The Clouds

First produced at the City Dionysia of 423 BC, The Clouds is one of Aristophanes’ best-known comedies. It satirizes the new teachers of speech and natural philosophy in Athens and puts Socrates on stage as their head. When Socrates stood trial in 399 BC, he told the jury that they had seen his supposed activities in Aristophanes’ comedy, a Socrates being carried about and saying that he was walking on air (Plato, Apology 19c). According to the ancient introduction to the play, it won only the third prize at the festival, and Aristophanes later began to revise it; the text that has reached us is that unfinished revision. The play begins with the farmer Strepsiades (his name suggests “Twister”) lying awake and bemoaning his fate: his son Pheidippides has run him into debt because of his passion for horses (lines 1–35). Strepsiades wants the young man to enroll at the Thinkery, the school of Socrates next door, to learn the Worse Argument that wins lawsuits and gets the family out of debt. Pheidippides refuses, so Strepsiades goes himself (lines 94–132). At the school a student tells him of the master’s discoveries, and Strepsiades soon meets Socrates himself, hanging in a basket and studying the sun (lines 133–234). After an initiation, Socrates calls up the Clouds, the goddesses he worships in place of the traditional gods (lines 254–274). The apprenticeship of Strepsiades fails: he cannot learn or remember anything, and Socrates throws him out of the school (lines 627–790). On the advice of the Clouds he sends his son instead (lines 794–812), and Pheidippides listens to the contest between the Better and the Worse Argument (lines 889–1104). The Worse Argument wins and takes the young man into the school. Thanks to his education Pheidippides helps his father get rid of two creditors, but then beats him and proves with his new skill that the beating was just (lines 1321–1451). Strepsiades, in a fit of rage and remorse, climbs on the roof of the Thinkery with his slave Xanthias and sets the school on fire (lines 1476–1511).

Date and Historical Background

According to the ancient introduction (hypothesis) to the play, the first Clouds was produced in the city (that is, at the City Dionysia) in the archonship of Isarchus, 423 BC, and came third, behind Cratinus’ Wine-flask (Pytine, a comedy that the ancient commentators say made fun of Cratinus’ own love of wine) and Ameipsias’ Connus. The result hurt Aristophanes. In the revised text, the chorus speaks for the poet and calls the play the “cleverest” of his comedies, which he thought best to show the audience first, and complains that it was beaten by vulgar rivals (lines 518–525). In the parabasis of Wasps (lines 1043–1050), the poet says that the audience betrayed his newest ideas “last year” because it did not understand them, and swears by Dionysus that no better comic verses were ever heard; this fits The Clouds, produced the year before.

The revision was never completed and never staged in this form, as far as we can tell. An anonymous ancient scholar who wrote one of the introductions to the play says that it is the same as the first Clouds but revised in many details, as though the poet meant to produce it again and then for some reason did not. Nearly every part, he says, shows corrections; some parts were cut, others woven in or changed in their arrangement and in the distribution of speaking parts. Two things in particular belong to the revised version: the parabasis was replaced, and two scenes were added, the one in which the Better Argument speaks to the Worse and the one in which Socrates’ school is burned. The text itself confirms that the parabasis belongs to the later version. The speaker in it looks back on the failure of the first performance (lines 518–525), complains that Eupolis in his Maricas twisted the poet’s Knights to his own use (lines 553–556), and mentions the attacks on Hyperbolus (lines 551–552, 557–559). It also speaks of Cleon as a man laid low: the poet says that he struck Cleon at the height of his power and would not leap on him when he was down (lines 549–550), although the chorus still urges the city to convict Cleon a few lines later (lines 591–594). Cleon was killed at Amphipolis in 422 BC (Thucydides 5.10), so the first of these passages cannot come from the performance of 423, and the clash between the two suggests an unfinished revision. The Moon’s complaint that Hyperbolus was chosen Hieromnemon “this year” and had his crown taken from him by the gods (lines 607–626) shows that Hyperbolus was still active in politics when these lines were written; he was later ostracised, and was killed at Samos in 411 BC (Thucydides 8.73.3). How far the lost original differed from our text cannot be known.

