AMYNIAS. Am I drivelling because I demand my money?
STREPSIADES. No, no, you cannot be in your right senses.
AMYNIAS. Why?
STREPSIADES. No doubt your poor wits have had a shake.
AMYNIAS. But by Hermes! I will sue you at law, if you do not pay me.
STREPSIADES. Just tell me; do you think it is always fresh water that
Zeus lets fall every time it rains, or is it always the same water that
the sun pumps over the earth?
AMYNIAS. I neither know, nor care.
STREPSIADES. And actually you would claim the right to demand your money,
when you know not a syllable of these celestial phenomena?
AMYNIAS. If you are short, pay me the interest, at any rate.
STREPSIADES. What kind of animal is interest?
AMYNIAS. What? Does not the sum borrowed go on growing, growing every
month, each day as the time slips by?
STREPSIADES. Well put. But do you believe there is more water in the sea
now than there was formerly?
AMYNIAS. No, 'tis just the same quantity. It cannot increase.
STREPSIADES. Thus, poor fool, the sea, that receives the rivers, never
grows, and yet you would have your money grow? Get you gone, away with
you, quick! Ho! bring me the ox-goad!
AMYNIAS. Hither! you witnesses there!
STREPSIADES. Come, what are you waiting for? Will you not budge, old nag!
AMYNIAS. What an insult!
STREPSIADES. Unless you get a-trotting, I shall catch you and prick up
your behind, you sorry packhorse! Ah! you start, do you? I was about to
drive you pretty fast, I tell you--you and your wheels and your chariot!
CHORUS. Whither does the passion of evil lead! here is a perverse old
man, who wants to cheat his creditors; but some mishap, which will
speedily punish this rogue for his shameful schemings, cannot fail to
overtake him from to-day. For a long time he has been burning to have his
son know how to fight against all justice and right and to gain even the
most iniquitous causes against his adversaries every one. I think this
wish is going to be fulfilled. But mayhap, mayhap, he will soon wish his
son were dumb rather!
STREPSIADES. Oh! oh! neighbours, kinsmen, fellow-citizens, help! help! to
the rescue, I am being beaten! Oh! my head! oh! my jaw! Scoundrel! do you
beat your own father!
PHIDIPPIDES. Yes, father, I do.
STREPSIADES. See! he admits he is beating me.
PHIDIPPIDES. Undoubtedly I do.
STREPSIADES. You villain, you parricide, you gallows-bird!
PHIDIPPIDES. Go on, repeat your epithets, call me a thousand other names,
an it please you. The more you curse, the greater my amusement!
STREPSIADES. Oh! you infamous cynic!
PHIDIPPIDES. How fragrant the perfume breathed forth in your words.
STREPSIADES. Do you beat your own father?
PHIDIPPIDES. Aye, by Zeus! and I am going to show you that I do right in
beating you.
STREPSIADES. Oh, wretch! can it be right to beat a father?
PHIDIPPIDES. I will prove it to you, and you shall own yourself
vanquished.
STREPSIADES. Own myself vanquished on a point like this?
PHIDIPPIDES. 'Tis the easiest thing in the world. Choose whichever of the
two reasonings you like.
STREPSIADES. Of which reasonings?
PHIDIPPIDES. The Stronger and the Weaker.
STREPSIADES. Miserable fellow! Why, 'tis I who had you taught how to
refute what is right, and now you would persuade me it is right a son
should beat his father.
PHIDIPPIDES. I think I shall convince you so thoroughly that, when you
have heard me, you will not have a word to say.
STREPSIADES. Well, I am curious to hear what you have to say.
CHORUS. Consider well, old man, how you can best triumph over him. His
brazenness shows me that he thinks himself sure of his case; he has some
argument which gives him nerve. Note the confidence in his look! But how
did the fight begin? tell the Chorus; you cannot help doing that much.
