The Clouds

SOCRATES. I am walking upon air and attacking the mystery of the sun.

STREPSIADES. Well, if you must attack the Mysteries of the gods, why can’t you do so on the ground?

SOCRATES. Why, for accurate investigation of meteorological phenomena it is indispensable to get one’s thoughts into a state of suspension and mix its minute particles into the air which they so closely resemble.”

Strepsiades’s first encounter with Socrates reveals a great deal about the way Aristophanes presents Socrates’s character. Socrates speaks in the elevated diction associated with the gods of drama. He implicitly attacks traditional ideas about the divine by examining natural or “meteorological phenomena.” Strepsiades misinterprets Socrates’s meditation on the “mystery of the sun,” the sun being a god in traditional Greek religion, as a contemptuous attack on the “Mysteries of the gods.” In the original Greek, there are two possible meanings of the word “periphronein,” which can mean either “to contemplate” or “to hold in contempt.”

“STREPSIADES. It doesn’t matter what fees you charge; I’m prepared to swear by the gods that I’ll pay them.

SOCRATES. What do you mean, swear by the gods? The first thing you’ll have to learn is that with us the gods are no longer current.

It was common practice in ancient Greece to swear an oath to pay a teacher’s fee, with the gods acting as the enforcers. Socrates cannot accept such payment; in his view, the traditional gods are “no longer current,” one of his many challenges to the traditional pantheon in the play. One might wonder at whether Strepsiades meant his oath sincerely in the first place—the very reason he has come to the Thinkery is to learn how to avoid paying his debts.

“O Lord, O King, O boundless Air,

On whom the earth supported rides,

O Ether bright, and you besides”

Socrates’ invocation of his new gods, the Clouds, mentions new and non-traditional deities such as “boundless Air” and “Ether bright.” These new gods are presented as little more than substitutes for the traditional gods, differing only in name, much like the distinction later made between Socrates’s Vortex and the traditional Zeus. In much the same way, the ceremonious invocation, like many of the rites of Socrates’s Thinkery, draw heavily on the rituals and initiation ceremonies of traditional religion. This makes Socrates’s rejection of the traditional gods and religion seem incomplete and all the more misguided.

“Let us rise, we Clouds eternal,

Shining bright with radiant dew,

From the roaring Ocean’s bosom

To the sky, the world to view.”

The first words spoken by the Clouds establish their connection with the water as well as the sky and highlight their “eternal” nature. Their self-presentation is dignified and already at odds with the absurd Socrates and his Thinkery. As the play continues, the Clouds’ affinity with the traditional gods will become clearer and clearer.

“Tell me, though, if they really are clouds, how come they look so human, so much like women? The other clouds—I mean the real ones—don’t look like that at all.”

In questioning Socrates on the nature of the Clouds, Strepsiades lights upon a crucial point—that the Clouds look like human women. Dramaturgically, these lines reveal something about the costume worn by the Clouds, which must have been cloudlike but also feminine. Thematically, the resemblance of the Clouds to human women likens them to the traditional Greek gods, who were anthropomorphic and had the physical and behavioral qualities of human beings. Though Socrates does his best to explain away the anthropomorphism of the Clouds, pointing out the capacity of clouds in the sky to take on forms that resemble living creatures, he is unable to resist the Clouds’ affinities with the traditional Greek gods whom he denies.

“Hail, grey-headed seeker for language artistic,

And you, our high priest of fine twaddle!

For though, among specialists cosmologistic,

Old Prodicus has the best noddle,

Still we favour you greatly, because of the way

You swagger and glance with disdain,

Endure much derision, go barefoot all day,

And on our account act really vain.”

The Clouds address and greet Socrates, hailing him as their elderly “grey-headed” champion and “high priest.” The compliments the Clouds give Socrates are not especially complimentary, highlighting his ridiculous behavior and his vanity. Though some of the Clouds’ remarks seem to have a basis in fact—Socrates was well known to walk around barefoot—others are less well-founded. The Clouds compare Socrates as a natural philosopher to the scientist Prodicus, even though the historical Socrates (as Plato informs us) emphatically spurned natural philosophy to pursue ethics.

