Episode 35: The Great Thundercrap

Aristophanes and Classical Greek Comedy

Hello, and welcome to Literature and History. Episode 35: The Great Thundercrap. In this program, we will discuss The Clouds, an ancient Greek comedy written by the playwright Aristophanes, and first staged in the city of Athens in 423 BCE.

We have this tendency when we think about Ancient Greece. I think maybe it’s because a lot of us encounter Ancient Greece for the first time in the works of Plato, or in the myths. And it all seems pretty serious. These bygone Greeks, we think, wrote epic legends about monster slaying – Medusa, and the minotaur, and the hydra. They wrote about wars between nations, and they delved into the fine points of ethical philosophy. We picture them there, standing amidst fluted columns and engaging in sober philosophical disputations in between meetings of the assembly. They can seem, if we just read Plato and Sophocles, as composed and dignified as the sculptures they chiseled out of marble two thousand five hundred years ago. We might have this image of – especially – classical Athens, as a time and place of dignified intellectualism, of discipline, of moderation and self-control. We might have this image of Athens, if we didn’t have a small handful of texts, the most important among them being the plays of Aristophanes. And as the great German poet Heinrich Heine said, “There is a God, and his name is Aristophanes.”¹

This is probably the most famous thing ever said about Aristophanes. The youngest of classical Greece’s four playwrights whose works have survived, Aristophanes lived from roughly 446 BCE until 386 BCE, and eleven of his plays are still extant today. In some ways, the statement “There is a God, and his name is Aristophanes” is an odd truism about the ancient world’s most famous funnyman. Aristophanes’ plays are full of farts and poop jokes, bodily orifices and ridiculous lechery, X-rated quips about sex and undisguised authorial self-promotion, and scene after scene of characters behaving with undignified stupidity and gross selfishness. If we were looking for someone from Ancient Greece to award with the hyperbole of “god,” Homer seems like the obvious choice, due to all of the downstream influence he eventually had. So why would a writer as accomplished as Heinrich Heine select this ancient jokester Aristophanes as the deity of all writers?

I’ll give you a long answer, and a short answer. The long answer is this and the next episode, in which we’ll consider two plays by Aristophanes in full. And the short answer is this. In the hands of someone like Aristophanes, comedy is like a typhoon, or maybe like a stampede of elephants. It might have an original direction that it takes – maybe a specific piece of political commentary or social criticism.² But once it gets going, comedy like that of Aristophanes whirls and tramples through anything and everything. It can be absolutely scathing toward religion. And at the same time it can denigrate the critics of religion. It can be fiercely anti-war. And at the same time it can be nationalistic and mock the enterprise of peacemaking. When Aristophanes pokes fun at something, he is able to simultaneously poke fun at the satirical position he seems to have taken, and thus, play after play, his comedy uproots everything, and flattens everything, leaving in its place only barren ground and gales of laughter. Over the years, readers have tried to claim that Aristophanes was a pacifist, or a secularist, or a feminist, or any number of positions that resonate with our own modern ones. But none of them quite fit. More than Aeschylus or Sophocles, and more than even the often deeply unorthodox Euripides, Aristophanes wrote plays that dismantled the creeds, and the people, and the culture of ancient Athens – and then, doubled back to dismantle that dismantling.

If, as Heine said, there’s something divine about Aristophanes, maybe it’s because this early wellspring of comedy showed us that humor can perform the astounding feat of criticizing everything that it comes across, while at the same time not taking itself seriously. Civilization needs creeds and institutions that hold us together. But at the same time, civilization needs these creeds and institutions to be periodically second guessed, critiqued, and improved. Aristophanes, like so many stellar comedians who have followed him, has shown us that this process of second guessing and critiquing and improving our sacred and state traditions can be joyous, and fun, and lighthearted, even if from time to time it leaves a small handful of inflexible reactionaries on the margins. And for that reason, as I hope to show you over this and the next show, Aristophanes can truly seem divine. [music]

The Adult Content of The Clouds

The Aristophanes play we’re going to talk about today is, again, called The Clouds. This play is a riot. It is extremely profane – there will be X-rated things in this episode that involve pederasty, graphic sex, vegetables used unorthodox ways, as well as the four-letter words typically endemic to Aristophanes, so be forewarned. The thing is, if you sat down at the Theater of Dionysus in 423 BCE to watch this play, you wouldn’t exactly think you were attending a Sunday school lesson. Because as you looked around the orchestra area, you would see strange costumes and lewd masks, probably a dozen characters with various sizes of fake penises – some merely a foot in length, and others far larger, made out of rolled leather and hanging out from beneath the short tunics that actors wore.³ Something about oversized artificial leather penises flopping around onstage before a show would probably clue you into the fact that the play was going to involve some adult themes. Anyway, since you’re listening to a podcast, I invite you to picture all of this, and take heed ahead of time – this play, and the program that you’re listening to, is going to contain some really graphic stuff, and is probably not suitable for children.

