES:

Oh, that’s why we call a loud fart “thunderous.”

Teach me this, now: Where do fiery bolts of lightning come from?

When they hit us, they can burn us up and, if they fail

440

to kill a man, can leave him singed. Zeus obviously hurls them

at perjurers as punishment.

SOCRATES:

You stupid Dark Age relic!

If Zeus smites perjurers, why, then, has he refrained from smiting

Simon, Theorus and Cleonymus?^o All that they do

is lie in court! But, no, Zeus strikes instead the shrines of Zeus

and sacred Cape Sunium,^o and the tall oak trees. Why smite them?

Do oak trees lie in law courts?

STREPSIADES:

I don’t know. Your words sound good.

What makes the lightning, then?

SOCRATES:

When dry wind rises and gets trapped

inside a cloud, it makes the cloud expand internally

like a balloon. The dry wind, then, explodes the cloud and rushes

450

outward with great force, owing to its density, and catches

fire because of all the impetus and flatulence.

STREPSIADES:

That’s just what happened to me once at the Diasia.^o

When I was roasting up a sausage for my relatives,

I failed to slit it, and it swelled up and exploded, spit

juice in my eyes and burned my face.

SOCRATES:

Henceforth will you believe

in no gods other than ones that we exalt, that is,

Chaos, the Clouds and Tongue?

STREPSIADES:

Yep, if I met another god,

I wouldn’t even stop to speak to him. He would receive

no victims, no libations and no frankincense from me.

CHORUS LEADER:

460

You, mortal man, who have desired to learn great wisdom from us,

will live in perfect happiness among the people of Athens

and all the Greeks, if you are good at memorizing things,

if you are thoughtful, if there is endurance in your soul,

if you shall not grow tired of being on your feet or seated,

if you shall not be vexed too much by cold, nor need to eat,

if you shall keep from wine and exercise and all such nonsense,

if, like a wise man, you believe that it is proper both

to win by deed and counsel and to battle with your tongue.

STREPSIADES:

As for a stubborn spirit and unsleeping aggravation

470

and stinginess and pinched digestion and alfalfa-dinners,

have no fear—I’ve got them all, and I am yours to beat on.

CHORUS LEADER:

Be bold, then, tell us what to do for you, and we will do it.

Just be our true adorer. Be a seeker after wisdom.

STREPSIADES:

Queens of the sky, there’s one small thing I want: to be the greatest

orator in all Greece by at least a hundred miles.

CHORUS LEADER:

That blessing will be yours. From here on out there will be no one

who gets more resolutions passed in your Assembly House.

STREPSIADES:

No, not that kind of bullshit—that’s not what I want, but only

to twist laws to my benefit and to escape my debt.

CHORUS LEADER:

480

Then you shall have what you desire, because your hopes are modest.

Be resolute, now, and entrust yourself to our disciples.

STREPSIADES:

Yes, I will trust in you, because I am oppressed by need,

need born of purebred steeds and an abominable marriage.

(to the audience)

From here on out my body’s theirs to do with as they please—

to beat, to starve, to parch, to soil, to freeze,

even to flay into a wineskin—if only I get free

of all my debts and win celebrity

as a glib, daring, shameless maker of deceits, a nimble

coiner of words, a fox, a tinkling cymbal,

490

a king of legalese, a code of laws, a shyster pest,

a slick impostor, rogue and whipping post.

They can, so long as I am called by names like these,

do with me absolutely as they please,

like, have my body chopped up, ground up, packed into a wiener^o

and served to intellectuals as dinner.

CHORUS: (to Strepsiades)

Your spirit is keen and brave.

Rest assured that, if I teach

the art of speech

to you, you will possess

500

a sky-high stature

among your race.

STREPSIADES:

What is my future?

CHORUS:

All your days

you shall have

an enviable life.

STREPSIADES:

Really truly?

CHORUS:

Yes.

CHORUS LEADER:

Many people will be sitting always at your gateway,

wanting to converse with you and ask for your advice,

a horde of people seeking your opinions on lawsuits

510

and liens worth lots of money, and you will deserve their praise.

(to Socrates)

It’s time to teach this geezer all that you intend to teach him.

Go, test his intellect and make a trial of his opinions.

SOCRATES: (to Strepsiades)

Come on, tell me what sort of mind you have.

Once I have grasped it, I can bring the proper

newfangled weaponry to bear on you.

STREPSIADES:

Do you intend to make a siege of me?

