The Clouds: "High thoughts must have high language"

By Aristophanes .

The reality is that little is known of Aristophanes actual life but eleven of his forty plays survive intact and upon those rest his deserved reputation as the Father of Comedy or, The Prince of Ancient Comedy. Accounts agree that he was born sometime between 456BC and 446 BC. Many cities claim the honor of his birthplace and the most probable story makes him the son of Philippus of Ægina, and therefore only an adopted citizen of Athens, a distinction which, at times could be cruel, though he was raised and educated in Athens. His plays are said to recreate the life of ancient Athens more realistically than any other author could. Intellectually his powers of ridicule were feared by his influential contemporaries; Plato himself singled out Aristophanes' play The Clouds as a slander that contributed to the trial and condemning to death of Socrates and although other satirical playwrights had also caricatured the philosopher his carried the most weight. His now lost play, The Babylonians, was denounced by the demagogue Cleon as a slander against the Athenian polis. Aristophanes seems to have taken this criticism to heart and thereafter caricatured Cleon mercilessly in his subsequent plays, especially The Knights. His life and playwriting years were undoubtedly long though again accounts as to the year of his death vary quite widely. What can be certain is that his legacy of surviving plays is in effect both a treasured legacy but also in itself the only surviving texts of Ancient Greek comedy.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Scribe Publishing
• Release date: Mar 3, 2017
• ISBN: 9781787371309

Book preview

The Clouds by Aristophanes

Translated from the Greek by William James Hickie

The reality is that little is known of Aristophanes actual life but eleven of his forty plays survive intact and upon those rest his deserved reputation as the Father of Comedy or, The Prince of Ancient Comedy.

Accounts agree that he was born sometime between 456BC and 446 BC. Many cities claim the honor of his birthplace and the most probable story makes him the son of Philippus of Ægina, and therefore only an adopted citizen of Athens, a distinction which, at times could be cruel, though he was raised and educated in Athens.

His plays are said to recreate the life of ancient Athens more realistically than any other author could. Intellectually his powers of ridicule were feared by his influential contemporaries; Plato himself singled out Aristophanes' play The Clouds as a slander that contributed to the trial and condemning to death of Socrates and although other satirical playwrights had also caricatured the philosopher his carried the most weight.

His now lost play, The Babylonians, was denounced by the demagogue Cleon as a slander against the Athenian polis. Aristophanes seems to have taken this criticism to heart and thereafter caricatured Cleon mercilessly in his subsequent plays, especially The Knights.

His life and playwriting years were undoubtedly long though again accounts as to the year of his death vary quite widely.  What can be certain is that his legacy of surviving plays is in effect both a treasured legacy but also in itself the only surviving texts of Ancient Greek comedy.

Index of Contents

The Persons

Scene

Time

THE CLOUDS

Aristophanes – A Short Biography

Aristophanes – A Concise Bibliography

THE PERSONS

Strepsiades

Phidippides

Servant of Strepsiades

Disciples of Socrates

Socrates

Chorus of Clouds

Just Cause

Unjust Cause

Pasias

Amynias

Witness

Chaerephon

SCENE

The interior of a sleeping-apartment.

TIME

Midnight.

THE CLOUDS

STREPSIADES, PHIDIPPIDES, and TWO SERVANTS are in their beds; a small house is seen at a distance.

STREPSIADES [Sitting up in his bed]

Ah me! Ah me! O King Jupiter, of what a terrible length the nights are! Will it never be day? And yet long since I heard the cock. My domestics are snoring; but they would not have done so heretofore! May you perish then, O war! For many reasons; because I may not even punish my domestics. Neither does this excellent youth awake through the night; but takes his ease, wrapped up in five blankets. Well, if it is the fashion, let us snore wrapped up.

[Lies down, and then almost immediately starts up again.

But 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. Boy! Light a lamp, and bring forth my tablets, that I may take them and read to how many I am indebted, and calculate the interest.

[Enter BOY with a light and tablets.

Come, let me see; what do I owe? Twelve minae to Pasias. Why twelve minae to Pasias? Why did I borrow them? When I bought the blood-horse. Ah me, unhappy! Would that it had had its eye knocked out with a stone first!

PHIDIPPIDES [Talking in his sleep]

You are acting unfairly, Philo! Drive on your own course.

STREPSIADES

This is the bane that has destroyed me; for even in his sleep he dreams about horsemanship.

PHIDIPPIDES

How many courses will the war-chariots run?

STREPSIADES

Many courses do you drive me, your father. But what debt came upon me after Pasias? Three minae to Amynias for a little chariot and pair of wheels.

PHIDIPPIDES

Lead the horse home, after having given him a good rolling.

STREPSIADES

O foolish youth, you have rolled me out of my possessions; since I have been cast in suits, and others say that they will have surety given them for the interest.

PHIDIPPIDES [Awakening]

Pray, father, why are you peevish, and toss about the whole night?

STREPSIADES

A bailiff out of the bedclothes is biting me.

PHIDIPPIDES

Suffer me, good sir, to sleep a little.

