The Clouds (sparknotes Literature Guide) 3k1k20

The Clouds

Aristophanes

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Contents

Context

Plot Overview

Character List

Analysis of Major Characters

Themes, Motifs & Symbols

Part 1

Part 2

Part 3

Part 4

Important Quotations Explained

Key Facts

Study Questions and Essay Topics

Quiz and Suggestions for Further Reading

Context

Greek drama was born, according to modern scholars' best conjectures, in 534 BCE at one of the many annual festivals honoring Dionysus. Dionysus was the God of wine and revelry. His name means "twice-born," alluding to his perilous birth wherein his father Zeus clutched him from the belly of his dying mother and implanted him into Zeus's own thigh out of which Dionysus would later spring. The Greeks associated Dionysus with seasons and with the notion of rebirth because of this extravagant myth. His rites and annual rituals were thus fertility rites that had been gradually formalized and ritualized. Performance of choral songs and hymns of praise, known as dithyrambs, came to dominate the festivals, until, in 534 BCE, the Greek ruler Pisistratus called for a competition among the performers. Theatre was born and Dionysus was its patron God.

The Clouds came to one such theatrical competition, the City Dionysia at Athens, in 423 BCE. By Aristophanes's day, the process of theatrical competition had been refined down to an art form. The festival was no longer an expression of revelry and ritual but a bona fide industry of its own, with strict rules governing selection of the playwright and producer as well as specific guidelines for appointing judges and tabulating votes. This first version of the play as it was performed in 423 BCE is no longer extant. Instead, the version that survives is a later edition of an indeterminate, yet eagerly debated, date. This later edition is incomplete and was probably never performed, but it provides evidence that the first edition was far from successful. It came in third out of the three plays performed.

Aristophanes himself was born c. 448 BCE at Athens during the city's heyday under Pericles. Not much is known about Aristophanes or his family except that they had enough money to supply their son with an excellent education that provided him with a firm foundation in literature and philosophy. In 431 BCE, however, Athens was plunged into the endless Peloponnesian War against Sparta

and the Spartan Allies. The war would drag on for decades until a conclusive peace was reached in 404 BCE. Thus, much of Aristophanes's adulthood ed amidst the turmoil of war, and much of his work, such as The Acharnians and Lysistrata suggest how the war taxed the minds, bodies, and souls of the Athenian people.

Aristophanes is the only extant dramatist of Greek "Old Comedy." Although he composed anywhere from thirty-six to fifty comedies during his lifetime, only eleven survive from which we may deduce qualities of the genre—its unsparing satire, its extravagant word play, its grand physical comedy, and its insistent moral core. Aristophanes's first play, The Banqueters, was performed in 427 BCE. The Babylonians soon followed and, as a result of this performance, Aristophanes was persecuted by the politician Cleon for "slandering" the image of Athens and Athenian politics. The Archanians, the first play to survive, follows in 425 BCE before The Clouds in 423 BCE. Aristophanes continued to write into the fourth century BCE and his last play, Plutus, or Wealth dates from 388 BCE, the year of his death. Aristophanes did not produce (or "direct" in the modern sense of the word) his own productions until The Horsemen of 424 BCE. He entrusted his last two plays to his son Araros's production.

Plot Overview

Strepsiades, the father of spend-thrift Pheidippides, cannot sleep because he is worried about the debts that he has incurred because of Pheidippides's expensive ion for racehorses. Strepsiades calls in a Slave to bring him his s so that he may tabulate his debts. Looking over his debts, he becomes enraged and his voice wakes Pheidippides. Strepsiades begs Pheidippides to refrain from his expensive ways and begs him to enroll in the new-fangled school next door wherein he may learn about esoteric natural sciences as well as sophistry that might help him outwit their creditors in court. Pheidippides stubbornly refuses, leaving Strepsiades to enroll himself.

Strepsiades arrives at the school and meets a Student who tells Strepsiades about Socrates's new experiments involving insects and astronomy. The Student shows Strepsiades the other Students of the school, bent over in their studies so that they may study geology with their faces and astronomy with their behinds. While the Student is showing Strepsiades their maps, Socrates appears in a balloon-basket hanging in mid-air. Socrates explains that the contraption helps him "suspend" (I.i.230) his judgment and open his mind to new ideas. Strepsiades explains his plight and asks for guidance. Socrates enlightens Strepsiades, proving to him that the gods do not exist and that the weather patterns are produced by a Chorus of Clouds. Socrates fleeces Strepsiades of his coat and hustles him inside.

In Strepsiades's absence, the Chorus of Clouds sings a song in defense of the play, berating the audience for not rewarding it when it was first produced. The Chorus praises the moral intent of the playwright and the important examples his satire teaches in troubled times.

Socrates and Strepsiades reemerge and discuss the gender of nouns. Socrates puts Strepsiades in a louse-ridden bed to contemplate. After much agony, Strepsiades shares his ludicrous theories for how to win his court case. Socrates despairs and calls him a worthless pupil. The Chorus of Clouds convinces Strepsiades to enroll his son instead.

Strepsiades runs home and quizzes Pheidippides with his newly acquired sophistry. He drags Pheidippides to the school where the two Arguments, Right and Wrong, argue over the proper model for boys' education. Right suggests a model of education based on traditional poetry and physical fitness, but his descriptions falter when his libido overwhelms him. Wrong unravels Right's argument with examples drawn from myth and other trivia. Right is thoroughly flustered and Wrong is granted Pheidippides as a pupil. The Chorus of Clouds intimates that Strepsiades's forcible education of Pheidippides will be his own undoing before turning to the audience, wheedling, bribing, and even threatening them for their approval of the play.

Strepsiades's day in court draws near and he goes to pick Pheidippides up at the school. Socrates promises that Pheidippides is well-versed in their special brand of specious learning which Pheidippides soon demonstrates when he attacks the idiom the day of "Old and New" as an instance of hysterical paradox. While Strepsiades is gloating that his son is a splendid example of Wrong Argument, he is visited by two creditors. The First Creditor demands that Strepsiades appear before the court. Strepsiades quizzes him about the gender of nouns and refuses to pay his debt on the basis of the First Creditor's apparent ignorance. The Second Creditor appears woefully wringing his hands and begging Strepsiades. Strepsiades berates him for his belief in the gods and uses the Wrong Argument to deny responsibility for any interest on his debt. He flogs the Second Creditor until he runs off. The Chorus sings a song warning that Strepsiades's "evil" (II.i.1303) will soon come back to him.

Sure enough, as their song winds down, Strepsiades bursts from the house while being beaten by Pheidippides. The two have been quarreling over the recitation

of traditional poetry. Pheidippides defends his beatings using sophistry. Strepsiades mourns that he has exchanged Pheidippides's obsession with expensive horses for his obsession with sophistry and rhetoric, which is proving to also have its price. Strepsiades blames the Chorus of Clouds for misleading him and they defend themselves by asserting that their deception taught Strepsiades a lesson. Strepsiades concedes that he has been wrong but still hungers to do violence against Socrates and the school. He summons his slave Xanthias and the two run over to the school and set fire to the roof. Chaerephon and a Second Student cry out from within as the building burns and finally rush outside. Strepsiades crows his "Revenge" (II.i.1506) and chases off the last of the Students by throwing rocks. The Chorus appraises the scene and takes its leave.

Character List

Strepsiades - An Athenian citizen and harried father, burdened by the debts his son, Pheidippides, has incurred. Strepsiades is the "hero" of the play, but he is not very heroic. He is concerned instead with pursuing his dishonest aim: shirking his debts instead of taking responsibility for them. Therefore, Strepsiades is more of an "anti-hero." He does not have the subtle, esoteric mind that it takes to succeed at the school, but rather frustrates Socrates and the other Students at the school with his stubbornness, his violence, and his limited, literal mind. He is a pragmatist, not a philosopher, and as such he is rooted in the physical world, happiest delivering a sound beating or masturbating. Because of his bumbling, brutish physicality, he is a fitting foil to Socrates's pure intellectualism.

Pheidippides - The spend-thrift and arrogant son of Strepsiades. He has adopted the aristocratic posturing of his mother and Uncle Megacles and demonstrates a ion for horses as well as a ion for esoteric knowledge. He is cocky and smug and proves a receptive pupil for the subtle rhetoric taught by Socrates. He is fascinated by himself—at first, his own material needs and finally his own whirling dervish of an intellect—and his egotism makes him cruel and ruthless.

Socrates - The master-sophist at the infamous school. Socrates is a spokesman for the "new education" of rhetoric, atheism, science, and sophistry. He represents the heights of esoteric knowledge—so removed from the reality of everyday life in Athens as to appear floating! In contrast to the brutish physicality of Strepsiades, Socrates represents pure, rarified intellect at its most ethereal and impractical. However, Socrates is not "above" human emotions such as anger and impatience, especially when plagued with such a buffoonish student as Strepsiades.

The Chorus of Clouds - The personified quasi-divinities who bring rain and thunder. The Chorus of Clouds acts as a core voice in the play, explaining certain motives and egging on the action. At times, they act as prophets, foreshadowing actions and obstacles to come. The Chorus of Clouds can interact directly with the audience and thus may seem to be removed from the action of the scene, much like the gods the chorus is supposed to be replacing. The chorus' prescience and sense of resolve makes its obvious candidates for divinity; with their singing and dancing en masse they lend the necessary air of ritual and spirituality. Also, because the Chorus speak directly to the audience about the play and about playwriting itself, they become mouthpieces for Aristophanes himself.

Wrong Argument - A personified school of thought. Wrong Argument is Right Argument's necessary foil. Like Socrates, Wrong Argument represents all that is wrong with sophistry and the "new education"—the specious moral content masked by slippery, well-wrought persuasion and rhetoric. Like Pheidippides, Wrong Argument is smug and disdainful of tradition. He has a facile mind, if not necessarily an upright set of values.

