To make the joke intelligible here, we must
suppose Pellene was also the name of some notorious courtesan of the day.
suppose Pellene was also the name of some notorious courtesan of the day.
Aristophanes
Quick, quick's the word, say I.
CHORUS OF WOMEN. Embroidered stuffs, and dainty tunics, and flowing
gowns, and golden ornaments, everything I have, I offer them you with all
my heart; take them all for your children, for your girls, against they
are chosen "basket-bearers" to the goddess. I invite you every one to
enter, come in and choose whatever you will; there is nothing so well
fastened, you cannot break the seals, and carry away the contents. Look
about you everywhere . . . you won't find a blessed thing, unless you have
sharper eyes than mine. [465] And if any of you lacks corn to feed his
slaves and his young and numerous family, why, I have a few grains of
wheat at home; let him take what I have to give, a big twelve-pound loaf
included. So let my poorer neighbours all come with bags and wallets; my
man, Manes, shall give them corn; but I warn them not to come near my
door, or--beware the dog! [465]
A MARKET-LOUNGER. I say, you, open the door!
A SLAVE. Go your way, I tell you. Why, bless me, they're sitting down
now; I shall have to singe 'em with my torch to make 'em stir! What an
impudent lot of fellows!
MARKET-LOUNGER. I don't mean to budge.
SLAVE. Well, as you _must_ stop, and I don't want to offend you--but
you'll see some queer sights.
MARKET-LOUNGER. Well and good, I've no objection.
SLAVE. No, no, you must be off--or I'll tear your hair out, I will; be
off, I say, and don't annoy the Laconian Envoys; they're just coming out
from the banquet-hall.
AN ATHENIAN. Such a merry banquet I've never seen before! The Laconians
were simply charming. After the drink is in, why, we're all wise men,
all. It's only natural, to be sure, for sober, we're all fools. Take my
advice, my fellow-countrymen, our Envoys should always be drunk. We go to
Sparta; we enter the city sober; why, we must be picking a quarrel
directly. We don't understand what they say to us, we imagine a lot they
don't say at all, and we report home all wrong, all topsy-turvy. But,
look you, to-day it's quite different; we're enchanted whatever happens;
instead of Clitagoras, they might sing us Telamon,[466] and we should
clap our hands just the same. A perjury or two into the bargain, la! what
does that matter to merry companions in their cups?
SLAVE. But here they are back again! Will you begone, you loafing
scoundrels.
MARKET-LOUNGER. Ah ha! here's the company coming out already.
A LACONIAN. My dear, sweet friend, come, take your flute in hand; I would
fain dance and sing my best in honour of the Athenians and our noble
selves.
AN ATHENIAN. Yes, take your flute, i' the gods' name. What a delight to
see him dance!
CHORUS OF LACONIANS. Oh Mnemosyne! inspire these men, inspire my muse who
knows our exploits and those of the Athenians. With what a godlike ardour
did they swoop down at Artemisium[467] on the ships of the Medes! What a
glorious victory was that! For the soldiers of Leonidas,[468] they were
like fierce wild-boars whetting their tushes. The sweat ran down their
faces, and drenched all their limbs, for verily the Persians were as many
as the sands of the seashore. Oh! Artemis, huntress queen, whose arrows
pierce the denizens of the woods, virgin goddess, be thou favourable to
the Peace we here conclude; through thee may our hearts be long united!
May this treaty draw close for ever the bonds of a happy friendship! No
more wiles and stratagems! Aid us, oh! aid us, maiden huntress!
LYSISTRATA. All is for the best; and now, Laconians, take your wives away
home with you, and you, Athenians, yours. May husband live happily with
wife, and wife with husband. Dance, dance, to celebrate our bliss, and
let us be heedful to avoid like mistakes for the future.