Now, you know that the play we’re covering is called The Clouds. [sexy music] And you know it involves sex and fake penises. So, what do you think it’s about? Hyperion and Aurora, getting steamy up in the sky? A torrid affair between Hera and a mortal astronomer? A sexy tryst between Heracles and his squire Hylas? No, actually. This play, with its lurid masks and its dangling leathern phalluses, is about philosophy.

Yeah. Philosophy. Now, I’m going to keep this introduction as short as possible, because I think the play speaks for itself. But that said, let me offer you a bit of background information. The Clouds is most commonly explained as a satire of Socrates, and his ideology. Socrates and Aristophanes were near-contemporaries in Athens. Socrates was twenty years older than Aristophanes, so by the time Aristophanes came of age and started writing plays, Socrates was already well known in Athens as an influential thinker and teacher. Let’s talk about Socrates.

The Historical Socrates and the Platonic Socrates

There are two Socrateses. They should not be confused with one another. There is the real Socrates, who lived from about 469 until 399 BCE. And then there is the Socrates of Plato, a fictional character who appears in Plato’s philosophical writings, and whom Plato uses to advance his various arguments.

Plato’s Socrates – the fictional Socrates, is the universally famous one – the preacher of moderation and discipline, courage and careful logical deduction, witty, perceptive, sometimes a bit irritating, but generally worth listening to. I think the kind of person who listens to educational podcasts probably knows a thing or two about the Platonic Socrates. The Platonic Socrates, largely due to Christianity and Islam prizing and preserving Platonic philosophy, has survived as a towering figure from the intellectual history of the ancient world. However, during the actual 400s BCE, the real Socrates lived and worked in a city where many schools of philosophy and scientific theory flourished. He was not the father of philosophy, because philosophy does not have a father, and it’s always been with us.

Even if we remove ancient Egyptian and Babylonian science and wisdom literature out of the picture, which English language histories have unfortunately done way too often, in the ancient Aegean world, philosophy predated Socrates by centuries. Long before Socrates, back around 600 BCE, the philosopher Thales of Miletus predicted an eclipse. More than a century before Socrates came Xenophanes, also from the eastern Aegean, who was a religious relativist who argued that people fashion gods that look like them. A century before Socrates came Heraclitus, who wrote that the only constant was perpetual change. Before Socrates came Protagoras, who suggested that the mechanisms of human perception wholly determine the way we look at the world. Before Socrates was elevated by the fan fiction of Plato, the philosopher Democritus generated an atomic theory of the universe. In these five figures alone – not to mention many others – we have the stirrings of modern comparative sociology, psychology, physics, astronomy, and atomism. The intellectual history of ancient Greece was already quite robust before Socrates.

Accordingly, the playwright Aristophanes, unlike casual students of philosophy today, did not see Socrates as some fulcrum on which all philosophical history turned. To Aristophanes, Socrates was an integrated part of a long and unwinding tradition of philosophy, and – this is the important part – Aristophanes didn’t see Socrates as some break with contemporary Athenian philosophy, at all. Aristophanes saw Socrates as central to the humdrum fads of the 400s BCE. To Aristophanes, Socrates was just another windbag on the street corner, blathering at people and swindling them out of their money. The play that we’re about to explore – The Clouds – is the single largest piece of evidence that the great Socrates, in his own time, may have been understood as just another sophist.