Right Argument - A personified school of thought. Right Argument is Wrong Argument's necessary foil. He, like Strepsiades, represents the "old" or "traditional" system of education, one that stressed obedience, reverence for one's elders, values indoctrinated in martial poetry such as Homer, and physical fitness. However, like Strepsiades, Right Argument's overdeveloped sense of the physical will be his undoing: his own over-zealous sexual appetite undermines the moral content in his argument, making him into a foolish pederast and not a wise pedagogue.

Student - A disciple at Socrates's school who shows Strepsiades the ropes

with characteristic verbal flair and an air of secrecy worthy of the FreeMasons. The Student takes great, albeit serious, delight in the minutiae of Socrates's scientific investigations. He is, however, defensive of his school when Strepsiades drops by and he acts defensively, even a bit neurotically, in order to maintain the order and sanctity of their proceedings.

First Creditor - An angry Athenian to whom Strepsiades owes money. He comes to demand Strepsiades's appearance in court and acts with great brashness and surety. He pays great attention to detail and procedure— attention that he demonstrates in bringing a witness with him when he pays his call. He is not overjoyed to be prosecuting Strepsiades, but acts with good energy and organization in preparing his case.

Second Creditor - A mopey Athenian to whom Strepsiades owes money. He is a morose, weepy figure, prone to swearing great, pathetic oaths to the gods. A comical figure of pathos. A great Greek Eeyore (of Winnie the Pooh fame).

Xanthias - A household slave to Strepsiades. He is obedient, but will stand up for himself when challenged.

Chaerephon - A philosopher-sophist from Socrates's school. Renowned for his paleness and his esoteric intellect, he is also whiny and helpless.

Students - Pupils of Socrates and Chaerephon. Blind adherents to esoteric knowledge. Moony, silent, pale types without physical vigor.

Character Analysis

Strepsiades

Strepsiades is the anti-hero of Aristophanes's play. He is an older Athenian citizen and a farmer. He married a well-to-do girl with aristocratic pretensions and has a son, Pheidippides, who has inherited the young woman's rarified tastes and has begun running Strepsiades into the ground with debts to finance his stables of expensive horses. Strepsiades is fundamentally dishonest: the action of the play occurs, in fact, because Strepsiades does not wish to pay the money that he owes his creditors. This dishonesty is no mere whim, but it sees Strepsiades through many a painful trial in its pursuit—be it the loss of his coat or the confinement to a flea-ridden bed. A plucky, stubborn fellow, Strepsiades does not loose his resolve once: not when trying to convince his smug son, nor when trying to wrap his stumped brain around some of the school's teachings, not even when Socrates rejects him as a hopeless failure. In this sense, sad Strepsiades represents the Athenian tenacity, especially when one considers that Aristophanes was composing his plays during the interminable Peloponnesian War when Athens and Sparta were at war for decades on end.

Strepsiades is a practical man: he has a problem—he is in debt—and he finds an existing solution for it in the theories and arguments taught at Socrates's school. In spite of the fact that he places his hopes on the slippery rhetoric and shady morals of the new sophistry and "new education," Strepsiades is a countryman and a traditionalist at heart. He wishes that his son Pheidippides were a farmer like him and his father before him. He gets into a fight with Pheidippides when Pheidippides disdains his request to recite some of the traditional poetry of Simonides, Aeschylus, and Euripides, works that made up the backbone of any traditional education.

Strepsiades's practicality manifests itself in his hearty physicality. He is comfortable with his own body and all that it produces. His quickness to violence and his low physical humor suggest this ease in his own skin. Since Strepsiades is a comic anti-hero, his physicality necessarily means that he had no intellect to speak of: when placed by Socrates into the flea-ridden bed to philosophize, Strepsiades masturbates. Likewise, when Socrates speaks of the Chorus of Clouds as "in a whirl" (I.ii.361), Strepsiades thinks that he has discovered a new god called "Awhirl" (I.ii.814). His inability to process subtle (and not-so-subtle) intellectual details makes him a good foil for the pale, ethereal Socrates.

As the play progresses, Strepsiades comes, like a tragic hero, to regret his actions. When he is being physically and verbally assaulted by Pheidippides, newly armed with his fancy sophistic education, Strepsiades bemoans his earlier rashness in considering the "new education" the solution. However "just" he considers the Chorus of Clouds's verdict to be, he still persists in burning down the school and calling it "revenge" (II.i.1506). Therefore, his ission is a halfhearted acceptance of his own ability at best.

The Chorus of Clouds

The Chorus of Clouds is an intriguing group. The few stage directions we have specify that they must be a group of young women decked out in gauzy cloudsuggesting garb, all of which must have been quite moving and effective when the group sang and danced. Because they are the only ones who speak directly to the audience and who speak about the play and playwriting in general, the Chorus occupies an interesting divide between audience and actors: they seem to be part divinity, part playwright, part commentator. Because of their status as quasi- divinities, they are the element of the play that most suggests the ritual

function of early drama. Early drama in fact evolved from competitions of choruses at festivals honoring the god Dionysus. Therefore, it is fitting that the Chorus of Clouds provides the one voice in this play that is urging reverence and invoking the protection of the gods upon the play.

The Chorus themselves sing and dance en masse, and the effect of their speech and movements must have been constant reminders of religious rite and ritual to an Athenian audience. The prescience the Chorus possesses also suggests their proximity to divinity: they seem to know that they are egging Strepsiades towards his necessary, rectifying downfall and they seem to accept their role which is akin to the role of rectifying "Nemesis" in Greek tragedy.

The Chorus's opportunity to engage the audience in their "parabasis" also provides an instance for them to speak on behalf of the playwright: as his commentator or mouthpiece. Their digression on the moral importance of satire in troubled times and their assertion of the purity of Aristophanes's literary intentions defend Aristophanes and his oeuvre against charges, such as those brought by the politician "Cleon" (I.ii.547), of slander or pointless mockery. Their discourse lends the whole experience of satire its reason for being. Satire is essentially a conservative form whose humor gains its extravagant momentum from its spectacular deviation from an agreed-upon standard of behavior. The Chorus's speech underlines satire's moral function and it reminds the audience to be aware that there are matters involved in the entertainment that are, unlike Wrong Argument, not just pretty words for show, but essential matters that are crucial to the health of Athens that they consider.

Socrates

As mentioned earlier, the Socrates that Aristophanes presents is a composite of

several current philosophers and sophists, such as Anaxagoras, Diogenes, Protagoras, Hippon, Korax, and Gorgias. Therefore, Socrates is as much of a "personification" as Right Argument and Wrong Argument. Socrates represents the heights to which esoteric intellect can reach: literally, with his arrival in a mid-air balloon-basket, and figuratively, with his delight in and cultivation of various overly intellectual mumbo-jumbo. Socrates, who is the foil of the buffoon Strepsiades, can discourse voluminously on everything from flea's feet to meteorology, and yet, perhaps most interestingly, the play chronicles what can best be described as his fall from lofty eloquence to abuse- laden frustration. When Strepsiades arrives at his school, Socrates radiates pseudo-scientific rationality and calm. He explains the slipperiest of his theories, from the harmful effects of terrestrial water on one's intellect to the mechanics of cloud-borne thunder, with a tone of purpose and mastery. Although the audience is surely laughing at this master of the esoteric from the get-go, it is only later when the effort expended in trying to teach the impossible Strepsiades have exhausted him that he becomes an irritated, short- tempered bully who seems only capable of sputtering and bemoaning his luck at having such a stubborn pupil.

Although Strepsiades diminishes Socrates's fluent eloquence with his pestering inability to learn, Socrates is still quite capable of instructing Pheidippides, Strepsiades's son, in the dangerous art of persuasion. The violence that Pheidippides spouts to Strepsiades (and then liberally applies about the face and neck!) is a direct result of his training at Socrates's hands: the fist that struck Strepsiades had Socrates's "fingerprints" all over them. Therefore, although Strepsiades reduces Socrates to gasping disbelief and although the audience chuckles at Socrates's extravagance throughout, Socrates is still very much a dangerous and potent figure. Indeed the level of absurdity that Socrates is granted only suggests how much of a threat Aristophanes considered the "new education" to represent. The laws of satire dictate that the greatest target must earn the most extravagant, absurd characterization, lest the audience disregard or miss them as a potential evil that needs to be addressed and rectified.

Themes, Motifs, and Symbols

Themes

Reconciling Science and Religion

The Clouds is a play primarily concerned with education. Nevertheless, it is a play with a strong moral message and a tragic arc that ends with the reassertion of the gods: Strepsiades shrieks, "Revenge for the injured gods!" as he stones the fleeing sophists (II.i.1506). This religious reassertion is especially intriguing because The Clouds is not a particularly pious play. It is doubtful that even underneath the many layers of satire and gross physical humor—down to where the play's undeniable moral center sits—we will locate a religious or even broadly spiritual motive or lesson. Rather, Aristophanes's comedy seems to be preaching honesty and responsibility: basic secular, or civic, virtues. Nonetheless, Aristophanes leaves his audience with religion. Why?

In the fifth century BCE, around the time when Aristophanes wrote The Clouds, the first stirrings of what today would be considered "scientific theory" were being felt. Anaxagoras, for instance, considered the sun, moon, and stars to be the fiery objects that humans more or less understand them to be today— unseating the prevailing religious notion that the sun, moon, and stars were gods or divine beings. However, atheism was a prosecutable offense in fifth-century Athens, a charge akin to treason. How, therefore, could these new scientific hypotheses be granted the imaginative and theoretical space of consideration when the prevailing religious milieu considered them treasonous, or heresy?