CHORUS OF ATHENIANS Appear, appear, dancers, and the Graces with you! Let
us invoke, one and all, Artemis, and her heavenly brother, gracious
Apollo, patron of the dance, and Dionysus, whose eye darts flame, as he
steps forward surrounded by the Maenad maids, and Zeus, who wields the
flashing lightning, and his august, thrice-blessed spouse, the Queen of
Heaven! These let us invoke, and all the other gods, calling all the
inhabitants of the skies to witness the noble Peace now concluded under
the fond auspices of Aphrodite. Io Paean! Io Paean! dance, leap, as in
honour of a victory won. Evoe! Evoe! And you, our Laconian guests, sing
us a new and inspiring strain!
CHORUS OF LACONIANS. Leave once more, oh! leave once more the noble
height of Taygetus, oh! Muse of Lacedaemon, and join us in singing the
praises of Apollo of Amyclae, and Athena of the Brazen House, and the
gallant twin sons of Tyndarus, who practise arms on the banks of Eurotas
river. [469] Haste, haste hither with nimble-footed pace, let us sing
Sparta, the city that delights in choruses divinely sweet and graceful
dances, when our maidens bound lightly by the river side, like frolicsome
fillies, beating the ground with rapid steps and shaking their long locks
in the wind, as Bacchantes wave their wands in the wild revels of the
Wine-god. At their head, oh! chaste and beauteous goddess, daughter of
Latona, Artemis, do thou lead the song and dance. A fillet binding thy
waving tresses, appear in thy loveliness; leap like a fawn; strike thy
divine hands together to animate the dance, and aid us to renown the
valiant goddess of battles, great Athene of the Brazen House!
* * * * *
FINIS OF "LYSISTRATA"
* * * * *
Footnotes:
[390] At Athens more than anywhere the festivals of Bacchus (Dionysus)
were celebrated with the utmost pomp--and also with the utmost licence,
not to say licentiousness.
Pan---the rustic god and king of the Satyrs; his feast was similarly an
occasion of much coarse self-indulgence.
Aphrodite Colias--under this name the goddess was invoked by courtesans
as patroness of sensual, physical love. She had a temple on the
promontory of Colias, on the Attic coast--whence the surname.
The Genetyllides were minor deities, presiding over the act of
generation, as the name indicates. Dogs were offered in sacrifice to
them--presumably because of the lubricity of that animal.
At the festivals of Dionysus, Pan and Aphrodite women used to perform
lascivious dances to the accompaniment of the beating of tambourines.
Lysistrata implies that the women she had summoned to council cared
really for nothing but wanton pleasures.
[391] An obscene _double entendre_; Calonice understands, or pretends to
understand, Lysistrata as meaning a long and thick "membrum virile"!
[392] The eels from Lake Copa? s in Boeotia were esteemed highly by
epicures.
[393] This is the reproach Demosthenes constantly levelled against his
Athenian fellow-countrymen--their failure to seize opportunity.
[394] An island of the Saronic Gulf, lying between Magara and Attica. It
was separated by a narrow strait--scene of the naval battle of Salamis,
in which the Athenians defeated Xerxes--only from the Attic coast, and
was subject to Athens.
[395] A deme, or township, of Attica, lying five or six miles north of
Athens. The Acharnians were throughout the most extreme partisans of the
warlike party during the Peloponnesian struggle. See 'The Acharnians. '
[396] The precise reference is uncertain, and where the joke exactly
comes in. The Scholiast says Theagenes was a rich, miserly and
superstitious citizen, who never undertook any enterprise without first
consulting an image of Hecate, the distributor of honour and wealth
according to popular belief; and his wife would naturally follow her
husband's example.
[397] A deme of Attica, a small and insignificant community--a 'Little
Pedlington' in fact.
[398] In allusion to the gymnastic training which was _de rigueur_ at
Sparta for the women no less than the men, and in particular to the dance
of the Lacedaemonian girls, in which the performer was expected to kick
the fundament with the heels--always a standing joke among the Athenians
against their rivals and enemies the Spartans.
