THE CLOUDS.
The satire in this, one of the best-known of Aristophanes’s comedies, is
directed against the new schools of philosophy which had been lately
developed in Athens, and which reckoned among their disciples not only
the more intellectual of the rising generation, but also a good many
idle young men of the richer classes, who were attracted by the novelty
of the tenets which were there propounded, the eloquence of the
teachers, and the richness of illustration and brilliant repartee which
were remarkable features in their method. There were several reasons
which would make this new learning unpopular, whatever its real merits
might have been. These men controverted popular opinions, and assumed to
know more than other people--which was an offence to the dignity of the
great Athenian commons. The lecturers themselves were nearly all of them
foreigners--Thrasymachus from Chalcedon, Gorgias from Leontini in
Sicily, Protagoras from Abdera in Thrace. These, with many others of
less note, had brought their talents to Athens as the great
intellectual mart, where such ware was understood, and was sure to find
its price, both in renown and in the grosser and more literal sense.
Besides, they sneered (so it was said) at the national religion; and the
national religion, especially to the lower ranks of citizens, meant
holidays, and public feasts, and processions, and a good deal of licence
and privilege which was very much valued. There were reasons, too, why
the poet himself should be very willing to exercise his wit at the
expense of the philosophers: to his conservative mind these outlandish
teachers, with their wild speculations and doctrine of free thought, and
generally aggressive attitude towards the established order of things,
were especially objectionable.
The term “Sophist,” though in its original and wider sense it was
applied to the professors of philosophy generally, had come to mean, in
the popular language of Athens, those who, for pay, undertook to teach a
method of rhetoric and argument by which a man might prove anything
whatever. It is against these public lecturers, who either taught or
were commonly believed to teach this perversion of the great science of
dialectics, that Aristophanes brings the whole weight of his biting
humour to bear in ‘The Clouds.’ This is no place to inquire how far the
accusation brought against them was or was not a fair one, or whether
that abuse of their powers which was the disgrace of a few may not have
been attributed by unjust clamour to a whole class of public teachers in
which they were but the exceptions. It is possible to believe not only,
with Mr Grote, that the Sophists “bear the penalty of their name in its
modern sense,” but also that in their own day they bore the penalty of
superior ability and intelligence in becoming the objects of dislike,
and therefore of misrepresentation, and yet to understand how they may
have afforded very fair material for the professional satirist. The art
of public speaking, which these professors taught, is a powerful engine,
which in unscrupulous hands may do as much to mislead as to instruct.
That the love of disputation and the consciousness of power will tempt a
clever man to maintain a paradox, and discomfit an opponent by what he
knows to be a fallacy--that a keen intellect will delight in questioning
an established belief--and that the shallow self-sufficiency of younger
disciples will push any doctrine to its wildest extremes,--are moral
facts for whose confirmation we have no need to go to ancient history.
And we are not to suppose that either the poet or his audience intended
the fun of the piece to be taken as serious evidence either of the
opinions or the practice of any school whatever.
But the question which has, with much more reason, exercised the
ingenuity of able critics, is the choice which Aristophanes has made of
Socrates as the representative of this sophistical philosophy, and his
motive in holding him up to ridicule, as he here does, by name. For
Socrates, it is generally allowed, was the opponent of these Sophists,
or at least of those objectionable doctrines which they were said to
teach. But there were some very important points--and those such as
would come most under public observation--in which he, as a
philosophical teacher, bore a broad resemblance to them. The whole
character of this new intellectual movement in Greece was negative and
critical, professing to aim rather at detecting error than establishing
certainty. To this the method of Socrates formed no exception. His
favourite assertion, that he himself knew nothing for certain, expressed
this in the strongest form. And if the reproach brought against the
Sophists was that they loved argument too much for argument’s sake, and
thought more of confounding an opponent than of demonstrating a truth,
we have only to read some of the dialogues in which Socrates bears a
part, as we have them recorded by his friends and pupils, to see that he
at least supplied abundant ground to an ordinary hearer to say the same
of him. He could scarcely have realised to the public of his own day the
definition which Schiller gives of the true philosopher--“One who loves
truth better than his system.” Xenophon tells us that in argument he did
what he liked with his opponents; and Plato has compared him to the
mythical giant Antæus, who insisted that every stranger whom he met
should try a fall with him.