SOCRATES:

No, I just want to learn up front how good

a memory you have.

STREPSIADES:

Well, it depends.

If someone owes me, I remember well;

520

if I, unlucky man, owe someone else,

I tend to be forgetful.

SOCRATES:

Were you born

to be a clever speaker?

STREPSIADES:

A speaker, no;

a swindler, yes.

SOCRATES:

How, then, will you be able

to learn the art of speaking?

STREPSIADES:

I’ll manage it.

SOCRATES:

Be sure that, when I toss out clever morsels

of subtlety, you quickly snap them up.

STREPSIADES:

What, will I feed on wisdom like a dog?

SOCRATES:

You are an ignorant barbarian.

I fear, old man, that you will need a beating

530

if you are to learn. Come, sir, and tell me

what you would do if someone beat you up.

STREPSIADES:

Well, I’d get beat up and after that

I’d summon witnesses and after that

take him to court.

SOCRATES:

Come, lay your cloak aside.

STREPSIADES:

Have I done something bad?

SOCRATES:

No, nothing wrong.

The rule among us is to cross this threshold

without a cloak on.

STREPSIADES:

I don’t intend to plant

some goods and then blame you for stealing them.

SOCRATES:

Lay down the cloak. Why are you talking nonsense?

(Strepsiades takes off his cloak.)

STREPSIADES:

540

If I work hard and learn my lessons well,

which of your students will I most resemble?

SOCRATES:

I think you will be just like Chaerephon.^o

STREPSIADES:

Oh no, I will become the living dead!

SOCRATES:

No guff, now. Promptly follow me inside.

STREPSIADES:

Alright, but first give me a honey cake

to feed the sacred snake. I’m scared to enter

a hole that’s like Trophonius’s cave.^o

SOCRATES:

Go on. Stop peering through the door like that.

(Socrates and Strepsiades exit into the Thinkery.)

CHORUS:

(to Strepsiades as he exits)

Brave as you are,

550

may you find happiness in there.

(to the audience)

Yes, may success attend the man

because, though he has gone

far down his lifetime’s passageway,

he dares to dye his nature

in contemporary culture

and labor toward sagacity.

CHORUS LEADER:

Audience, all I tell you will be true, so help me Dionysus,

who nurtured me. So may I win the prize and be considered wise,

I thought you were discerning spectators and this was my

560

most clever comedy. I put a lot of work into the thing

and let you taste it first. Though I deserved to win, I lost the contest,^o

defeated by inferior men. I blame the most astute of you—

it was for you I worked so hard on it. Believe me, I will never

deliberately betray the smartest of you. Ever since the time

when my two characters, the Nice Boy and the Faggot,^o won much praise

from certain men to whom it is a pleasure to refer, yes, back when I,

a maiden author not yet due to be a mother, left my child

exposed and had another maiden take it up, and you all had it

generously raised and educated, ever since that time

570

I have enjoyed sworn pledges of a favorable judgment from you.

So now this play is like renowned Electra,^o traveling in search

of a sophisticated audience, for she will recognize,

if she should see, her brother’s lock of hair. Look closely: she is modest

by nature. First of all, she hasn’t come here with a dangling leather

strap-on attached to her—a thick one with a red tip meant to make

the children laugh. She doesn’t mock the bald or dance a sleazy cordax,^o

and there’s no old man in the play who lashes people with his cane

to cover up lame jokes. She doesn’t dash about the stage with torches

or yammer, “Goodness! Goodness!” No, the girl has come here trusting in

herself alone and poetry.

580

I’m hardly an obnoxious poet.

I’d never try to swindle you by putting out the same play two

or three times.^o Furthermore, I’m good at introducing fresh ideas,

each unlike the others, all of them quite clever. It was I

who struck a blow at Cleon’s paunch^o when he was in his pride but later

refused to keep on pummeling the fellow after he was down.

But other poets, once Hyperbolus^o had given them a grip,

kept beating on the sorry fellow, and his mother. First of all,

Eupolis put his Maricas before you.^o He had plagiarized

my play The Knights (because he is a plagiarist) to make his play

590

and even added in a drunken hag to dance a naughty cordax—

the very woman Phrynichus^o had put onstage some time ago,

the one the sea beast longed to eat. Hermippus^o was the next to write

verses about Hyperbolus, and all the other poets now

will not stop battering Hyperbolus, in imitation of

the similes I wrote about the eels.^o Whoever laughs at their jokes

should not enjoy my plays. If you delight in me and my inventions,

however, people in the future will remember you as wise.