We talked about sophistry several episodes ago, but let’s quickly recall what we learned. In the intensely rhetorical culture of Athens in the mid to late 400s – in this culture in which compelling speeches at the assembly and law courts were the difference between legislation passing and failing, and between a defendant being acquitted and convicted, rhetoric was staggeringly important. Think of a democratic system in which fact checking is sluggish or impossible, and a lack of printing makes documented, detailed plans difficult to circulate for review. In this kind of a system, the electorate is less acquainted with the facts, and does not have technology to review proposals and measures in very much detail. And so what does the electorate seek? Or, similarly, what does a jury seek? They seek a powerful, pyrotechnic, pedal-to-the-metal speech that will drive them into a passionate yea, or nay. They seek a piece of fiery rhetoric that will compel them to put the potsherd onto which their vote is etched into one of two jars. That is why rhetoric, and oratory were highly important subjects for up and coming young men in Athens to study in the 400s BCE. Rhetoric and oratory turned the motor of politics and law courts.

Within this environment, Sophists were most famous as instructors of rhetoric, who taught their students to argue both sides of a case. If you went to a sophist instructor, including, we can imagine, the real Socrates, you would be taught to argue that a defendant was innocent, and then, that he was guilty. You’d be taught to argue that a piece of legislation was indispensable to your city-state, and then, a moment later, to argue that this piece of legislation was terrible. The most famous Sophist, Protagoras, was an agnostic. He believed that two opposite, and equally true arguments can be made about everything. Protagoras believed that knowledge of absolute truth eludes us, and that we know nothing more than what comes through our senses.⁴ We don’t know how much the real Socrates shared this stance – the fictional Socrates shares almost none of it. But according to one often quoted source, the real Socrates wasn’t the inventor of the Socratic method – it was his predecessor, Protagoras. Protagoras, a later chronicler wrote, “Since he ignored meaning and focused his talk on mere words. . .was the forefather of that tribe of. . .speakers who are so common nowadays. . .He was also the first to develop the kind of argument known as ‘Socratic.’”⁵ In other words, there’s a good chance that the Socratic method wasn’t anything original to Socrates.

So let’s go over the facts essential for The Clouds. The real Socrates – the one Aristophanes knew, was in his own time thought by many to be just another sophist. According to one scholar, “There is no evidence that [Socrates’] contemporaries in general regarded him as a man of any exceptional merit at all.”⁶ The real Socrates taught rhetoric, and he seemed to have believed that when it came to speech, persuasiveness was more important than truth, if there were any such thing as truth at all. The real Socrates, in order to make a living as a teacher of rhetoric, would have taught young people to argue vigorously and relentlessly, and to challenge any kind of orthodoxy, or tradition, or received wisdom that stood in their paths. The real Socrates, unlike the fictional Socrates, probably didn’t have any theory of forms, or notion of a philosopher king, or the any fantasies about the authoritarian state Plato outlines in The Republic.⁷ Plato uses the figure of Socrates give weight to his own theories and fables, just as ancient Hebrew chroniclers attributed the Pentateuch to Moses, and Psalms to David, and Ecclesiastes to Solomon, and so on.

To Aristophanes, and perhaps many other Athenians in the 420s BCE, Socrates wasn’t a revolutionary figure towering over lesser philosophers. To Aristophanes, Socrates was simply rank and file with contemporary sophism – a movement more interested in the acrobatics of argumentation than in the more grounded world of business and statecraft. The play that we’re about to go through together, then, is going to be a satire of the real Socrates. The Clouds premiered in 423 BCE when the philosopher Plato was a toddler, and Plato actually referenced The Clouds later in his work as a piece of theater that had significantly harmed Socrates’ reputation. We’ll talk about that a little later, after we read the play.

Before we open The Clouds, let me just say one more thing about the play we’re about to read. The play is a satire of Socrates. As such, it’s probably no more historically reliable than Plato’s Socratic dialogues. Aristophanes’ version of Socrates is an absurd jackass. Plato’s version of Socrates is saintly and brilliant. Both of them are literary treatments of a person who, tragically, was executed in 399 BCE by the Athenian state. This real person was likely neither as valorous as the Platonic Socrates, nor as crackbrained as the Aristophanic Socrates, but he was beloved by many of his contemporaries, and as such, my guess is that he was a delightful person and a dazzling conversationalist. I say all of this upfront just to emphasize that the Aristophanic Socrates you’re about to meet is a satirical creation, intended to elicit laughter, and I would imagine that as an agile thinker who could see the pros and cons of any production, the real Socrates himself might have laughed at The Clouds, just as we still do, today.

So the plot of Aristophanes’ The Clouds is very straightforward. There’s an old farmer. He’s poor, and he owes some money. This old farmer has a lazy, good-for-nothing son with an entitlement complex. The old farmer decides that he wants his son to be educated in rhetoric, so that his son can make brilliant arguments, and talk them out of debt. And so the old father gets in touch with Socrates. Socrates has a school – a school called “The Thinkery.” And when the old farmer and his son enroll in this so-called “Thinkery,” the two learn that sophism is definitely not without its faults.

