No More Learning

[430] An allusion to the disastrous Sicilian Expedition (415-413 B. C. ),
in which many thousands of Athenian citizens perished.

[431] The dead were laid out at Athens before the house door.

[432] An offering made to the Manes of the deceased on the third day
after the funeral.

[433] Hippias and Hipparchus, the two sons of Pisistratus, known as the
Pisistratidae, became Tyrants of Athens upon their father's death in 527
B. C. In 514 the latter was assassinated by the conspirators, Harmodius
and Aristogiton, who took the opportunity of the Panathenaic festival and
concealed their daggers in myrtle wreaths. They were put to death, but
four years later the surviving Tyrant Hippias was expelled, and the young
and noble martyrs to liberty were ever after held in the highest honour
by their fellow-citizens. Their statues stood in the Agora or Public
Market-Square.

[434] That is, the three obols paid for attendance as a Heliast at the
High Court.

[435] See above, under note 3 [433. Transcriber. ].

[436] The origin of the name was this: in ancient days a tame bear
consecrated to Artemis, the huntress goddess, it seems, devoured a young
girl, whose brothers killed the offender. Artemis was angered and sent a
terrible pestilence upon the city, which only ceased when, by direction
of the oracle, a company of maidens was dedicated to the deity, to act
the part of she-bears in the festivities held annually in her honour at
the _Brauronia_, her festival so named from the deme of Brauron in
Attica.

[437] The Basket-Bearers, Canephoroi, at Athens were the maidens who,
clad in flowing robes, carried in baskets on their heads the sacred
implements and paraphernalia in procession at the celebrations in honour
of Demeter, Dionysus and Athene.

[438] A treasure formed by voluntary contributions at the time of the
Persian Wars; by Aristophanes' day it had all been dissipated, through
the influence of successive demagogues, in distributions and gifts to the
public under various pretexts.

[439] A town and fortress of Southern Attica, in the neighbourhood of
Marathon, occupied by the Alcmaeonidae--the noble family or clan at
Athens banished from the city in 595 B. C. , restored 560, but again
expelled by Pisistratus--in the course of their contest with that Tyrant.
Returning to Athens on the death of Hippias (510 B. C. ), they united with
the democracy, and the then head of the family, Cleisthenes, gave a new
constitution to the city.

[440] Queen of Halicarnassus, in Caria; an ally of the Persian King
Xerxes in his invasion of Greece; she fought gallantly at the battle of
Salamis.

[441] A _double entendre_--with allusion to the posture in sexual
intercourse known among the Greeks as [Greek: hippos], in Latin 'equus,'
the horse, where the woman mounts the man in reversal of the ordinary
position.

[442] Micon, a famous Athenian painter, decorated the walls of the
Poecile Stoa, or Painted Porch, at Athens with a series of frescoes
representing the battles of the Amazons with Theseus and the Athenians.

[443] To avenge itself on the eagle, the beetle threw the former's eggs
out of the nest and broke them. See the Fables of Aesop.

[444] Keeper of a house of ill fame apparently.

[445] "As chaste as Melanion" was a Greek proverb. Who Melanion was is
unknown.

[446] Myronides and Phormio were famous Athenian generals. The former was
celebrated for his conquest of all Boeotia, except Thebes, in 458 B. C. ;
the latter, with a fleet of twenty triremes, equipped at his own cost,
defeated a Lacedaemonian fleet of forty-seven sail, in 429.

[447] Timon, the misanthrope; he was an Athenian and a contemporary of
Aristophanes. Disgusted by the ingratitude of his fellow-citizens and
sickened with repeated disappointments, he retired altogether from
society, admitting no one, it is said, to his intimacy except the
brilliant young statesman Alcibiades.

[448] A spring so named within the precincts of the Acropolis.

[449] The comic poets delighted in introducing Heracles (Hercules) on the
stage as an insatiable glutton, whom the other characters were for ever
tantalizing by promising toothsome dishes and then making him wait
indefinitely for their arrival.

[450] The Rhodian perfumes and unguents were less esteemed than the
Syrian.

[451] 'Dog-fox,' nickname of a certain notorious Philostratus, keeper of
an Athenian brothel of note in Aristophanes' day.

[452] The god of gardens--and of lubricity; represented by a grotesque
figure with an enormous penis.