[399] The allusion, of course, is to the 'garden of love,' the female
parts, which it was the custom with the Greek women, as it is with the
ladies of the harem in Turkey to this day, to depilate scrupulously, with
the idea of making themselves more attractive to men.
[400] Corinth was notorious in the Ancient world for its prostitutes and
general dissoluteness.
[401] An Athenian general strongly suspected of treachery; Aristophanes
pretends his own soldiers have to see that he does not desert to the
enemy.
[402] A town and fortress on the west coast of Messenia, south-east part
of Peloponnese, at the northern extremity of the bay of Sphacteria--the
scene by the by of the modern naval battle of Navarino--in Lacedaemonian
territory; it had been seized by the Athenian fleet, and was still in
their possession at the date, 412 B. C. , of the representation of the
'Lysistrata,' though two years later, in the twenty-second year of the
War, it was recovered by Sparta.
[403] The Athenian women, rightly or wrongly, had the reputation of being
over fond of wine. Aristophanes, here and elsewhere, makes many jests on
this weakness of theirs.
[404] The lofty range of hills overlooking Sparta from the west.
[405] In the original "we are nothing but Poseidon and a boat"; the
allusion is to a play of Sophocles, now lost, but familiar to
Aristophanes' audience, entitled 'Tyro,' in which the heroine, Tyro,
appears with Poseidon, the sea-god, at the beginning of the tragedy, and
at the close with the two boys she had had by him, whom she exposes in an
open boat.
[406] "By the two goddesses,"--a woman's oath, which recurs constantly in
this play; the two goddesses are always Demeter and Proserpine.
[407] One of the Cyclades, between Naxos and Cos, celebrated, like the
latter, for its manufacture of fine, almost transparent silks, worn in
Greece, and later at Rome, by women of loose character.
[408] The proverb, quoted by Pherecrates, is properly spoken of those who
go out of their way to do a thing already done--"to kill a dead horse,"
but here apparently is twisted by Aristophanes into an allusion to the
leathern 'godemiche' mentioned a little above; if the worst comes to the
worst, we must use artificial means. Pherecrates was a comic playwright,
a contemporary of Aristophanes.
[409] Literally "our Scythian woman. " At Athens, policemen and ushers in
the courts were generally Scythians; so the revolting women must have
_their_ Scythian "Usheress" too.
[410] In allusion to the oath which the seven allied champions before
Thebes take upon a buckler, in Aeschylus' tragedy of 'The Seven against
Thebes,' v. 42.
[411] A volcanic island in the northern part of the Aegaean, celebrated
for its vineyards.
[412] The old men are carrying faggots and fire to burn down the gates of
the Acropolis, and supply comic material by their panting and wheezing as
they climb the steep approaches to the fortress and puff and blow at
their fires. Aristophanes gives them names, purely fancy ones--Draces,
Strymodorus, Philurgus, Laches.
[413] Cleomenes, King of Sparta, had in the preceding century commanded a
Lacedaemonian expedition against Athens. At the invitation of the
Alcmaeonidae, enemies of the sons of Peisistratus, he seized the
Acropolis, but after an obstinately contested siege was forced to
capitulate and retire.
[414] Lemnos was proverbial with the Greeks for chronic misfortune and a
succession of horrors and disasters. Can any good thing come out of
_Lemnos_?
[415] That is, a friend of the Athenian people; Samos had just before the
date of the play re-established the democracy and renewed the old
alliance with Athens.
[416] A second Chorus enters--of women who are hurrying up with water to
extinguish the fire just started by the Chorus of old men. Nicodice,
Calyce, Critylle, Rhodippe, are fancy names the poet gives to different
members of the band. Another, Stratyllis, has been stopped by the old men
on her way to rejoin her companions.
[417] Bupalus was a celebrated contemporary sculptor, a native of
Clazomenae. The satiric poet Hipponax, who was extremely ugly, having
been portrayed by Bupalus as even more unsightly-looking than the
reality, composed against the artist so scurrilous an invective that the
latter hung himself in despair. Apparently Aristophanes alludes here to a
verse in which Hipponax threatened to beat Bupalus.