The strangeness of Aristophanes's turn to the gods suggests the awkwardness of this period in intellectual history. His defense or reassertion of the Gods is satirical: a critical examination of the Athenian's illogical, unwavering adherence to their gods. Divine sanctity guards not only divine beings but also the study and criticism of the divine. Aristophanes is suggesting, by considering science with religion in this play, that the two often-conflicting concepts must be equally open to inquiry, to criticism, and even to satire.

The Quest for Proper Education

As mentioned above, The Clouds is a satire that is primarily concerned with education. (In fact, its full title reads: The Clouds, or The School for Sophists.) Aristophanes employs the "Thinkery" (I.i.93) because it represents comically and exactly what he believes a school should not be: dishonest, overly serious, and entirely divorced from the practices and concerns of the real world. Aristophanes is fundamentally a conservative thinker. Fittingly, satire is a conservative form: a comedic genre that draws its punch from hysterical deviations from an agreed-upon and socially condoned standard of values and behavior. Aristophanes would most probably side with Right Argument who, in spite of his lustful distractions, prescribes an educational system based on careful study of classical literature supplemented with a good dose of physical fitness. (Undoubtedly, this is the kind of education that Aristophanes himself enjoyed, although the specifics of biographical detail are unavailable to us.) Right Argument's educational model was respected and well-rounded: both mind and body were exercised to their fullest potential in order to provide a holistic experience.

Aristophanes, however, is never one to settle for less. There are problems with this traditional model and he knows it. This is why he paints Right Argument as a pedophile and why he allows Right Argument to utter such vacuous statements

as "Be ashamed when you ought to be ashamed," (I.ii.1013). This last example demonstrates precisely why Aristophanes feels that the traditional model of education needs to be satirized along with the new: Aristophanes believes in the importance of satire and criticism in Athenian society. He believes that decades, even centuries, of not questioning or challenging the authority of the older models have left them stagnant. The circular, vacuous statement above illustrates how, a traditional system left unexamined might lose sight of the convictions and values upon which it was founded.

Educational Playwriting

As mentioned above, Aristophanes is fundamentally a conservative thinker. Fittingly, satire is a conservative form: a comedic genre that draws its punch from hysterical deviations from an agreed-upon and socially condoned standard of values and behavior. Therefore, it is understandable when, in the "parabasis," the Chorus of Clouds digresses from the action of the play to address the audience about playwriting in general and about Aristophanes's career in particular that the Chorus uses the chance to defend Aristophanes's moral aims. Since education itself is the primary concern of this play in particular, the reminder of satire's educative purpose is twice as resonant. The Chorus argues that, without the good and bad examples gleaned from satire, how would the Athenian citizenship know right from wrong?

This "parabasis" serves as both a moral thesis in favor of playwriting as well as a carefully timed defense. Cleon, whom the Chorus of Clouds mentions, is the powerful Athenian politician who, a year or two prior to the original production of The Clouds had taken Aristophanes to court for slandering Athens in the presence of foreign dignitaries. Cleon's court case was in response to Aristophanes's festival-winning play The Babylonians which had been performed at the grand City Dionysia festival to which crowds flocked from far and wide. Aristophanes exploits the venue—an educative satire on education

itself—to explain his moral and educative aims and to make his benign intentions crystal clear.

Reconciling Education with Daily Life

As mentioned above, The Clouds is concerned with the question of a proper, moral education. Right Argument seems to offer an appealing curriculum—wellrounded and grounded in practical experience. However, lack of fresh insights have rendered Right Argument's traditions stale, vacuously circular, and out of touch with the current ideas. The alternative to Right Argument is Wrong Argument, and in particular Socrates's school for sophists and other slipperythinkers. However, as Pheidippides disgustedly gasps early in the play, such sophist-masters and their followers are an unlikely lot: "stuck-up white-faced barefoot characters" (I.i.93) who are so removed from the real actions and transactions of everyday life and the world that they appear floating in a basket above it! Aristophanes dislikes Socrates and the sophists because they are dishonest: their Wrong Arguments are morally as vacuous as Right Argument's morally upright maxims are semantically empty. Also, as the conflicts between the pig-headed pragmatist Strepsiades and the ethereal, esoteric Socrates demonstrate, sophistic learning is necessarily separate from the world. Socrates, at one point, berates Strepsiades for his disinterest in the minutiae of sentence rhythms, but meanwhile all Strepsiades wants out of his education is to learn to keep his money. Aristophanes is a realist: he understands that moral messages are best digested within a comic coating—a fact that demonstrates the inescapability of the funny, grubby, popular world.

Motifs

Old and New

The phrase "Old and New" is repeated throughout The Clouds in order to advance and emphasize the thematic issue of the proper educational system: old (meaning, traditional) or new (meaning sophistic). The day of "Old and New" is the Athenian term for the end of the month. Since months were calculated according to a lunar calendar, the end of the month occurred with each cycle of the moon: the last day of the "old" cycle of the moon and the first day of the "new" cycle of the moon. Debts were collected on this final day, the day of "Old and New," and it is Strepsiades's anxiety over this day of (financial) reckoning that leads him to the wild and crazy notion of learning sophistry in order to outwit his creditors in court.

Currency

Currency, or money, is central to this play: the wealth discrepancy between Strepsiades and his wife makes his marriage uncomfortable and it is his debts that make his nights unbearable with worry. The notion of money suggests a legacy and the notion of a legacy or inheritance of money suggests familial relationships. Therefore, the idea of money and family are intertwined.

Money and the notion of debt are also important to this play in of its tragic arc: in tragedy, the tragic hero "pays for" his tragic flaw by his suffering. Thus, in this play, Strepsiades receives back, at Pheidippides's pummeling hand, the bruises he has dealt out to slaves, students, and creditors, with added interest as well. The notion of "revenge" (II.i.1506) itself contains an awareness of finance: giving someone what is due. Aristophanes's tragi-comedy is driven by the question of "what is due" in particular: Strepsiades owes his creditors money, and when Strepsiades misbehaves by deciding not to pay this debt, he pays for

his poor choice in other ways.

The word "currency," in particular, carries with it a potent pun on the word "current." As mentioned above, much of this play is concerned with the question of how to digest much of the new or "current" information—be it science, sophistry, or atheism—that was circulating in fifth-century Athens.

Gendered Nouns

Much of the humor in this play derives from Aristophanes's hysterical invention of specifically gendered nouns, such as "chicker," "chickeness," "trough," and "triffen," (I.ii.658). Not only does Strepsiades flaunt his newly enriched vocabulary to his son Pheidippides, but he also uses it as the basis of his abuse of his two creditors. The words that Aristophanes invents are delightfully droll and because of their novelty, they seem to us and to Strepsiades to represent the heights of chic. Why else would Strepsiades waste so much time and breath clucking over "chicken"?

However, the words that Socrates teaches Strepsiades are precisely as banal as that: chicken, trough. He does not teach Strepsiades the proper names for potions, spells, or distant kings. Rather, he focuses on the trivial, boring vocabulary. Therefore, in spite of how delicate "triffen" may sound, the audience must realize that pigs eat from it! The disjunction between the prettiness and level of specialization between the invented word and its representative object creates great comedy. This disjunction also reemphasizes the key theme of the unfortunate disconnect between intellectualism and pragmatism, grand knowledge and the real world.

Symbols

The Clouds

The Chorus of Clouds are an intriguing group. As a chorus, they speak directly to the audience and act as Aristophanes's mouthpiece. As a chorus in a tragicomedy, they represent the "nemesis," the rectifying, necessary evil that brings the tragic hero to due punishment: the prescience necessary to fulfill this particular plot function lends them an eerie air of superiority and distance, akin to gods. However, Socrates speaks of them in the most basic of as the pockets of water and energy that cause rain: dumb, fluffy meteorological phenomena that, at their best, inspire cloud-gazing hippies and, at their worst, do nothing more than lend thunder its ill-digested rumble. This latter definition is especially interesting when you consider that it is the Chorus of Clouds that gives the play its primary name. The Clouds lend the satire their name because they represent, to Athenian idiom, what we today would call "hot air": The Clouds are symbols of the intellectual fluff that Socrates is teaching his students. Clouds in the sky look big and substantial, but in fact they are mere clumps of thin vapor—a fact that the new scientific advances were beginning to appreciate. Likewise, Wrong Argument is full of pomp and intellect—an imposing figure until you realize that his debates are mere snatches of important-sounding trivia that have no real, honest use.

Insects

If the curriculum of Socrates's school was judged by the introductory impression Strepsiades receives speaking with the Student, one might think the master-

sophist studied entomology and not philosophy! From the introductory anecdotes about fleas' feet to the digestive play-by-play of gnats, tales from the Thinkery share an obsessive focus on insects, especially tiny insects whose presence suggests the absence of proper hygiene. Much of Aristophanes's project tries to render the curriculum of the school as vividly and as humorously as possible: instead of boring his audience by inventing hopelessly ethereal and abstract theories, he uses physical humor—insect humor—to illustrate the pettiness and unsuitability of their research. The insects suggest triviality because of their size. Insects, with their tiny bodies, recall the meaningless trivia that Wrong Argument presents to cross- examine Right Argument: our modern idiom preserves the term "nit-picking" to suggest someone who is overly fastidious, grossly and inappropriately attentive to detail in the way that Aristophanes suggests the sophists are.

The Flea-Ridden Bed

Like the symbol of the insect, the symbol of the flea-ridden bed suggests the futility, grossness, and triviality of sophistic pursuits. The loony sophist Socrates considers the bed "appropriate" or "conducive" to good, creative thought. The flea-ridden bed recalls the "nit-picking" critique of sophistic argument and it also connotes laziness and sloppiness. A flea-ridden bed is sloppy because it is unclean and suggests how unhealthy the sophists' disregard of worldly matters was: unhealthy to the point of causing physical pain and damage. Not only is sophistic argument hard on the listeners; it is torturously hard and painful on the bodies and psyches of its practitioners, warping them with its cruel and unusual demands. Also, the bed is traditionally a symbol of sloth: a bed is not somewhere you go to work hard at anything, but rather a place you go to relax and not work. Therefore, being called to do hard work in bed is at root perverse.