Characters and Setting

Characters

• Strepsiades, an Athenian farmer
• Pheidippides, son of Strepsiades
• A slave of Strepsiades, who lights the lamp (lines 55–58)
• A Student of Socrates
• Socrates, the head of the Thinkery
• The Chorus of Clouds, goddesses of the school
• The Better (or Just) Argument and the Worse (or Unjust) Argument
• Pasias, a creditor, who brings a witness
• Amynias, a second creditor
• Chaerephon, a disciple of Socrates, who speaks one line from inside the burning school (line 1505)
• Xanthias, a slave of Strepsiades, who is called but does not speak (line 1485)

Setting

The scene is a street in Athens on which the house of Strepsiades and the Thinkery of Socrates stand side by side; Strepsiades points out the “little door and little house” of the school to his son in the prologue (lines 92–93). The action takes place on this one street, from the night of the opening to the burning of the school.

Summary of The Clouds

Prologue

It is the middle of the night, but Strepsiades cannot sleep, unlike his son Pheidippides, who is wrapped in five blankets, and his slaves, who are snoring (lines 1–11). He explains why: “I am not able, miserable man, to sleep, being tormented by my expenses, and my stud of horses, and my debts, through this son of mine. He with his long hair, is riding horses and driving curricles, and dreaming of horses; while I am driven to distraction, as I see the moon bringing on the twentieths; for the interest is running on” (lines 12–18). He has a slave bring a lamp and the tablets of his debts: twelve minae to Pasias for a horse and three minae to Amynias for a little chariot (lines 21–32). In his sleep Pheidippides dreams of chariot racing (lines 25–27). Strepsiades laments his marriage to an extravagant city woman and how she and he quarrelled over the boy’s name, she wanting a name ending in hippos, “horse”, and he the name of his own grandfather (lines 41–67).

He has worked out a plan to save himself (lines 74–77). He wakes his son, makes him swear to obey, and points to the Thinkery, a “thinking-shop of wise spirits” (lines 92–94). “There dwell men who in speaking of the heavens persuade people that it is an oven, and that it encompasses us, and that we are the embers. These men teach, if one give them money, to conquer in speaking, right or wrong” (lines 95–99). Pheidippides knows who they are: the pale-faced, barefoot quacks, of whom Socrates and Chaerephon are the leaders (lines 102–104). He refuses to join them because he could not face the horsemen, his friends, any more, with all the colour lost from his face (lines 119–120). Strepsiades threatens to throw him out of the house and decides to go to the school himself, old and forgetful as he is (lines 121–132).

He knocks. A student comes to the door, angry that the knock has made an idea miscarry, and then tells Strepsiades about the master’s discoveries, which are all supposed to be mysteries (lines 133–143). Socrates has measured how many of its own feet a flea can jump, by dipping the flea’s feet in wax so that little Persian slippers formed on them (lines 144–152). Chaerephon asked him whether gnats buzz through the mouth or the rump, and Socrates replied that it was through the narrow intestine, so that the gnat is a trumpet (lines 156–168). While Socrates was studying the moon, with his mouth wide open, a lizard dropped on him from the roof (lines 169–173). And when there was no supper, he used a bent spit as a pair of compasses to filch a cloak from the wrestling school (lines 175–179). “Why then do we admire Thales?” Strepsiades exclaims, and begs to be let in at once (lines 180–183).

The door opens and he sees the disciples bent double and looking at the ground. They are searching, the student explains, “the things below the earth”, and their rumps, turned to the sky, are being taught astronomy by themselves (lines 184–194). The student shows him the school’s instruments: a model of astronomy, geometry for measuring land, and a map of the whole earth on which Strepsiades finds Athens and wants Sparta “removed very far” from it (lines 195–216). Then he sees Socrates hanging in a basket. He calls to him, and Socrates answers: “I am walking in the air, and speculating about the sun” (lines 217–225). He can only do it from above, he says, for “the earth forcibly attracts to itself the meditative moisture” (lines 229–234). Strepsiades says why he has come: he wants to learn to speak, because creditors are plundering him, and in particular to learn the other Argument, the one that pays no debts (lines 235–246). He offers to swear by the gods that he will pay any fee. Socrates asks by what gods, for “gods are not a current coin with us” (lines 247–248).