“STREPSIADES: But tell me too, who makes the thunder that sends shivers down my spine?

SOCRATES: They [the Clouds] do too, when they roll about.

STREPSIADES. You’ll stop at nothing. How do you mean?

SOCRATES. When they are suspended in the sky, filled with a large quantity of water, they are necessarily compelled to move while full of rain, collide with each other, and owing to their weight they burst open with a crash.

STREPSIADES. Ah, but who compels them to move? That’s got to be Zeus!

SOCRATES. No, it’s a celestial vortex.

STREPSIADES. Vortex? I never knew that before. So Zeus is dead, and Vortex has taken his place on the throne!”

Socrates tries to give Strepsiades a naturalistic explanation for celestial phenomena such as rain and thunder, demonstrating that Zeus—the traditional Greek sky and weather god—does not exist. Socrates’s explanations, which at times are accurate from a meteorological standpoint, go over the foolish Strepsiades’s head. When Socrates explains that it is a “celestial vortex” that generates the movement of celestial bodies, Strepsiades believes this meteorological concept is a deity named Vortex who has overthrown Zeus. Through misunderstanding, Aristophanes creates comedy.

“[…] I’d never written any play so witty

As this—and that is why I first produced it in this city.

A lot of toil went into it—and yet my play retreated

By vulgar works of vulgar men unworthily defeated.

For your sake I took all these pains, and this was all your gratitude!”

The first lines of the parabasis, spoken by the Chorus Leader in the voice of Aristophanes, belong to the incomplete revision of the play, and show that the text as we have it is that of the revised “Clouds II” rather than the original “Clouds I.” Aristophanes characteristically boasts that he tells his countrymen the truth, and reprimands them for allowing Clouds to be defeated when it was staged in 423 BCE. Though many of Aristophanes’s grandiose statements must be taken as comedic exaggeration—for instance, his dismissal of rivals as “vulgar men”—the fact that he took the time to revise Clouds suggests that he really did regard the play as one of his better works.

“In the name of Respiration and Chaos and Air and all that’s holy, I’ve never met such a clueless stupid forgetful bumpkin in all my life! The most trifling little thing I teach him, he forgets before he’s even learnt it!”

Socrates calls on his non-traditional—and, to a fifth-century BCE Athenian audience, utterly absurd—deities. He complains about the stupidity of his new pupil, Strepsiades. We have already seen in previous scenes how little aptitude Strepsiades has for Socrates’s lessons, and we will see more evidence of this in the scenes that follow. It is Strepsiades’s foolishness that led him to Socrates in the first place; Strepsiades will soon learn that his immoral attempt to skirt the law by cheating his creditors will not be without consequences.

“SOCRATES. Ah, there are many other things you have to learn first. For instance, which animals are truly masculine?

STREPSIADES. Well, I know that, if I haven’t gone potty. Ram, billygoat, bull, dog, fowl.

SOCRATES. And feminine?

STREPSIADES. Ewe, nannygoat, cow, bitch, fowl.

SOCRATES. See what you’re doing? You’re calling the male female by the same name ‘fowl’.

STREPSIADES. How do you mean?

SOCRATES. How do I mean? ‘Fowl’—‘Fowl’.

STREPSIADES. Ah, I get you! What ought I to call them?

SOCRATES. ‘Fowless’, and for the male ‘fowler’.”

Here, we see how Aristophanes creates comedy through absurdity. Socrates tries to give Strepsiades a lesson in basic grammar, specifically on the distinction between masculine and feminine nouns. Socrates’s lesson quickly becomes nonsensical, as he claims that the word for “fowl” of either sex—alektryon in Greek—should have a masculine form different from the feminine form, and introduces unusual terms—“fowler” and “fowless”—to create the desired differentiation. 

“You see how high his heart’s lifted—

Make your profit fast!