[418] The Heliasts at Athens were the body of citizens chosen by lot to
act as jurymen (or, more strictly speaking, as judges and jurymen, the
Dicast, or so-called Judge, being merely President of the Court, the
majority of the Heliasts pronouncing sentence) in the Heliaia, or High
Court, where all offences liable to public prosecution were tried. They
were 6000 in number, divided into ten panels of 500 each, a thousand
being held in reserve to supply occasional vacancies. Each Heliast was
paid three obols for each day's attendance in court.
[419] Women only celebrated the festivals of Adonis. These rites were not
performed in public, but on the terraces and flat roofs of the houses.
[420] The Assembly, or Ecclesia, was the General Parliament of the
Athenian people, in which every adult citizen had a vote. It met on the
Pnyx hill, where the assembled Ecclesiasts were addressed from the Bema,
or speaking-block.
[421] An orator and statesman who had first proposed the disastrous
Sicilian Expedition, of 415-413 B. C. This was on the first day of the
festival of Adonis--ever afterwards regarded by the Athenians as a day of
ill omen.
[422] An island in the Ionian Sea, on the west of Greece, near
Cephalenia, and an ally of Athens during the Peloponnesian War.
[423] Cholozyges, a nickname for Demostratus.
[424] The State treasure was kept in the Acropolis, which the women had
seized.
[425] The second (mythical) king of Athens, successor of Cecrops.
[426] The leader of the Revolution which resulted in the temporary
overthrow of the Democracy at Athens (413, 412 B. C. ), and the
establishment of the Oligarchy of the Four Hundred.
[427] Priests of Cybele, who indulged in wild, frenzied dances, to the
accompaniment of the clashing of cymbals, in their celebrations in honour
of the goddess.
[428] Captain of a cavalry division; they were chosen from amongst the
_Hippeis_, or 'Knights' at Athens.
[429] In allusion to a play of Euripides, now lost, with this title.
Tereus was son of Ares and king of the Thracians in Daulis.
[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?
CHORUS OF WOMEN. Embroidered stuffs, and dainty tunics, and flowing
gowns, and golden ornaments, everything I have, I offer them you with all
my heart; take them all for your children, for your girls, against they
are chosen "basket-bearers" to the goddess. I invite you every one to
enter, come in and choose whatever you will; there is nothing so well
fastened, you cannot break the seals, and carry away the contents. Look
about you everywhere . . . you won't find a blessed thing, unless you have
sharper eyes than mine. [465] And if any of you lacks corn to feed his
slaves and his young and numerous family, why, I have a few grains of
wheat at home; let him take what I have to give, a big twelve-pound loaf
included. So let my poorer neighbours all come with bags and wallets; my
man, Manes, shall give them corn; but I warn them not to come near my
door, or--beware the dog! [465]
A MARKET-LOUNGER. I say, you, open the door!
A SLAVE. Go your way, I tell you. Why, bless me, they're sitting down
now; I shall have to singe 'em with my torch to make 'em stir! What an
impudent lot of fellows!
MARKET-LOUNGER. I don't mean to budge.
SLAVE. Well, as you _must_ stop, and I don't want to offend you--but
you'll see some queer sights.
MARKET-LOUNGER. Well and good, I've no objection.
SLAVE. No, no, you must be off--or I'll tear your hair out, I will; be
off, I say, and don't annoy the Laconian Envoys; they're just coming out
from the banquet-hall.
AN ATHENIAN. Such a merry banquet I've never seen before! The Laconians
were simply charming. After the drink is in, why, we're all wise men,
all. It's only natural, to be sure, for sober, we're all fools. Take my
advice, my fellow-countrymen, our Envoys should always be drunk. We go to
Sparta; we enter the city sober; why, we must be picking a quarrel
directly. We don't understand what they say to us, we imagine a lot they
don't say at all, and we report home all wrong, all topsy-turvy. But,
look you, to-day it's quite different; we're enchanted whatever happens;
instead of Clitagoras, they might sing us Telamon,[466] and we should
clap our hands just the same. A perjury or two into the bargain, la! what
does that matter to merry companions in their cups?