Unless otherwise noted, quotes in the remainder of this program will come from the Alan Sommerstein translation, published by Penguin in 2002 in a book titled Lysistrata and Other Plays. This is a great translation, by the way, with excellent notes on the original language. So, let’s take a deep breath, folks. We’re opening our first piece of comedy for this podcast. And it’s going to be a blast. From 423 BCE, here comes The Clouds, by Aristophanes. [music]

The Opening of The Clouds: Strepsiades Awakes

It was morning in the house of the farmer Strepsiades. The roosters had already crowed, and the early sun hung over the courtyard, and the old man tossed and turned. Strepsiades and his son were in their beds, but Strepsiades was awake. He looked around his house with disapproval. The war, he said, had put everything out of joint. No one was getting up in time. You couldn’t discipline your slaves. Nothing was happening in an orderly fashion any more.

Strepsiades looked over at his son, Pheidippides, and grimaced. Old Strepsiades said, “And what about this dutiful son of mine? He never wakes up before sunrise either; just farts merrily away wrapped up in five or six blankets. . .I’m being bitten all over. Not by bugs – by. . .bills and debts, on account of this son of mine, him and his long hair and his riding and his chariot.”⁸ Young Pheidippides, said old Strepsiades, was affecting to be a member of the upper class, and doing things like wearing his hair long, and riding horses, and deepening the family debts.

Strepsiades summoned a slave, and he told the man to bring in the family accounting book. With his accounting documents in hand, Strepsiades looked through a number of tablets, and grimaced. His son Pheidippides had borrowed money, he saw, in order to purchase a horse. As old Strepsiades groused about this horse, his son Pheidippides mumbled in his sleep about horse racing. Strepsiades became increasingly disgusted with the account books and his son’s sleepy mumblings until the old man’s grumbling finally caused young Pheidippides to awaken.

Strepsiades lamented having ever married Pheidippides’ mother. She’d been a member of a very rich family, and she’d sired him an expensive son. Strepsiades, before his marriage, had been a contented country man. But he had not been able to afford his wife’s extravagant tastes. Their son, unfortunately, had inherited his mother’s appetite for luxury. Pheidippides’ mother used to tell her son that he’d one day drive a chariot in a fine robe. Strepsiades, on the other hand, had told his son he’d probably just end up driving goats and wearing a leather smock. Young Pheidippides had listened to his mother.

Yet even though he was in financial trouble, Strepsiades, looking down on the groggy form of his lazy son, said he had a plan. He urged Pheidippides the rest of the way awake, and he told the boy that he needed him to do something. The two men went out into the street, and Strepsiades gestured to an adjacent house. This house, he said, was called the Thinkery. This Thinkery was where young men learned to argue – and once trained there, they could argue anything. They could argue a point Strepsiades emphasized, regardless of whether or not it was true!

Young Pheidippides was very skeptical. Did his father really want him to learn from a bare footed, pallid quack – like that man Socrates who worked in the Thinkery? Strepsiades said that if Pheidippides learned how to prove a correct argument wrong, then the young man might get the two of them out of debt. Unfortunately, young Pheidippides was absolutely unwilling to enroll in any educational program. Pheidippides said he’d go and seek money from his rich uncle, and he vanished back into his father’s house.

Alone on the street, poor Strepsiades wondered what he’d do. After some hesitation, he happened on an idea. He said he himself would go to school there at the Thinkery. He worried that he might be too old or too dull, but in short order, he tramped over and knocked on the door. [music]

Strepsiades Visits the Thinkery

A flummoxed student answered the door of the philosophical school. Strepsiades, said the student at the Thinkery, had just interrupted a terribly important piece of research. A flea had jumped from a fellow student’s eyebrow and onto Socrates’ head. This had prompted a scientific investigation as to how far flees could jump. The unit of measure would be in flea-feet. To investigate further, Socrates had made little waxen shoes for the flea and then meticulously measured how many flea-feet the insect had jumped.