It is of the very essence, again, of caricature to take gravity and
wisdom for its subject. And caricature on the Athenian stage knew no
limits in this. Nothing was sacred for the comic dramatist and his
Chorus. The national gods, the great religious mysteries, the mighty
Athenian people itself, were all made to put on the comic mask, and
figure in the wild procession. Why should the philosophers escape? The
higher the ground upon which Socrates stood, the more tempting mark did
he present. Lucian understood perfectly the kind of taste to which a
writer of comedy must appeal at Athens, when, in his own defence for
having made sport of the philosophers, he says: “For such is the temper
of the multitude, they delight in listening to banter and abuse,
especially when what is solemn and dignified is made the subject of
it.”[27]
But besides this, the author who was to write a new burlesque for the
Athenians, and had resolved to take as his theme these modern vagaries
of speculative philosophy, wanted a central figure for his piece. So in
‘The Acharnians’ he takes Lamachus, a well-known general of the day, to
represent the passion for war which he there holds up to ridicule, and
dresses him up with gorgon-faced shield and tremendous crest, in parody
of military splendour: though we have no reason whatever to suppose that
he had any private grudge against the man, or that Lamachus was more
responsible for the war than others. Here the representative figure must
be a philosopher, and well known. Whether his opinions were very
accurately represented or not, probably neither the dramatist nor his
audience would very much care. Who so convenient for his purpose as the
well-known and remarkable teacher whose grotesque person must have
struck every passer-by in the public streets, whose face, with its flat
nose, lobster-like eyes, and thick lips, seemed a ready-made comic mask,
and whose round and protuberant body made his very friends liken him to
the figures of Silenus,--who went about barefooted, unwashed, and in
shabby clothes, and would sometimes stand for half an hour in a public
thoroughfare as it were wrapt in a dream? There is surely no need to
imagine that the comic dramatist had any personal grudge against the
philosopher, or any special horror of his particular teaching. Such an
artist could hardly have helped caricaturing him, if he had been his
personal friend.
The opening scene in this comedy is an interior. It represents a room in
the house of Strepsiades, a well-to-do citizen, in which he and his son
Pheidippides are discovered occupying two pallet-beds. The household
slaves are supposed to be sleeping in an outer room, the door of which
is open. So much of the antecedents of the drama as is required to be
known in order to its ready comprehension come out at once in the
soliloquy of the anxious father.
_Str._ (_yawning in his bed_). O--h!
Great Jove, how terribly long the nights are now!
Interminable! will it never be day, I wonder?
I’m sure I heard the cock crow long ago.
These slaves are snoring still, the rascals. Ah!
It was not so in the old times of peace.
Curse the war, I say, both for other reasons,
And specially that I daren’t punish my own slaves.[28]
And there’s that hopeful son of mine can sleep
Sound as a top, the whole night long, rolled up
Like a great sausage there, in five thick blankets.
Well--I suppose I’d as well put my head
Under the clothes, and try to get a snooze.--
I can’t--I _can’t_ get to sleep! There are things biting me--
I mean the bills, the stable expenses, and the debts
Run up for me by that precious son of mine.
And he--oh, he lives like a gentleman,
Keeps his fine horses, drives his curricle--
Is dreaming of them now, no doubt--while I lie vexing,
Knowing next month those notes of hand come due,
With interest mounting up. (_Calls to his slave without._)
Boy! light a lamp;
Bring me my pocket-book, that I may see
How my accounts stand, and just cast them up.
(_Slave brings a lamp, and holds it while Strepsiades sits up and looks
over his account-book._)
Let’s see now. First, here’s Prasias, fifty pounds.
Now, what’s that for? When did I borrow that?
Ah! when I bought that grey. Oh dear, oh dear!
I shall grow grey enough, if this goes on.
_Ph._ (_talking in his sleep_). That’s not fair,
Philo! keep your own side of the course!
_Str._ Ay, there he goes! that’s what is ruining me;
He’s always racing, even in his dreams.