SLAVE. But here they are back again! Will you begone, you loafing
scoundrels.
MARKET-LOUNGER. Ah ha! here's the company coming out already.
A LACONIAN. My dear, sweet friend, come, take your flute in hand; I would
fain dance and sing my best in honour of the Athenians and our noble
selves.
AN ATHENIAN. Yes, take your flute, i' the gods' name. What a delight to
see him dance!
CHORUS OF LACONIANS. Oh Mnemosyne! inspire these men, inspire my muse who
knows our exploits and those of the Athenians. With what a godlike ardour
did they swoop down at Artemisium[467] on the ships of the Medes! What a
glorious victory was that! For the soldiers of Leonidas,[468] they were
like fierce wild-boars whetting their tushes. The sweat ran down their
faces, and drenched all their limbs, for verily the Persians were as many
as the sands of the seashore. Oh! Artemis, huntress queen, whose arrows
pierce the denizens of the woods, virgin goddess, be thou favourable to
the Peace we here conclude; through thee may our hearts be long united!
May this treaty draw close for ever the bonds of a happy friendship! No
more wiles and stratagems! Aid us, oh! aid us, maiden huntress!
LYSISTRATA. All is for the best; and now, Laconians, take your wives away
home with you, and you, Athenians, yours. May husband live happily with
wife, and wife with husband. Dance, dance, to celebrate our bliss, and
let us be heedful to avoid like mistakes for the future.
CHORUS OF ATHENIANS Appear, appear, dancers, and the Graces with you! Let
us invoke, one and all, Artemis, and her heavenly brother, gracious
Apollo, patron of the dance, and Dionysus, whose eye darts flame, as he
steps forward surrounded by the Maenad maids, and Zeus, who wields the
flashing lightning, and his august, thrice-blessed spouse, the Queen of
Heaven! These let us invoke, and all the other gods, calling all the
inhabitants of the skies to witness the noble Peace now concluded under
the fond auspices of Aphrodite. Io Paean! Io Paean! dance, leap, as in
honour of a victory won. Evoe! Evoe! And you, our Laconian guests, sing
us a new and inspiring strain!
CHORUS OF LACONIANS. Leave once more, oh! leave once more the noble
height of Taygetus, oh! Muse of Lacedaemon, and join us in singing the
praises of Apollo of Amyclae, and Athena of the Brazen House, and the
gallant twin sons of Tyndarus, who practise arms on the banks of Eurotas
river. [469] Haste, haste hither with nimble-footed pace, let us sing
Sparta, the city that delights in choruses divinely sweet and graceful
dances, when our maidens bound lightly by the river side, like frolicsome
fillies, beating the ground with rapid steps and shaking their long locks
in the wind, as Bacchantes wave their wands in the wild revels of the
Wine-god. At their head, oh! chaste and beauteous goddess, daughter of
Latona, Artemis, do thou lead the song and dance. A fillet binding thy
waving tresses, appear in thy loveliness; leap like a fawn; strike thy
divine hands together to animate the dance, and aid us to renown the
valiant goddess of battles, great Athene of the Brazen House!
* * * * *
FINIS OF "LYSISTRATA"
* * * * *
Footnotes:
[390] At Athens more than anywhere the festivals of Bacchus (Dionysus)
were celebrated with the utmost pomp--and also with the utmost licence,
not to say licentiousness.
Pan---the rustic god and king of the Satyrs; his feast was similarly an
occasion of much coarse self-indulgence.
Aphrodite Colias--under this name the goddess was invoked by courtesans
as patroness of sensual, physical love. She had a temple on the
promontory of Colias, on the Attic coast--whence the surname.