STREPSIADES. I will tell you what was the start of the quarrel. At the
end of the meal you wot of, I bade him take his lyre and sing me the air
of Simonides, which tells of the fleece of the ram.[571] He replied
bluntly, that it was stupid, while drinking, to play the lyre and sing,
like a woman when she is grinding barley.
PHIDIPPIDES. Why, by rights I ought to have beaten and kicked you the
very moment you told me to sing!
STREPSIADES. That is just how he spoke to me in the house, furthermore he
added, that Simonides was a detestable poet. However, I mastered myself
and for a while said nothing. Then I said to him, 'At least, take a
myrtle branch and recite a passage from Aeschylus to me.'--'For my own
part,' he at once replied, 'I look upon Aeschylus as the first of poets,
for his verses roll superbly; 'tis nothing but incoherence, bombast and
turgidness.' Yet still I smothered my wrath and said, 'Then recite one of
the famous pieces from the modern poets.' Then he commenced a piece in
which Euripides shows, oh! horror! a brother, who violates his own
uterine sister.[572] Then I could no longer restrain myself, and attacked
him with the most injurious abuse; naturally he retorted; hard words were
hurled on both sides, and finally he sprang at me, broke my bones, bore
me to earth, strangled and started killing me!
PHIDIPPIDES. I was right. What! not praise Euripides, the greatest of our
poets!
STREPSIADES. He the greatest of our poets! Ah! if I but dared to speak!
but the blows would rain upon me harder than ever.
PHIDIPPIDES. Undoubtedly, and rightly too.
STREPSIADES. Rightly! oh! what impudence! to me, who brought you up! when
you could hardly lisp, I guessed what you wanted. If you said _broo,
broo_, well, I brought you your milk; if you asked for _mam mam_, I gave
you bread; and you had no sooner said, _caca_, than I took you outside
and held you out. And just now, when you were strangling me, I shouted, I
bellowed that I would let all go; and you, you scoundrel, had not the
heart to take me outside, so that here, though almost choking, I was
compelled to ease myself.
CHORUS. Young men, your hearts must be panting with impatience. What is
Phidippides going to say? If, after such conduct, he proves he has done
well, I would not give an obolus for the hide of old men. Come, you, who
know how to brandish and hurl the keen shafts of the new science, find a
way to convince us, give your language an appearance of truth.
PHIDIPPIDES. How pleasant it is to know these clever new inventions and
to be able to defy the established laws! When I thought only about
horses, I was not able to string three words together without a mistake,
but now that the master has altered and improved me and that I live in
this world of subtle thought, of reasoning and of meditation, I count on
being able to prove satisfactorily that I have done well to thrash my
father.
STREPSIADES. Mount your horse! By Zeus! I would rather defray the keep of
a four-in-hand team than be battered with blows.
PHIDIPPIDES. I revert to what I was saying when you interrupted me. And
first, answer me, did you beat me in my childhood?
STREPSIADES. Why, assuredly, for your good and in your own best interest.
PHIDIPPIDES. Tell me, is it not right, that in turn I should beat you for
your good? since it is for a man's own best interest to be beaten. What!
must your body be free of blows, and not mine? am I not free-born too?
the children are to weep and the fathers go free?
STREPSIADES. But...
PHIDIPPIDES. You will tell me, that according to the law, 'tis the lot of
children to be beaten. But I reply that the old men are children twice
over and that it is far more fitting to chastise them than the young, for
there is less excuse for their faults.
STREPSIADES. But the law nowhere admits that fathers should be treated
thus.
PHIDIPPIDES. Was not the legislator who carried this law a man like you
and me? In those days he got men to believe him; then why should not I
too have the right to establish for the future a new law, allowing
children to beat their fathers in turn? We make you a present of all the
blows which were received before this law, and admit that you thrashed us
with impunity. But look how the cocks and other animals fight with their
fathers; and yet what difference is there betwixt them and ourselves,
unless it be that they do not propose decrees?