_Ph._ (_still asleep_). How many times round do the war-chariots go?
_Str._ You make your old father’s head go round, you do.
But let me see--what stands here next to Prasias?--
Twelve pounds to Amynias,--for a car and wheels.
_Ph._ There--give that horse a roll, and take him home.
_Str._ You’ll roll me out of house and home, young man!
I’ve judgment debts against me, and the rest of them
Swear they’ll proceed.
_Ph._ (_awaking_). Good heavens! my dear father,
What makes you groan and toss so all night long?
_Str._ There’s a sheriff’s officer at me--in the bed-clothes.
_Ph._ Lie quiet, sir, do pray, and let me sleep.
_Str._ Sleep, if you like; but these debts, I can tell you,
“Will fall on your own head some day, young man.
Heugh! may those match-makers come to an evil end
Who drew me into marrying your good mother!
There I was living a quiet life in the country,--
Shaved once a-week, may-be, wore my old clothes--
Full of my sheep, and goats, and bees, and vineyards,
And I must marry the fine niece of Megacles.
The son of Megacles! an awkward country fellow
Marry a fine town belle, all airs and graces!
A pretty pair we were to come together--
I smelling of the vineyard and the sheep-shearing,
She with her scents, and essences, and cosmetics,
And all the devilries of modern fashion.
Not a bad housekeeper though--I will say that--
For she kept open house. “Madam,” said I,
Showing her one day my old coat with a hole in’t,
By way of parable,--“this can’t last long.”
_Slave_ (_examining the lamp, which is going out_).
This lamp has got no oil in it.
_Str._ Deuce take you,
Why did you light that thirsty beast of a lamp?
Come here, and you shall catch it.
_Slave._ Catch it,--why?
_Str._ (_boxes his ears_). For putting such a thick wick in,
to be sure.--
Well,--in due time this boy of ours was born
To me and my grand lady. First of all,
We got to loggerheads about his name;
She would have something that had got a _horse_ in it,--
Xanthippus--or Charippus--or Philippides;[29]
I was for his grandfather’s name--Pheidonides.
Well, for some time we squabbled; then at last
We came to a compromise upon Pheid--ippides.
This boy--she’d take him in her lap and fondle him,
And say, “Ah! when it grows up to be a man,
It shall drive horses, like its uncle Megacles,
And wear a red cloak, it shall.” Then I would say,
“He shall wear a good sheep-skin coat, like his own father,
And drive his goats to market from the farm.”
But there--he never would listen to me for a moment;
He’s had a horse-fever always--to my ruin.
He has thought of a scheme, however, if he can but get his son to fall
in with it, by which they may both be relieved from the pressure of
these debts. So he awakes young Pheidippides, and takes him into his
counsels. They both walk to the front; the scene shuts, and they are
outside the house. The father points to another building at the wing.
That’s the great Thinking-School of our new philosophers;
There live the men who teach that heaven around us
Is a vast oven, and we the charcoal in it.[30]
And they teach too--for a consideration, mind--
To plead a cause and win it, right or wrong.
_Ph._ (_carelessly_). Who are these fellows?
_Str._ I don’t quite remember
The name they call themselves, it’s such a long one;
Very hard thinkers--but they’re first-rate men.
_Ph._ Faugh! vulgar fellows--I know ’em. Dirty vagabonds,
Like Socrates there and Chœrephon--a low set.
_Str._ Pray hold your tongue--don’t show your ignorance.
But, if you care at all for your old father,
Be one of them, now, do, and cut the turf.
_Ph._ Not I, by Bacchus! not if you would give me
That team of Arabs that Leogoras drives.
_Str._ (_coaxingly_). Do, my dear boy, I beg you--go and be taught.
_Ph._ And what shall I learn there?
_Str._ Learn? (_Confidentially._) “Why, they _do_ say
That these men have the secret of both Arguments,
The honest Argument (if there be such a thing) and the other;
Now this last--this false Argument, you understand--
Will make the veriest rascal win his cause.
So, if you’ll go and learn for us this glorious art,
The debts I owe for you will all be cleared;
For I shan’t pay a single man a farthing.
