Aristophanes’ Clouds (NΕΦΕΛΑΙ)
D. B. Levine. April 21, 2021
1. The Story.
Strepsiades (“Twister”) fails to convince his son Pheidippides to study the Inferior Argument at Socrates’ school in order to save the family from debts due to the son’s high living. Strepsiades decides to enroll, but he is too stupid to learn. He brings Pheidippides back,a nd turns him over to Inferior Argument, who teaches him sophistic argument techniques. Strepsiades comically rids himself of his creditors, but is chagrined to see that his son’s sophism justifies the outrageous notion that a son can beat his own father. Realizing his mistake in accepting the new gods (“Whirl” and the Clouds), the old man with his slave burns down Socrates’ school.
2. Agon (ἀγών). Formal Debate.
Agon #1 Superior vs. Inferior Argument, on the right kind of education (889ff.) [more below]
Agon #2 Stresiades vs. Pheidippides, on whether it is right for a son to beat a father (1345ff.).
The first speaker always loses the agon.
3. Parabasis (παράβασις). The Chorus Speaks the Poet’s words to the Audience.
Parabasis #1 The Chorus (for Aristophanes) complains to the audience about not winning a prize for a previous comedy performance, and speaks of how his earlier play attacked Cleon, whom the Athenians later re-elected to the generalship (518ff).
Parabasis #2 The Chorus (Clouds) tells the Audience that if they vote for this play that they will receive benefits from the Clouds, but if they vote against it, they will harm their fields.
4. Education.
“Sophists” charged money for lessons on how to make the weaker argument stronger, and how to win cases regardless of right or wrong. This new education threw out old practices, favored new music, and considered the earlier generation’s strict lifestyle to be archaic and outmoded.
The traditional Athenians saw this new learning as immoral and atheistic, and preferred the “old ways” that had made Athens great.
In the first agon, Superior Argument outlines the “old ways that was the “system of student tutoring that raised the men who fought so bravely at Marathon” (986). Boys were quiet, orderly, respectful of teachers and parents, patriotic, and sang patriotic songs. If they acted up in class they got a beating. They behaved modestly in the gymnasium (where they were naked), and did not seek older lovers. The Old Education kept boys from hanging out in the agora (like the mall), made them avoid public baths (where there were sexual temptations) and prostitutes, while behaving with respect for parents, and elders. The Old Education promised healthy workouts at the Academy, where there was a school (and which we learned about in a Classics in Our World presentation), and resulted in “a strapping body, a gleaming complexion, huge shoulders, a tiny little tongue, big buttocks, and a small cock” (1012). In other words, not a lot of hot air, strong bodies, and minimal sexual arousal.
4 A. The Consequence for Socrates
When Athens lost the Peloponnesian War, Athenians looked for scapegoats. How could their great state have fallen? Many say the new ideas of the sophists as having undermined traditional Athenian morality, and blamed the sophists. Even though Socrates was not a sophist, he was odd enough and eccentric enough to embody the changes that many Athenians had loathed.
Twenty-four years after this play was produced, in 399 BCE, the Athenians tried Socrates on charges of corrupting the youth, and not accepting the gods of the city, but recognizing others instead, and teaching these things to others. In Plato’s account of Socrates’ defense speech (The Apology), Socrates speaks of the bias that he has suffered, and the many years of slander that have made him out to be a sophist. Who were these accusers? He hints at Aristophanes when he says,
And the most unreasonable thing of all is that it is not even possible to know and to say their names, unless a certain one happens to be a comic poet (Apology 18d)
In this defense speech, Socrates claims never to have been a sophist, since he neither claimed to be a teacher, nor did he ever accept money for talking with his friends. In this speech he mentions a scene in Aristophanes’Clouds that you will recognize:
For you yourselves also used to see these things in the comedy of Aristophanes: a certain Socrates was carried around there, claiming that he was treading on air and spouting much other drivel about which I have no expertise, either much or little (Apology 19c).
Many people think that Socrates got his death sentence as a result of being tarred with the sophists’ brush. Aristophanes’ “all in good fun” satire of him might have played a role in Socrates’ conviction and execution.
5. The Peloponnesian War and Politics.
This play was performed in 423 BCE, in the eighth year of the Peloponnesian war, just two years after the Athenians captured the Spartans alive on the island of Sphacteria. Strepsiades mentions the war in the Prologue, to say that it bothers him because he can’t beat his slaves, or they will run away to the enemy. Other than that, there is little mention of it. But in the prologue, when Strepsiades sees some of the pale and wasted students of the Pondertorium (Greek Phrontisterion), he compares them to the Spartans captured at Pylos. Our translation says “They look like a bunch of half-starved walking wounded to me,” (146), but the Greek is actually, “They resemble the Lacedaimonians captured from Pylos.” This is a reference to the Spartan prisoners still held in Athens. They would not be released until 421, with the Peace of Nikias, possible only when Kleon is dead (he died the year after CLOUDS, in 422 BCE).