Act One: Scene 1–First Half of Scene 2

Summary

Scene One

Strepsiades wakes from a fitful sleep. He bemoans the sorry state of war- torn Athens and the flighty servants, but most of all he is troubled by his spend-thrift son Pheidippides. Pheidippides has expensive tastes, especially as regards the racehorses after which he was named by his high-born mother with her aristocratic airs. The cost of buying and maintaining the necessary stables of thoroughbred racehorses is putting an enormous strain on Strepsiades's pocketbook. He asks his slave to bring him his checkbook so that he may mull over his debts and plot a way to avoid his creditors who will soon be clamoring after their money. Strepsiades's angry ing awakes Pheidippides who is blissfully unaware of his father's plight and who makes a pathetic plea for peace and for sleep. Strepsiades beseeches Pheidippides to reform his extravagance and to practice moderation and thrift.

Strepsiades has noticed that the building next door houses the "Thinkery" (I.i.93) wherein scholars and philosophers of mystical, natural, and rhetorical wisdom reside, presided over by Socrates. Strepsiades declares that the scholars at the "Thinkery" have redefined the world in new, materialistic . According to Strepsiades, they say "that the sky is like one of those round things you use to bake bread" (I.i.93). These philosophers, he continues, are studying two

stereotypical arguments, "Right and Wrong" (I.i.93). The "Wrong" argument is morally inferior but rhetorically superior: slick and convincing. These philosophers are studying how to conquer the "Right" argument by this cleverly concocted "Wrong" argument. Strepsiades sees potential in this pursuit, hoping that the philosophers will be able to teach Pheidippides a wittily "Wrong" argument to outdo the creditors In court. However, the smug, spoiled Pheidippides refuses to comply with his father's suggestion, and Strepsiades himself, in his desperation, marches over to the "Thinkery" to enroll himself.

Scene Two (Part One)

Strepsiades arrives at the "Thinkery" and meets a disdainful Student who tells him about some of Socrates's latest experiments, such as measuring how many flea-feet a flea jumped and examining whether gnats hum with their mouths or with their asses. The Student takes Strepsiades into the school where he sees several students comically bent over and studying the ground. The Student informs Strepsiades that, when bent over in this manner, the students can study geology with their eyes and astronomy with their behinds.

While Strepsiades and the Student are getting introduced, Socrates floats onto the stage, suspended in a gondola. Socarates, the exceedingly esoteric sophist, explains that his contrivance helps him think more openly by keeping his snap judgments in "suspension" (I.ii.230). Strepsiades explains his situation to Socrates and asks for ission. Socrates performs an initiation rite and calls in the Chorus of Clouds to prove to Strepsiades that the Gods do not exist. Strepsiades, misunderstanding Socrates's explanation of atmospheric physics as a new religion and not the end of religion itself, promises to worship the Clouds instead of the Gods. He asks them to be a superior orator so that he can win wealth and fame, and he celebrates the vision of his future self, enhanced by his education, with the Chorus in song.

Socrates and Strepsiades begin the "preliminaries" (I.ii.456) of Strepsiades's formal education as Socrates questions Strepsiades about his character and his native talents. Socrates becomes frustrated with Strepsiades's ignorance and stubbornness. He fleeces Strepsiades of his coat and hustles him into the school.

Analysis

The subject of the "new education," the education offered by the schools of sophists that are parodied in The Clouds, is not new to Aristophanes or his audience. In 427 BCE, The Banqueters, Aristophanes's earliest known play was performed at one of the Dionysiac festivals. This play no longer survives in its entirety, but scholars can infer from what few fragments we possess that this play, like The Clouds, centers around a father-son relationship. However, in The Banqueters, the relationship is between a father and two very dissimilar sons, "the moral [boy] and immoral [boy]" (I.i.547). When the two sons are sent from their farm to a sophist in the city, the "moral" son flees the urban impropriety and the "immoral" son stays to imbibe the sneaky trade secrets of the sophists. This "new education" that the "immoral" son exploits is considered "new" because of its new emphasis on rhetoric and sophistry. Such an education focuses on showy but not necessarily sound arguments. The older, more traditional education, by contrast, relies upon more morally weighty models of conduct and eloquence, usually drawn from the epic poetry of Homer, who stressed martial valor and communal values.

In The Banqueters, the split between "old" and "new" education conforms to the predictable split in generations: the father is the traditionalist and the "immoral" son is gung-ho about the new models. However, in The Clouds, it is the father, Strepsiades, who is eager to have his son indoctrinated in the "new education." Pheidippides himself resists and clings to the privileges that tradition and "old money" have earned for him, such as his prized racehorses. Also, in The Banqueters the father and the "moral" son clearly represent Aristophanes and the audience's sympathies and sense of rectitude: they are the moral heroes of the play. Strepsiades, by contrast, in The Clouds, is in no way heroic or virtuous. His motivating impulse is crooked and dishonest: he wishes to cheat his creditors out of the money they have loaned him in good faith. Strepsiades, therefore, represents more of an "anti-hero" than a traditional "hero."

The "new education" that the sophists at the "Thinkery" pioneer represents the first stirrings of scientific theories that were circulating in Athens at the time of

the play's production in the fifth century BCE. Aristophanes mocks this new science by making it appear ridiculous and trivial: obsessively concerned with the measurement of insect feet, the digestion of a gnat, etc. He combines this new scientific experimentation with the new emphasis on rhetoric to present the sophists as laughably literal: the notion of "suspending one's judgment" becomes literally, physically realized by Socrates who enters dangling in mid- air.

Many of the theories that Aristophanes parodies and attributes to Socrates and his school were current intellectual trends circulating in Athens. Alan Sommerstein, in his introduction to The Clouds in the Penguin Classics edition, divides the "new education" into the four constituent elements, "atheism, scientific inquiry and speculation, rhetoric, and the new morality" (Penguin, 1973). Many of these trends actually had their roots in other scientists and philosophers of that era, such as Anaxagoras, Hippon, Diogenes, Protagoras, and Gorgias. Anaxagoras redefined cosmology and astronomy by suggesting that the sun, moon, and stars were physical and not divine bodies. He also redefined meteorology according to these , positing the theory of thunder and rain that Socrates espouses, that weather is a matter of clouds and cloud collisions, not divine intervention. Hippon's belief that all matter is made up of the two essential elements, water and fire, is parodied when Strepsiades speaks of the sky as "one of those round things [i.e. baking covers] you use to bake bread" (I.i.93). Diogenes's theories on the importance of air and aerie intelligence are evident in Socrates's emphasis on the clear- headedness of "suspended" thinking, especially when he arrives in mid-air. Protagoras espoused agnosticism, or doubt about the existence of the gods, which Aristophanes herein inflates into pure atheism, or outright denial of the gods. Finally, Gorgias pioneered the rhetorical training, based on legal speechifying, that stressed presentation over content, superficial slickness over moral rectitude. As noted, this rhetorical approach is the overall target of the play's satire.

Therefore, Aristophanes's Socrates is undoubtedly a composite philosopher: a character and not an exact biographical sketch. It is in the best interest of the play to consolidate all of the theories and practices into one figure, and Socrates was the most familiar, accessible figure from philosophy, and a local Athenian to boot. Plato, in his Apology goes to great lengths to refute Aristophanes's portrait

of Socrates from The Clouds, stating that the image of Socrates as "a clever man who was a thinker about the things up above, investigated everything that was underground, and made the worse argument the better" (18b-d) was purely an invention of "a comic poet"(18b-d): Aristophanes. Plato denies that, as Aristophanes suggests, Socrates charged fees for his school, preferring to cast Socrates's interactions with the youth of Athens as informal discussions, not lectures or lessons.

However, scholars, such as Sommerstein, now conjecture that it is possible that Socrates's possessed more of an interest in natural sciences than Plato would be comfortable itting. Also, while Socrates may not have charged set fees for his interactions with disciples, undoubtedly he reaped material benefits from his students in the form of presents and meals. Finally, Plato agrees that Socrates liked to question and test many basic presumptions the Athenians had: skepticism was his defining methodology. Sommerstein characterizes the difference between the Platonic and Aristophanic Socrates as one who "refutes statements which are apparently true[versus one who] refutes statements which are actually true" (Penguin, 1973). Aristophanes's choice to inflate this skepticism to outright absurdity is a matter of dramatic necessity, of comic caricature.

Act One: Parabasis of Scene 2–Scene 3

Summary

Scene Two (Parabasis)

As Strepsiades turns to enter the school, the Chorus of Clouds sings him a valediction and then turns to address the audience. The Chorus attacks the audience for not ing the play in its earlier festival run. They recount Aristophanes's success with previous plays and paint a demure, deserving picture of Aristophanes's play: "My Comedy's a modest girl" (I.ii.547), a distraught maiden such as an "unwed mother" (I.ii.547) or "Electra" (I.ii.547) looking to reunite her family. The Chorus insist upon this "modest[y]" by claiming that Aristophanes never resorts to the gross physical and sexual humor to which other playwrights stoop. The picture the Chorus paints is of a long-suffering figure who has some vital, "new ideas" (I.ii.547) to present and who is standing by them in spite of persecution by "Cleon" (I.ii.574) or "plagiari[sm]" (I.ii.547). They insist that these "new ideas" are for the betterment of Athens and will improve the quality and character of the Athenian citizenship.

