Aka Nubes or Nebulae (Ancient Greek: Νεφέλαι Nephelai)
First performed at the Great Dionysia 423 BC. Aristophanes believed it to be his best comedy, but it only won third prize. The surviving text of the play was Aristophanes' revision of his text of 423 BC.
A full analysis is to be found in
The Clouds of Aristophanes tr by W.J.M. Starkie pp. xi to xxiii - Internet Archive
Dramatis Personae
StrepsiadesSetting: A street in Athens, The Skene is Strepsiades' house.
Strepsiades complains what a bad night he has had. The slaves are still asleep and he cannot punish them like in the old days before the war [Peloponnesian War. They might run off and join the enemy]. As for his son he just lies there cocooned in his luxury blankets farting away, whilst he Strepsiades, has been bitten to bits with worries about his debts which have arisen all because of his son's passion for racing horses. The month is in its twentieth days, soon coming to an end when interest on his loans falls due and becomes payable. He calls for a slave to bring him a lamp and his accounts so he can reckon how much he still owes his creditors
The Slave returns with a lit lamp.
After their son was born she wanted to name him with the word Hippes [horse] as part of his name, whereas Strepsiades wanted to name his son after his grandfather, Pheidonides. They compromised with Pheidippides. She spoiled the child often saying no leather jerkin for him like his father, saying that her son would one day ride a fine chariot through the streets of Athens wearing a fine cloak just like her Uncle Megacles does.
The lamp goes out. Strepsiades scolds the slave for using too fat a wick.
Strepsiades: Get out my house.
Pheidippides: Uncle Megacles won't leave me long without a horse.
Scene 2 [133-222] Strepsiades Enrols at the Thinkery
Since his son doesn't want to attend the Thinkery, Strepsiades decides he will enrol himself. He knocks on its door. A Student answers the door complaining that Strepsiades has interrupted his thinking, and demands to know who he is and what his business with the Thinkery is. Strepsiades apologises saying he is but a simple rustic from the country and asks what was the Student thinking about. The Student responds that that is a secret only revealable to members of the Institute. Strepsiades answers well in that case its all right as he has come to enrol at the Thinkery.
The Jumping Flea thought experiment
The Student then describes the thought experiment Socrates had posed to his friend and colleague, Chaerephon, that morning. Consider a flea. One had just bitten Chaerephon's eyebrow and then jumped onto Socrates' head. Socrates then asked how many of its own feet it could jump. He proposed the following solution: (1) dip the flea's feet in molten wax. (2) As the wax hardened the flea would acquire tiny Persian-style booties. (3) Then take these off the flea and use them to measure the distance it has jumped.
Strepsiades: Pure genius!
The Student then asks whether Strepsiades would like to hear another one of Socrates' ideas.
The Trumpeting of Gnats
Do Gnats buzz through their proboscis of their backsides? The Student explains that Socrates decided the following after thinking about the question in the following manner.
The proboscis of a gnat is too narrow. Air that is swallowed by it is driven down and backwards towards its arsehole. The colon being hollow amplifies the sound, so it whistles through its anus like a war-trumpet.
Strepsiades: O happy me! The power, logic and eloquence of these arguments is so convincing. It's going to be easy for me to be delivered from my creditors.
The Passage of the Moon
The Student tells him that there was another big idea that Socrates had last night which was stolen by a gecko [a lizard].
Socrates was looking up at the roof watching the passage of the Moon through the skies when the lizard poohed on him.
The Student then tells him of another story.
The Student went on to say that on the previous night they had had nothing to eat. What did Socrates do to secure the meal? He spread the table with a light covering of ashes. Then he bent an iron spit in half and with a pair of compasses lifted the haunch of a victim from the wrestling school off its hook.
Strepsiades: And we thought Thales was a genius. Admit me straight away I yearn to become Socrates' disciple to learn from him.
The Student admits Strepsiades into the Thinkery. [The Ekkyklema is wheeled out with the "Spartan captives" in various poses on it in a tableau. Strepsiades looks through the door at all the wonderful things he can see inside the Thinkery.
Strepsiades: What are those strange creatures over there?
Student: Captive Spartans from Pylos.
Strepsiades: Why have they got their noses in the ground?
Student: Investigating things beneath the ground.
Strepsiades: Must be studying onions.
Student: Exploring the Underworld.
Strepsiades: Why are their bums pointed up at the heavens?
Student: Teaching themselves Astronomy. They are not allowed to be out too long.
Strepsiades then points at some strange objects.
Strepsiades [pointing at a celestial globe]: What's that?
Student: Astronomy.
Strepsiades [pointing at a map]: And that?
Student: That's geometry for measuring land. It represents the entire world. Here's Athens.
Strepsiades: And my deme, Cicynna, where is it?
Student: Here and here's Euboea.
Strepsiades: And where's Sparta?
Student: Here.
Strepsiades: Can we move it further away?
Student: Alas no. That's not possible.
Socrates is seen flying in basket hung on the mechane above the roof of the Thinkery.
Strepsiades: And who's that up hanging in the air in a basket?
Student: That's Socrates! Call out loudly to him.
Strepsiades: Hello Socrates, my little Socratiddikins!
Socrates: Do you really want to know the truth of celestial matters?
Strepsiades: Truly, is that possible?
Socrates: To converse with the Clouds who are our goddesses?
Strepsiades: I do.
Socrates: Sit down on the sacred couch.
Strepsiades: I have done that!
Socrates: Now wear this garland.
Strepsiades starts to complain that Socrates wants to sacrifice him to the Cloud goddesses. Socrates tells him that he simply undergoing an initiation ceremony which all new students to The Thinkery have to undergo, He must do this if he wants to study at the Institute. Socrates tells Strepsiades to calm down and submit to the ceremony. Strepsiades asks why. Socrates explains he will become a smooth talker able to deal with any matter that will confront him. Strepsiades suggests Socrates is going to carve him up for dinner.
Socrates: The old man must submit to this ceremony.