Hearing this, Strepsiades was stunned. Thinking of Socrates, Strepsiades said, “Lord Zeus, what a subtle intellect!” (80). Strepsiades then consented to hear another tale of Socrates’ great brilliance. This time, the famous philosopher had applied his mind to determining why gnats made humming noises. In considering why these small insects emitted such noises, Socrates had quickly focused on their anuses. They had, the philosopher had decided, a trumpet-like organ there, which was the source of the buzzing sound that they emitted. Again, the old farmer Strepsiades was deeply impressed. Anyone who could make such precise proclamations about the back side of a gnat would surely be able to dismantle the case of any greedy creditor!

But it wasn’t all dazzling displays of reason on the part of Socrates, this student said. The student explained that two days before, a lizard had robbed Socrates of a brilliant idea. Strepsiades was intrigued. The old farmer asked how a lizard had stolen Socrates’ idea. The student replied, “Well, [Socrates] was doing some research on the movements and revolutions of the moon, gazing upwards, open-mouthed, and then this gecko shat on him from the ceiling in the dark” (80). Strepsiades laughed. He said, “Oh, I liked that one – a gecko shitting in Socrates’ face” (80).

Notwithstanding moments when reptiles were defecating on him, the student told Strepsiades, Socrates was blindingly intelligent. In fact, just the other day, when no one in the school had anything to eat, Socrates had covered the dinner table with ash, in what his students believed to be preparation to draw out some equations there. Socrates had bent an eating utensil into a pair of compasses. His students waited to see how he would use his great mind to solve the problem of their hunger. And soon enough, Socrates had gone to the gymnasium, stolen someone’s cloak, and sold it for cash! What a mind he had! What a powerful, capacious mind!

Strepsiades could wait no longer. He absolutely had to meet this great man and become one of his pupils. [music]

Strepsiades Meets Socrates and Has His First Lesson

A wheeled platform was pushed out on which there were many students, and Strepsiades looked over the pupils of Socrates. They were hardly robust specimens of masculinity. In fact, they were altogether wheezy, pallid, and didn’t look to be particularly well. Strepsiades scrutinized their bizarre postures, and then, as they were wheeled away, he studied some scientific instruments at the back of their wheeled platform. Strepsiades was shown a map of Greece, but it was distorted and inaccurate. And a moment later, Socrates himself appeared. Side note. Socrates appears suspended by the mechane, or “machine,” or stage crane. Usually in Ancient Greek theater, when someone flew on the crane, it was either a really powerful mortal, like Medea, or a god, like Zeus or Athena. So Socrates appearing, being suspended in four ropes, is all part of Aristophanes’ strategy to make the philosopher appear toweringly absurd.

When asked by the old farmer Strepsiades, Socrates said that he was suspended there in order to study the mysteries of the sun. He needed to be suspended, Socrates explained, because the earth interfered with his ability to ponder the sky and stars. Although Strepsiades did not pretend to understand this method of studying, he explained his own reason for being there at the school. Old Strepsiades needed, he said, to learn how to argue against any case. And he would swear by any god to pay Socrates anything he wanted if only he could learn rhetoric in this fashion.

This promise, however, confused Socrates. Socrates said that the gods were no longer up to date – the Thinkery had newer and improved deities. It was time, said Socrates, for Strepsiades to meet the gods of the Thinkery. These gods were called the Clouds. Socrates then had Strepsiades adorn himself in a garland of ugly, moldering vegetation. And then flour was dumped all over Strepsiades. Following this, Socrates recited a careful invocation in order to summon the Clouds, who will henceforth be the chorus of this play.

The Clouds appeared with a roar of thunder, singing a brief song about the vast scope of their vision, and the way that they watered villages and rivers. Socrates asked Strepsiades if Strepsiades weren’t indeed filled with awe, and Strepsiades said the display had been so imposing that he’d nearly soiled himself. A moment later the Clouds continued their song, singing of rain and watering crops, temples and timely, generous sacrifices. Strepsiades asked who the Clouds were, and Socrates explained that they were the goddesses of the shiftless and lazy – they enabled the inhabitants of the Thinkery to have great intelligence and capacity in argumentation. And Strepsiades announced that when he had heard the Clouds sing a moment ago, he had wanted more than anything to quibble and to engage in all manner of argumentation.

Strepsiades, looking at the Clouds, was compelled to admit that he’d never thought they were anything other than condensed vapor in the air overhead. Socrates snickered. They were no mere vapor, Socrates said. They were the inspiration and nutriment of sophists everywhere – sophists and prophets and idling, long haired poets with fine rings. Socrates said the Clouds could take any form they needed to. The Clouds then offered lavish praises to Socrates, and Socrates, returning the compliment, said that the Clouds were indeed the only deities. Zeus, Socrates proclaimed, was just a fable.