_Ph._ (_after a little hesitation_). No--I can’t
do it. Studying hard, you see,
Spoils the complexion. How could I show my face
Among the Knights, looking a beast, like those fellows?
_Str._ Then, sir, henceforth I swear, so help me Ceres,
I won’t maintain you--you, nor your bays, nor your chestnuts.
Go to the dogs--or anywhere--out of my house!
_Ph._ Well, sir, I’m going. I know my uncle Megacles
Won’t see me without a horse--so I don’t mind.
Indignant as he is with his son, the father is determined not to lose
the chance which this new science offers him of getting rid of his
creditors. If his son will not learn, he will take lessons himself, old
as he is; and with this resolve he knocks at the door of this
“Thinking-School,” the house of Socrates. One of the students comes to
answer his summons--in no very good humour, for the loudness and
suddenness of Strepsiades’s knock has destroyed in embryo a thought
which he was breeding. Still, as the old gentleman seems an earnest
disciple, he condescends to expatiate to him on the subject of some of
the great master’s subtle speculations; subtle in the extreme, not to
say childish, but yet not very unfair caricatures of some which we find
attributed to Socrates in the ‘Dialogues’ of Plato. Charmed with what he
hears, the new scholar begs to be at once introduced. The back scene
opens, and discovers the students engaged in their various
investigations, with Socrates himself suspended in a kind of basket,
deeply engaged in thought. The extraordinary attitude of one class of
learners arrests the attention of the visitor especially:--
_Str._ What _are_ those doing--stooping so very oddly?
_Student._ They probe the secrets that lie deep as Tartarus.
_Str._ But why--excuse me, but--their hinder quarters--
Why are they stuck so oddly up in the air?
_Stud._ The other end is studying astronomy
Quite independently. (_To the students, whose
attention is, of course, diverted to the
visitor._) Go in, if you please!
Suppose HE comes, and catches us all idling!
But Strepsiades begs to ask a few more questions. These mathematical
instruments,--what are they for?
_Stud._ Oh, that’s geometry.
_Str._ And what’s the use of it?
_Stud._ For measuring the Earth.
_Str._ You mean the grants
We make in the colonies to Athenian citizens?
_Stud._ No--_all_ the Earth.
_Str._ A capital idea!
Divide it all?--I call that true democracy.
_Stud._ See, here’s an outline-map of the whole world;
And here lies Athens.
_Str._ Athens! nay, go to--
It cannot be--I see no law-courts sitting.
_Stud._ ’Tis Attica, I assure you, none the less.
_Str._ And where’s my parish, then--and my fellow-townsmen?
_Stud._ Oh, they’re all there.--And here’s Eubœa, you see,
That long strip there, stretched out along the coast.
_Str._ Ay--we and Pericles stretched that--pretty tight.[31]
But where’s Lacedæmon, now?
_Stud._ Why, there, of course.
_Str._ How close to Athens! Pray, with all your thinking,
Can’t ye contrive to get it further off?
_Stud._ (_shaking his head_). That we can’t do, by Jove!
_Str._ Then worse luck for ye.--
But who hangs dangling in the basket yonder?
_Stud._ HIMSELF.
_Str._ And who’s Himself?
_Stud._ Why, Socrates.
_Str._ Ho, Socrates!--Call him, you fellow--call loud.
_Stud._ Call him yourself--I’ve got no time for calling.
(_Exit indoors._)
_Str._ Ho, Socrates! sweet, darling Socrates!
_Soc._ Why callest thou me, poor creature of a day?
_Str._ First tell me, pray, what _are_ you doing up there?
_Soc._ I walk in air, and contemplate the sun.
_Str._ Oh, _that’s_ the way that you despise the gods--
You get so near them on your perch there--eh?
_Soc._ I never could have found out things divine,
Had I not hung my mind up thus, and mixed
My subtle intellect with its kindred air.
Had I regarded such things from below,
I had learnt nothing. For the earth absorbs
Into itself the moisture of the brain.--
It is the very same case with water-cresses.
_Str._ Dear me! so water-cresses grow by thinking!
He begs Socrates to come down and help him in his difficulties. He is
very anxious to learn this new Argument--that “which pays no bills.”