314-357
Strepsiades: In the name of Zeus who are these ranting dames? Are they Amazons?
Socrates: Not dames but Heavenly Clouds, friendly powers: bringers of intellect, speech, wit and roguery; boasting lies and wisdom.
Strespsiades: Why can't I see them?
Socrates: They are coming. They're beginning to descend.
Stepsiades: Now I see them.
Socrates: And you did not know they were goddesses?
Strepsiades: No. I thought they were only fog, dew and vapour.
Socrates: In the name of shame they are the wet-nurses of all our Sophists, new-age visionaries, quacks, pseudo-philosophers, bejeweled fops, prophets from beyond the seas, astrological knaves and fortune-tellers, fools who rehearse the dancing of dithyrambs, long-haired layabouts and purveyors of snake-oil. They all exalt them in their verses.
Strepsiades: So that's why they produce all that stuff: bright whirling clouds, showers, some turning to storms, typhoons and hurricanes. O ye bringers of rain ye feed on barracudas and thrushes.
Socrates: All because they are clouds and quite rightly so.
Strepsiades: Why do they look like women?
Socrates: What do you expect them to look like? Have you never looked up at the sky? Have you never seen a cloud which looked like a centaur, a leopard, a wolf or a bull?
Strepsiades: Of course I have! Often!
Strepsiades: What if someone saw that one of them became Simon the fraudster?
Strepsiades: Only yesterday I saw one of them as Cleonymus the Coward running away from the field of battle. They soon turned him into a deer.
Strepsiades [To the Chorus of Clouds]: All hail to you sweet ladies, queens of the sky.
[358-363]
Chorus: All hail old man. Tell us what you desire O priest of this subtle feast. You are all affectation and fuss, You will wear no shoes. Your strength will come from the hard life you have had up to now, but you will bear it for our sake.
[364-407]
Strepsiades: What a wonderful holy announcement.
Socrates: They are the only true gods. All the rest are nothing but "gods" made of straw.
Strepsiades: What about Zeus? He who sends us the rain. Surely he is a god.
Strepsiades: I am forced to accept what you say. I used to believe when it was raining it was Zeus peeing through a sieve. But whence comes the thunder?
Socrates: It is they who make the thunder as they roll around. When they are filled with water they driven by Necessity to keep moving. So they smash and crash into each other with all their weight.
Strepsiades: So there is no Zeus only a Vortex of Air and it is the Vortex of Air which sits on his throne.
Strepsiades: How come?
Socrates: You are my living proof of this. Have you ever been to the Panathenaean Festival and eaten broth and puddings? And then you suffer a great bloating of your stomach. It aches badly so. Suddenly your belly is forced to grumble.
Strepsiades: By Apollo, that's true. The stew sets the stomach growling and finally all bursts forth. First papax papax, then papapappax. And then when I go for a shit, it at last thunders for real, papapappappappapappax, just like those clouds.
Socrates: And that's the sound produced by your diminutive belly. Think what sound the infinitely high sky could produce. It can go on thundering without end.
Strepsiades: Whence originate the thunderbolts of Zeus? They with their terrifying and awful flashes reduce some things to ashes. Let the rain be produced by the Clouds, but Zeus punishes perjurers with his thunderbolts.
Socrates: You are an old fool, a pupil from a school of the dark-ages. You have the wits of an antediluvian. If Zeus sends them to strike perjurers why have they never struck Cleonymus, Simon and Theorus and yet he has smote his own shrine and ancient oak trees with them, and neither of them have ever perjured?
Strepsiades: Your words seem to be true. So whence do thunderbolts originate?
Socrates: When a wind that is dry gets lifted up high, aloft and is pent up inside these clouds of Necessity it bursts forth with such a crash that it catches fire.
Strepsiades: Of course it does. When I was attending one day a great festival dedicated to Zeus, I tossed a great big stuffed sausage onto a fire to cook it, but I forgot to cut a vent in its side. It exploded and I was covered all over in filth and muck, and my face was badly scalded.
Chorus: You will be the envy of all Athens, happy old man. You will lead a prosperous life if you have a good memory and think profoundly. But you must go forward without feeling fatigue and caring little for food. You must abstain from wine and gymnastic exercise, and other similar follies. You must believe that every man of intellect should consider that the greatest of all blessings is to live and think more clearly than the vulgar herd, and shine with the use of words.
Strepsiades: If it means hard work I am ready and willing. I am as hard as an anvil.
Socrates: From henceforth you will only recognise three gods and no others: Chaos, The Clouds and The Tongue [Rhetoric].
Strepsiades: I will not speak to any of the others even if I meet them in the street. Nor will I make any sacrifice to them, nor pour libations, nor burn incense.
Chorus: Tell us what you desire. You cannot fail if you revere us and are resolved to ply the trade of a philosopher.
Strepsiades goes onto to explain to The Chorus of Clouds that he wishes to escape the clutches of his creditors in the law court.
Chorus: This you shall do for your demands are not great. We grant your prayer. You have won our favour. Prepare to be placed into the hands of our teachers of Sophistry.
Strepsiades: Here I come. I have faith in you. My wife and the horses have brought me to the very brink of ruin. I am totally in the hands of my creditors. I'll do whatever needs doing, only let me escape my debts and gain the reputation of being the very best shyster in town, a concocter of lies, a shameless braggart, one able to turn the tables at law, a knave with cunning. I expect to be greeting with all these epiphets, and if they wish they can turn me into sausage and serve me up to the philosophers.
Chorus: When you have completed all that we have to teach you then your glory will grow and reach even unto the skies.
Strepsiades: How will I profit?
Chorus: You will spend the rest of your life amongst us and be the most envied of men.
Strepsiades: Will I be that happy?
Chorus: You will gain a great renown. People will crowd to your doors. They will want to discuss with you deals worth a fortune, seeking your advice milking the skill of your brain. [To Socrates] Let the old man commence with his introductory lesson to get his mind moving.