Socrates first has him sit on a couch, put on a chaplet, and be sprinkled, as in an initiation, which makes the old man afraid that he is going to be sacrificed like Athamas (lines 254–262). Then he prays to Air, Aether and the Clouds to appear to their “deep thinker” (lines 263–274).

Parodos (Entrance Song)

The Clouds first sing from outside the stage, calling each other to rise from the sea and look down at the earth (lines 275–290). Strepsiades hears the thunder and is so frightened that he needs to relieve himself (lines 291–295). As Socrates tells him to be silent, the Clouds sing again, now of the “fruitful land of Pallas” and the “much-loved country of Cecrops”, with its mystic rites, temples, processions and festivals, and its choruses and flutes at the spring Dionysia (lines 298–313). Strepsiades asks who they are, and Socrates answers that they are the heavenly Clouds, “great divinities to idle men”, who supply thought, argument and intelligence (lines 314–318). They then enter from the direction of Mount Parnes, which Strepsiades at first cannot see (lines 323–326).

Episode

Strepsiades is astounded, and Socrates tells him that the Clouds feed the sophists, the soothsayers, the long-haired idlers and the poets of cyclic choruses, who in return celebrate them in verse (lines 331–339). Strepsiades asks why they do not look like women; the answer is that they take whatever shape they please. Socrates asks him whether he has ever seen a cloud like a centaur, a leopard, a wolf or a bull; they turn into wolves when they see a thief such as Simon, into deer when they see the coward Cleonymus, and into women when they see Cleisthenes (lines 340–355). The Clouds greet the old man and say that, of all the teachers on high matters, they listen only to Prodicus and Socrates (lines 358–363). “These alone are goddesses; and all the rest is nonsense”, says Socrates (line 365).

He then teaches Strepsiades that Zeus does not exist. It is the Clouds, not Zeus, who make the rain, and Strepsiades agrees that rain never falls without clouds (lines 367–373). The Clouds also make the thunder: when they are full of water and crash into each other, they make a noise, as Strepsiades’ own belly rumbles after a Panathenaic stew (lines 375–394). Who makes them move? Not Zeus but Vortex (Dinos), who “reigns” in his place (lines 379–381). If Zeus used the thunderbolt to punish perjurers, Socrates asks, why does it not strike Simon, Cleonymus and Theorus, instead of Sunium and oak trees (lines 395–402)? The bolt is a dry wind shut up in a cloud, which bursts out of it (lines 404–411), as a haggis bursts in the fire (lines 408–411). The Clouds promise Strepsiades success if he has a good memory, endures hardship, and is ready to believe in no gods except Chaos, the Clouds and the Tongue, as Socrates puts it (lines 412–424). Strepsiades swears that he will not talk to the other gods, or sacrifice or pour libations to them (lines 425–426). The favour he asks of the Clouds is to be the best speaker among the Greeks, “only to pervert the right for my own advantage, and to evade my creditors”, and the Clouds say that he will have it, for he does not covet great things (lines 427–456).

Socrates then tests him. Strepsiades has a good memory for what is owed to him, but a poor one for what he owes, and no talent for speaking, only for cheating (lines 477–489). He is told to take off his cloak before he goes in, since it is the custom to enter naked (lines 497–500), and Socrates takes him inside, while the old man is afraid of descending “as if into the cave of Trophonius” (lines 501–509). The Chorus wishes him luck.

First parabasis

In the parabasis (lines 510–626) the Chorus leader speaks for the poet. He swears by Dionysus that he thought the audience clever enough to be given this play first, his “cleverest” comedy, which cost him the most labour, but that he was defeated by vulgar rivals (lines 518–525). He compares his comedy to Electra looking for the lock of her brother, which a clever audience will recognise (lines 534–536). It has, he says, no leather phallus to make the boys laugh, no jokes at bald men, no cordax, no old man beating the others with a stick, and no torches (lines 537–544); he does not offer the same pieces twice or three times, but always brings new ideas (lines 545–548). He struck Cleon at the height of his power and did not leap on him when he was down, whereas his rivals keep trampling on Hyperbolus and his mother (lines 549–552). Eupolis, he says, twisted his Knights into the Maricas and added a drunken old woman for the sake of the cordax, taken from Phrynichus; Hermippus and others also attack Hyperbolus, in imitation of his own comparisons with eels (lines 553–559).