CHORUS:

Strophe

The first god I invite to join our choir

is mighty Zeus, the king who rules on high.

600

The potent trident-wielder^o

comes next, who shakes the land and sea,

then Aether who bestows vitality

on all, a father god of great repute.

Last comes the deity who fills the plain

of Earth with vivid rays of light,

the charioteer^o who daily proves a great

power among the gods and mortal men.

CHORUS LEADER:

Most clever audience, give us your attention. We were wronged by you,

and we will censure you directly.

We support the city of Athens

610

better than all the other gods, and yet to us alone you fail

to offer sacrifice or pour libation. We watch over you.

Whenever you begin a foolish expedition, we erupt

in rain and thunder. When you were about to choose that god-detested

Paphlagonian tanner Cleon as a general,^o we wrinkled

our brows and made frightening noises; lightning struck, and thunder followed;

the Moon forsook her usual course; the Sun was quick to snuff his wick

and said that he would give no light to you if Cleon should be general.

You chose him anyway.

They say that terrible decision-making

plagues this town but that the gods transform these lapses to successes.

620

We will swiftly teach you how this choice as well can come to good.

If you convict that vulture Cleon of embezzlement and graft

and bind his neck fast in the stocks, your situation will return

to what it was before and, though you made a bad mistake in judgment,

everything, in the end, will wind up only benefiting Athens.

CHORUS:

Antistrophe

Delian Apollo, Phoebus, you who live

atop Mount Cynthus, listen to my prayer,

and you, too, blessed goddess of

Ephesus’s golden temple,^o where

the Lydian virgins bow before your power,

630

and you, Athena, goddess of this town,

aegis-wielder, warden of city walls,

and Bacchus, boon companion,

who, from a peak of Mount Parnassus, shine

in torchlight on the Delphic bacchanals.

CHORUS LEADER:

When we were getting ready to travel here, the Moon by chance approached us

and told us, first, give her greeting to the Athenians and their allies.

She then said she was irritated. You had wronged her, she explained,

though she has helped you not in words but actively.

First off,

you spend less money buying torches, since, on certain evenings,

640

everybody tells their slaves, “No need to buy a torch because

the moon is shining.” She explained that, though she does you other favors,

you run your calendar erroneously and confuse the dates

across the board. She said the gods reprove her when they miss a dinner

and come home after having shown up for a feast too late or early.

Then, when you should be offering them sacrifices, you are busy

torturing witnesses and litigating. Often, when we gods

are sitting for a fast to mourn the loss of Sarpedon or Memnon,^o

you all are pouring drinks and laughing. That is why we stripped the garland

off Hyperbolus, this year’s allotted Sacred Signatory.^o

650

Thus he will learn that he should spend his days according to the Moon.

(Socrates enters from the Thinkery.)

SOCRATES:

I swear by Respiration, Air and Chaos

I have never met so ignorant,

forgetful, frustrating and dumb a hick

in all my life. The man forgets the tiniest

little quibble that I teach him even

before he learns it. All the same, I’ll call him

out into daylight, and we’ll try again.

Strepsiades? Come out and bring your bed.

(Strepsiades enters from the Thinkery carrying a pallet bed and blankets.)

STREPSIADES:

Ah, but the bedbugs—they don’t want me to.

SOCRATES:

660

Be quick, now. Set it down and pay attention.

STREPSIADES:

Okay.

(Strepsiades puts down the bed and blankets.)

SOCRATES:

Of all the things you’ve never learned,

which do you want most to be taught about?

Shall we begin with measures, words or rhythms?

STREPSIADES:

Measures.^o Just the other day a grocer

cheated me out of two whole quarts of flour.

SOCRATES:

That’s not my meaning. Which is the most appealing,

three-measure? Four?

STREPSIADES:

I like the gallon best.

SOCRATES:

What are you babbling about?

STREPSIADES:

You want

to bet four quarts don’t measure out a gallon?

SOCRATES:

670

Oh, go to hell, you stupid hick. Let’s try

rhythms—they might be easier to grasp.

STREPSIADES:

Will rhythms help me earn my daily bread?

SOCRATES:

You will be great at making conversation

if you know the difference between

the “battle” rhythm and the “finger” rhythm.

STREPSIADES:

“Finger”? I know about the finger.

SOCRATES:

What?

STREPSIADES:

What answer can I give except

(holding up his middle finger)

this finger?