Socrates offers to introduce him to the Clouds, the new goddesses of
philosophers--“great divinities to idle men;” and Strepsiades--first
begging to be allowed to wrap his cloak round his head for fear of rain,
having left home in his hurry without a hat--sits down to await their
arrival.
(SOCRATES _chants_.)
Come, holy Clouds, whom the wise revere,
Descend in the sight of your votaries here!
Whether ye rest on the heights of Olympus,
whereon the sacred snow lies ever,
Or in coral groves of your father Ocean
ye weave with the Nymphs the dance together,
Or draw aloft in your golden vessels
the holy waters of ancient Nile,
Or haunt the banks of the lake Mæotis,
or clothe the Mimas’ steeps the while,--
Hear our prayer, O gentle goddesses,
take the gifts your suppliants bring,
Smile propitious on these our offerings,
list to the mystic chant we sing!
It is not very easy to comprehend the mode in which the succeeding scene
was managed, but the appliances of the Athenian stage were no doubt
quite equal to presenting it very effectively. The vast amphitheatre in
which these performances took place, open to the sky, and from which
actors and audience commanded a view of the hills round Athens, and of
the “illimitable air” and “cloudless heaven” which Socrates
apostrophises in his invocation to the goddesses, would add greatly to
the effect of the beautiful choric songs which follow. But, on the other
hand, it presents difficulties to any arrangement for the actual descent
of the Clouds upon the stage. Probably their first chorus is sung behind
the scenes, and they are invisible,--present to the imagination only of
the audience, until they enter the orchestra in palpable human shape.
Theories and guesses on these points are, after all, but waste of
ingenuity. The beauty of the lines which herald their entrance (which
can receive but scant justice in a translation) is one of the many
instances in which the poet rises above the satirist.
(CHORUS OF CLOUDS, _in the distance, accompanied by the low rolling of
thunder_.[32])
Eternal clouds!
Rise we to mortal view,
Embodied in bright shapes of dewy sheen,
Leaving the depths serene
Where our loud-sounding Father Ocean dwells,
For the wood-crownèd summits of the hills:
Thence shall our glance command
The beetling crags which sentinel the land,
The teeming earth,
The crops we bring to birth;
Thence shall we hear
The music of the ever-flowing streams,
The low deep thunders of the booming sea.
Lo, the bright Eye of Day unwearied beams!
Shedding our veil of storms
From our immortal forms,
We scan with keen-eyed gaze this nether sphere.
Socrates falls to the ground in adoration of his beloved deities; and
Strepsiades follows his example, in great terror at the thunder, with
all the buffoonish exaggeration which would delight an Athenian
audience.
(CHORUS OF CLOUDS, _nearer_.)
Sisters who bring the showers,
Let us arise and greet
This glorious land, for Pallas’ dwelling meet,
Rich in brave men, beloved of Cecrops old;
Where Faith and Reverence reign,
Where comes no foot profane,
When for the mystic rites the Holy Doors unfold.
There gifts are duly paid
To the great gods, and pious prayers are said;
Tall temples rise, and statues heavenly fair.
There, at each holy tide,
With coronals and song,
The glad processions to the altars throng;
There, in the jocund spring,
Great Bacchus, festive king,
With dance and tuneful flute his Chorus leads along.
And now, while Socrates directs the attention of his pupil towards Mount
Parnes, from whose heights he sees (and the imagination of the audience
is not slow to follow him) the ethereal goddesses descending towards the
earth, the Chorus in bodily form enter the orchestra, to the sound of
slow music--four-and-twenty nymphs in light cloud-like drapery. They
promise, at the request of their great worshipper Socrates, to instruct
his pupil in the mysterious science which is to free him from the
importunity of his creditors. For these, says the philosopher, are your
only true deities--Chaos, and the Clouds, and the Tongue. As to Jupiter,
whom Strepsiades just ventures to mention, he is quite an exploded idea
in these modern times; the great ruler of the universe is Vortex.[33]
The machinery of the world goes on by a perpetual whirl. Socrates will,
with the help of the Clouds, instruct him in all these new tenets. There
is one point, however, upon which he wishes first to be satisfied--has
he a good memory?