The Clouds then call on Zeus, Poseidon, Aether and the Sun to help the chorus (lines 563–574). They complain that the Athenians do not sacrifice to them, although they warn the city by thunder and rain, as when the Athenians chose Cleon general against their sign, and they advise the Athenians to convict him of bribery (lines 575–594). A second prayer calls on Apollo, the goddess of Ephesus (Artemis), Athena and Dionysus (lines 595–606). The parabasis closes with the message of the Moon, who greets the Athenians and is angry that they keep the calendar so badly that the gods go without their dinners, so that Hyperbolus was deprived of his crown as Hieromnemon (lines 607–626).

Episodes

Socrates comes out of the school infuriated at Strepsiades, whom he calls the most boorish, forgetful man he has seen, one who forgets what he learns before he learns it (lines 627–632). He first asks what Strepsiades wants to learn, and the old man chooses measures and is told about rhythms and verses (lines 635–654). Socrates then tries to teach him the genders of words, and Strepsiades shows that he does not know the difference between a male and a female bird (alektryon and alektryaina), or a kneading trough (kardopos or kardope), or the masculine and feminine of names such as Amynias (lines 658–692). Socrates then makes him lie on a couch and meditate under a blanket, but Strepsiades is bitten by bugs and keeps complaining (lines 693–725). When Socrates asks him if he has found anything, he answers: nothing, except what he has in his right hand (lines 733–734), which is a crude joke. Later he does come up with ideas to get rid of his debts: to buy a Thessalian witch to draw down the moon and lock it up, so that the month would not come round and the interest would not be due (lines 746–756), or to use a burning-glass to melt the wax tablet on which the lawsuit is written (lines 764–772). When he proposes to hang himself before the case is called, Socrates thinks that he is joking (lines 777–780). In the end Strepsiades forgets even what he was taught first, and Socrates drives him out as hopeless (lines 783–790).

The Chorus advises him to send his son in his place, if he has a grown son (lines 794–796). Strepsiades says that he does, and that if the boy does not obey he will throw him out (lines 797–803). Pheidippides at first thinks that his father is out of his mind when he swears by Zeus; Strepsiades tells him that there is no Zeus, that Vortex has replaced him, and that this is what Socrates and Chaerephon have taught him (lines 814–830). The young man considers having his father tried for madness (lines 844–846), but at last gives in, though only after Strepsiades has reminded him of how he bought him a toy cart with his first juror’s fee (lines 860–865). He predicts that his father will regret it, and Strepsiades takes him to Socrates, “persuaded against his will” (lines 865–868).

First agon

Socrates says that the young man will learn from the two Arguments in person, and goes away (lines 886–888). The two Arguments come on stage quarrelling. The Better Argument tells the other to show himself to the spectators, and each threatens to destroy the other: the Better says that he will do it by speaking what is just, and the Worse replies that he will overturn it by contradicting it, for he denies that justice exists at all (lines 889–903). If justice exists, the Worse asks, how has Zeus not perished who bound his own father (lines 904–906)? They trade insults (lines 907–933), until the Chorus tells them to stop and to show Pheidippides the old and the new education, so that he can choose between them (lines 934–959).

The Better Argument describes the old education, when boys walked silently to school in order, sang the old songs, sat modestly in the gymnasium and ate no delicacies (lines 961–999). This education, he says, bred the men who fought at Marathon. If Pheidippides follows it, he will spend his time at the Academy, running races under the sacred olive trees, with a strong chest, broad shoulders and a small tongue; if he takes the new road, he will be pale, small-shouldered and long-tongued (lines 1000–1023). The Chorus praises him (lines 1024–1031).