For favouring winds ere now have shifted—

Luck don’t always last.”

As Strepsiades goes home to force his son Pheidippides to enroll in the Thinkery, the Clouds sing a short song and warn him that his fortunes may soon turn. The changeability of fortune is a familiar trope in ancient Greek literature, especially tragedy. The Clouds’ warning introduces foreboding and reminds us that the allegiances of the Clouds may not be quite what they appear.

“STREPSIADES. Well, make sure he learns your two Arguments—Right, or whatever you call it, and Wrong, the one that takes a bad case and defeats Right with it. If he can’t manage both, then at least Wrong—that’s essential.

SOCRATES. He’ll be taught by the Arguments in person; I won’t be there.

STREPSIADES. Don’t forget, he’s got to be able to argue against any kind of justified claim at all.”

Until now, we have only heard scattered references to the two personified Arguments of the Thinkery, Right and Wrong. Here, Strepsiades reiterates his desire to have Pheidippides learn the Wrong Argument so that he can “argue against any kind of justified claim at all”—and thus help Strepsiades cheat his creditors. We are to be introduced to these two Arguments, who will take over Pheidippides’s education.

“WRONG. My position is that there isn’t any such thing as Justice.

RIGHT. No such thing?!

WRONG. Well, if there is, where is it to be found?

RIGHT. With the gods, of course.

WRONG. Very well; in that case, why hasn’t Zeus been destroyed for putting his father in chains?

RIGHT. Ugh, you make me want to puke. Fetch me a basin, somebody!”

As Right and Wrong gear up for their agon—in a scene sometimes known as the proagon, or “pre-debate”—they preview their respective positions, focusing on the ideas of justice and the gods. Wrong, outrageously, will argue that there is no justice, pointing to the lack of justice among the gods as evidence. We have already seen very similar arguments employed by Socrates, who in an earlier scene contradicted Strepsiades’s assertion that Zeus strikes wrongdoers with his thunderbolts by naming a few contemporary “wrongdoers” who were never struck by lightning. Wrong’s case against justice and the gods highlights the danger that he—and thus the Thinkery—pose to Athens. Here, Aristophanes peppers the seriousness of his subject with comedy. He does this with the levity of his prose: “Ugh, you make me want to puke. Fetch me a basin, somebody!”

“As you battle with words and with thoughts of the mind,

We’ll soon see who’s victorious and who lags behind.

For our friends a great issue hangs on this debate—

Education’s whole future and Culture’s whole fate.”

The Chorus announces the agon between Right and Wrong and establishes how much hangs in the balance: “Education’s whole future and Culture’s whole fate.” Yet there is ambiguity behind the Chorus’s words; some may still assume that the Cloud-Chorus side with Socrates, as they refer to him and the other members of the Thinkery as “our friends.” It will become clear after the agon that the Clouds sympathize much more with traditional values—and that their real “friends” may in fact be the gods.

“Be that as it may, that’s the sort of discipline that I used to rear the men who fought at Marathon. What does your kind do for our young men?”

Right argues for traditional values and says that he is the one who reared “the men who fought at Marathon.” The Battle of Marathon, fought in 490 BCE and led by Athens, represented the first notable Greek victory over an invading Persian force on mainland Greece. By Aristophanes’s time, the “men who fought at Marathon” (or Marathonomachoi in Greek) referred to the “good old days,” a generation that embodied traditional Athenian values of courage, piety, and justice.

If my sound advice you heed, if you follow where I lead,

You’ll be healthy, you’ll be strong and you’ll be sleek;

You’ll have muscles that are thick and a pretty little prick—

You’ll be proud of your appearance and physique.

If contrariwise you spurn my society and turn

To these modern ways, you’ll have a pale complexion,

And with two exceptions, all of your limbs will be too small—

The exceptions are the tongue and the e-lection;”

Right promises Pheidippides health and an attractive appearance if he follows him. He warns him of the dangers of following Wrong. Here we see the play’s use of comedy in the form of double entendre, where a phrase has two meanings, one of which is vulgar: One of the dangers of following Wrong includes a large “e-lection,” suggesting a political role but also a large penis, which was considered ugly and bestial by traditional ancient Greek standards. Right’s warning is to prove prophetic: Pheidippides does indeed develop the negative attributes mentioned by Right when he leaves the Thinkery, such as pale skin.