_Str._ ’Tis of two sorts, by Jove! remarkably good,
If a man owes me anything; of my own debts,
I’m shocked to say, I’m terribly forgetful.
_Soc._ Have you good natural gifts in the way of speaking?
_Str._ Speaking,--not much; cheating’s my strongest point.
He appears to the philosopher not so very unpromising a pupil, and the
pair retire into the “Thinking-shop,” to begin their studies, while the
Chorus make their usual address to the audience in the poet’s name,
touching chiefly upon topics of the day which have lost their interest
for us moderns.
But the next act of the comedy brings in Socrates, swearing by all his
new divinities that he never met with so utterly hopeless a pupil, in
the whole course of his experience, as this very late learner, who has
no one qualification for a sophist except his want of honesty. He puts
him through a quibbling catechism on the stage about measures, and
rhythms, and grammar, all which he declares are necessary preliminaries
to the grand science which Strepsiades desires to learn, although the
latter very naïvely remonstrates against this superfluous education: he
wants to learn neither music nor grammar, but simply how to defeat his
creditors. At last his instructor gets out of patience, and kicks him
off the philosophical premises as a hopeless dunce. By the advice of the
Clouds the rejected candidate goes in search of his son, to attempt once
more to persuade him to enter the schools, and learn the art which has
proved too difficult for his father’s duller faculties.
One step, indeed, the old gentleman has made in his education; he swears
no more by Jupiter, and rebukes his son, when he does so, for
entertaining such very old-world superstitions; somewhat to the
astonishment of that elegant young gentleman, whose opinions (if he has
any on such subjects) are not so far advanced in the way of scepticism.
The latter is, however, at last persuaded to become his father’s
substitute as the pupil of Socrates, though not without a warning on the
young man’s part that he may one day come to rue it. On this head the
father has no misgivings, but introduces him to the philosopher
triumphantly as a scholar who is sure to do him credit--he was always a
remarkable child:--
He was so very clever always, naturally;
When he was but so high, now, he’d build mud houses,
Cut out a boat, make a cart of an old shoe,
And frogs out of pomegranate-stones--quite wonderful![34]
And Socrates, after a sneer at the young gentleman’s fashionable lisp,
admits him as a pupil, and undertakes to instruct him in this “new way
of paying old debts.”
The choral ode which must have divided this scene from the next is lost.
The dialogue which follows, somewhat abruptly as we now have the play,
is but another version of the well-known “Choice of Hercules” between
Virtue and Vice, by the sophist Prodicus--known probably to the audience
of the day as well as to ourselves. The Two Arguments, the Just and the
Unjust, now appear upon the stage in character; one in the grave dress
of an elder citizen, the other as a young philosopher of the day.[35] It
is very probable that they wore masks which would be recognised by the
audience as caricatures of real persons; it has been suggested, of
Æschylus and Euripides, or of Thrasymachus the sophist, and of
Aristophanes himself. What is certain is, that they represent the old
and new style of training and education: and they set forth the claims
of their respective systems in a long discussion, in which each abuses
the other with the utmost licence of Athenian comedy. Yet there are
passages of great simplicity and beauty here and there, in the speeches
of the worthier claimant. The Unjust Argument, confident in the
popularity of his system and his powers of argument, permits his rival
to set his claims before the audience first. He proceeds to speak of the
days when justice, temperance, and modesty were in fashion; when the
Athenian youth were a hardy and a healthy race, not languid and
effeminate as now; and he calls upon young Pheidippides to choose for
himself the principles and the training which “had made the men of
Marathon:”--
Cast in thy lot, O youth, with me, and choose the better paths--
So shalt thou hate the Forum’s prate, and shun the lazy baths;
Be shamed for what is truly shame, and blush when shame is said,
And rise up from thy seat in hall before the hoary head;
Be duteous to thy parents, to no base act inclined,
But keep fair Honour’s image deep within thine heart enshrined;
And speak no rude irreverent word against the father’s years,
Whose strong hand led thine infant steps, and dried thy
childhood’s tears.
