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THE
satire in The Clouds, one of the best known of all Aristophanes'
comedies, is directed against the new schools of philosophy,
or perhaps we should rather say dialectic, which had lately been
introduced, mostly from abroad, at Athens. The doctrines held
up to ridicule are those of the 'Sophists'--such men as Thrasymachus
from Chalcedon in Bithynia, Gorgias from Leontini in Sicily,
Protagoras from Abdera in Thrace, and other foreign scholars
and rhetoricians who had flocked to Athens as the intellectual
centre of the Hellenic world. Strange to say, Socrates of all
people, the avowed enemy and merciless critic of these men and
their methods, is taken as their representative, and personally
attacked with pitiless raillery. Presumably this was merely because
he was the most prominent and noteworthy teacher and thinker
of the day, while his grotesque personal appearance and startling
eccentricities of behavior gave a ready handle to caricature.
Neither the author nor his audience took the trouble, or were
likely to take the trouble, to discriminate nicely; there was,
of course, a general resemblance between the Socratic 'elenchos'
and the methods of the new practitioners of dialectic; and this
was enough for stage purposes. However unjustly, Socrates is
taken as a typical of the new-fangled sophistical teachers, just
as in The Acharnians
Lamachus, with his Gorgon shield, is introduced as representative
of the War party, though that general was not specially responsible
for the continuance of hostilities more than anybody else. Aristophanes'
point of view, as a member of the aristocratical party and a
fine old Conservative, is that these Sophists, as the professors
of the new education had come to be called, and Socrates as their
protagonist, were insincere and dangerous innovators, corrupting
morals, persuading young men to despise the old-fashioned, home-grown
virtues of the State and teaching a system of false and pernicious
tricks of verbal fence whereby anything whatever could be proved,
and the worse be made to seem the better--provided always a sufficient
payment were forthcoming. True, Socrates refused to take money
from his pupils, and made it his chief reproach against the lecturing
Sophists that they received fees; but what of that? The Comedian
cannot pay heed to such fine distinctions, but belabours the
whole tribe with indiscriminate raillery and scurrility.
The play was produced at the Great Dionysia
in 423 B.C., but proved unsuccessful, Cratinus
and Amipsias being awarded first and second prize. This is said
to have been due to the intrigues and influence of Alcibiades,
who resented the caricature of himself presented in the sporting
Phidippides. A second edition of the drama was apparently produced
some years later, to which the 'Parabasis' of the play as we
possess it must belong, as it refers to events subsequent to
the date named.
The plot is briefly as follows: Strepsiades,
a wealthy country gentleman, has been brought to penury and deeply
involved in debt by the extravagance and horsy tastes of his
son Phidippides. Having heard of the wonderful new art of argument,
the royal road to success in litigation, discovered by the Sophists,
he hopes that, if only he can enter the 'Phrontisterion,' or
Thinking-Shop, of Socrates, he will learn how to turn the tables
on his creditors and avoid paying the debts which are dragging
him down. He joins the school accordingly, but is found too old
and stupid to profit by the lessons. So his son Phidippides is
substituted as a more promising pupil. The latter takes to the
new learning like a duck to water, and soon shows what progress
he has made by beating his father and demonstrating that he is
justified by all the laws, divine and human, in what he is doing.
This opens the old man's eyes, who sets fire to the 'Phrontisterion,'
and the play ends in a great conflagration of this home of humbug.
This article is reprinted
from Aristophanes: The Eleven Comedies. Trans. Anonymous.
London: The Athenian Society, 1922.
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