[453] A staff in use among the Lacedaemonians for writing cipher
despatches. A strip of leather or paper was wound round the 'skytale,' on
which the required message was written lengthwise, so that when unrolled
it became unintelligible; the recipient abroad had a staff of the same
thickness and pattern, and so was enabled by rewinding the document to
decipher the words.

[454] A city of Achaia, the acquisition of which had long been an object
of Lacedaemonian ambition. To make the joke intelligible here, we must
suppose Pellene was also the name of some notorious courtesan of the day.

[455] A deme of Attica, abounding in woods and marshes, where the gnats
were particularly troublesome. There is very likely also an allusion to
the spiteful, teasing character of its inhabitants.

[456] A mina was a little over ? 4; 60 minas made a talent.

[457] Carystus was a city of Euboea notorious for the dissoluteness of
its inhabitants; hence the inclusion of these Carystian youths in the
women's invitation.

[458] A [Greek: para prosdokian]; i. e. exactly the opposite of the word
expected is used to conclude the sentence--to move the sudden hilarity of
the audience as a finale to the scene.

[459] A wattled cage or pen for pigs.

[460] An effeminate, a pathic; failing women, they will have to resort to
pederasty.

[461] These _Hermae_ were half-length figures of the god Hermes, which
stood at the corners of streets and in public places at Athens. One
night, just before the sailing of the Sicilian Expedition, they were all
mutilated--to the consternation of the inhabitants. Alcibiades and his
wild companions were suspected of the outrage.

[462] They had repeatedly dismissed with scant courtesy successive
Lacedaemonian embassies coming to propose terms of peace after the
notable Athenian successes at Pylos, when the Island of Sphacteria was
captured and 600 Spartan citizens brought prisoners to Athens. This was
in 425 B. C. , the seventh year of the War.

[463] Chief of the Lacedaemonian embassy which came to Athens, after the
earthquake of 464 B. C. , which almost annihilated the town of Sparta, to
invoke the help of the Athenians against the revolted Messenians and
helots.

[464] Echinus was a town on the Thessalian coast, at the entrance to the
Maliac Gulf, near Thermopylae and opposite the northern end of the
Athenian island of Euboea. By the "legs of Megara" are meant the two
"long walls" or lines of fortification connecting the city of Megara with
its seaport Nisaea--in the same way as Piraeus was joined to Athens.

[465] Examples of [Greek: para prosdokian] again; see above.

[466] Clitagoras was a composer of drinking songs, Telamon of war songs.

[467] Here, off the north coast of Euboea, the Greeks defeated the
Persians in a naval battle, 480 B. C.

[468] The hero of Thermopylae, where the 300 Athenians arrested the
advance of the invading hosts of Xerxes in the same year.

[469] Amyclae, an ancient town on the Eurotas within two or three miles
of Sparta, the traditional birthplace of Castor and Pollux; here stood a
famous and magnificent Temple of Apollo.

"Of the Brazen House," a surname of Athene, from the Temple dedicated to
her worship at Chalcis in Euboea, the walls of which were covered with
plates of brass.

Sons of Tyndarus, that is, Castor and Pollux, "the great twin brethren,"
held in peculiar reverence at Sparta.






THE CLOUDS




INTRODUCTION

The satire in this, one of the best known of all Aristophanes' comedies,
is directed against the new schools of philosophy, or perhaps we should
rather say dialectic, which had lately been introduced, mostly from
abroad, at Athens. The doctrines held up to ridicule are those of the
'Sophists'--such men as Thrasymachus from Chalcedon in Bithynia, Gorgias
from Leontini in Sicily, Protagoras from Abdera in Thrace, and other
foreign scholars and rhetoricians who had flocked to Athens as the
intellectual centre of the Hellenic world. Strange to say, Socrates of
all people, the avowed enemy and merciless critic of these men and their
methods, is taken as their representative, and personally attacked with
pitiless raillery. Presumably this was merely because he was the most
prominent and noteworthy teacher and thinker of the day, while his
grotesque personal appearance and startling eccentricities of behaviour
gave a ready handle to caricature. Neither the author nor his audience
took the trouble, or were likely to take the trouble, to discriminate
nicely; there was, of course, a general resemblance between the Socratic
'elenchos' and the methods of the new practitioners of dialectic; and
this was enough for stage purposes. However unjustly, Socrates is taken
as typical of the newfangled sophistical teachers, just as in 'The
Acharnians' Lamachus, with his Gorgon shield, is introduced as
representative of the War party, though that general was not specially
responsible for the continuance of hostilities more than anybody else.