The Chorus of Clouds make a plea that the audience of Athenian citizens reconsider the play's worth and treat them justly—with respect, as they treat the gods. The Chorus ends its interlude by ing along a complaint from the "Moon" (I.ii.609) that the Athenians look to rectify their miscalculated lunar calendar, since their mishap has confused secular and sacred days and is causing cosmic chaos.

Scene Two (Continued)

Socrates bursts out of the "Thinkery" arguing with Strepsiades who has proven to be a frustrating student. The two bicker. Strepsiades is unable to grasp much of what Socrates is asking of him. Socrates decides to teach Strepsiades about the gender of nouns: he introduces Strepsiades to the word "chickenness" (I.ii.658) for female chicken and "triffen" (I.ii.658) for a feminine trough. Even this lesson proves too much for Strepsiades. Disgusted, Socrates demands that Strepsiades get into bed and think about the lesson. The bed is flea-ridden and Strepsiades writhes, unable to properly philosophize. But he is not so incapacitated that he cannot masturbate, which he does.

Socrates and Strepsiades consider how to best avoid Strepsiades's debts. Strepsiades concocts amazingly fanciful plots—stopping time with sorcery, destroying evidence, and finally suicide—as a means to escape his predicament. Socrates declares that Strepsiades is a hopeless failure and storms off. Strepsiades appeals to the Chorus of Clouds. The Chorus suggests that Strepsiades enroll his son Pheidippides in his place. Strepsiades runs off. The Chorus turns conspiratorially to Socrates and encourages him to take advantage of Strepsiades.

Scene Three

Strepsiades hauls Pheidippides out of the house and raves to him about the wisdom and thrift of the philosophers at the "Thinkery." He enlightens his son to

his new "atheism" and the proper gender of nouns. He is so wound up that Pheidippides thinks him mad. He drags Pheidippides to the school to meet Socrates. Socrates sizes-up Pheidippides and suggests a fee for his education. Strepsiades consents and Socrates calls forth two personified Arguments, Right and Wrong, to educate Pheidippides by their example.

Right and Wrong bicker and swap insults. Right defends the existence of the gods against Wrong's skepticism and blames Wrong for corrupting the Athenian youth and disrupting tradition. The Chorus of Clouds summons Right and Wrong to a formal debate over education and morality in order to decide how best to teach Pheidippides. Right speaks in of the traditional educational system under which boys were obedient, respectful, and strong. Right's students are philosopher-soldiers and he swoons as he speaks, considering their beauty. After Right speaks, Wrong does not propose a different system, but rather crossexamines Right's statements according to examples drawn from myth and other items of trivia. Wrong's needling argument flusters Right, and Wrong wins the ability to teach Pheidippides. The Chorus of Clouds ends the act with an aside to the audience and festival judges, insinuating that the quasi-divine Chorus of Clouds will reward those who reward the Chorus, but that it will curse those who spurn the Chorus's obvious charms.

Analysis

After the Chorus of Clouds sing Strepsiades a valediction upon his matriculation, they turn aside to the audience and depart from the narrative flow of the play to comment on the history of the play's production. This interlude, known as a "parabasis," was part of the general form or framework for Greek drama. These formal elements were not rigid structural devices, but rather provided dramatic "punctuation" which helped the architecture of the drama. Since Greek drama developed out of competitions by choral performers, much of the major formal elements of a play hinge on the action of the chorus. The typical

framework, or "skeleton," of a play would proceed as follows: the play opens with a "prologue" in which characters provide exposition for the drama that is to follow; the chorus make their entrance with a song known as a "parodos"; two characters debate a major theoretical question in a formal debate known as an "agon"; the chorus sings a "parabasis," which is a highly formalized diversion from the linear plot; a second "parabasis" may follow; and finally, the chorus exits with a festive song or "exodus" marking the end of the play. Other typical devices include one neighbor knocking at another's door, beseeching help, and in The Clouds Socrates is the neighbor to whom Strepsiades flees when his debts overwhelm him.

The Clouds lacks an "exodus," or final celebration, but contains a "prologue," "parados," "agon," one "parabasis," and the appeal for help. The "parabasis" comes with a strict set of rules dictating the alternation of song and speech that make up the form: the "parabasis" opens with an introductory song or "kommation." A long speech follows, then two shorter songs, and finally two short speeches. True to the nature of the form, the "parabasis" does not advance the action or plot of the play. Instead, the "parabasis" is a very meta- theatrical interlude wherein the Chorus speaks about the play and about playwriting in general. The long speech near the beginning of the interlude wherein the Chorus berates the audience, blaming them for the failure of the play's run at the festival of Dionysia in 423 BCE has lead scholars to conjecture to that the edition of the play that we now have is the partially revised second draft of the play, a draft that can be dated from the allusions in the speech to no earlier than 420 BCE, according to the scholar Douglas M. McDowell in his analysis of the play (Oxford University Press, 1995). This is considered a partial revision because "Cleon" (I.ii.547), the leading politician who had prosecuted Aristophanes for slandering Athens after the production of his earlier satire The Babylonians, had died in 422 BCE and it is unlikely that, after his death, such defensive comments would have been necessary.

However, much of the "parabasis" shows the wounds sustained by Cleon's prosecution. Much of the "parabasis" is concerned with asserting the good moral value that drama, even satirical drama, contains. Aristophanes's choice to speak of himself, the poor persecuted playwright, as an "unwed mother" not only

increases the sense of pathos and injustice at Cleon's attack, but also provides an emotional parallel to the familial relationships within this and earlier plays. The "parabasis" asserts that Aristophanes writes "modest" (I.ii.547) comedy that does not stoop to employ low or grotesque jokes or costumes, and scholars have suggested that these references are probably ironic and intended for a few guffaws. How else would we explain the later jokes that graphically compound philosophy with masturbation?

However, it is likely that Aristophanes quite earnestly intends his satires to provide the moral models that will educate and enlighten a corrupt Athens. Satire, as many scholars note, is a fundamentally conservative form, whose comedy gains its momentum through gross and exaggerated deviation from an accepted and widely endorsed standard. Aristophanes argues that his audience will be advised by the good and bad choices made by characters in his plays to live better lives after the last chorus member has danced off of the stage. Therefore, although much of the theory bandied about in The Clouds might suggest endorsement of atheism, which was widely considered sinful, much of the "parabasis" is at pains to invoke the gods: to reassert their existence and to call upon their aid and guidance.

After the "parabasis," when Strepsiades's education continues, Aristophanes delights in parodying more current rhetorical and philosophical trends. The amusing redefinition of nouns according to their gender is a parody of Protagoras, who first divided nouns into masculine, feminine, and neuter. The possible legal arguments that Strepsiades concocts under Socrates's tutelage— arguments that absurdly culminate in Strepsiades considering his own death as a profitable way out of expensive legal decisions—suggest the rhetoric of Korax of Syracuse and Antiphon, who were developing rhetorical and legal arguments based on probability. According to their theories, logic was turned on its head and the most likely suspect immediately became the least likely: for instance, a big brute of a fellow, known for bar-brawls could not have bludgeoned a chap with a bottle because it would be too obvious and the surety of his being caught for this act would mean that he would avoid it at all costs. He would be innocent by reason of foresight, and Aristophanes seeks to debunk this absurd system of logic.

The warning the Chorus gloats over apparently escapes Strepsiades as he abandons his own path to sophistry and instead commits his son to the tutelage of the "Wrong" Argument. The argument between Right and Wrong make up the play's formal "agon," or formalized theoretical debate, and Right's defeat ends the act in a miniature climax, foreshadowing Strepsiades's own defeat at Pheidippides's (literal) hands which occurs in Act Two. In the original Greek, the words are not at all clear cut: not "Right" and "Wrong" but "Better" and "Worse," suggesting a certain slippery relativism, an absence of any clear definition of good and bad. This indecision is especially evident when Right's description of pedagogy—or student-teacher relationships—veers into pederasty, or improper sexual relationships! "Wrong" may fluster "Right" into defeat, but the audience understands that his is a victory wrought by special effects and not firm reasoning. Many of his rebuttals hinge on details worthy of trivia not moral example. As scholar David McDowell its, they are "logical- sounding[but not] true conclusions," (Oxford University Press, 1995).

Act Two

Summary

Strepsiades's day in court grows near and he goes to retrieve Pheidippides from Socrates's school. Socrates assures him that the school has shaped Pheidippides into a brilliant speaker and thinker, able to wriggle his way out of any impossible pinch. Strepsiades whoops for joy and fawns about Pheidippides. Pheidippides, however, does not share Strepsiades's enthusiasm, but rather starts immediately to question the very premise of the day of "Old and New" (II.i.1153), the day when debts are due. Using his Socrates-influenced methodology, he systematically destroys the notion that a day could be both "Old and New." Strepsiades is flustered and hardly seems to know what to do with his new and improved son, but the two adjourn to celebrate their reunion and plot their case.

Almost instantly the First Creditor is at their door, wanting to haul Strepsiades to court. Strepsiades, cocky because he believes in his son's powers of persuasion, answers the First Creditor and ridicules him because of his belief in the gods and because of his nonsensical adherence to the paradoxical day of "Old and New" (II.i.1153). He quizzes the First Creditor about the proper name and gender for a "trough" (II.i.1255). The First Creditor is flustered and indignant. Strepsiades imperiously sends him off because of his gross "ignoran[ce]."

A Second Creditor arrives, but instead of berating Strepsiades for his failure to pay, the Second Creditor moans and wrings his hands in a melodramatic display of neediness. Strepsiades also sasses the Second Creditor, asking him about his thoughts on the mechanism of rain. When the baffled Second Creditor demands his loan plus interest, Strepsiades refutes his accrual of interest with the example

of the sea, which he says is always full of new water but never increases in size. Strepsiades proceeds to beat the Second Creditor and chases him off.