The Worse Argument says that he is called by that name because he was the first to speak against law and justice (lines 1036–1042). He takes up the points one by one. Warm baths are condemned by his rival, he says, but Heracles, the bravest of the sons of Zeus, had warm baths (lines 1043–1054). Speaking in the market-place is good, for Homer made Nestor an orator (lines 1055–1062). Modesty did no good to Peleus: it won him a sword, but Hyperbolus got many talents by his villainy and no sword (lines 1063–1067). If a young man is caught committing adultery, he need only point out that Zeus himself gave way to love (lines 1068–1082). Then he asks his rival from what class lawyers, tragic poets and public speakers come, and each time the answer is the debauched (the euryprokti); he points to the audience and asks him how many of them are of the same sort (lines 1083–1101). The Better Argument gives in: “We are beaten”, he says, and goes over to the debauched, with his cloak (lines 1102–1104). Socrates asks Strepsiades whether he wants to take his son away or to have him taught; Strepsiades asks him to teach him, with a tongue sharpened for small lawsuits and for large ones (lines 1105–1111). A voice, which this text gives to Pheidippides, adds that the pupil will come back “pale, I think, and wretched” (line 1112).

The Chorus says that he will regret it (line 1113), and then, turning to the judges of the contest, promises rain for their fields in spring to those who judge the chorus well, and hail on the tiles, vines and weddings of those who do not (lines 1115–1130).

Episodes

Strepsiades enters, counting the days to the end of the month, when his creditors will claim their money (lines 1131–1140). He knocks on the door of the school, where Socrates tells him that his son has learned the Worse Argument (lines 1144–1155). The young man appears, and Strepsiades is delighted by his pale face, his air of contradiction and his look of an injured man while injuring others: “see that you save me, since you have also ruined me” (lines 1165–1177). Pheidippides gives him the argument about the Old and New day: the law of Solon provided for two days, so that the parties could settle on the first (lines 1178–1200). Strepsiades is pleased with himself and his son (lines 1201–1213).

The first creditor, Pasias, comes with a witness and summons him for the twelve minae (lines 1214–1221). Strepsiades denies that he ever borrowed it. Pasias reminds him that he swore by the gods that he would repay it, and Strepsiades answers that he swore before his son knew the irrefutable argument, and that Zeus is a figure of fun to the clever (lines 1227–1245). When Pasias asks for his money, Strepsiades asks him what a kneading trough is called and refuses to pay a man who says kardopos instead of kardope (lines 1246–1252). The creditor departs, threatening a lawsuit (lines 1253–1255). The second creditor, Amynias, comes in lamenting that his horses have thrown him in the chariot race and asking for the money; Strepsiades makes fun of him, asking whether it rains new rain each time and whether the sea is bigger than before (lines 1259–1291), and drives him off with a goad (lines 1292–1302). Then he goes into the house, and the Chorus sings that he will soon find what has long been boiling up, for his son is skilful to speak against justice, “perhaps, perhaps his father will wish that he were even speechless” (lines 1303–1320).

Second agon

Strepsiades runs out of the house with Pheidippides behind him, shouting to his neighbours, kinsmen and fellow-tribesmen to protect him from being beaten (lines 1321–1325). His son admits that he has beaten him, and says that he can prove that it was just (lines 1326–1339). The Chorus tells Strepsiades to say how the quarrel began (lines 1345–1352). After dinner, Strepsiades says, he asked his son to take the lyre and sing a song of Simonides; Pheidippides said that this was old-fashioned. Strepsiades then asked him to recite Aeschylus; he said that Aeschylus was bombastic and rugged, and he recited a passage from Euripides about a brother who seduced his sister. Strepsiades lost his temper, and the son beat him (lines 1353–1379). He then reminds his son of how he fed and cared for him as a baby (lines 1380–1390).

Pheidippides says that he now knows how pleasant it is “to be acquainted with new and clever things, and to be able to despise the established laws” (lines 1399–1405). His proof is that his father beat him when he was a boy out of kindness, so it is just that the son should do the same; fathers, he argues, are boys twice over, and if there is a law that fathers may beat sons, the sons may make a new law that they may beat their fathers back (lines 1406–1429). Cocks, he adds, beat their fathers (lines 1427–1431). Strepsiades, to his own dismay, begins to think that his son may be right (lines 1437–1439). Then Pheidippides announces that he will beat his mother as well, and prove that too (lines 1440–1446). That is too much for Strepsiades (lines 1447–1451).