Aristophanes' point of view, as a member of the aristocratical party and
a fine old Conservative, is that these Sophists, as the professors of the
new education had come to be called, and Socrates as their protagonist,
were insincere and dangerous innovators, corrupting morals, persuading
young men to despise the old-fashioned, home-grown virtues of the State
and teaching a system of false and pernicious tricks of verbal fence
whereby anything whatever could be proved, and the worse be made to seem
the better--provided always sufficient payment were forthcoming. True,
Socrates refused to take money from his pupils, and made it his chief
reproach against the lecturing Sophists that they received fees; but what
of that? The Comedian cannot pay heed to such fine distinctions, but
belabours the whole tribe with indiscriminate raillery and scurrility.

The play was produced at the Great Dionysia in 423 B. C. , but proved
unsuccessful, Cratinus and Amipsias being awarded first and second prize.
This is said to have been due to the intrigues and influence of
Alcibiades, who resented the caricature of himself presented in the
sporting Phidippides. A second edition of the drama was apparently
produced some years later, to which the 'Parabasis' of the play as we
possess it must belong, as it refers to events subsequent to the date
named.

The plot is briefly as follows: Strepsiades, a wealthy country gentleman,
has been brought to penury and deeply involved in debt by the
extravagance and horsy tastes of his son Phidippides. Having heard of the
wonderful new art of argument, the royal road to success in litigation,
discovered by the Sophists, he hopes that, if only he can enter the
'Phrontisterion,' or Thinking-Shop, of Socrates, he will learn how to
turn the tables on his creditors and avoid paying the debts which are
dragging him down. He joins the school accordingly, but is found too old
and stupid to profit by the lessons. So his son Phidippides is
substituted as a more promising pupil. The latter takes to the new
learning like a duck to water, and soon shows what progress he has made
by beating his father and demonstrating that he is justified by all laws,
divine and human, in what he is doing. This opens the old man's eyes, who
sets fire to the 'Phrontisterion,' and the play ends in a great
conflagration of this home of humbug.

* * * * *

THE CLOUDS


DRAMATIS PERSONAE

STREPSIADES.
PHIDIPPIDES.
SERVANT OF STREPSIADES.
SOCRATES.
DISCIPLES OF SOCRATES.
JUST DISCOURSE.
UNJUST DISCOURSE.
PASIAS, a Money-lender.
PASIAS' WITNESS.
AMYNIAS, another Money-lender.
CHAEREPHON.
CHORUS OF CLOUDS.

SCENE: A sleeping-room in Strepsiades' house; then in front of Socrates'
house.

* * * * *

THE CLOUDS


STREPSIADES. [470] Great gods! will these nights never end? will daylight
never come? I heard the cock crow long ago and my slaves are snoring
still! Ah! 'twas not so formerly. Curses on the War! has it not done me
ills enough? Now I may not even chastise my own slaves. [471] Again
there's this brave lad, who never wakes the whole long night, but,
wrapped in his five coverlets, farts away to his heart's content. Come!
let me nestle in well and snore too, if it be possible . . . oh! misery,
'tis vain to think of sleep with all these expenses, this stable, these
debts, which are devouring me, thanks to this fine cavalier, who only
knows how to look after his long locks, to show himself off in his
chariot and to dream of horses! And I, I am nearly dead, when I see the
moon bringing the third decade in her train[472] and my liability falling
due. . . . Slave! light the lamp and bring me my tablets. Who are all my
creditors? Let me see and reckon up the interest. What is it I owe? . . .
Twelve minae to Pasias. . . . What! twelve minae to Pasias? . . . Why did I
borrow these? Ah! I know! 'Twas to buy that thoroughbred, which cost me
so dear. [473] How I should have prized the stone that had blinded him!

PHIDIPPIDES (_in his sleep_). That's not fair, Philo! Drive your chariot
straight,[474] I say.

STREPSIADES. 'Tis this that is destroying me. He raves about horses, even
in his sleep.

PHIDIPPIDES (_still sleeping_). How many times round the track is the
race for the chariots of war? [475]

STREPSIADES. 'Tis your own father you are driving to death . . . to ruin.
Come! what debt comes next, after that of Pasias? . . . Three minae to
Amynias for a chariot and its two wheels.

PHIDIPPIDES (_still asleep_). Give the horse a good roll in the dust and
lead him home.

STREPSIADES. Ah! wretched boy! 'tis my money that you are making roll. My
creditors have distrained on my goods, and here are others again, who
demand security for their interest.

