No More Learning

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?

STREPSIADES. I traverse the air and contemplate the sun. [574]

SOCRATES. Ah! ah! woe is upon me! I am suffocating!

CHAEREPHON. Ah! you insulted the gods! Ah! you studied the face of the
moon! Chase them, strike and beat them down! Forward! they have richly
deserved their fate--above all, by reason of their blasphemies.

CHORUS. So let the Chorus file off the stage. Its part is played.

* * * * *

FINIS OF "THE CLOUDS"

* * * * *

Footnotes:

[470] He is in one bed and his son is in another; slaves are sleeping
near them. It is night-time.

[471] The punishment most frequently inflicted upon slaves in the towns
was to send them into the country to work in the fields, but at the
period when the 'Clouds' was presented, 424 B. C. , the invasions of the
Peloponnesians forbade the pursuit of agriculture. Moreover, there
existed the fear, that if the slaves were punished too harshly, they
might go over to the enemy.

[472] Among the Greeks, each month was divided into three decades. The
last of the month was called [Greek: en_e kai nea], the day of the old
and the new or the day of the new moon, and on that day interest, which
it was customary to pay monthly, became due.

[473] Literally, the horse marked with the [Greek: koppa] ([Symbol:
Letter 'koppa']), a letter of the older Greek alphabet, afterwards
disused, which distinguished the thoroughbreds.

[474] Phidippides dreams that he is driving in a chariot race, and that
an opponent is trying to cut into his track.

[475] There was a prize specially reserved for war-chariots in the games
of the Athenian hippodrome; being heavier than the chariots generally
used, they doubtless had to cover a lesser number of laps, which explains
Phidippides' question.

[476] The wife of Alcmaeon, a descendant of Nestor, who, driven from
Messenia by the Heraclidae, came to settle in Athens in the twelfth
century, and was the ancestor of the great family of the Alcmaeonidae,
Pericles and Alcibiades belonged to it.

[477] The Greek word for horse is [Greek: hippos].

[478] Derived from [Greek: pheidesthai], to save.

[479] The name Phidippides contains both words, [Greek: hippos], horse,
and [Greek: pheidesthai], to save, and was therefore a compromise arrived
at between the two parents.

[480] The heads of the family of the Alcmaeonidae bore the name of
Megacles from generation to generation.

[481] A mountain in Attica.

[482] Aristophanes represents everything belonging to Socrates as being
mean, even down to his dwelling.

[483] Crates ascribes the same doctrine in one of his plays to the
Pythagorean Hippo, of Samos.

[484] This is pure calumny. Socrates accepted no payment.

[485] Here the poet confounds Socrates' disciples with the Stoics.
Contrary to the text, Socrates held that a man should care for his bodily
health.

[486] One of Socrates' pupils.

[487] Female footwear. They were a sort of light slipper and white in
colour.

[488] He calls off their attention by pretending to show them a
geometrical problem and seizes the opportunity to steal something for
supper. The young men who gathered together in the palaestra, or
gymnastic school, were wont there to offer sacrifices to the gods before
beginning the exercises. The offerings consisted of smaller victims, such
as lambs, fowl, geese, etc. , and the flesh afterwards was used for their
meal (_vide_ Plato in the 'Lysias'). It is known that Socrates taught
wherever he might happen to be, in the palaestra as well as elsewhere.

[489] The first of the seven sages, born at Miletus.

[490] Because of their wretched appearance. The Laconians, blockaded in
Sphacteria, had suffered sorely from famine.

[491] In fact, this was one of the chief accusations brought against
Socrates by Miletus and Anytus; he was reproached for probing into the
mysteries of nature.

[492] When the Athenians captured a town, they divided its lands by lot
among the poorer Athenian citizens.

[493] An allusion to the Athenian love of law-suits and litigation.

[494] When originally conquered by Pericles, the island of Euboea, off
the coasts of Boeotia and Attica, had been treated with extreme
harshness.

[495] Is about to add, "you believe in them at all," but checks himself.

[496] This was the doctrine of Anaximenes.

[497] The scholiast explains that water-cress robs all plants that grow
in its vicinity of their moisture and that they consequently soon wither
and die.

[498] In the other Greek towns, the smaller coins were of copper.

[499] Athamas, King of Thebes. An allusion to a tragedy by Sophocles, in
which Athamas is dragged before the altar of Zeus with his head circled
with a chaplet, to be there sacrificed; he is, however, saved by
Heracles.

[500] No doubt Socrates sprinkled flour over the head of Strepsiades in
the same manner as was done with the sacrificial victims.

[501] The mysteries of Eleusis celebrated in the Temple of Demeter.

[502] A mountain of Attica, north of Athens.

[503] Sybaris, a town of Magna Graecia (Lucania), destroyed by the
Crotoniates in 709 B. C. , was rebuilt by the Athenians under the name of
Thurium in 444 B. C. Ten diviners had been sent with the Athenian
settlers.

[504] A parody of the dithyrambic style.

[505] Hieronymus, a dithyrambic poet and reputed an infamous pederast.

[506] When guests at the nuptials of Pirithous, King of the Lapithae, and
Hippodamia, they wanted to carry off and violate the bride. That,
according to legend, was the origin of their war against the Lapithae.
Hieronymus is likened to the Centaurs on account of his bestial passion.

[507] A general, incessantly scoffed at by Aristophanes because of his
cowardice.