When I was young, “the finger” stood for this.

SOCRATES:

You clod.

STREPSIADES:

But I don’t want to learn this stuff.

SOCRATES:

What do you want to learn?

STREPSIADES:

680

That, that Argument—

the one you intellectuals call the “Wrong.”

SOCRATES:

But there are other things you must learn first:

namely, which animals are rightly male?

STREPSIADES:

If I am not insane, I know the males:

ram, billy goat, bull, dog, bird.

SOCRATES:

That’s very good. Now tell me which are female?

STREPSIADES:

Ewe, nanny goat, cow, bitch, bird.

SOCRATES:

Ah, do you see what you have done? You used

the same word, “bird,” for both the male and female.

STREPSIADES:

How’s that?

SOCRATES:

690

You called one “bird”; the other, “bird.”

STREPSIADES:

What should I call them, then, from here on out?

SOCRATES:

Call one “birdette” and call the other “birdus.”

STREPSIADES:

“Birdette”? I promise by the Holy Air

for that one bit of learning I will fill

your kneading-trough with lots and lots of flour.

SOCRATES:

See! You have made the same mistake. You made

“trough,” which is feminine, be masculine.

STREPSIADES:

How did I make the word “trough” masculine?

SOCRATES:

The -ough, like -us as in “Cleonymus.”

STREPSIADES:

Say what?

SOCRATES:

700

Their endings—they are masculine.

STREPSIADES:

Cleonymus possessed no kneading-trough

(making a masturbatory gesture)

but worked his hands through flesh meal down below.

From now on, then, what should I call the “trough”?

SOCRATES:

Call it “troughette,” just as you say Babbette.

STREPSIADES:

“Troughette” is feminine?

SOCRATES:

That is correct.

STREPSIADES:

Good, I can say “troughette” just like Babbette.

SOCRATES:

Now you must learn which names are masculine

and which are feminine.

STREPSIADES:

I know some names of females.

SOCRATES:

Tell me, then.

STREPSIADES:

Clitagora, Lysilla,

Demetria, Phillinna.

SOCRATES:

710

And names for males?

STREPSIADES:

Thousands: Philoxenus, Melesias,

Amynias.

SOCRATES:

But these aren’t masculine,

you moron.

STREPSIADES:

Aren’t they masculine to you?

SOCRATES:

No, they are not. See here, how would you call for

Amynias if you met him.^o

STREPSIADES:

I would say,

“Hey, Minnie, over here!”

SOCRATES:

See? You just called

Amynias a woman.

STREPSIADES:

That makes sense,

since “she” does not do military duty.

But why learn things that everybody knows?

SOCRATES:

You are incorrigible!

(gesturing to the bed)

720

Lie down here.

STREPSIADES:

And then do what?

SOCRATES:

Think about your own troubles.

STREPSIADES:

Not here, I beg you. If I must lie down,

just let me do my thinking on the ground.

SOCRATES:

There is no other way.

STREPSIADES:

Poor me, the bedbugs

will make me pay in blood for all my debts!

(Socrates exits into the Thinkery. Strepsiades lies down in the bed and covers himself with blankets.)

CHORUS:

It’s time for meditation

and close investigation.

Throw blankets round yourself, then toss

and turn and, if you get in trouble,

730

leap to a new thought on the double.

May gentle sleep be absent from your eyes.

STREPSIDES: (scratching himself)

Ow! And ow again!

CHORUS:

What’s wrong with you?

STREPSIDES: (sitting up)

I’m almost dead!

Poor me, the critters in this bed

are crawling all over my skin,

eating me up, biting my side,

sucking my soul,

nibbling my nuts,

and plowing my hole!

740

They’re chewing me to bits!

CHORUS:

Would you stop carrying on?

STREPSIADES:

Why? My money’s gone,

my color gone,

my spirit gone,

and both of my slippers, gone.

What’s worse, on top of all these woes,

with singing all night long like this,

I myself am lost

almost.

SOCRATES: (peeking out of a window in the Thinkery)

750

Hey you, what are you up to? Meditating?

STREPSIADES:

Yes, quite a bit.

SOCRATES:

What are your thoughts about?

STREPSIADES:

Whether these bugs will eat me up entirely.

SOCRATES:

Oh, go to hell.

STREPSIADES:

I’m there already, friend.

SOCRATES:

Now, don’t be such a wimp. Get all wrapped up

inside the blankets. Think, think till you discover

scams and a fraudulent cast of mind.