[478]
Strepsiades: O Zeus, give me a honey cake so that I may enter the cave of Trophonius.
Socrates: Why are you still dawdling, go through the door.
Chorus: Go, your courage is great, your future is bright. Go! walk like a novice in wisdom's way.
Exit Socrates and Strepsiades into the Thinkery via its front door.
Parabasis. [510-626]
The Chorus turn to face the spectators of the play. The Chorus Leader [Aristophanes himself] speaks.
Chorus Leader: Spectators, let me tell you the truth. I, nurtured by my father Dionysos, may be deemed to be a poet and today win the prize. I should have won before. I thought you were smart. This play was my best. I blame you, the clever ones. This was your play. Even so I will not abandon you, not since I got good praise for my play "The Good Boy and the Pederast" [The Banqueters]. My muse had not gained her maturity. She had to give away her firstborn for another to adopt. Since then you have had faith in me. Since then I have come again hoping to find enlightened spectators. Like Electra, I came today to seek her Orestes. Will she recognise him by his curly hair? Never did she need to expose a long dangly leathery thing with a redhead hanging below her frock so as to cause laughter amongst children. She mocks not the baldies. She dances not the licentious cordax. No old man is seen battering his questioner with a stick. She does not rush in upon the scene with a burning torch, screaming. No, instead, she relies on her lines. I do not seek to bore you with a repeat of the same theme, nor to deceive you with the same topic. I try always to invent new and clever themes. Remember when I attacked Cleon in his face when he was all-powerful. But he has since fallen. Now I have no desire to kick him further. My rivals, on the contrary, have shown no such reluctance. Hyperbolus copied my theme mocking both his mother and him. Eupolis presented his Maricas which was nothing more than a plagiarism of my Knights which added to it was a drunk old woman who might as well have danced the cordax.
Chorus invites the gods to their dance [563-574]
Chorus [singing and dancing]: O Zeus, supreme god, we invite you to dance. And you too Poseidon god of the mighty seas. And you Aether, the god most blest in heaven, who makes it possible for everything to exist. And you also, Apollo, charioteer of the sun, a god of might amongst both immortals and mankind.
Shame on you, Athens, for ignoring the warnings of the Clouds
[575-594]
Chorus Leader: O wise spectators, pay attention. We complain of ill-treatment by you. We have always helped your city, with all our strength and yet you pay us no devotion. That is why we now complain. For if any project of yours seems unwise, then we thunder, and the rain pours down in streams. And when we knit our brows together, thunders crash and lightnings flash: never was there such awful weather. The Moon eclipsed the Sun and he in anger swore that he would curl up his wick inside himself and give light to you no more, should you elect that worker of mischief, Cleon, whom the gods loathe, that tanner, slave and Paphalagonian [Cleon] to lead your army into war. Yet you chose him. It is said this city breeds folly, the best and finest of its kind. But the gods always ensure matters turn out for the best. Let that cormorant be convicted of taking bribes and of theft. Chain him to a pillory and leave him to suffer, and those matters which have gone wrong will turn out to your advantage and bring blessings to the city.
More appeals to the gods to come [595-606]
Chorus: Apollo, come to us and you too his sister, Artemis, to whom Lydian maidens devoutly pray at her golden temple at Ephesus. And Athena, our Lady, the queen of us all, come to our call. And thou whose dancing torches of pine flicker, Dionysus, star of thy Maenad throng, come, reveller most divine!
The Moon and the Calendar [607-626]
Chorus Leader: When we were coming here we were greeted by the Moon and were charged by her to wish the Athenians and their allies well. But she was angry with you as you Athenians had treated her with shame. She doesn't just charm you with encouraging words, but actually saves you money, at least a drachma a month for lights, as each of you who goes out at night on business and tells the slave not to bother with lighted torches tonight as the Moon is shining gloriously. And this not to speak of the other benefits she brings. She complains that your calendar does not reckon her phases correctly: it's all jumbled up and confused in all sorts of ways. The other gods complain bitterly to her as their festivals are not being held at the right time: when you ought to be sacrificing to them you are torturing a victim and trying a judicial case and we other gods are fasting for the deaths of the famous sons of the gods and you are enjoying your libations. Last year when Hyperbolus should have returned in glory to Amphyction wearing his laurel wreathe it was blown away by us.
[The geometer Meton had proposed a reform which would significantly have corrected the Attican Luni-Solar Calendar with Moon's actual lunations but it was not adopted by the Athenians.]
Strepsiades and the Thinkery [627-792]
[627-699]
Socrates comes out on stage.
Socrates: By all of nature never have I seen a man so gross, so inept, so stupid, so forgetful. Everything which I teach him he forgets even before he has learnt them. However, I will not give up. I will bring him out here into the open air. Strepsiades come, bring your mat out here.
Strepsiades [from inside the Thinkery]: The bed-bugs in my mat are offering too much resistance.
Enter Strepsiades
Socrates wants to discuss with Strepsiades' knowledge of poetic metre or measure. Strepsiades mockingly suggests that some trader tried to cheat him concerning measures of corn.
Socrates: Very well then, what would you begin by learning now, of the subjects you were never taught anything about? Tell me, would it be measures, or rhythms, or words?
Strepsiades: I'll take the measures. Only the other day a corn dealer sold me short two quarts.
Socrates: That's not what I'm asking you about; I'm asking what you consider to be the most beautiful measure, the three-measure or the four-measure?
Strepsiades: I say nothing beats the gallon.
Socrates: You're making absolutely no sense whatsoever!
Strepsiades: Bet me then, that a gallon isn't a four-measure.
Socrates: To hell with you! You're a stupid clod. No doubt you'd soon learn about rhythms!
Strepsiades: But how will these rhythms help me get my daily bread?
Socrates: To begin with, by making you smart in society, and enabling you to recognize which rhythms are shaped for marches, say, and which by the finger...
Strepsiades: By the finger? That one I know, by Zeus.