“O how sweet are your words and how modest your thought,

You noble and glorious sage!

How we envy the happiness of those whom you taught—

They lived in a real Golden Age!”

The Clouds’ lavish and sincere praise of Right is another hint that the Clouds may not be as devoted to Socrates and his school as we were led to believe. Before even hearing Wrong, the Clouds express their approval of Right’s words—an approval they will withhold from Wrong even after Right himself admits defeat.

“That’s why the people at the Thinkery call me Wrong: I was the one who invented ways of proving anything wrong, established laws, soundly based accusations, you name it. Isn’t that worth millions—to be able to have a really bad case and yet win?”

Wrong advertises his formidable abilities; he can skillfully turn the most established of the “old” values on their head, regardless of their merit: As Wrong boasts, it was he who “invented ways of proving anything wrong.” The dangers of this, such as the undermining of societal stability, are to become increasingly apparent. Wrong’s dangerous power suggests that he is so named not only because he can prove anything wrong, but because he himself represents what is wrong.

“Listen to all the things that virtue can’t do for you, my lad—all the pleasures you won’t be able to have. No boys. No women. No gambling. No fancy food. No booze. No belly laughs. Will your life be worth living, without all these?”

Wrong emphasizes the restrictions that old-fashioned, traditional virtue places on one’s life, making the case that life can hardly be worth living with so many restrictions. Yet his argument is misrepresentative, conveniently omitting the many benefits that result from accepting such restrictions—the very benefits Right tries, albeit unsuccessfully, to bring to Pheidippides’s attention. Aristophanes uses repetition and short sentence fragments to create drama and emphasis (emphasis added)—"No boys. No women. No gambling. No fancy food. No booze. No belly laughs.”

“WRONG. Then don’t you see you were talking nonsense? Why, look at the audience; what do you think most of them are?

RIGHT. I’m looking.

WRONG. And what do you see?

RIGHT. Good gods, the f****** have it by a street! At least, I know he’s one, and him, and him […] "

Wrong defeats Right in their agon by demonstrating that the majority of contemporary Athenians—including most of the Athenians in important positions—are from the class of people he refers to with a translation of the Greek slur euryproktos, which refers to men who have anal sex. This quote represents a breaking of the “fourth wall” between performers and viewers, as Right directly references members of the audience.

“Farewell; but we bet it

You’ll come to regret it!”

At the turning point of the play, Strepsiades commits to having his son undergo a sophistic education. The Clouds warn him that he will “come to regret” his decisions—though they give this warning when Strepsiades is not paying attention, or possibly after he has already left. This confirms that the Clouds have never been allies of Socrates or the Thinkery, and that they have their own agenda, which they will soon explain. Had the revised version of Clouds been staged, Aristophanes may have given the Chorus additional lines to create a more complete second parabasis.

“Is he not in love with evil,

This old man—in love, I say?

[…]

But before this day is ended,

He’ll be rendered broken-hearted”

In a brief choral song, the Clouds once again foreshadow the punishment Strepsiades is about to receive for his immoral attempt to cheat his creditors. By saying that Strepsiades is “in love with evil,” the Clouds confirm their true values, which are antithetical to those of Socrates and the Thinkery.

“We do the same to anyone that we

Perceive to be in love with wickedness:

We cast him into misery, so he

May learn that it is right to fear the gods.”

The Clouds reveal their true role in the play: Far from sympathizing with Socrates and his immoral school, the Clouds are agents of the traditional gods. They encouraged and misled Strepsiades and punished him so that he learns to “fear the gods.” Far from representing the new and absurd gods of Socrates and sophists like him, the Clouds represent the traditional Greek gods.