The Chorus of Clouds interrupts with a song that judges Strepsiades, noting his new ion for dishonesty and promising that he will be brought low because of this "wickedness" (II.i.1303). The Chorus prophesizes that Strepsiades will prove his own undoing: that he has educated his son in the slippery arts of immoral persuasion with which his son will in turn harm him.

As the Chorus finishes its dire prediction, Strepsiades races from the house, pursued by Pheidippides who is beating him. The two had bickered over the recitation of traditional poetry and their argument came to blows. They decide to have a formal debate to prove who is right and who is wrong. Strepsiades recounts his evening arguments with Pheidippides, explaining his shock that his son is not obedient or respectful towards him, always using every instance as an opportunity to attack Strepsiades and his tastes. Strepsiades accuses Pheidippides of being ungrateful, recalling the tender and special relationship they had when Pheidippides was a needy infant. Strepsiades argues that such nurturing and sacrifice on his part should have earned him Pheidippides's respect and high regard. Pheidippides relishes his new rhetorical abilities and wonders aloud about his past fascination with horses. Strepsiades ruefully adds that he wishes his son was still mad for horses—although it was this very obsession that landed Strepsiades in such a financial pickle.

Pheidippides argues that he has hit his father for Strepsiades's own good, that any prior laws dictating standards of behavior and deferral to parental authority are fallible and subject to change. He invokes examples of animal behavior. He threatens to include his mother in his argument and Strepsiades bemoans his choice to educated Pheidippides. Strepsiades turns to the Chorus of Clouds and berates the Chorus for encouraging the folly of educating Pheidippides in the Wrong argument. The Chorus of Clouds asserts that Strepsiades earned what he got and that the Chorus has strung him along in order to prove to him the folly of his ways and beliefs, to teach him to respect "Heaven's holy laws" (II.i.1458).

Appalled, Strepsiades grabs Pheidippides and strides over to the school, denouncing all of the new knowledge over which he had previously been gloating. Strepsiades reasserts the existence of the gods and begs forgiveness of Hermes, from whom he appears to receive a message to burn down Socrates's school. He climbs the roof with Xanthias, one of his household slaves, and burn the roof. The students inside begin to shriek. The philosopher Chaerephon and the Student are astonished and cry for help. Socrates emerges and demands to know what is going on. Strepsiades mocks him, calling his arson an act of grand, esoteric philosophizing. Socrates, Chaerephon, and the students cough and flee the building. Strepsiades claims that he is attacking the school as an agent of revenge on behalf of the slighted gods. He kicks Socrates and drives-off the rest of the people by pelting them with a flurry of stones. The Chorus approves the scene and its performance and then exits, ending the play.

Analysis

The day of "Old and New" that provides much comic fodder throughout the play refers to the day of transition between the end of one cycle of the moon and the next: the last day of the "old" moon and the first day of the "new" moon. The Athenian calendars were lunar calendars and each month ended with the end of one complete lunar cycle (28 days long). The mention of "Old and New" recalls the play's central concern with "new" and "old" (or "traditional") systems of education. The sophistry of the "new education" makes Pheidippides capable of arguing that "Old and New" cannot coexist. Not only does this argument ironically suggest the overly literal minutiae with which the "new education" is concerned; it also sincerely suggests that the two systems of education are incompatible and must be rectified.

The thesis of the play is that violence must be met with violence. This is the logic behind the Chorus's defense of its own actions, which encouraged

Strepsiades to behave badly. Strepsiades displays great physical and psychological violence with his two creditors: he bullies the First Creditor into flight and he beats off the Second Creditor with a stick. Then, in turn, Strepsiades is the recipient of Pheidippides's blows. In Greek society, doing violence to one's elders was considered an unspeakable evil. However, there is a certain symmetry to the scenes of beatings that recalls the element of a rectifying "nemesis," or a necessary evil, in Greek tragedy and tragic conventions.

Indeed, The Clouds ends with a scene of further violence—the arson committed upon the "Thinkery" and the assault upon its occupants—and this tragic, destructive ending is a far cry from the scenes of drinking, feasting, and celebration that mark so many of Aristophanes's other plays. In fact, the concluding celebration was such as staple of Greek comedy as to have become formalized: the "exodus," or concluding celebratory song, as mentioned earlier, was a typical formal division of Greek comedy. While the violence in the final scene possesses a certain abandon akin to revelry and while the scene progresses with spectacular choreography and action, no one celebrates in any traditional fashion.

A commentator, or a number of commentators, in the Hellenistic period (approximately 331 BCE to 31 BCE) composed a Scholia, or collection of plot hypotheses for several plays, including the plays of Aristophanes. In their commentary on The Clouds, they it that, in the extant revision we possess, Aristophanes has written a new "parabasis" and a new finale. The scholar David McDowell suggests, using the model of several other Aristophanes plays, that one possible way the original play might have ended would have been with Pheidippides trouncing the creditors in court and Strepsiades producing a celebration in honor of their success (Oxford University Press, 1995). However, this is only a conjecture. McDowell suggests, among many possible reasons why The Clouds failed in its first run, that perhaps the audience failed to comprehend the scope of the satire and condemned Aristophanes for the dishonest and sinful elements of the "new education" that he is satirizing. The scholar Cedric Whitman wisely notes, "the poet seems to have recognized that he could not moralize his play without ruining it, and given up the attempt." (Whitman, Cedric. H. Aristophanes and the Comic Hero. Cambridge: Cambridge University

Press: 1964. 137).

Definitions

The word "sophistry" is central to the play because it is the kind of educational training that Socrates provides in his school. It connotes a special kind of knowledge: knowledge that is subtle, tricky, and probably false. "Sophist" would have the same ring to ancient Athenian ears as "con-man" would to modern ears.

Important Quotations Explained

I was happy with my bees and my sheep and my olives. Then I married this city girl, the niece of Megacles, no less, very classy—a right Coesyra!

This quotation is spoken by the anti-hero Strepsiades at the opening of the play as he lies awake in bed worrying over his enormous debts. This quotation is part of the "prologue," or expository opening section of the play which provided the background necessary for the comedy to progress. Strepsiades has been bemoaning his current debts, all of which he explains are the result of having a young son, Pheidippides, who has a ion for horses, an expensive hobby akin to a modern-day zeal for antique cars. In this quotation, Strepsiades is explaining the origin of Pheidippides's expensive tastes: his mother, Strepsiades's wife, was a high-born "city girl" (I.i.41) who cultivated aristocratic pretensions for herself and her son. Strepsiades calls his wife "a right Coesyra" (I.i.41), a name he uses in The Clouds and his earlier play The Acharnians to suggest a notoriously wealthy woman. "Megacles" (I.i.41) likewise suggests wealth and prestige since a "Megacles" was the great- grandfather of the Athenian hero Pericles who presided over Athens in the fifth century BCE and brought Athens much prosperity and success.

Strepsiades explains how he himself, in contrast to his rich, urban wife, came from humble means, raised on a country farm among the "beessheepandolives" (I.i.41) of rural Greece. He recounts how, when Pheidippides was born, he and his wife clashed over everything regarding their infant son, from his name to his hobbies. His wife, for instance, wished to give him a "horsey" name, such as "Xanthippus" (I.i.41), "Charippus or Callipides" (I.i.41) and to fill his head with visions of "procession[s][and]..chariot[s]" (I.i.41). Strepsiades himself preferred to name his son after his grandfather "Pheidonides" (I.i.41) and to raise his son to live a happy, simple life among the plants and animals of the farm. While

Strepsiades and his wife managed a happy compromise for their son's name, Pheidippides's personal preferences were undiluted replicas of his ritzy mother's preferences.

This quotation introduces the collision of city and country values that provide for the necessary tension and humor in The Clouds and many other of Aristophanes's plays such as The Acharnians and The Banqueters. In many of these plays, Aristophanes's sympathies are with the country people: they represent honesty and humility in opposition to the pretensions and excesses of the townsfolk. The city, being the seat of business and politics, could be easily lampooned as corrupt and dishonest. Nevertheless, it is clear that Aristophanes exploits both "types" and systems of values as "types": his city folk and country folk are caricatures of typified attitudes and are exploited as such for laughs.

How can I? How can I study all this logic-chopping and hair-splitting? I'm an old man

This quotation is spoken by Strepsiades, the old farmer and father to the spendthrift Pheidippides at the opening of the Scene Two in Act One. Strepsiades is desperately searching for a way out of paying the exorbitant debts acquired through his son's expensive taste for racehorses. In the first scene of Act One, he approached his son with the plan to enroll the young man in the neighboring "Thinkery" (I.i.91), the school for sophistry run by the philosophers Socrates and Chaerephon. He had hoped that his son would learn the new rhetorical trick called "Wrong [Argument]" (I.i.93), a technique that enables its practitioner, through the art of persuasion, to defeat any argument, however airtight and morally sound that argument might be. Strepsiades hopes that, armed with these argumentative skills, Pheidippides will defeat Strepsiades's creditors in court. However, when Pheidippides disdainfully refuses to comply, Strepsiades decides to enroll himself instead.

The theme of new-fangled or fanciful education is not new to Aristophanes's plays. In the fragments of Aristophanes's first play The Banqueters that survive, another farmer-father sends his sons to study at a special, city school. In The Banqueters, the father has two sons, one "moral and [one] immoral" (I.ii.547) son. The "moral" son shuns the dishonest, new-fangled, urban education and flees home to the familiar comforts of the farm. The "immoral" son, however, thrives in this "new education." In The Banqueters, the split between "old" or "traditional" education and "new" education rests comfortably along generational lines: the father and his farm represent the "old" or "traditional" way of life and the "immoral" son and his city school represent the treacherous "new" way of life.