Socrates: Well then, tell me!
Strepsiades: What else could it be but this finger here? [sticking his middle finger up to Socrates] In the old days, when I was a boy, it was always this one.
Socrates: O go to the dogs, you ridiculous old blockhead!
Socrates: They help you to behave correctly in society.
Stresiades: O, this finger here. Before I became grown up I played with that.
Socrates: You complete dolt.
Strepsiades: You goose, I have no wish to learn that. Teach me the Right and Just Argument and the Wrong and Unjust Argument.
Socrates: But you need to learn other matters first, like what makes males amongst 4-legged creatures.
Strepsiades: I would be mad not to know that: Ram, Bull, Goat, Dog, Chicken.
Socrates: There you are. You have made a mistake. You've called the male fowl the same as the female fowl. You should have called the male chicken, Cock, and her Coquette.
Strepsiades: You're so right, by Aether so brilliant! I will fill your trough to the brim with extra barley .
Socrates: You've made another mistake. Trough is masculine: you've specified it to be feminine. The same can be said of Cleonymus [hinting at his effeminacy].
Strepsiades: But Cleonymus has no trough. He kneads his bread in another type of a divine round bowl. Should I call it troughness? And him Cleonyma?
Strepsiades: Well, I know the difference between feminine and masculine names.
Socrates: Well, tell me some.
Strepsiades: Demetria, Cleitagora, Philinna .
Socrates: Now tell me some men's names.
Strepsiades: O yes, ten thousand of them - Philon, Melesias, Amynias.
Socrates: Hold on! I said men's names: these are all women's names.
Strepsiades: No they're not. They're all men's names.
Socrates: They are not men's names. How would you address Amynias if you met him?
Strepsiades: How? Like this: "Here, Amynia!"
Socrates: Exactly, Amynia, a woman's name, you now see!
Strepsiades: And rightly so: Amynias, a sneak who shirks all military service! [How effeminate] But I know all this; let's pass onto another topic.
Socrates: Well then, climb into your own bed.
Strepsiades: And then?
Socrates: Contemplate on your own affairs.
Strepsiades: Not there please, I do beg you, not there. Please let me excogitate on the bare ground.
Socrates: There is no other way but that.
Strepsiades: O, poor devil that I am, why must I suffer from the bed bugs today?
Exit Socrates back into the Thinkery.
[700-]
Chorus: Now then survey in every way,
With airy judgment sharp and quick:
Wrapping your thoughts around you thick:
And if it so be upon one you stick,
Do not stop to toil and bother,
Lightly, lightly, lightly leap,
Onto another, to another;
And banish balmy sleep.
Strepsiades:Yeeow!
Chorus: What ails you?
Strepsiades: I am being ravaged by a vast Corinthian [κόρις bed-bug] host. They are biting me everywhere. They are driving holes right through me. They'll make a ghost of me yet.
Chorus: Bear it not so forcefully
Strepsiades: Well that's fine advice to offer me. Up to my eyeballs in debt, lacking my shoes. Am I still a man tortured by these beasties?
Socrates re-enters.
Socrates: Are you still thinking?
Strepsiades: Yes!
Socrates: Well, what have you thought about?
Strepsiades: Well, after the bugs have finished with me I doubt if there will be anything left.
Socrates: O, go to blazes!
Strepsiades: I am not sure whether I am already there, in Hell!
Exit Socrates into the Thinkery
Chorus: Now, Now! Stop being a coward. Think of a way to cheat your creditors.
Strepsiades: Where on earth am I going to find that idea?
The Method of Diairesis [731 -743]
Re-enter Socrates from inside the Thinkery
Socrates questions Strepesiades whether he managed to sleep on his problem and what has he managed to think about it. Has he come up with any ideas? He tells Strepsiades that he must have a very clear idea in his mind about what the problem is he wants to resolve. Strepsiades tells Socrates all he wants to do is defeat his creditors in the court and not pay back his loans. Socrates advises Strepsiades after his having established what his problem is then he should use the method of Diairesis [διαίρεσις], that is simply using pure thought just to divide the problem up to help him define each of the issues or categories his problem raises, and that this method may help him to define more exactly what his problem is and find his own solution to his problem. He tells Strepsiades to cover his head, relax his mind, and concentrate on the minutiae of his problem using careful analysis and examination.
Strepsiades is thinking.
Strepsiades tells Socrates that he has now thought of a way how to avoid paying his debts. He asks Socrates to listen to it:
Suppose he were to hire a witch from Thessaly, and if that witch was to conjure the Moon to come down from passage in the sky and then was able to lock the Moon up inside a helmet box, then no one would know what day of the month it was. If the Moon was never to rise again then he would never have to pay a single penny interest on his loans ever again as money is lent by the month as it is measured by the passage of the Moon through its phases.
Socrates comments that that was clever idea, but he will pose Strepsiades a further problem.
[758-805]
Socrates: Suppose a case with damages worth 5 talents was brought against you, how would you evade that? Don't think forever about this, let your thoughts range freely through the air like a May bug tied by a thread to its feet.
Strepsiades: I have found an splendid answer. You have seen in the pharmacies transparent stones which can be used to start a fire, burning glasses. I would obtain one of these and as the clerk was writing down my case standing a little back I would catch the Sun with the glass and burn out every line he had written.
Socrates: A smart ruse.
Strepsiades: I am glad to have a debt like that against me totally eliminated.
Socrates: Now try this one. How would you stop an adversary's case against you that you were sure to lose?
Strepsiades: Nothing easier. Whilst the case before mine was progressing I would go hang myself.
Socrates: That's absurd!
Strepsiades: No it isn't! They couldn't prosecute me if I were dead.
Socrates: Be off with you. I'll try no more to teach you.
Strepsiades: Oh please do Socrates!
Socrates: No way! Be off with you! Go feed the crows, you silly old dolt!
Strepsiades: Help me, O Clouds. Advise me what to do.
Chorus of Clouds: You have a son. Send him to the school in your place.