But the arguments of the evil counsellor are many and plausible. What
good, he argues, have men ever gained by justice, continence, and
moderation? For one poor instance which his opponent can adduce of
virtue being rewarded upon earth, the fluent sophist quotes a dozen
against him of those who have made their gain by the opposite qualities.
Honesty is _not_ the best policy among mortals; and most assuredly the
moral virtues receive no countenance from the example of the gods.
Sophistical as the argument is, and utterly unfair as we know it to be
if intended to represent the real teaching of Socrates, the satirist
seems to have been fully justified in his representation so far as some
of the popular lecturers of the day were concerned. The arguments which
Plato, in his ‘Republic,’ has put into the mouth of the sophist
Thrasymachus--that justice is really only the good of _others_, while
injustice is more profitable to a man’s self--that those who abuse
injustice do so “from the fear of suffering it, not from the fear of
doing it”--that justice is merely “an obedience yielded by the weak to
the orders of the strong,”--do but express in grave philosophical
language the same principles which Aristophanes here exaggerates in the
person of his devil’s advocate.[36] This latter winds up the controversy
by plying his antagonist with a few categorical questions, quite in the
style of Socrates:--
_Unjust A._ Come now,--from what class do our lawyers spring?
_Just A._ Well--from the blackguards.
_Unj. A._ I believe you. Tell me
Again, what are our tragic poets?
_Just A._ Blackguards.
_Unj. A._ Good; and our public orators?
_Just A._ Blackguards all.
_Unj. A._ D’ye see now, how absurd and utterly worthless
Your arguments have been? And now look round--
(_turning to the audience_)
Which class amongst our friends here seems most numerous?
_Just A._ I’m looking.
_Unj. A._ Well;--now tell me what you see.
_Just. A._ (_after gravely and attentively
examining the rows of spectators_). The
blackguards have it, by a large majority.
There’s one, I know--and yonder there’s another--
And there, again, that fellow with long hair.
And amidst the roars of delighted laughter with which the Athenian
“gallery” would be sure to receive this sally of buffoonery, the
advocate of justice and morality declares that he throws up his brief,
and joins the ranks of the dissolute majority.
The creditors of Strepsiades have not been quiescent meanwhile. We find
him, in the next scene, calculating with dismay that it wants but five
days to the end of the month, when debts and interest must be paid, or
legal proceedings will be taken. He is come to the School, to inquire
how his son gets on with his studies. Socrates assures him that his
education is quite complete; that he is now furnished with a mode of
argument which will win any lawsuit, and get him off scot-free of all
liabilities, even in the teeth of a thousand witnesses who could prove
the debt. He presents the youth to his father, who is charmed at first
sight with the change in his complexion, which has now the genuine
disputatious tint. He looks, as Strepsiades declares, “all negations and
contradictions,” and has the true Attic expression in his face. The
father takes him home rejoicing, and awaits confidently the summons of
his creditors.
The devices with which the claimants are put off by the new learning of
Pheidippides, turn so entirely on the technical expressions of Athenian
law, that they have little interest for an English reader. Suffice it to
say that the unfortunate tradesmen with whom this young gentleman has
run up bills for his horses and chariots do not seem likely to get their
money. But the training which he has received in the “Thinking-shop” has
some other domestic results which the father did not anticipate. He
proceeds, on some slight quarrel (principally because he will quote
Euripides, whom his father abominates), to cudgel the old gentleman, and
further undertakes to justify his conduct on the plea that when he was a
child his father had often cudgelled _him_.
_Strep._ Ay, but I did it for your good.
_Pheid._ No doubt;
And pray am I not also right to show
Goodwill to you--if beating means goodwill?
Why should your back escape the rod, I ask you,
Any more than mine did? was not I, forsooth,
Born like yourself a free Athenian?
Perhaps you will say, beating’s the rule for children;
I answer, that an old man’s twice a child;
And it is fair the old should have to howl
More than poor children, when they get into mischief,
Because there’s ten times less excuse for the old ones.
_Strep._ There never was a law to beat one’s father.
_Pheid._ Law? pray who made the law? a man, I suppose,
Like you or me, and so persuaded others:
Why have not I as good a right as he had
To start a law for future generations
That sons should beat their fathers in return?