Strepsiades, hearing this, was a bit put off. Well, surely, Strepsiades said, Zeus existed. After all, whenever it rained – that was Zeus, of course, urinating through a gigantic sieve. But Socrates said this, too, was a fable. The Clouds, said Socrates, caused the rain – above the earth they floated, full of water, and when they collided, it rained, and that was that. But what, said old Strepsiades, caused the clouds to collide? – that had to be Zeus! Socrates shook his head. Socrates said, “No, it’s a celestial vortex” (90). And hearing this curious explanation, Strepsiades requested more information.

Socrates, for a moment adopting something like the Socratic method, asked Strepsiades if the old farmer had ever had an upset tummy from eating too much soup. Strepsiades said that indeed this had happened to him. Socrates asked, “You have had a bit too much soup and got an upset stomach, and then suddenly a bit of wind has set it all rumbling?” Strepsiades said this had certainly happened to him.

The old farmer agreed, “That’s just right. It makes a great nuisance of itself right away, and the soup crashes around and roars fearfully just like thunder. First quite gently, ‘prrrr prrrr,’ then it takes a step up, ‘prrr prrr,’ and then when I crap, it really is a thundercrap, ‘prrrrrrrrrrrr!,’ just like [the Clouds over there do].” (90). Socrates said this was exactly how thunder worked – a bunch of celestial roiling and then great booms of noise – just on a larger scale than a human fart. He added that lightning came from wind being trapped inside of clouds, and then rushing out with such friction that it ignited.

Seeing Strepsiades won over by his evidence, Socrates said he presumed Strepsiades would, in the future, remember that the Clouds, and the logical lessons they offered, were the only gods. Strepsiades said that indeed, these would be the only gods he would honor. And then the chorus of Clouds asked Strepsiades what it was he sought from them. The old farmer said he wanted to be the most powerful orator in Greece – not so much in order to accomplish anything political, but instead, to talk his way out of his debts. The chorus of Clouds said this could certainly be done, and Strepsiades heartily vowed that he would be a devotee of the Thinkery, and adhere to all its precepts at all costs. [music]

Strepsiades Begins His Sophistic Education

The first part of Strepsiades’ education was to be a test – a mental test. The old farmer was asked a series of questions. Socrates asked if Strepsiades had a good memory. Strepsiades said, “Yes and no. Very good if somebody owes me something – very bad if I owe it to someone else” (93). After a few more questions, Socrates was not convinced that Strepsiades was a promising pupil. He said that physical punishment might need to be a part of the old farmer’s training. Yet even with this threat, and after having been made to remove his outer cloak, Strepsiades was convinced that he would head into the school.

In his absence, the Clouds who serve as the play’s chorus talked. The main speaker of this chorus of clouds was a figure who stood for the playwright Aristophanes. The figure speaking for Aristophanes said Aristophanes was original, and Aristophanes always came up with new ideas, and just as importantly, once he’d satirized a public figure and knocked him down a few steps, he didn’t press the point, like other playwrights. The figure speaking for Aristophanes said some of his ideas had been stolen by lesser playwrights, and that he hoped that his present, and genuine novelties, would win their approval.

Following what is literally an inset advertisement for Aristophanes himself, the chorus of the Clouds all gathered and sang together. They said that they were terrifically important, and yet no one honored them. They said they (and presumably their creator Aristophanes) had warned Athens against electing a hawkish demagogue named Cleon, and the Athenians hadn’t listened. The Clouds went on and on, and grumbled to the audience about how Athens’ calendar didn’t adequately follow a lunar cycle. Following the lengthy performance of the chorus, the door of the Thinkery flew open and Socrates emerged.

The philosopher was flustered. He said he’d never met a more hopeless, idiotic rustic than Strepsiades. Socrates brought out Strepsiades in order to show just how stupid the old farmer was. Strepsiades was asked about the poetic measures he’d like to learn, but the only measures he knew were things like gallons and liters. Strepsiades similarly failed to understand what rhythms were. He had trouble learning some novel ways of conjugating words that Socrates showed him. Eventually, Socrates told Strepsiades to just lie down on the bed outside the Thinkery. Strepsiades did so, and Socrates left the old farmer alone with the chorus.