Strepsiades: I shall go fetch him. If he refuses to come I'll throw him out of the home. I'll be back soon.
Exit Strepsiades into his own house.
[806] The Chorus of Clouds sing
The Chorus of Clouds advise Socrates that Strepsiades is clearly willing to do anything to please Socrates. They advise Socrates that Strepsiades is a dupe and that he can he take him and his son for as much as he wants now that he has fooled Strepsiades with so much wisdom. But Socrates has to hurry if he wants to do this as matters like this might quickly change.
[809-888] Strepsiades enrols Pheidippides at the Thinkery
Strepsiades comes out of his house pushing Pheidippides in the direction of the Thinkery.
Strepsiades: Get out! By the Mist in the Clouds you no longer live here. Go live with Uncle Megacles and gobble him out of house and home.
Pheidippides: What wind has got up you? By Zeus, you''re wandering all over the place! You're out of your mind!
Strepsiades: Did you just mention Zeus? you blockhead! Does everyone of your age still believe in him?
Pheidippides: What's the joke all about?
Strepsiades: It's preposterous when babes like you still hold onto antiquated notions. Come, I'll teach you a thing or two. I'll make a man of you.
Pheidippides: What are you on about?
Strepsiades: Didn't you just swear "by Zeus"?
Pheidippides: I did!
Strepsiades: Well, he doesn't exist. See what a good thing learning is.
There is no Zeus. Vortex rules in his place and has kicked Zeus out!
Pheidippides: Oh dear! what's this stuff all about?
Strepsiades: Be sure that this is the case!
Pheidippides: Who taught you all this?
Strepsiades: The Melian [Diagoras, the Sceptic of Melos], Socrates and Chaerephon who knows all about flea racing.
Pheidippides: Have you been so cast into a fit of madness that you now trust those whose minds have been so struck?
Strepsiades: They are very clever men. Don't insult them! They are frugal: they don't shave, nor buy expensive balms. They never go to the bath house to cleanse themselves and yet you have taken me for a corpse and have cleaned me out. Make haste, and go do all the learning for me.
Pheidippides: What learning must I do that is worth learning?
Strepsiades: Just go and learn whatever is clever in the world: Then you shall come to know just how dense you are.
Wait a moment: I'll be back shortly.
Exit Strepsiades
Pheidippides: Oh dear me! what am I going to do with my mad father? Shall I have him locked up and detained for his lunacy? Or shall I just tell the undertakers of his symptoms simply to take him away?
Stresiades comes back in clutching a chicken by its neck in one hand and a cockerel similarly in his other hand.
Strepsiades [holding the chicken out front]: Now then, you see this, don't you? What do you call it?
Pheidippides: A fowl!
Strepsiades [holding the cockerel out forwards]: And this?
Pheidippides: That's a fowl too!
Strepsiades: This one is called the "fowl". The other one one must call "fowless".
Pheidippides: Then there are some mighty secrets you must have picked up from having been amongst these earth-born [peasant/autochthonous] fellows!
Strepsiades: And a lot else besides, but everything I learn I soon forget as I am so old and stupid.
Pheidippides: And this is why you have lost your cloak and shoes, you absolute dotard!
Strepsiades: Yes, just like Pericles, I've lost them and all for the best! Now come and go with me : humour me in this matter, and then you can go and do what you like.
Pheidippides: And this is why you have lost your cloak and shoes, you absolute dotard!
Strepsiades: Yes, just like Pericles, I've lost them and all for the best! Now come and go with me and humour me in this matter, and then you can do what you like.
Oh how I spent the first obol that I earned as a juror buying you a present at the Diasia festival for Zeus, a toy chariot.
Pheidippides: The time will come when you'll repent of this.
Strepsiades: It's good to see that you, boy, now obey me!
Socrates is hovering in his basket about these two in dialogue with each other.
Strepsiades [to Socrates]: Take this boy into your school and teach him how to defeat by reasoning to down all Justice.
The Great Debate [Lines 889-1114]
Socrates has been drawn away in his basket and left the stage
[889-948]
Enter Right Logic [Just Argument] followed by Wrong Logic [Sophism or Unjust Argument]
Right Logic claims he will be able to defeat Wrong Logic more easily before a large audience. Wrong Logic claims the same for himself. Right Logic claims he is superior to Wrong Logic. Wrong Logic claims he has some new tricks. Right Logic says he is going to destroy Wrong [or Weak] Logic.
Right Logic: I’ll smash you and your lies!
Wrong Logic: By what method?
Right Logic: By speaking the Truth.
Wrong Logic: Your words I will meet, and entirely defeat: there never was any Justice or Truth, I repeat.
Right Logic: No Justice you say?
Wrong Logic: Well, where does it live?
Right Logic: Amongst the gods in the air.
Wrong Logic: If Justice be there, how comes it that Zeus could his father reduce, yet live amongst the gods unpunished and loose?
Right Logic: Ugh ! Ugh ! These evils come thick, I feel awfully sick, fetch me a basin, quick!
Wrong Logic: You are a useless old drone with one foot in the grave!
Right Logic: You are a shameless, unprincipled, dissolute knave!
They repeat these last insults at each other.
Right Logic tells Wrong Logic that he is mighty finely dressed. Wrong Logic tells Right Logic that he is looking shabby nowadays and is quite out-of-date.
[949-960]
The Chorus intercedes to stop them squabbling. They ask who will speak first. And to let the lad [Pheidipides] decide which form of schooling he wants to attend.
[961-1023]
Right Logic begins
He talks about his own schooling: How virtue was the most important norm. How Honour and Truth were in fashion with the youth. Boys should be seen and not heard. They would march along the street in the cold naked without cloaks to their music lessons at the home of the Old Harpist where they would be taught songs which they would sing. No one was allowed to extemporize, which seems to be the fashion today, and which, if they did improvise in any way, they would be thrashed for meddling with the Muses. They would drill in rows seeing nothing indecent or vile if they aroused the attentions of strangers. And tehy would smooth the sand whenever they rose from their seats so as not not to leave a trace of themselves when they parted for a vigilant lover to view. Nor would they oil their persons with artificial oil. Nor would they soften their voices for a lover or sigh. Nor would they strut about stirring the desires of others. Nor at dinner make suggestions with the foods, but behave with absolute decorum, nor giggle at meals, nor entwine their leg with another.