Several of Aristophanes’ plays ridiculed Kleon relentlessly. In the Clouds’ parabasis, Aristophanes mentions how his earlier play (probably Kinghts), “When Cleon was at the peak of his powers, I slugged him in the stomach, but I never hit the man when he was down “ (548). The Chorus goes on to scold the Athenians for electing Kleon, and tell them that they can save their city by throwing him in jail:
When you were holding elections for general and chose that damned Paphlagonian tanner (i.e. Kleon), we [Clouds] frowned down and thundered our dissent… and the very sun in the sky snuffed his great wick and announced that he would not rekindle his heavenly light if you nominated Cleon as General! But in spite of everything, you still went ahead and voted for the man! It has been said that bad decisions run rife in this city, and yet somehow the gods always conspire to make everything turn out for the best. It is the same in this instance, for there is a simple solution to turn this terrible error of judgment to your advantage. Just go ahead and indict that gannet Cleon on charges of fraud and embezzlement, clap him in the stocks, and lock him up. Lo and behold, out of your previous folly shall come your salvation, everything will be as before, back the way things were, to the very great benefit of your city (Clouds 582-594).
Indeed, after Cleon’s death, Aristophanes still poked fun at him. As we saw in Thucydides, the Athenians both liked and loathed this demagogue.
6. Three things that should be familiar to students in CLST 1003 by now.
A. Herm
At Clouds 1482, Strepsiades rues his mental weakness, and says,
Oh, I must have been completely out of my mind, to think I rejected the gods because Socrates told me to. Unbelievable! What was I thinking? Dear, dear Hermes, take pity on me, please be kind; don’t destroy me now. I know I behaved like a raving maniac, but it was all because of them and their philosophical drivel. I need you now, help me, tell me what can I do to redeem myself? Should I file a lawsuit against them? What” What can I do? Yes, that’s it, that’s exactly right, I’m not going to fiddle around with lawsuits, no, I’ll burn those babbling bastards out, that’s what I’ll do!
That’s right, Strepsiades speaks to a herm, a stone pillar with the head and genitals of the god, the same ones which unknown people mutilated on the eve of the Sicilian Expedition in 415 BCE, as we read in Thucydides book 6. They were common all over Athens, and stood at the entrance of many houses.
B. Solon
When Pheidippides is showing off his knowledge of the Inferior Argument, and is telling his father Strepsiades a legal technicality that could save him from his creditors, he mentions the famous Athenian lawgiver Solon as a founder of the Athenian legal system, as we have learned (Clouds 1187ff):
STR What does the law really mean, then?
PH Solon, the elder statesman, was essentially a benefactor of the people, correct?
STR What’s that got to do with the old-and-new day?
PH He was the one who decreed that there should be two days set aside for the issuing of court summonses, and that all deposits must be lodged on the new day…
C. Electra and Orestes
Aristophanes expects his audience to remember Aeschylus’ Oresteia, which had been produced in 458 BCE, thirty-five years before. Do you remember the anagnorisis scene in Libation Bearers with Electra and Orestes, and how a lock of hair helped prove their connection? Of course you do, and so did the Athenians! In the parabasis of Clouds, when the Chorus speaks of Aristophanes’ early career as a playwright, they say to the audience (Clouds 534ff),
Ever since then I [Aristophanes] have held you all (Athenians) in the highest esteem, and I always swore by your sound judgment and prudent wisdom. And now like Electra, this comedy comes searching, hoping, seeking an audience equal in wit and intelligence, and like the hair on Orestes’ head, she’ll know them when she sees them!
Don’t you feel educated?
7. Some Theater Apparatus
MECHANE (μηχανἠ): Socrates enters from above in the mechane (μηχανή crane) in a basket at the end of a rope (217). This crane would have been set up behind the skene building.
ECCKΥLΕMA (ἐκκύκλημα): This device was a low platform on rollers that could be wheeled out from the skene building and wheeled back in again. Aeschylus used it for the tableau of Klytaimnestra vaunting over the bodies of Agamemnon and Cassandra in Agamemnon, and for Orestes vaunting over the bodies of Clytemnestra and Aegisthus in the Libation Bearers. In Aristophanes’ Clouds, it shows a scene from inside the Pondertorium, with Socrates’ students and some of their equipment (184).
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