We shall be liberal, too, if all the stripes
You laid upon us before the law was made
We make you a present of, and don’t repay them.
Look at young cocks, and all the other creatures,--
They fight their fathers; and what difference is there
’Twixt them and us--save that they don’t make laws?
The unlucky father finds himself quite unprepared with any reply to
these ingenious arguments. Too late he begins to see that this new
liberal education has its inconvenient side. He protests it would have
been better for him to allow his son to go on driving four-in-hand to
his heart’s content, than to become so subtle a philosopher. The only
comfort which the young student offers him is the assurance that he is
quite as ready to beat his mother, if occasion should arise; but it is
much to the credit of domestic relations at Athens that, although the
old gentleman has complained of his wife, in the earlier part of the
play, as having been the cause of all his present difficulties, he shows
no desire to accept this kind of consolation. He curses Socrates, and
appeals to the Clouds, who, he complains, have terribly misled him. The
Chorus reply with truth that the fault was his own; he had sought to be
instructed in the school of Injustice, and the teaching has recoiled
deservedly on his own head. But he has his revenge. Summoning his
slaves, he bids them bring ladders and mattocks, and storm the
stronghold of these charlatans and atheists. He mounts the roof himself,
torch in hand, and proceeds to set fire to the timbers. When the
students rush to the window in dismay to ask what he means by it, he
tells them mockingly he is only
Holding a subtle disputation with the rafters.
Socrates is at length aroused from his lucubrations, and inquires what
he is doing up there. Strepsiades retorts upon him his own explanation
of his position in the hanging basket--
I walk in air, and contemplate the sun.
And the piece concludes with a grand tableau of the Thinking-school in
flames, and Socrates and his pupils shrieking half-smothered from the
windows.
The comedy, as has been said above,[37] was not so far successful as to
obtain for its author either the first or second place in the award of
the judges; Cratinus being placed first with his comedy of ‘The
Bottle’--the child of his old age--and Ameipsias second. It has been
thought necessary to account for this on other grounds than the
respective merits of the three pieces; though, as we are not in
possession of the text of either of the others, we have no means of
ascertaining how far the award was or was not an honest one. It has
been suggested by some critics, that ‘The Clouds’ was _too_ clever for
the audience, who preferred a coarser article; and indeed (unless the
two gamecocks were produced upon the stage) the jests are more
intellectual than practical, and the comic “business” has little of that
uproarious fun with which some of the other plays abound. The author
himself, as would appear from some expressions put into the mouth of the
Chorus in his subsequent comedy of ‘The Wasps,’ was of opinion that his
finer fancies had been in this case thrown away upon an unsympathetic
public. Another explanation which has been given is, that the glaring
injustice with which the character of Socrates is treated was resented
by the audience--a supposition which carries with it a compliment to
their principles which it is very doubtful whether they deserved, and
which the author himself would have been very slow to pay them. There is
a story that the result was brought about by the influence of
Alcibiades, who had been already severely satirised in the poet’s comedy
of ‘The Revellers,’ and who felt that the character of Pheidippides--his
extravagance and love of horses, his connection by his mother’s side
with the great house of Megacles, his relation to Socrates as pupil, and
even the lisping pronunciation which his teacher notices[38]--were all
intended to be caricatures of himself, which seems by no means
improbable; and that he and friends accordingly exerted themselves to
prevent the poet’s success.
It is not probable that the broader caricature of the great philosopher,
any more than that of Cleon in ‘The Knights,’ had any special effect
upon the popularity of its object. The story told by Ælian, that the
subsequent condemnation of Socrates was due in great measure to the
prejudice raised against him by this comedy, has been long refuted by
the observation that it at least did not take place until more than
twenty years after the performance. A traditionary anecdote of a very
different kind, though resting upon not much better authority, has more
of probability about it,--that the philosopher himself, having been made
aware of what was in store for him, took his place among the audience at
the representation, and laughed as heartily as any of them: nay, that he
even rose and mounted upon a bench, in order that the strangers in the
house to whom his person was previously unknown might see how admirable
a counterpart the stage Socrates was of the original.