He turns on the Clouds and blames them for his misfortune (line 1452). The Clouds answer that he is the cause, having turned to wicked courses: “We always do this to him whom we perceive to be a lover of wicked courses, until we precipitate him into misfortune, so that he may learn to fear the gods” (lines 1454–1461). Strepsiades accepts that he was wrong to withhold the money he had borrowed and asks his son to help him destroy Socrates and Chaerephon (lines 1462–1466). Pheidippides refuses to wrong his teachers, and tells his father that there is no Zeus, Vortex having expelled him (lines 1467–1475). Strepsiades gives up: “How mad, then, I was when I ejected the gods on account of Socrates!” (lines 1476–1477).

Exodos (Exit Song)

Strepsiades prays to Hermes not to be angry with him and asks whether he should bring a suit against the philosophers; Hermes, as he understands it, advises him to burn the house of the “prating fellows” at once (lines 1478–1484). He calls Xanthias to climb on the roof of the Thinkery with a ladder and a mattock and to dig the roof in, and asks for a lighted torch (lines 1485–1492). A student cries from inside (lines 1493–1499). Socrates asks the man on the roof what he is doing, and Strepsiades answers with Socrates’ own words from the first part of the play: “I am walking on air and speculating about the sun” (lines 1502–1503). Socrates cries that he will be suffocated, and Chaerephon that he will be burnt to death (lines 1504–1505). Strepsiades asks why they dared to insult the gods and spy on the seat of the moon, and a voice, given in this text to the god Hermes, calls for them to be chased, pelted and struck, “especially because you know that they offended against the gods” (lines 1506–1509). The play ends with the Clouds’ line “Lead the way out; for we have sufficiently acted as chorus for today” (lines 1510–1511).

A Brief Analysis

The main subject of The Clouds is the new education of the late fifth century, above all training in speech, which Aristophanes presents as the art of making the weaker argument beat the stronger. The play states this idea outright in the figure of the Worse Argument, who says that he is called by that name because he was the first to speak against law and justice (lines 1036–1042), and in the plan of Strepsiades, who wants to learn how to “pervert the right for my own advantage, and to evade my creditors” (lines 432–434). The school is also a school of natural science: Socrates hangs in the air to study the sun (lines 218–234), and teaches that Vortex has replaced Zeus (lines 379–381). The play joins the two ideas together: the denial of the gods goes with the denial of right and wrong. That is why the end of the play punishes Socrates for atheism (“they offended against the gods”, line 1509) and not for his teaching of rhetoric.

The picture of Socrates in the play is a caricature. Plato’s Socrates says at his trial that he has been slandered for a long time as a man who investigates the things in the sky and under the earth and makes the weaker argument the stronger (Plato, Apology 18b, 19b), and he points to Aristophanes’ comedy as the source of the slander (Apology 19c), adding that he has never taught for payment, nor does he claim to teach (Apology 19d–e). In the play, in contrast, Socrates is offered pay for lessons (lines 245–246) and is given a gift for his teaching (lines 1146–1147). Whether the comedy had any effect on the verdict of 399 BC is something that only Plato’s Socrates claims, and he does so about slanders in general, and the old ones in particular, which he thought more dangerous than the formal accusers (Apology 18b–d).

The comic structure is that of a contest in which the hero seems to win and is then undone. The first half shows the success of the plan of Strepsiades: by lines 1214–1302 he has driven away two creditors. The second half shows the consequence: the same skill is turned against him by his own son (lines 1321–1451). The Clouds, whose very nature is to change shape (lines 346–355), say as much at the end: they lead those who love wicked courses into trouble so that they will learn to fear the gods (lines 1458–1461). Strepsiades himself draws the moral when he says that he was mad to cast out the gods for Socrates (lines 1476–1477).

Sources

Aristophanes, Clouds (lines 1–1511) and Wasps 1043–1050; the ancient hypotheses to Clouds, for the festival result and the revision; Thucydides 5.10 and 8.73.3; Plato, Apology 18b–19e. An English translation of the play can be read on Perseus (Clouds).

See Also: Aristophanes, The Wasps, The Frogs, Wealth