Wrong Logic: This stinks of being some fusty old song.
Right Logic: This is the same precepts that the heroes of old were taught as were the Men who fought at Marathon. So must this lad be clad in a man's real cloak. So, young man, choose me as your tutor. Learn my methods and you will learn respect for your parents and elders and abstain from dissolute baths and impure fashions, to shrink from disgrace, nor resort to the door of a dancing girl, nor glance at the harlots lest they toss an apple for you to catch with your tongue hanging out. Choose me the superior argument. You will spend your time exercising and improving your body, and excel at games becoming athletic and fit. You will learn not to prate like an idler but with marvellous prickly dispute. Nor will you be dragged into court day after day to be made sport of in some petty and disagreeable suit. But to the Academy you will go and run around with rivals and friends in the olive groves with garlands made of reeds. Everything will be proper and right, your body and mind will be fit with a tongue ready and practised to speak. Special laws will teach you that your life currently is licentious and wrong. All this will be yours forever if you come learn with me. But if you follow the fashion like a dandy and listen to him [Wrong Logic] you will be filled to the brim with muck from the backside of that bugger, Antimachus.
[1024-1035]
Chorus: O glorious Sage, with loveliest Wisdom teeming! Sweet on thy words does ancient virtue rest! As for your game, however, you will need smarter words and ideas for this. Your rival has won over the crowd. You'll need a better plan or end up a laughing stock.
[1036-1104]
Wrong Logic: So you say. I long to overthrow your arguments with stronger ones. Am I really the Lesser Logic? True you schoolmen call me so because I was the first to show Mankind that the old established rules and laws could be contradicted. This is worth a fortune to me, to take up the feebler cause and yet win the dispute.
You complain about the hot baths and those that attend them that they shun the Games, leaving the wrestling grounds empty. And now we must tell our youth that he has to abstain from them too. Listen, which of the sons of Zeus was the most manly and bold? Why Heracles, of course, yet his baths were refeshingly cold. No one was braver than him.
You are critical of time spent in the Agora. Do you really think that Homer would have made Nestor and his followers and wise councillors ply a more worthy trade? He was a Man of the Agora.
Let me now move to the tongue which you say a young man should not exercise. Have you ever seen anyone succeed because they were modest? Prove me wrong!
Next you say he must be chaste. This is preposterous. Have you known anyone gain the least good by being so?
Right Logic: Many. Peleus won a knife by being chaste.
Wrong Logic: A knife indeed, a delightful reward for a poor old loser. Take Hyperbolus, the lampmaker, for example. He's a complete crook and has made a fortune by employing all kinds of tricks which I have taught. But I don't think he ever won a knife.
Right Logic: Then Peleus because of his chastity was given the bed of Thetis.
Wrong Logic: And she then ran away from him for he was not ardent enough. Young man [addressing Pheidippides] think what being temperate means and what it deprives you of: young fellows, women, play, wine, fine dishes, laughter. Is life worth living without any of these? And if you are caught in flagrante delicto in the act of seduction or adultery, you are done for if you can't speak. Follow my teaching and you will be able to satisfy all your passions: to dance, to laugh and blush at nothing. For if you are caught being adulterous, tell the husband that Zeus allowed himself to be conquered by love and women. Can a mortal ever be as strong as a god?
Right Logic: And what if he follows your advice and gets the radish rammed up his behind and now must be wedged and sanded, and probed [the punishment for adultery]? Can he prevent this from happening? How is he going to prove his arsehole just got wider?
Wrong Logic: What wrong with being a broad-arse?
Right Logic: What greater damage can a young man suffer?
Wrong Logic: What will you do if I win this dispute? Whence come all the probed adulterers?
Right Logic: Well there are Counsellors, Tragic Poets and Orators, all probed adulterers.
Wrong Logic: And so right you are! Now look at the audience. Are they probed or unprobed?
Right Logic: Well the majority seem to have been probed. Well it seems I have lost the dispute. Take my cloak.
Exit Right Logic into the Thinkery.
[1105-1114]
Enter Socrates from the Thinkery
Wrong Logic turns to Strepsiades and asks whether he consents to give him his son to teach his methods. Strepsiades consents telling him to give him teeth.
Strepsiades: Teach him, and flog him, and be sure you well sharpen his mother wit, grind the one edge fit for my little law-suits, and the other. why, make that serve for more important matters.
Socrates: Why, he'll make a splendid Sophist.
Exit Strepsiades into his own house. Exit Socrates, Wrong Logic and Pheidippides into the Thinkery.
2nd Parabasis [1115-1130]
The Chorus of Clouds turn to face the audience with the Chorus Leader out in front of them. The Chorus Leader speaks. He addresses the judges of the plays.
He tells the judges they will receive a boon if they award first prize to this play they are acting in. Justice warrants this and they in turn, the Clouds, promise if the judges do this that they the Clouds will send the rain to fall upon those ploughed lands belonging to the judges first before anyone else's. And that they will ensure that neither drought nor storms will damage either the vines or the other crops when they need harvesting. But woe betide to any judge who fails to support the play with the award. He must remember that he is Mortal and the Clouds are Immortal. Better that he would have never been born.
"For from his estates he shall gather neither corn, nor oil, nor wine, for whenever blossoms sparkle on the olive or the vine they shall all at once be blighted: we will ply our slings so true. And if ever we behold him building up his mansions new, with our tight and nipping hailstones we will all his tiles destroy. But if he, his friends or kinsfolk, would a marriage-feast enjoy, All night long we’ll pour in torrents: so perchance he’ll rather pray to endure the drought of Egypt, than decide amiss today!