PHIDIPPIDES (_awaking_). What is the matter with you, father, that you
groan and turn about the whole night through?

STREPSIADES. I have a bum-bailiff in the bedclothes biting me.

PHIDIPPIDES. For pity's sake, let me have a little sleep.

STREPSIADES. Very well, sleep on! but remember that all these debts will
fall back on your shoulders. Oh! curses on the go-between who made me
marry your mother! I lived so happily in the country, a commonplace,
everyday life, but a good and easy one--had not a trouble, not a care,
was rich in bees, in sheep and in olives. Then forsooth I must marry the
niece of Megacles, the son of Megacles; I belonged to the country, she
was from the town; she was a haughty, extravagant woman, a true
Coesyra. [476] On the nuptial day, when I lay beside her, I was reeking of
the dregs of the wine-cup, of cheese and of wool; she was redolent with
essences, saffron, tender kisses, the love of spending, of good cheer and
of wanton delights. I will not say she did nothing; no, she worked hard
. . . to ruin me, and pretending all the while merely to be showing her the
cloak she had woven for me, I said, "Wife, you go too fast about your
work, your threads are too closely woven and you use far too much wool. "

A SLAVE. There is no more oil in the lamp.

STREPSIADES.
Why then did you light such a guzzling lamp? Come here, I am
going to beat you!

SLAVE. What for?

STREPSIADES. Because you have put in too thick a wick. . . . Later, when we
had this boy, what was to be his name? 'Twas the cause of much
quarrelling with my loving wife. She insisted on having some reference to
a horse in his name, that he should be called Xanthippus, Charippus or
Callippides. [477] I wanted to name him Phidonides after his
grandfather. [478] We disputed long, and finally agreed to style him
Phidippides. . . . [479] She used to fondle and coax him, saying, "Oh! what a
joy it will be to me when you have grown up, to see you, like my father,
Megacles,[480] clothed in purple and standing up straight in your chariot
driving your steeds toward the town. " And I would say to him, "When, like
your father, you will go, dressed in a skin, to fetch back your goats
from Phelleus. "[481] Alas! he never listened to me and his madness for
horses has shattered my fortune. But by dint of thinking the livelong
night, I have discovered a road to salvation, both miraculous and divine.
If he will but follow it, I shall be out of my trouble! First, however,
he must be awakened, but let it be done as gently as possible. How shall
I manage it? Phidippides! my little Phidippides!

PHIDIPPIDES. What is it, father!

STREPSIADES. Kiss me and give me your hand.

PHIDIPPIDES. There! What's it all about?

STREPSIADES. Tell me! do you love me?

PHIDIPPIDES. By Posidon, the equestrian Posidon! yes, I swear I do.

STREPSIADES. Oh, do not, I pray you, invoke this god of horses; 'tis he
who is the cause of all my cares. But if you really love me, and with
your whole heart, my boy, believe me.

PHIDIPPIDES. Believe you? about what?

STREPSIADES. Alter your habits forthwith and go and learn what I tell
you.

PHIDIPPIDES. Say on, what are your orders?

STREPSIADES. Will you obey me ever so little?

PHIDIPPIDES. By Bacchus, I will obey you.

STREPSIADES. Very well then! Look this way. Do you see that little door
and that little house? [482]

PHIDIPPIDES. Yes, father. But what are you driving at?

STREPSIADES. That is the school of wisdom. There, they prove that we are
coals enclosed on all sides under a vast extinguisher, which is the
sky. [483] If well paid,[484] these men also teach one how to gain
law-suits, whether they be just or not.

PHIDIPPIDES. What do they call themselves?

STREPSIADES. I do not know exactly, but they are deep thinkers and most
admirable people.

PHIDIPPIDES. Bah! the wretches! I know them; you mean those quacks with
livid faces,[485] those barefoot fellows, such as that miserable Socrates
and Chaerephon. [486]

STREPSIADES. Silence! say nothing foolish! If you desire your father not
to die of hunger, join their company and let your horses go.

PHIDIPPIDES. No, by Bacchus! even though you gave me the pheasants that
Leogoras rears.

STREPSIADES. Oh! my beloved son, I beseech you, go and follow their
teachings.

PHIDIPPIDES. And what is it I should learn?

STREPSIADES. 'Twould seem they have two courses of reasoning, the true
and the false, and that, thanks to the false, the worst law-suits can be
gained. If then you learn this science, which is false, I shall not pay
an obolus of all the debts I have contracted on your account.