In The Clouds, however, the lines dividing "old" and "new" are not quite as clear. For instance, although in this quote Strepsiades worries that his age makes him a poor candidate for the "new" sophistic education, he is nonetheless the one who eggs Pheidippides to attend: the "old" man is, ironically, very much in favor of the "new" education. As the play progresses, however, it becomes evident that Strepsiades is not capable of adapting to the school's teachings whereas his son proves too good a pupil. The dichotomy of "old" versus "new" is important to this play as it provides for dramatic and comic tension. Aristophanes's sympathies are certainly with the "old" or "traditional" model of education and the older generation that espouses this model. Nevertheless, no one is spared Aristophanes's satiric eye and he lampoons the "old" model just as easily as the "new." For instance, lusty Right Argument proves almost as laughable as Socrates himself and both seem poorly suited to instruct the Athenian youth.

"Damn your quarts, you stupid peasant. Let's try rhythms, perhaps you'll understand better." "I will if they'll help me sell my corn."

This quotation is an exchange that takes place between sophist-teacher Socrates and his stubborn pupil Strepsiades after the choral "parabasis" in Act One, Scene Two. Socrates is attempting to teach Strepsiades the proper metrics of oratory because it was believed that the proper "rhythms" (I.ii.657) were more compelling and persuasive and would enhance the underlying argument. Socrates's school teaches its pupils rhetoric and a new kind of persuasion known as "Wrong [Argument]" (I.i.93) whereby its practitioners can unravel any educated debate with their slippery, well-hewn persuasion. This kind of education also includes in-depth study of many esoteric pursuits, from the measuring of fleas' jumps to the finer points of geology, and is thought of as "new education" because it differs from the older models that stressed physical fitness and recitation of canonical, ancient works.

This quotation illustrates two essential dichotomies that structure the comedy: the difference between city and country values and the difference between practical (or old, traditional) and esoteric (or new, sophistic) education. Socrates and his academy represent the heights of esoteric, urban knowledge: he and his students are "white-faced" (I.i.93) from being cooped up all day with their books and their sophistries are practiced in the law-courts in the center of town. Strepsiades, by contrast, possesses a rural or "peasant" (I.ii.647) mentality that is partial to hard work, farm life, and a practical, hands-on existence. Strepsiades only wants to acquire knowledge if it can tangibly, physically, and practically help him, whereas Socrates pursues knowledge for its own cerebral, ethereal ends.

I wish you'd go back to your horses

This quotation is spoken by Strepsiades near the end of play as he is being physically and verbally abused by his son Pheidippides. He sent his son to Socrates's school of sophistry hoping that he might learn the rhetorical tricks necessary of dodging their creditors in court. Strepsiades had run into debt

because of Pheidippides's expensive tastes in racehorses. Strepsiades believed that Socrates's fancy, esoteric education was the answer to his problems with his fussy son. Instead, the arguments that Pheidippides has learned at Socrates's school have enabled him to cause his father further pain and torment. The situation has a kind of irony that can best be described as "tragic-comic," containing elements of both tragic irony and comic irony.

While The Clouds is undoubtedly a comedy—full of sight-gags and broad physical humor—much of its narrative arc is tragic: the play chronicles the down-fall of Strepsiades, the anti-hero, whose tragic flaw was his desire to cheat his creditors out of the money he owed them. Much of what befalls Strepsiades appears tragic because of its "fittedness" or sense of karmic response—that he deserves what he gets. Throughout much of the play, for instance, the audience watches Strepsiades pummel hapless minor characters—first his Slave, next a Student, and finally the pathetic Second Creditor. Therefore, when Strepsiades himself is beaten by his son Pheidippides, his suffering feels just and fitting.

Be ashamed when you ought to be ashamed

This quotation is spoken by Right Argument near the end of Act One, Scene Two as he debates with Wrong Argument over the proper model of education for young boys in general, and Pheidippides in particular. Right Argument, when asked to expound upon boys' education, speaks at length about the edifying value of ancient poetry and physical fitness. Often, however, he disrupts the flow of his own argument with some lustful elaboration on the beauty of young boys and his over-zealous libido undercuts the seriousness and morality of his message. Wrong Argument does not, in exchange, suggest an alternate system of education, but rather picks apart the minutiae of Right's model until he has flustered him completely and Right cedes him the victory.

The concept of a proper education is crucial to The Clouds and is featured prominently in other Aristophanes plays such as the no-longer-extant The Banqueters. This quotation is taken from the "agon," or formalized debate, a central element of Greek comic form wherein the thesis of the piece was given a proper debate by two or more of its characters. In this play, it is obvious that Aristophanes sympathizes with the traditional system of education that Right here represents: the finale of the play only proves the extensive damage (arson, abuse, etc.) that results from the "new," sophistic education. However, in casting Right Argument as a flighty pedophile, Aristophanes is demonstrating that both sides have their flaws. This quotation in particular demonstrates how even the good, old education—the education that "rear[ed] the men who fought at Marathon" (I.ii.961)—can fail. This quote is a ridiculously circular maxim that teaches nothing and proves nothing. It is a vacuous statement and it suggests the damage that can be done by not questioning or challenging tradition hard enough.

Key Facts

Full title · The Clouds, or The School for Sophists

Author · Aristophanes

Type of work · Drama

Genre · Satire; tragi-comedy

Language · Attic Greek, translated into English

Time and place written

· Prior to 427 BCE in Athens, Greece

Date of first performance · First performed in 427 BCE. The version we now possess is a later (incomplete) revision.

Publisher/Producer · Produced by Kallistratos at the festival of the City Dionysia at Athens

Narrator · Not applicable (drama)

Point of view · Not applicable (drama)

Tone · Humorous, but with an undercurrent of seriousness

Tense

· Not applicable (drama)

Setting (time) · Fifth-Century BCE

Setting (place) · Athens, Greece

Protagonist · Strepsiades

Major Conflict · Strepsiades's burden of debt, sustained in satisfying the expensive taste of his son Pheidippides for race horses.

Rising action · Strepsiades attempts to enroll in Socrates's special school for sophists in order to learn the slippery, dishonest Wrong Argument that will help him best his creditors in court. He learns many weird and wonderful things about atheism, natural sciences, and proper nouns. However, he proves an impossible pupil and enrolls his spend-thrift son Pheidippides instead. Pheidippides masters the slippery rhetoric of the Wrong Argument.

Climax · Pheidippides uses the tricky sophistry he learned at Socrates's academy to physically and verbally abuse his father Strepsiades.

Falling action · Strepsiades and his slave Xanthias burn down Socrates's school as revenge for the slighted gods and for Strepsiades's own misfortune.

Themes · The question of how to reconcile science with religion; the quest to find the proper education; playwriting is educative; the question of how to reconcile education with daily life, or with the outside world

Motifs · Old and New; currency; gendered nouns

Symbols · The Clouds; insects; the flea-ridden bed

Foreshadowing · As Strepsiades commits his son Pheidippides into the tutelage of Wrong Argument, at the very end of Act One, the Chorus of Clouds warns him that " soon / [He'll] sing a less ecstatic tune" (I.ii.1114), and that his "harvest will the whirlwind be" (I.ii.1114), meaning that nothing but chaos and trouble will come from his decision.

Study Questions and Suggested Essay Topics

Study Questions

To which genre of drama does Aristophanes's The Clouds belong?

The Clouds, while very much a comedy, also contains many elements more likely to be found in tragedy. Therefore, to use a fairly modern hybrid, The Clouds provides a good example of a "tragi-comedy." The comedy in The Clouds is quite evident—riotously evident, even. There are elements of both physical and verbal comedy: The Clouds offers comedy in abundance, from the spectacular sight gags of the Students who are "studying astronomy" with their rumps in the air and Socrates's mid-air entrance to Strepsiades's bodily humor and Right Argument's lustful pontification.

However, just as the Chorus of Clouds advises the Athenian audience in the "parabasis," there is a lesson to be learned after all the special effects have lost their sparkle and the belly-laugh has become a cramp in one's side. This lesson is intended for the audience, but it is a lesson that Strepsiades himself must sorely realize in order to provide the audience with the necessary moral example: Strepsiades must behave poorly, shirk responsibility, and slander the gods so that, by his resultant, tragic down-fall, the viewing audience will learn to avoid that type of behavior.

The lesson to be learned by the audience is most palatable when it is embedded in comedy. The brand of comedy that Aristophanes employs is satire. Satire is a

type of comedy that is often outrageous in its appearance but conservative in its message: satire gains its comic force through exaggeration of or deviation from an accepted standard. Therefore, satire is a genre that lends itself particularly well to moral and political humor, and the moral aims of Aristophanes's satire fuse well with his play's tragic arc.

Can The Clouds be said to be a religious play? What role does religion play in the drama?

Greek drama was born out of Greek religion: the first plays developed from performances of sung poems of praise called "dithyrambs" at annual religious festivals in honor of the god Dionysus. Therefore, Greek drama and religion are inextricably linked. Although many translations of Aristophanes's plays are not metric translations, the original Greek was written in verse. The experience of watching a performance of The Clouds in the original Greek by a contemporary Athenian audience must have been a far different experience than the experience we get today while reading translations of the work. The original audience had the pleasure of watching the staging of the play: songs, dances, fight scenes, gestures, and movements which are today mostly lost to us since much Greek drama was transcribed without the copious stage-directions we have come to expect today. Watching the choreography of the play and listening to Aristophanes's dialogue in verse must have recalled the spectacle of religious ritual to the original Athenian audience.