STREPSIADES:

Poor me!

I wish someone would cast a cloak of fraud

over me to replace these sheepskin blankets.

(Socrates enters from the Thinkery.)

SOCRATES:

Alright, then, let me see what he is up to.

Hey, are you sleeping?

STREPSIADES:

760

No, I’m wide awake.

SOCRATES:

Have you had any good ideas?

STREPSIADES:

No,

by Zeus, no good ideas.

SOCRATES:

Nothing at all?

STREPSIADES: (throwing his blanket off to reveal his hand on his leather strap-on)

Nothing except this boner in my hand.

SOCRATES:

Cover yourself and think some grand thoughts, quick.

STREPSIADES: (covering himself with the blanket again)

Thoughts about what? Instruct me, Socrates.

SOCRATES:

No, you yourself tell me what you would learn.

STREPSIADES:

I’ve told you what a thousand times already:

how not to pay the interest on my debts.

SOCRATES:

Get down beneath the blankets, spread your thoughts

770

outward, make them subtle, then consider

your personal business, making sure to draw

the right distinctions.

STREPSIADES:

Oh, I’m miserable!

SOCRATES:

Keep still, and when a thought will go no further,

abandon it a little while and then

start contemplating it again until

you lock it up.

(A few “beats” pass onstage.)

STREPSIADES:

O most sweet Socrates!

SOCRATES:

What is it, old man?

STREPSIADES:

I have found a way

to cheat my creditors out of the interest.

SOCRATES:

Present it to me.

STREPSIADES:

Say that . . .

SOCRATES:

Yes? Go on.

STREPSIADES:

780

. . . I were to buy a witch from Thessaly^o

and make her drag the moon out of the sky

and lock it in a big round box, as if

it were a mirror. Say I kept it safe . . .

SOCRATES:

But how would this be useful to you?

STREPSIADES:

How?

If there were no moon, I would never need

to pay the interest on my debts.

SOCRATES:

Why’s that?

STREPSIADES:

Because the interest increases monthly.

SOCRATES:

Excellent. Let me now propose a further

test case: Let’s say a certain plaintiff sues you

790

for thirty thousand drachmas. How would you

get out of it?

STREPSIADES:

How? How? I don’t know yet.

Just give me time to think the matter over.

SOCRATES:

Don’t always keep your thoughts locked up within you.

Let your mind go out and ride the air,

like a pet beetle dangling from a thread.

STREPSIADES:

Aha! I’ve found a very clever way

of getting out of it. You’ll like it, too.

SOCRATES:

How would you do it?

STREPSIADES:

Have you ever seen

that stone that druggists sell, the pretty, see-through

800

one that can be used to start a fire?

SOCRATES:

You mean a burning-glass?

STREPSIADES:

That’s what I mean.

Let’s say that, when the clerk was entering

the suit into his tablet, I was standing

like this some distance off and holding up

the glass between the sun and him and melting

the wax right where my suit was being entered.

SOCRATES:

Genius!

STREPSIADES:

I know! I have expunged a case

worth thirty thousand drachmas from the dock.

SOCRATES:

Consider this, now.

STREPSIADES:

What’s that?

SOCRATES:

You’re on trial;

810

you’ve got no witnesses; the guilty verdict

is all but certain—how do you contrive

to get out of it?

STREPSIADES:

That’s an easy one.

SOCRATES:

What do you do?

STREPSIADES:

Alright, I’ll tell you: I,

while there is time before my suit is called,

run off and hang myself.

SOCRATES:

That’s stupid talk.

STREPSIADES:

That’s what I’d do! No one could sentence me

if I were dead!

SOCRATES:

You’re talking nonsense. Get out!

I refuse to teach you any longer.

STREPSIADES:

Socrates, please, no. Keep on teaching me.

SOCRATES:

820

The things I tell you slip your mind so quickly.

What was the first thing that I taught you? Tell me.

STREPSIADES:

Hmn, yeah. What was the first thing? What came first?

Oh, we were kneading dough in something, hmn—

what did you call the thing?

SOCRATES:

Get out of here,

you old, forgetful oaf!

STREPSIADES:

Oh no! Poor me!

What’s going to happen to me now? I’m done for

if I don’t learn to wrestle with my tongue.

Clouds, can you offer any good advice?

CHORUS LEADER:

Old man, we offer you the following counsel:

830

If you have a full-grown son at home,

send him here to study in your stead.

STREPSIADES:

I have a fine and handsome son indeed,

but he refused to come and study here.