The Genetyllides were minor deities, presiding over the act of
generation, as the name indicates. Dogs were offered in sacrifice to
them--presumably because of the lubricity of that animal.
At the festivals of Dionysus, Pan and Aphrodite women used to perform
lascivious dances to the accompaniment of the beating of tambourines.
Lysistrata implies that the women she had summoned to council cared
really for nothing but wanton pleasures.
[391] An obscene _double entendre_; Calonice understands, or pretends to
understand, Lysistrata as meaning a long and thick "membrum virile"!
[392] The eels from Lake Copa? s in Boeotia were esteemed highly by
epicures.
[393] This is the reproach Demosthenes constantly levelled against his
Athenian fellow-countrymen--their failure to seize opportunity.
[394] An island of the Saronic Gulf, lying between Magara and Attica. It
was separated by a narrow strait--scene of the naval battle of Salamis,
in which the Athenians defeated Xerxes--only from the Attic coast, and
was subject to Athens.
[395] A deme, or township, of Attica, lying five or six miles north of
Athens. The Acharnians were throughout the most extreme partisans of the
warlike party during the Peloponnesian struggle. See 'The Acharnians. '
[396] The precise reference is uncertain, and where the joke exactly
comes in. The Scholiast says Theagenes was a rich, miserly and
superstitious citizen, who never undertook any enterprise without first
consulting an image of Hecate, the distributor of honour and wealth
according to popular belief; and his wife would naturally follow her
husband's example.
[397] A deme of Attica, a small and insignificant community--a 'Little
Pedlington' in fact.
[398] In allusion to the gymnastic training which was _de rigueur_ at
Sparta for the women no less than the men, and in particular to the dance
of the Lacedaemonian girls, in which the performer was expected to kick
the fundament with the heels--always a standing joke among the Athenians
against their rivals and enemies the Spartans.
[399] The allusion, of course, is to the 'garden of love,' the female
parts, which it was the custom with the Greek women, as it is with the
ladies of the harem in Turkey to this day, to depilate scrupulously, with
the idea of making themselves more attractive to men.
[400] Corinth was notorious in the Ancient world for its prostitutes and
general dissoluteness.
[401] An Athenian general strongly suspected of treachery; Aristophanes
pretends his own soldiers have to see that he does not desert to the
enemy.
[402] A town and fortress on the west coast of Messenia, south-east part
of Peloponnese, at the northern extremity of the bay of Sphacteria--the
scene by the by of the modern naval battle of Navarino--in Lacedaemonian
territory; it had been seized by the Athenian fleet, and was still in
their possession at the date, 412 B. C. , of the representation of the
'Lysistrata,' though two years later, in the twenty-second year of the
War, it was recovered by Sparta.
[403] The Athenian women, rightly or wrongly, had the reputation of being
over fond of wine. Aristophanes, here and elsewhere, makes many jests on
this weakness of theirs.
[404] The lofty range of hills overlooking Sparta from the west.
[405] In the original "we are nothing but Poseidon and a boat"; the
allusion is to a play of Sophocles, now lost, but familiar to
Aristophanes' audience, entitled 'Tyro,' in which the heroine, Tyro,
appears with Poseidon, the sea-god, at the beginning of the tragedy, and
at the close with the two boys she had had by him, whom she exposes in an
open boat.
[406] "By the two goddesses,"--a woman's oath, which recurs constantly in
this play; the two goddesses are always Demeter and Proserpine.
[407] One of the Cyclades, between Naxos and Cos, celebrated, like the
latter, for its manufacture of fine, almost transparent silks, worn in
Greece, and later at Rome, by women of loose character.
[408] The proverb, quoted by Pherecrates, is properly spoken of those who
go out of their way to do a thing already done--"to kill a dead horse,"
but here apparently is twisted by Aristophanes into an allusion to the
leathern 'godemiche' mentioned a little above; if the worst comes to the
worst, we must use artificial means. Pherecrates was a comic playwright,
a contemporary of Aristophanes.