Resolution and the Power of Education [1131-1511]
[1131-1166]
Strepsiades says that he hates the countdown of days at the end of the month, towards the beginning of the new month.
Strepsiades: Never will they abuse me, these swindlers. Let them bring their actions against me. I am not afraid, not if my son has been taught properly to speak.
Strepsiades knocks on the door of the Thinkery. Socrates answers.
Strepsiades: Has my son completed his lessons to the level of that Second Logic which he saw just now?
Socrates: Yes! You may now escape any law suit they challenge you with.
Strepsiades: What if I made the loan contract before witnesses?
Socrates: The more the merrier.
Stresiades sings a merry song:
My son is my Champion and Guard shall be,
He will his old father set free,
Run you, and call him forth unto me.
Pheidippides is brought out to his father by Socrates.
Socrates: Now take your son and depart.
Socrates goes back into the Thinkery.
[1167-1213]
Strepsiades: Come son. It's a joy to see you.
Pheidippides asks what is actually troubling his father. Strepsiades explains that his day of reckoning in court approaches, the Old & New Day when he has to pay his debts, when deposits have to be put down and the case goes to court. Pheidippides tells his father not to worry for if they do that they will lose their case. Strepsiades asks how. Pheidippides tells him that Solon the Lawgiver intended that there were to be two days for the hearing, one following the other. How could a woman be both Old and Young on the same day? There's no way for a day to be both Old & New on a single day. Solon was a man of the people. He fixed the summons to the court to be held on two separate days: deposits were only to be made on the second day, on the day of the New Moon, so that the debtor could come to the court on the day before allowing him an opportunity to try to settle the matter out of court with his creditors on that day. If they could not reach an agreement it was only the next day at dawn on the first day of the New Month when the debtor should begin to worry.
Strepsiades and Pheidippides go inside into their house.
Enter Pasias the Creditor with a Witness
Amynias: Oh it's just the same amount. It cannot increase.
Strepsiades: Poor fool, the sea that receives waters from the rivers, never gets bigger, and yet you would have vour monev grow? Be off with you, get you gone quick! [calling into his house] Slave, fetch me my ox-goad!
Amynias: I have witnesses to this behaviour of yours.
Strepsiades: What are you waiting for? Won't you leave, you old nag!
Amynias: What an insult!
Strepsiades: Unless you start trotting off, I shall catch up with you and stick this goad up your backside, you sorry packhorse! [Amynias runs off.] Ah so off you start, do you? I tell you I was about to drive you away pretty fast, with this, your wheels and your chariot!
Strepsiades enters his house.
Chorus [1304-1320]
The Chorus of Clouds sings of Strepsiades' hubris at winning his arguments against his creditors but also how he will meet his retribution [Nemesis/punishment] because of it. Strepsiades is going to get his come-uppance.
What a lust for shady business this is. Consider this old man who is fully obsessed with the idea of not repaying the money he owes. But today he cannot avoid becoming mixed up in one of those scams which will pay this Sophist back for all the wickedness he has caused.
He will soon discover that this son of his is devilishly smart, for he has learned how to counter all Justice, be what or where that may lead. He will trump up any tale right or wrong so as to prevail. This we know: Strepsiades will dearly come to wish that his son was dumb.
[1321-1344]
[Strepsiades rushes out of the house chased by Pheidippides who is brandishing a stick]
Strepisiades cries out for help from his neighbours, relatives and/or citizens from his deme. He is being beaten by his son. How could a son inflict such harm on his father?
Pheidippides admits that he is doing this.
Strepsiades calls his son a fiend and accuses him of attempted parricide as well as being a house-breaker.
Pheidippides provokes his father to continue further with more insults to give him yet more reason to hit him. He says he strikes him justly so.
Strepsiades: Prove it!
Pheidippides: Choose your form of Logic: Better or Worse?
Strepsiades: Well it is true I have had you taught to reason down all Justice. But if you think you can prove what you are doing is just and right, that fathers should be beaten by their sons then do so.
Pheidippides: All right, now listen.
[1345-1390] The Debate between Father and Son
The Chorus of Clouds intervenes. They want to know the cause of this dispute between father and son and how it began.
[1353]
Strepsiades tells them that he was about to give his son a large feast. But he had first asked his son to fetch a lyre and to sing the song by Simonides, "How the Ram got Shorn". Pheidippides had told his father that singing at dinner was no longer fashionable any more; that such a practice was considered coarse nowadays; it was rather like an old woman grinding her barley. And it was because he had told his son to wait before eating his meal and first had to sing he said that his father therefore deserved a thrashing. As for suggesting that he should sing songs by Simonides, that sorry old man, a bad poet, and this had only made him angry: it was like having to entertain before a bunch of crickets. Pheidippides told his father that he deserved a thrashing and beating because of this.
Strepsiades then said why hadn't his son put on a myrtle wreathe and chanted some lines from Aeschylus instead. Pheidippides had replied that he was not an admirer of Aeschylus calling him a coarse and turgid bard, a mouther of a mountain of words. And that he deserved a thrashing because of this suggestion.
Strepsiades then suggested that he could try singing one of those modern songs which the youth of today sing. Pheidippides then began to chant a tale by Euripides about how a brother and his sister had lived together in incest. But this song really annoyed Strepsiades. Strepsiades said that now his son could no longer hold down his anger and had flown into a rage, leaping upon him and had started to choke him.
Pheidipiddes described Euripides as a genius. Strepsiades said he wasn't. Pheidippides said his father definitely deserved a thrashing because of what he had said about Euripides.
[1380]
Strepsiades then described how much trouble he had taken to bring his son up when he was a baby: how he had nursed him, and learned his baby talk. When he cried out "Mamma" how he had fetched him some bread and when he said "Kaka" how he immediately took him outside to do his business. And yet he is now throttling him. And that he had squeezed so hard that now he had soiled himself.