The Clouds is also a play that concerns itself thematically with issues of the gods, religion, and religious piety. One of the principle lessons that the overeager pupil Strepsiades learns from the sophist-master Socrates is that the gods do not exist. Although Strepsiades happily misunderstands this sophistic tenet— naming physical principles as deities—the focus on atheism is clear. Strepsiades will return to this insight when he quizzes his son Pheidippides and when he torments the First Creditor and the Second Creditor. In the end, when the Chorus of Clouds reveal that they led Strepsiades to ruin in order to teach him a

renewed respect for the gods and goddesses he so unhesitatingly shunned, Strepsiades is transformed into a religious zealot, a born-again polytheist, a vigilante for piety. He burns down Socrates's school and claims his arson as an act of vengeance for the slighted gods.

The Clouds does not only concern itself with the question of gods and atheism, but several references suggest the play's self-conscious awareness of the festival of the City Dionysia at Athens in honor of the god Dionysus wherein the play was first performed in competition. For instance, in the opening scene of the play, when Strepsiades confronts Pheidippides, he asks him to swear an oath that he will reform his spend-thrift ways. Pheidippides, true to character, swears on Poseidon, the god of the sea and of horses. When Strepsiades demands that he swear on a god more appropriate to his oath of reform, Pheidippides immediately chooses Dionysus. This self-conscious allusion suggests a latent but persistent and significant awareness of the gods and foreshadows the discussion of religion that is to come.

How does The Clouds conform to the standard model of Greek comedies in general? How does it conform to Aristophanes's comedic model in particular?

The Clouds both is and is not a typical Aristophanic comedy. The Clouds can be considered a typical Aristophanic comedy for formal and thematic reasons. First, the play follows many of the traditional formal divisions within a drama. Traditional formal divisions include an introductory "prologue" which provides the necessary exposition and background; the "parados," or song sung, by the chorus as the make their entrance; the "parabasis," a highly regulated diversion from the main plot, as sung in alternating songs and speeches by the chorus; the "agon," or formalized debate between two characters over a theme or issue central to the action of the play; sometimes a second "parabasis" or diversion; and finally, an "exodus," or song of conclusion sung by the chorus at the end of the ultimate celebration on which the play closes. Other less formal but no less typical elements include the scene wherein one character seeks help from

another character and goes to petition them by knocking on their neighboring door. The Clouds fulfills all these formal conventions and tropes except for the final "exodus" or celebration song.

Not only does The Clouds meet the formal expectations of an Aristophanic comedy, but it revisits some of the thematic concerns. Earlier plays, such as The Acharnians and the no-longer-extant The Banqueters, employed the tensions between old and young men as well as city folk and country folk to produce vivacious comedies with moral messages. The Clouds, with its discussion of city versus country values and its quest for the proper education for young men, gives Aristophanes a chance to reemphasize existing themes in hopes of educating and better advising his fellow Athenian citizens.

However, The Clouds is an intriguingly unfinished tragi-comedy whose violent ending comes as a sharp departure from the concluding revelry of earlier plays. The fact that The Clouds lacks an "exodus" has implications that stretch far beyond concerns of structural formality. The strange and spectacular revenge that Strepsiades exacts fits neither the comic nor the tragic models. A comedy, for instance, requires a festive ending and while the scene of the conflagration must have been quite dramatic and fantastic to watch, it can hardly qualify as a celebration in any acceptable sense. On the other hand, a tragedy requires that the tragic hero accept his or her punishment and its essential, moral rectitude as what is "due" for his or her tragic flaw. However, in The Clouds, when the Chorus of Clouds condemns Strepsiades for his rash atheism and pronounce his tragic punishment as just, Strepsiades agrees and still pursues further violence: The Clouds ends in tragic overkill! Because of its failure to conform to either category, thus, The Clouds can comfortably be characterized as an atypical Aristophanic comedy.

Suggested Essay Topics

Scholars consider the extant version of The Clouds to be an unfinished revision. Consider whether you believe the play to feel "unfinished" or not. Examine each position.

Discuss the role of the chorus. Discuss the chorus's role both as a god-like figure and as a mouthpiece for Aristophanes.

Compare and contrast ancient and modern stereotypes about the figure of the "Intellectual." Use modern books, magazines, TV, and cinema. What is different? What remains the same?

Discuss Strepsiades's status in the play. Is he a hero? A tragic hero? An antihero? A tragic anti-hero?

Discuss the role of money in this play. What does it do in this play? What values (or lack of values) does it connote?

Quiz

1. Why does Strepsiades wake up in the middle of the night?

A. Because he hears a noise B. Because his debts weigh upon his mind C. Because he hears a slave practicing the Wrong Argument D. Because he has sleep apnea E. Because he has a vision of the Clouds

2. What is Pheidippides's expensive hobby?

A. Owning and racing horses B. Betting on horses C. Eating whole horses D. Whores

3. Who wanted to name Pheidippides after horses?

A. Strepsiades B. Socrates C. Chaerephon D. His aristocratic mother

4. What does Strepsiades think the sophists consider the sky?

A. A balloon-basket B. A gnat C. A baking cover for bread D. The back of a giant tortoise

5. What are the students at the "Thinkery" studying when they bend over?

A. Geology and astronomy B. History and gastroenterology C. Philology and philosophy D. Entymology and escatology

6. When Strepsiades asks Pheidippides to change his expensive ways, by whom does he swear first?

A. Hermes B. Dionysus C. Artemis D. Socrates E. Poseidon

7. By whom does Pheidippides swear second?

A. Poseidon B. Dionysus C. Epiglottus D. Chaerephon E. Hephaestus

8. What insects does the Student say that Socrates and Chaerephon are studying?

A. Centipede and millipede B. Ladybug and katydid C. Flea and gnat D. Worm and slug

9. According to Socrates, who causes the rain?

A. Zeus B. Dionysus C. The Clouds D. Poseidon E. Rainman

10. What does Socrates steal from Strepsiades?

A. His wallet B. His horses C. His debts

D. His coat

11. In the "parabasis," the Chorus speaks on behalf of Aristophanes, calling him what?

A. A gnat B. An unwed mother C. A sophist D. A politician

12. What does Socrates call a male chicken?

A. A chicken B. A chickadee C. A chick D. A chicker

13. What does Socrates call a female chicken?

A. A chickeness B. A chick C. A chicker D. A chicken

14. What does Socrates call a female trough?

A. A trivet B. A triffen C. A troughelette D. A trollop

15. Where does Socrates demand that Strepsiades go in order to properly think and philosophize?

A. To bed B. To the kitchen C. To the horse-races D. To the library

16. When he is fresh out of the "Thinkery," what is the first argument Pheidippides has?

A. Why it is right to beat one's parents B. How many flea's feet are in a flea's jump C. Whether Heracles took hot or cold baths D. That the day of "Old and New" cannot exist because it is nonsensical

17. What does Strepsiades demand of the First Creditor?

A. The difference between female and male troughs B. The difference between female and male chickens C. The impossibility of a day of both "Old and New" D. Who makes the rain

18. What does Strepsiades ask the Second Creditor?

A. The cost of horses

B. Whether the sky is a baking-cover for bread C. Who makes the rain D. How a gnat hums

19. Whom does Pheidippides beat?

A. Strepsiades B. His slave C. Chaerephon D. Socrates

20. What does Strepsiades wish to hear recited at dinner?

A. Anaxagoras or Protagoras B. Aristophanes C. Simonides, Aeschylus, or Euripides D. Sophocles

21. How does Strepsiades take his revenge?

A. He burns down the school and drives off its occupants with stones B. He takes them to court and trumps their Wrong Argument with his Right Argument C. He burns down the barn full of Pheidippides's horses D. He convinces the Chorus of Clouds to rain on his court date

22. What two philosophers reside at the "Thinkery"?

A. Aeschylus and Euripedes B. Homer and Socrates C. Cleon and Socrates D. Socrates and Chaerephon

23. Who helps Strepsiades burn down the school?

A. Xanthias, his slave B. Socrates C. Chaerephon

D. The Chorus of Clouds

24. The Athenians based their calendar on what natural occurrence?

A. The rising and setting of the sun B. The patterns of shooting stars and comets C. The movements of birds D. The cycles of the moon

25. Right and Wrong Argument debate over what?

A. Whether Strepsiades should pay his debts B. The proper model of education for young men and boys C. What kind of horse is the fastest in a chariot race D. Whether a gnat can jump farther than a flea

Answer Key:

1: B; 2: A; 3: D; 4: C; 5: A; 6: E; 7: B; 8: C; 9: C; 10: D; 11: B; 12: D; 13: A; 14: B; 15: A; 16: D; 17: A; 18: C; 19: A; 20: C; 21: A; 22: D; 23: A; 24: D; 25: B

Suggestions for Further Reading

Aristophanes. Lysistrata and Other Plays. Alan Sommerstein, trans. New York: Penguin Putnam, 1973.

The Cambridge Guide to World Theatre. Martin Basham, ed. New York: Cambridge University Press, 1988.

The Chambers Biographical Dictionary. Melanie Parry, ed. New York: Chambers Harrap Publishing, 1997.

Dearden, C. W. The Stage of Aristophanes. London: Athlone Press, 1976.

The Encyclopedia of World Biography. Paula K. Byers, ed. New York: Gale Research, 1998.

Freedley, George and Reeves, John A. A History of the Theatre. New York: Crown Publishing, 1968.

Geisinger, Marion. Plays, Players, Playwrights. New York: Hart Publishing Co.,

1975.

MacDowell, Douglas M. . Aristophanes and Athens, An Introduction to the Plays. New York: Oxford University Press, 1995.

Murray, G. G. A.. Aristophanes. Oxford: The Clarendon Press, 1933.

Pickard-Cambridge, A.W. The Dramatic Festivals of Athens. Second ed, revised by J. Gould and D. M. Lewis. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1968.

Whitman, Cedric H. Aristophanes and the Comic Hero. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1964.