PHIDIPPIDES. No, I will not do it. I should no longer dare to look at our
gallant horsemen, when I had so tarnished my fair hue of honour.

STREPSIADES. Well then, by Demeter! I will no longer support you, neither
you, nor your team, nor your saddle-horse. Go and hang yourself, I turn
you out of house and home.

PHIDIPPIDES. My uncle Megacles will not leave me without horses; I shall
go to him and laugh at your anger.

STREPSIADES. One rebuff shall not dishearten me. With the help of the
gods I will enter this school and learn myself. But at my age, memory has
gone and the mind is slow to grasp things. How can all these fine
distinctions, these subtleties be learned? Bah! why should I dally thus
instead of rapping at the door? Slave, slave! (_He knocks and calls. _)

A DISCIPLE. A plague on you! Who are you?

STREPSIADES. Strepsiades, the son of Phido, of the deme of Cicynna.

DISCIPLE. 'Tis for sure only an ignorant and illiterate fellow who lets
drive at the door with such kicks. You have brought on a miscarriage--of
an idea!

STREPSIADES. Pardon me, pray; for I live far away from here in the
country. But tell me, what was the idea that miscarried?

DISCIPLE. I may not tell it to any but a disciple.

STREPSIADES. Then tell me without fear, for I have come to study among
you.

DISCIPLE. Very well then, but reflect, that these are mysteries. Lately,
a flea bit Chaerephon on the brow and then from there sprang on to the
head of Socrates. Socrates asked Chaerephon, "How many times the length
of its legs does a flea jump? "

STREPSIADES. And how ever did he set about measuring it?

DISCIPLE. Oh! 'twas most ingenious! He melted some wax, seized the flea
and dipped its two feet in the wax, which, when cooled, left them shod
with true Persian buskins. [487] These he slipped off and with them
measured the distance.

STREPSIADES. Ah! great Zeus! what a brain! what subtlety!

DISCIPLE. I wonder what then would you say, if you knew another of
Socrates' contrivances?

STREPSIADES. What is it? Pray tell me.

DISCIPLE. Chaerephon of the deme of Sphettia asked him whether he thought
a gnat buzzed through its proboscis or through its rear.

STREPSIADES. And what did he say about the gnat?

DISCIPLE. He said that the gut of the gnat was narrow, and that, in
passing through this tiny passage, the air is driven with force towards
the breech; then after this slender channel, it encountered the rump,
which was distended like a trumpet, and there it resounded sonorously.

STREPSIADES. So the rear of a gnat is a trumpet. Oh! what a splendid
discovery! Thrice happy Socrates! 'Twould not be difficult to succeed in
a law-suit, knowing so much about the gut of a gnat!

DISCIPLE. Not long ago a lizard caused him the loss of a sublime thought.

STREPSIADES. In what way, an it please you?

DISCIPLE. One night, when he was studying the course of the moon and its
revolutions and was gazing open-mouthed at the heavens, a lizard shitted
upon him from the top of the roof.

STREPSIADES. This lizard, that relieved itself over Socrates, tickles me.

DISCIPLE. Yesternight we had nothing to eat.

STREPSIADES. Well! What did he contrive, to secure you some supper?

DISCIPLE. He spread over the table a light layer of cinders, bending an
iron rod the while; then he took up a pair of compasses and at the same
moment unhooked a piece of the victim which was hanging in the
palaestra. [488]

STREPSIADES. And we still dare to admire Thales! [489] Open, open this
home of knowledge to me quickly! Haste, haste to show me Socrates; I long
to become his disciple. But do, do open the door. (_The disciple admits
Strepsiades. _) Ah! by Heracles! what country are those animals from?

DISCIPLE. Why, what are you astonished at? What do you think they
resemble?

STREPSIADES. The captives of Pylos. [490] But why do they look so fixedly
on the ground?

DISCIPLE. They are seeking for what is below the ground.

STREPSIADES. Ah! 'tis onions they are seeking. Do not give yourselves so
much trouble; I know where there are some, fine and large ones. But what
are those fellows doing, who are bent all double?

DISCIPLE. They are sounding the abysses of Tartarus. [491]

STREPSIADES. And what is their rump looking at in the heavens?

DISCIPLE. It is studying astronomy on its own account. But come in; so
that the master may not find us here.

STREPSIADES. Not yet, not yet; let them not change their position.