[1391]
The Chorus chant of the generation gap between father and son. The young people's hearts are beating hard in eager attention to what the old man has to say. If he what he says is the wrong thing they say that his hide is not worth a chickpea.
Chorus Leader turns to Pheidippides: Twister of words convince us what you say is right!
Pheidippides: How rewarding it is having been taught to be clever and be able to snub normal practice. Before there was nothing but horses in my head and it was a wonder I could put a dozen words together in a meaningful way. But now he has made me quit all that reckless mode of living, and now I’m completely comfortable with subtle thought and logical argument. Of course I can prove that it is right to beat one's father.
Strepsiades: By Zeus, buy your horses back again. I would rather be cheering for a four horse chariot than to be struck again.
Pheidippides: When I was a child did you beat me?
Strepsiades: I did it for your own good.
Pheidippides: Tell me if I beat you now is that not for your own good? I was born a freeman. If children are meant to cry why not their fathers too? You'll say this custom only applies to children. When the old reach a certain age they experience a second childhood. Theirs is stronger reason to cry for they ought to know better.
Strepsiades: Where does the law say that a father should suffer like this?
Pheidippides: The first man to make laws put them to the ancients to agree to them. I am a freeman. I put now it to the people: why can't children in the future beat their fathers in return? We freely drop our claim for compensation for what went before. Consider cockerels and the beasts of the field they withstand their fathers except they don't make laws.
Strepsiades sets fire to the Thinkery [1476-1511]
Strepsiades: I must have been mad to have given up the gods for Socrates. Hermes (Strophalos), old friend, [hugs the herm standing outside his house] don't be annoyed with me or bring me a disaster. Should I sue them? Hermes. you can be my lawyer, [puts his ear to the herm listening for an answer].
That's good advice. No need to cook up lawsuits. I can simply burn the house down of these prating babblers. Xanthias, fetch me a ladder so that I can climb up on their roof with a hatchet and break their tiles, and bring the house down around their ears. Someone fetch me a lighted torched. Today they will pay for what they have done to me.
[In a similar story a Pythagorean School at Croton in Graeca Magna was burned down and only two managed to escape.]
The ladder, a hatchet, and a lit torch are brought. Strespiades and Pheidippides climb up onto the roof of the Thinkery. Pheidippides begins to smash the tiles.
Student 1: Help! Help! What are you doing?
Strepsiades [Setting fire to the Thinkery: Right my torch do your worst. [To the Student] I am using a rather subtle argument against your house.
Student 2: Who's setting fire to our school?
Stepsiades: Don't you remember me? You stole my coat.
Student 2: You'll kill us all.
Strepsiades: That's my intention!
Socrates: You up there, what are you doing?
Strepsiades: Contemplating the Sun.
Socrates: I'm done for!
Student 2: Me too!
Strepsiades: And what do you think you were doing laughing at the gods? Chase them! hit them! stone them! for all their injustice towards the gods.
Chorus Leader: Lead the dancers on their way, we've done our dancing for today!
Exeunt
References
The Clouds - Wikipedia
Chaerephon - Wikipedia
Prodicus - Wikipedia
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Diagoras_of_Melos
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THE CLOUDS - ARISTOPHANES | PLAY SUMMARY & ANALYSIS | Ancient Greece
The Clouds - World History Encyclopedia
A Guide to Ancient Greek Drama: Synopsis of Aristophanes' Clouds
Cliffs' Notes on Aristophanes' Lysistrata, The Birds, The Clouds, The Frogs
THE CLOUDS - ARISTOPHANES | PLAY SUMMARY & ANALYSIS | Ancient Greece
Aristophanes' Clouds Study Guide – University College London
The Clouds: Study Guide - SparkNotes
The Clouds Summary | SuperSummary
The Clouds Summary | Shmoop
The Clouds Plot Summary | Course Hero
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W. K. C. Guthrie A History Of Greek Philosophy vol. 4 - Internet Archive
Phrontisterion = Socrates' Thinkery
Phron- is to do with thinking, thought ...
Definition of PHRONTISTERION by Oxford Dictionary on Lexico.com also meaning of PHRONTISTERION
'The Thinkery' is phrontisterion, a word coined by Aristophanes on the model of such words as dikasterion ( "law court " from dikē , "justice").
Vista do Burning Socrates’ School down with Aristophanes: Learning and teaching under Clouds
Aristophanes' satirical play The Clouds
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Analysis of Play: Clouds
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Greek Versions
Nubes : Aristophanes - Internet Archive editit J. van Leeuwen
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Clouds : Aristophanes - Internet Archive
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Clouds : Aristophanes - Internet Archive
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Translations
The Clouds by Aristophanes tr. by W. J. Hickie - Project Gutenberg
“The Clouds.” Google Books, https://books.google.com/books/about/The_Clouds.html?id=Fj74LCv8unUC.
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https://archive.org/details/aristophanes0003aris/page/85/mode/1up
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https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=REZUCRm3lkk Center for Hellenic Studies
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Audio/Visual
Comedies of Aristophanes - Clouds, Lysistrata, The Birds, The Frogs
Aristophanes - The Clouds - Internet Archive
Clouds, Aristophanes - YouTube - Center for Hellenic Studies
Episode 35: The Great Thundercrap (Aristophanes' The Clouds) from Literature and History on RadioPublic
Episode_035_the_great_thundercrap Doug Metzger
Sophism
Lavery, J. (2005). The sophists. In P. F. O'Grady (Ed.), Meet the philosophers of ancient Greece. Ashgate Publishing. Credo Reference: https://search.credoreference.com/content/entry/ashgtpag/the_sophists/0?institutionId=599
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Stephen Potter
Stephen Potter - Wikipedia
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There are some similarities to be found in the 1959 film School for Scoundrels which portrayed Stephen Potter's "One Upmanship" and "Lifemanship" books.
Varieties of Unreligious Experience: Play
School For Scoundrels (1959) - Internet Archive
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