STREPSIADES. But if you imitate the cocks in all things, why don't you
scratch up the dunghill, why don't you sleep on a perch?
PHIDIPPIDES. That has no bearing on the case, good sir; Socrates would
find no connection, I assure you.
STREPSIADES. Then do not beat at all, for otherwise you have only
yourself to blame afterwards.
PHIDIPPIDES. What for?
STREPSIADES. I have the right to chastise you, and you to chastise your
son, if you have one.
PHIDIPPIDES. And if I have not, I shall have cried in vain, and you will
die laughing in my face.
STREPSIADES. What say you, all here present? It seems to me that he is
right, and I am of opinion that they should be accorded their right. If
we think wrongly, 'tis but just we should be beaten.
PHIDIPPIDES. Again, consider this other point.
STREPSIADES. 'Twill be the death of me.
PHIDIPPIDES. But you will certainly feel no more anger because of the
blows I have given you.
STREPSIADES. Come, show me what profit I shall gain from it.
PHIDIPPIDES. I shall beat my mother just as I have you.
STREPSIADES. What do you say? what's that you say? Hah! this is far worse
still.
PHIDIPPIDES. And what if I prove to you by our school reasoning, that one
ought to beat one's mother?
STREPSIADES. Ah! if you do that, then you will only have to throw
yourself along with Socrates and his reasoning, into the Barathrum.[573]
Oh! Clouds! all our troubles emanate from you, from you, to whom I
entrusted myself, body and soul.
CHORUS. No, you alone are the cause, because you have pursued the path of
evil.
STREPSIADES. Why did you not say so then, instead of egging on a poor
ignorant old man?
CHORUS. We always act thus, when we see a man conceive a passion for what
is evil; we strike him with some terrible disgrace, so that he may learn
to fear the gods.
STREPSIADES. Alas! oh Clouds! 'tis hard indeed, but 'tis just! I ought
not to have cheated my creditors.... But come, my dear son, come with me
to take vengeance on this wretched Chaerephon and on Socrates, who have
deceived us both.
PHIDIPPIDES. I shall do nothing against our masters.
STREPSIADES. Oh! show some reverence for ancestral Zeus!
PHIDIPPIDES. Mark him and his ancestral Zeus! What a fool you are! Does
any such being as Zeus exist?
STREPSIADES. Why, assuredly.
PHIDIPPIDES. No, a thousand times no! The ruler of the world is the
Whirlwind, that has unseated Zeus.
STREPSIADES. He has not dethroned him. I believed it, because of this
whirligig here. Unhappy wretch that I am! I have taken a piece of clay to
be a god.
PHIDIPPIDES. Very well! Keep your stupid nonsense for your own
consumption. (_Exit_.)
STREPSIADES. Oh! what madness! I had lost my reason when I threw over the
gods through Socrates' seductive phrases. Oh! good Hermes, do not destroy
me in your wrath. Forgive me; their babbling had driven me crazy. Be my
councillor. Shall I pursue them at law or shall I...? Order and I
obey.--You are right, no law-suit; but up! let us burn down the home of
those praters. Here, Xanthias, here! take a ladder, come forth and arm
yourself with an axe; now mount upon the school, demolish the roof, if
you love your master, and may the house fall in upon them, Ho! bring me a
blazing torch! There is more than one of them, arch-impostors as they
are, on whom I am determined to have vengeance.
A DISCIPLE. Oh! oh!
STREPSIADES. Come, torch, do your duty! Burst into full flame!
DISCIPLE. What are you up to?
STREPSIADES. What am I up to? Why, I am entering upon a subtle argument
with the beams of the house.
SECOND DISCIPLE. Hullo! hullo! who is burning down our house?
STREPSIADES. The man whose cloak you have appropriated.
SECOND DISCIPLE. But we are dead men, dead men!
STREPSIADES. That is just exactly what I hope, unless my axe plays me
false, or I fall and break my neck.
SOCRATES. Hi! you fellow on the roof, what are you doing up there?