STREPSIADES

Then, do you sleep on; but know that all these debts will turn on your head.

[PHIDIPPIDES falls asleep again.

Alas! Would that the match-maker had perished miserably, who induced me to marry your mother. For a country life used to be most agreeable to me, dirty, untrimmed, reclining at random, abounding in bees, and sheep, and oil-cake. Then I, a rustic, married a niece of Megacles, the son of Megacles, from the city, haughty, luxurious, and Coesyrafied. When I married her, I lay with her redolent of new wine, of the cheese-crate, and abundance of wool; but she, on the contrary, of ointment, saffron, wanton-kisses, extravagance, gluttony, and of Colias and Genetyllis. I will not indeed say that she was idle; but she wove. And I used to show her this cloak by way of a pretext and say Wife, you weave at a great rate.

[SERVANT re-enters.

SERVANT

We have no oil in the lamp.

STREPSIADES

Ah me! Why did you light the thirsty lamp? Come hither that you may weep!

SERVANT

For what, pray, shall I weep?

STREPSIADES

Because you put in one of the thick wicks.

[SERVANT runs out

After this, when this son was born to us, to

Reviews for The Clouds

[antao-3 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

(Original Review, 2002-06-20)In Taoism the idea of the relativity of judgement is important. So to describe something as heavy is neither true nor false since in different contexts any particular object could be usefully described as both heavy and light.Language uses binary oppositions like heavy/light whereas in the real world there is a continuum of weight and so heavy and light are relative terms. But ordinary people make these kind of judgments all the time and often believe they are right. Hence in this context it is an important step towards wisdom to give up making these judgments as if they expressed anything solid.In the field of science, Kant showed that this system does not hook onto the world-in-itself only the world as present to our senses. So the world-in-itself could be very different in reality to the system that we have developed to model it. It could be that the universe is infinitely complex so that quarks break down into smaller pieces and those break down further and this goes on ad infinitum. There is no way to tell! Science is a useful tool but not a system of knowledge about reality - it can't get at the reality behind appearances.Consider also the way science branches out into finer and finer specialisations, so that as time goes on the number of unanswered questions actually increases rather than decreases. The more we 'know' the more we realise we don't know. Look at the current state of fundamental physics, what a mess philosophically, it's a time of great confusion and uncertainty (string theory, etc.).In maths of course we know about Godel's uncertainty theorem. Also consider model theory; 'Model Theory is the part of mathematics which shows how to apply logic to the study of structures in pure mathematics. On the one hand it is the ultimate abstraction; on the other, it has immediate applications to every-day mathematics. The fundamental tenet of Model Theory is that mathematical truth, like all truth, is relative. A statement may be true or false, depending on how and where it is interpreted. This isn't necessarily due to mathematics itself, but is a consequence of the language that we use to express mathematical ideas. ' (source here.)So I think that when Socrates says that I know nothing except that I know nothing, I am sure there is something to this.Just to leave you with a question. If a picture is worth a thousand words, wouldn't it be amazing if there was a consciousness that could think in pictures in the way we think in binary symbols?. Would this consciousness be a thousand times more intelligent? Aristophanes, in his play "Clouds", which is blamed by Plato in the Apology for the public's low opinion of Socrates, makes the idea that Socrates is teaching a new religion to young citizens a central plank of his satire. The character Socrates in the play says there are no goddesses except the Clouds, who are spun around by Flux (Dinos), and that even Zeus doesn't exist. His "Thinkery" is a school for learning about these new gods and rejecting the traditional ones. When Strespiades has been "initiated" into Socrates' alternative mystery cult, he swears by the new gods of Chaos, Clouds, and Chatter.Another thing that hasn't been paid much attention so far in these threads is the political aspect. His most serious problem as an Athenian is surely that some of his most celebrated and successful supporters and pupils are traitors and tyrants, anti-democracy, pro-Sparta. In 411 his associate Alcibiades attempts to mount an oligarchic coup with Persian support, after being exiled. In 404 his former pupil Kritias is one of the bloodiest leaders of the "thirty tyrants" who are installed by Sparta's generals after Athens loses the war. The Apology addresses these issues by trying to disassociate Socrates from these excesses and show that he refused to participate in at least one treason trial. But people were adding up: Socrates + New Thinking = Kritias and Tyranny.Presenting Socrates as a universal guru ignores the deeply ambiguous political position he and his followers held at the time. Mark can present him to us as if he were an inspiring Oxford don, a bit unworldly, dedicated to academic inquiry: yes, perhaps, but among his favourite pupils were the Bullingdon Club of the day, and what they seem to have taken from his teachings was a corrosive contempt for democracy.

[hemlokgang · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

What a pleasant surprise this drama was! I picked this ancient Greek play up in anticipation of an intellectual muscle stretcher and ended up laughing out loud. Who knew Aristophanes could be so wonderfully entertaining! That silly old Socrates! This drama was entered into a competition in roughly 423 B.C. as an attempt to regain the playwright's standing as the champion. Excellent choice! He poked fun at the Sophists quite well! Very readable too!