[409] Literally "our Scythian woman. " At Athens, policemen and ushers in
the courts were generally Scythians; so the revolting women must have
_their_ Scythian "Usheress" too.
[410] In allusion to the oath which the seven allied champions before
Thebes take upon a buckler, in Aeschylus' tragedy of 'The Seven against
Thebes,' v. 42.
[411] A volcanic island in the northern part of the Aegaean, celebrated
for its vineyards.
[412] The old men are carrying faggots and fire to burn down the gates of
the Acropolis, and supply comic material by their panting and wheezing as
they climb the steep approaches to the fortress and puff and blow at
their fires. Aristophanes gives them names, purely fancy ones--Draces,
Strymodorus, Philurgus, Laches.
[413] Cleomenes, King of Sparta, had in the preceding century commanded a
Lacedaemonian expedition against Athens. At the invitation of the
Alcmaeonidae, enemies of the sons of Peisistratus, he seized the
Acropolis, but after an obstinately contested siege was forced to
capitulate and retire.
[414] Lemnos was proverbial with the Greeks for chronic misfortune and a
succession of horrors and disasters. Can any good thing come out of
_Lemnos_?
[415] That is, a friend of the Athenian people; Samos had just before the
date of the play re-established the democracy and renewed the old
alliance with Athens.
[416] A second Chorus enters--of women who are hurrying up with water to
extinguish the fire just started by the Chorus of old men. Nicodice,
Calyce, Critylle, Rhodippe, are fancy names the poet gives to different
members of the band. Another, Stratyllis, has been stopped by the old men
on her way to rejoin her companions.
[417] Bupalus was a celebrated contemporary sculptor, a native of
Clazomenae. The satiric poet Hipponax, who was extremely ugly, having
been portrayed by Bupalus as even more unsightly-looking than the
reality, composed against the artist so scurrilous an invective that the
latter hung himself in despair. Apparently Aristophanes alludes here to a
verse in which Hipponax threatened to beat Bupalus.
[418] The Heliasts at Athens were the body of citizens chosen by lot to
act as jurymen (or, more strictly speaking, as judges and jurymen, the
Dicast, or so-called Judge, being merely President of the Court, the
majority of the Heliasts pronouncing sentence) in the Heliaia, or High
Court, where all offences liable to public prosecution were tried. They
were 6000 in number, divided into ten panels of 500 each, a thousand
being held in reserve to supply occasional vacancies. Each Heliast was
paid three obols for each day's attendance in court.
[419] Women only celebrated the festivals of Adonis. These rites were not
performed in public, but on the terraces and flat roofs of the houses.
[420] The Assembly, or Ecclesia, was the General Parliament of the
Athenian people, in which every adult citizen had a vote. It met on the
Pnyx hill, where the assembled Ecclesiasts were addressed from the Bema,
or speaking-block.
[421] An orator and statesman who had first proposed the disastrous
Sicilian Expedition, of 415-413 B. C. This was on the first day of the
festival of Adonis--ever afterwards regarded by the Athenians as a day of
ill omen.
[422] An island in the Ionian Sea, on the west of Greece, near
Cephalenia, and an ally of Athens during the Peloponnesian War.
[423] Cholozyges, a nickname for Demostratus.
[424] The State treasure was kept in the Acropolis, which the women had
seized.
[425] The second (mythical) king of Athens, successor of Cecrops.
[426] The leader of the Revolution which resulted in the temporary
overthrow of the Democracy at Athens (413, 412 B. C. ), and the
establishment of the Oligarchy of the Four Hundred.
[427] Priests of Cybele, who indulged in wild, frenzied dances, to the
accompaniment of the clashing of cymbals, in their celebrations in honour
of the goddess.
[428] Captain of a cavalry division; they were chosen from amongst the
_Hippeis_, or 'Knights' at Athens.
[429] In allusion to a play of Euripides, now lost, with this title.
Tereus was son of Ares and king of the Thracians in Daulis.
[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?