[508] Aristophanes frequently mentions him as an effeminate and debauched
character.

[509] A celebrated sophist, born at Ceos, and a disciple of Protagoras.
When sent on an embassy by his compatriots to Athens, he there publicly
preached on eloquence, and had for his disciples Euripides, Isocrates and
even Socrates. His "fifty drachmae lecture" has been much spoken of; that
sum had to be paid to hear it.

[510] These three men have already been referred to.

[511] A promontory of Attica (the modern Cape Colonna) about fifty miles
from the Piraeus. Here stood a magnificent Temple, dedicated to Athene.

[512] The opening portion of the parabasis belongs to a second edition of
the 'Clouds. ' Aristophanes had been defeated by Cratinus and Amipsias,
whose pieces, called the 'Bottle' and 'Connus,' had been crowned in
preference to the 'Clouds,' which, it is said, was not received any
better at its second representation.

[513] Two characters introduced into the 'Daedalians' by Aristophanes in
strong contrast to each other. Some fragments only of this piece remain
to us.

[514] It was only at the age of thirty, according to some, of forty,
according to others, that a man could present a piece in his own name.
The 'Daedalians' had appeared under the auspices of Cleonides and
Chalistrates, whom we find again later as actors in Aristophanes' pieces.

[515] Allusion to the recognition of Orestes by Electra at her brother's
tomb. (_See_ the 'Choephorae' of Aeschylus. )

[516] An image of the penis, drooping in this case, instead of standing,
carried as a phallic emblem in the Dionysiac processions.

[517] A licentious dance.

[518] This coarse way of exciting laughter, says the scholiast, had been
used by Eupolis, the comic writer, a rival of Aristophanes.

[519] In the 'Knights. '

[520] Presented in 421 B. C. The 'Clouds' having been played a second time
in 419 B. C. , one may conclude that this piece had appeared a third time
on the Athenian stage.

[521] Doubtless a parody of the legend of Andromeda.

[522] A poet of the older comedy, who had written forty plays. It is said
that he dared to accuse Aspasia, the mistress of Pericles, of impiety and
the practice of prostitution.

[523] Cleon.

[524] This part of the parabasis belongs to the first edition of the
'Clouds,' since Aristophanes here speaks of Cleon as alive.

[525] A mountain in Delos, dedicated to Apollo and Diana.

[526] Artemis.

[527] An allusion to the reform, which the astronomer Meton had wanted to
introduce into the calendar. Cleostratus of Tenedos, at the beginning of
the fifth century, had devised the _octaeteris_, or cycle of eight years,
and this had been generally adopted. This is how this system arrived at
an agreement between the solar and the lunar periods: 8 solar years
containing 2922 days, while 8 lunar years only contain 2832 days, there
was a difference of 90 days, for which Cleostratus compensated by
intercalating 3 months of 30 days each, which were placed after the
third, fifth and eighth year of the cycle. Hence these years had an extra
month each. But in this system, the lunar months had been reckoned as 354
days, whereas they are really 354 days, 8 hours, 48 minutes. To rectify
this minor error Meton invented a cycle of 19 years, which bears his
name. This new system which he tried to introduce naturally caused some
disturbance in the order of the festivals, and for this or some other
reason his system was not adopted. The octaeteris continued to be used
for all public purposes, the only correction being, that three extra days
were added to every second octaeteris.

[528] Both sons of Zeus.

[529] Hyperbolus had supported Meton in his desire for reform. Having
been sent as the Athenian deputy to the council of the Amphictyons, he
should, like his colleagues, have returned to Athens with his head
wreathed with laurel. It is said the wind took this from him; the Clouds
boast of the achievement.

[530] These are poetical measures; Strepsiades thinks measures of
capacity are meant.

[531] Containing four _choenixes_.

[532] So called from its stirring, warlike character; it was composed of
two dactyls and a spondee, followed again by two dactyls and a spondee.

[533] Composed of dactyls and anapaests.

[534] [Greek: Daktylos] means, of course, both _dactyl_, name of a
metrical foot, and finger. Strepsiades presents his middle finger, with
the other fingers and thumb bent under in an indecent gesture meant to
suggest the penis and testicles. The Romans for this reason called the
middle finger 'digitus infamis,' the _unseemly finger_. The Emperor Nero
is said to have offered his hand to courtiers to kiss sometimes in this
indecent way.

[535] Meaning he was too poor, Aristophanes represents him as a glutton
and a parasite.

[536] A woman's name.

[537] He is classed as a woman because of his cowardice and effeminacy.

[538] In Greek, the vocative of Amynias is Amynia; thus it has a feminine
termination.

[539] The Corinthians, the allies of Sparta, ravaged Attica. [Greek:
Kor], the first portion of the Greek word, is the root of the word which
means a bug in the same language.

[540] Mirrors, or burning glasses, are meant, such as those used by
Archimedes two centuries later at the siege of Syracuse, when he set the
Roman fleet on fire from the walls of the city.

[541] That is, the family of the Alcmaeonidae; Coesyra was wife of
Alcmaeon.

[542] Socrates was an Athenian; but the atheist Diagoras, known as 'the
enemy of the gods' hailed from the island of Melos. Strepsiades,
crediting Socrates with the same incredulity, assigns him the same
birthplace.

[543] i. e. the enemies of the gods. An allusion to the giants, the sons
of Earth, who had endeavoured to scale heaven.