What should I do?

CHORUS LEADER:

Can’t you compel him?

STREPSIADES:

No.

He’s big and strong and, on his mother’s side,

descends from rich girls who are like Coesyra.

Still, I will pressure him. If he refuses,

I will throw him straight out of the house!

(to Socrates)

Go in and wait for me. I’ll be back soon.

(Strepsiades exits into his house.)

CHORUS: (to Socrates)

840

Do you perceive you soon will win

great blessings though our aid? That man

will do what he is told to do.

While he is awed and giddy, you

will do your best to take him in.

Still, sketchy matters of this kind

often refuse to go as planned.

(Socrates exits into the Thinkery. Strepsiades and Pheidippides enter from their house.)

STREPSIADES: (to Pheidippides)

I swear by Mist you won’t be living with me

any longer. Go and eat your uncle

Megacles’s fancy portico.^o

PHEIDIPPIDES:

850

Father, what’s wrong with you. You’re nuts, by Zeus

upon Olympus.

STREPSIADES: (laughing)

“Zeus upon Olympus!”

What foolishness! To think that you believe

in Zeus, a grown boy.

PHEIDIPPIDES:

What’s so funny, Dad?

STREPSIADES:

That you are young and have archaic notions.

Nevertheless, come here, and I will teach you

something that will make a man of you.

But, hey now, don’t share this with anyone.

PHEIDIPPIDES:

What is it?

STREPSIADES:

Zeus—you swore by Zeus just now.

PHEIDIPPIDES:

I did.

STREPSIADES:

See here, ain’t education great?

Pheidippides, there is no Zeus.

PHEIDIPPIDES:

860

Who’s up there?

STREPSIADES:

Vortex has ousted Zeus and claimed the throne.

PHEIDIPPIDES:

That’s dumb.

STREPSIADES:

You can be certain that it’s true.

PHEIDIPPIDES:

Who told you this?

STREPSIADES:

The Melian Socrates

and Chaerephon, who knows the feet of fleas.

PHEIDIPPIDES:

Have you become so very mad yourself

that you believe the words of madmen?

STREPSIADES:

Hush.

Refrain from idle talk. Say nothing bad

about the wise and clever. They, through thrift,

have never shaved or rubbed themselves with oil

870

or ever washed their grime off in a bathhouse,

while you are bathing all my wealth away

as if I were already dead. Quick, now,

you go and study with them in my place.

PHEIDIPPIDES:

What could a person ever learn from those guys?

STREPSIADES:

All the wisdom that there is on earth.

And you will learn yourself how dumb you are,

how ignorant. Wait here for me a minute.

(Strepsiades exits into his house.)

PHEIDIPPIDES: (to the audience)

What can I do now that my dad is crazy?

Go to court and get him certified?

880

Go leave a message with the undertaker?

(Strepsiades returns with two birds.)

STREPSIADES:

Come, now, what do you call this here?

PHEIDIPPIDES:

A bird.

STREPSIADES:

Good, and what’s this?

PHEIDIPPIDES:

A bird.

STREPSIADES:

You called them both

“bird.” How ridiculous is that! From now on

call this one “birdus” and this here “birdette.”

PHEIDIPPIDES:

“Birdette.” Is this some clever thing you learned

while studying with those primordial monsters?

STREPSIADES:

Yes, and a lot more, too. The problem was

that everything I learned immediately

escaped my mind—I’m just too old for school.

PHEIDIPPIDES:

890

Is this the reason why you lost your cloak?

STREPSIADES:

I didn’t lose it; I paid it as tuition.

PHEIDIPPIDES:

How did you lose your slippers, you old fool.

STREPSIADES:

I spent them on “necessities,” you know,

like Pericles once said.^o Come on, let’s go.

So long as you obey your father, you

may do the wrong thing. I remember, back

when you were just a lisping little kid,

I was obeying you. In fact I used

the first money I earned in jury pay

900

to buy a toy for you, a little wagon,

at the Diasia.^o

PHEIDIPPIDES:

You will regret this.

STREPSIADES:

I’m glad that you are listening to me now.

(calling into the Thinkery)

Come out, come out, now, Socrates. This is

my son—I dragged him here against his will.

(Socrates enters from the Thinkery.)

SOCRATES:

He’s young; he has to get the hang of things here.

PHEIDIPPIDES: (to Socrates)

May you, who have the hang of them, get hanged.

STREPSIADES:

You rotten boy. Do you insult your teacher?

SOCRATES:

“Get hanged”—how childishly he spoke that phrase,

and with his lips spread wide. How will he ever

910

learn to win acquittal from a trial,

compose a writ or make convincing points

in a debate? Oh well, Hyperbolus

has learned this, though it cost him quite a bit.

STREPSIADES:

No worries. He will learn. My son was born

precocious. When he was a little boy

only as tall as this,

(holding out his hand)

he used to sit

indoors and make toy houses, model warships,

little figwood carts and—just imagine—

frogs out of pomegranate rinds.

You just

920

be sure he learns both of the arguments:

Right, or whatever it is called, and Wrong,

the one that, while maintaining what is wrong,

defeats the Right. If both of them are too much,

just teach the Wrong one—that’s the one that matters.

SOCRATES:

He will be taught by both the Arguments

in person. I have other things to do.

STREPSIADES:

Remember, though, the boy has to be able

to give the lie to all just arguments.

(Socrates exits into the Thinkery as Right Argument enters through the same stage door.)

RIGHT ARGUMENT: (to Wrong Argument inside)

Come out and meet the audience.

You’re hardly shy.

(Wrong Argument enters from the Thinkery.)

WRONG ARGUMENT: (to Right Argument)

930

You go where you want.

I’ll destroy you all the better

with all these people watching.

RIGHT ARGUMENT:

You—

you’ll destroy me? Just what are you?

WRONG ARGUMENT:

An Argument.

RIGHT ARGUMENT:

Yes, but a Wrong one.

WRONG ARGUMENT:

Go and claim that you are Right.

I’m going to beat you, all the same.

RIGHT ARGUMENT:

By using what clever reasoning?

WRONG ARGUMENT:

By coming up with new ideas.

RIGHT ARGUMENT:

“New ideas” are all the rage,

(gesturing to the audience)

940

thanks to all these morons here.

WRONG ARGUMENT:

No, they are intellectuals.

RIGHT ARGUMENT:

I’ll utterly obliterate you.

WRONG ARGUMENT:

Come on and tell me, how will you do it?

RIGHT ARGUMENT:

By arguing for justice.

WRONG ARGUMENT:

I’ll trash

your arguments with my rejoinders,

since I deny that justice exists.

RIGHT ARGUMENT:

You deny the existence of justice?

WRONG ARGUMENT:

Well, then, where is it?

RIGHT ARGUMENT:

Among the gods.

WRONG ARGUMENTS

If justice is there, why hasn’t Zeus

950

been removed from power for chaining up

his father Cronus?^o

RIGHT ARGUMENT:

Nauseating!

You, an obscenity, have gone

too far. I need a pan to puke in!

WRONG ARGUMENT:

You Dark Age windbag.

RIGHT ARGUMENT:

You shameless faggot.

WRONG ARGUMENT:

Your words are roses to me.

RIGHT ARGUMENT:

Buffoon!

WRONG ARGUMENT:

A crown of lilies.

RIGHT ARGUMENT:

Father-killer!

WRONG ARGUMENT:

You just don’t get it, do you? You are

sprinkling me with words of gold.

RIGHT ARGUMENT:

In the past such words were lead, not gold.

WRONG ARGUMENT:

960

Today they are fancy ornaments.

RIGHT ARGUMENT:

You’re pretty obnoxious.

WRONG ARGUMENT:

You’re pretty old.

RIGHT ARGUMENT:

It’s because of you that none of the young men

want to go to school. The people

of Athens will soon come to recognize

just what sort of education

you’ve been giving to these morons.

WRONG ARGUMENT:

You are obscenely filthy.

RIGHT ARGUMENT:

You,

though prosperous now, once, as a beggar,

swore you were Mysian Telephus

970

and lived off nibbles from the quibbles

of Pandeletus.^o You kept them in

a little bag.

WRONG ARGUMENT:

Oh how witty—

RIGHT ARGUMENT:

Oh how crazy—

WRONG ARGUMENT:

. . . your allusion was.

RIGHT ARGUMENT:

. . . you are, and the city of Athens is nuts

for paying your bills while you corrupt

the younger generation.

WRONG ARGUMENT:

You Cronus!^o

You won’t be getting this boy as a student.

RIGHT ARGUMENT:

I will if he is going to be saved

and not given lessons in nonsense.

WRONG ARGUMENT: (to Pheidippides)

980

Come over here. Let him rave to himself.

RIGHT ARGUMENT:

Touch him, and I will make you howl!

CHORUS LEADER:

Enough with the insults and fisticuffs.

You both should give a presentation.

(to Right Argument)

You describe what you did to teach

the men of old,

(to Wrong Argument)

and you describe

the modern sort of education.

After hearing both sides, the boy

can make his choice and go to school.

RIGHT ARGUMENT:

Yes, I agree.

WRONG ARGUMENT:

I do as well.

CHORUS LEADER:

990

Perfect. Who will be first to speak?

WRONG ARGUMENT:

He can go first, and then I’ll use

newfangled phrases and grand conceptions

to shoot down all his arguments.

By the end of this, if he even mutters,

I’ll sting his face and both his eyes

so terribly with hornet-like

debating-points that he’ll just die.

CHORUS: (to both Right and Wrong Argument)

You now will strive with thoughts and adages and subtle

distinctions. Which of you has won the battle

1000

soon enough will become quite clear.

What wisdom will be in the years to come depends

on who prevails, and our important friends

await the outcome of your verbal war.

(to Right Argument)

First, you who crowned our senior citizens with many virtues,

deploy the voice you love to use, explain your pedagogy.

RIGHT ARGUMENT:

Thank you. I will describe the old-style kind of education,

how people did things back when I, the advocate of justice,

was in the bloom of youth, and self-restraint was all the rage.

First off, boys never made even the slightest chatter; next,

1010

those from the same ward marched in order to their music teacher’s,^o

naked and in a body, even when the snow was falling

thick as oatmeal. Third, the boys would never squeeze their thighs

together as they learned to sing by heart “Some Far-off Shout”

or “Queen Athena City-Leveler”^o and strained to reach

the perfect harmonies our fathers handed down to us.

If any of them hammed it up or tied the melody in knots

(you know those jazzy sounds certain contemporaries make

to copy Phrynis),^o well, that boy was given quite a beating

because he had disgraced the Muses.

Also, when the boys

1020

were sitting down at their gymnastics teacher’s, it behooved them

to keep their thighs tucked in so that they never flashed temptation

at those who watched them. Also, when the boys got up again,

they raked the sand together and were careful not to leave

impressions for the men who dote on youth. Back then no boy

was rubbing oil on himself below the belly button,

and so the down and moisture on his private parts resembled

those on peaches. Nor would he affect a woman’s voice

or whore himself out with his glances when he went to see

the man who loved him. Nor was it permitted then to take up

1030

a radish-head at supper or to steal parsley or dill

from senior citizens, eat fish or laugh or sit cross-legged.

WRONG ARGUMENT:

That’s all as old as the Dipolia^o and riddled with

grasshoppers, Cecydes and the Buphonia festival.^o

RIGHT ARGUMENT:

And yet these are the rudiments on which I reared the men

who fought at Marathon!^o You teach the boys today to go out

wrapped up in layers of clothing. What’s the consequence? I choke

with laughter when I see some youth at the Panathenaea

hold out his shield to hide his flabby body, disrespecting

Tritogeneia, when he should be dancing.^o Therefore, young man,

1040

be bold enough to side with me, Right Argument, and you

will learn to hate the marketplace, despise the bathhouse, feel

shame over shameful things and burn with rage when someone mocks you.

Yes, when your elders come into the room, you will surrender

your chair, and you will not be scornful of your parents.

You will do nothing that is shameful since you will have cast

afresh the statue of Restraint inside your conscience. Never

will you dash into the shanty of a dancing girl

where you, while leering at the goings-on, will feel an apple,

tossed by a hussy, hit you and destroy your reputation.

1050

Never will you speak against your father, never call him

a graybeard geezer Iapetus^o and never bring to mind

how old he is, because it was his life that gave you life.

WRONG ARGUMENT:

Young man, if you side with him in this, you will be like

Hippocrates’s sons,^o and everyone will call you “moron.”

RIGHT ARGUMENT:

And yet you will be sleek and hale because you will be spending

your days at the gymnasium, not making bawdy jokes

while chattering in the marketplace, the way the young do now.

You won’t be dragged into a small-claims court because of some

hairsplitting-pettifogging-barefaced-roguish lawsuit; no,

1060

you will go down to the Academy and, with some modest

companion, sprint for exercise beneath the sacred olives.

You will be garlanded with white reeds; you will smell like yew trees

and leisure-time and poplars shedding leaves; you will enjoy

the springtime and adore the plane tree whispering to the elm.

If you do

the things I say,