Reclined on the bed, Strepsiades began complaining immediately. Bedbugs, he said, were biting him all over – including his ribs, his testicles, and his anus. He suffered vociferously for a while, speaking first to the Clouds and then to Socrates, who reemerged from an upstairs window, until the philosopher came downstairs again and recommenced speaking with his new pupil. Socrates asked Strepsiades if the old farmer had any ideas about how to talk his creditors out of collecting money.

Strepsiades said that he actually had one idea. He’d find a witch. And he’d have this witch steal the moon and put it in a box. Without the lunar cycle, there would be no collection process – because no time would pass. Socrates, after hearing this idea, congratulated Strepsiades on his plan. But he pushed Strepsiades further. What if, said Socrates, Strepsiades owed 30,000 drachmas to someone due to a lawsuit? Strepsiades thought about it, and he came up with another plan. If this happened, he said, he’d find a piece of glass. And as the law clerk drew up his bill for 30,000 drachmas, Strepsiades said, he’d take this piece of glass, focus it on the waxed tablet of the bill, and melt the document, effectively canceling his debt. Socrates congratulated Strepsiades on another ingenious plot.

Then Socrates drew out another scenario. What if, he said, Strepsiades was the defendant in a case, and he had no witnesses, and he was about to be convicted? What would Strepsiades do? Strepsiades said this was easy. He would kill himself! How could they convict him, then? But Socrates disapproved of this solution. He grumbled about Strepsiades’ limitations, and further, observed that Strepsiades didn’t remember anything he was taught. The Clouds, when asked, recommended that Strepsiades send his son to be taught, since the young man’s sharper mind would take to new information more easily.

Strepsiades was skeptical about this advice. His son Pheidippides wasn’t exactly a hard worker. But nonetheless, Strepsiades hurried into his house, and reemerged shoving his bewildered son in front of him. Pheidippides asked his father what in the name of Zeus he was doing. Strepsiades scoffed at the boy. The boy, he said still believed in Zeus – what a buffoon! There was no Zeus. Repeating what he had heard from Socrates and the Thinkery earlier, Strepsiades told his perplexed son that the Clouds, and the vortex in the air that they created, ruled everything. He’d learned it from Socrates, he said – and Socrates was an expert on the feet of fleas.

Young Pheidippides shook his head. His father couldn’t possibly believe such lunatics, Pheidippides said. Strepsiades gave Pheidippides an illustration of his new education, demonstrating the new names he had learned for chickens. Young Pheidippides listened incredulously, and noticed that his father’s shoes were missing. Strepsiades called for Socrates, and the bald old codger emerged in his airborne basket. Young Pheidippides was understandably skeptical about the sudden manifestation of this notorious quack, but, due to his father’s furious pressure, Pheidippides said that he would learn Right and Wrong, as he had been bidden.

Now in the play that we’re reading, Right and Wrong are two characters. And they are the embodiments of two principles. Right is the embodiment of making an argument for a true and justified cause. Wrong is the embodiment of purposely making an argument for a cause known to be false. The two characters look their parts. Right is an elegant old fellow, wearing clothing of two generations back. And wrong is a rather immoral looking young man with an enormous fake penis. In the scene that’s about to take place, these very different figures are going to argue with one another. [music]

The Personifications of Right and Wrong Debate

As soon as dignified old Right, and dissipated young Wrong took the stage, the argument began. Right said that he would win because he would speak the truth, and what was just, and justice was seated with the gods. Wrong scoffed. The audience, Wrong said, was wise enough to know that there was no such thing as justice – why, if there were, then how in the world had Zeus been able to get away with assaulting and imprisoning his own father Kronos? This question sent Right into a renewed fury, and the two figures began bickering in earnest, Right always a defender of conservatism and orthodoxy, and Wrong a champion of nonconformity and logical horseplay. The bickering between Right and Wrong grew so intense that finally, the leader of the chorus of Clouds had to intervene.

The leader of the chorus asked Right and Wrong to explain education – wouldn’t Right lay out the old ways in which boys used to be taught, and wouldn’t Wrong explain the new educations received by boys at present – so that Pheidippides could decide which one we wanted to learn? Wrong said that he would go second – that way, he could listen to whatever Right said and dismantle it. And so Right went first.

Right’s vision of the past was idyllic. Once, old Right said, young men were brought up humble, and decent. Boys dutifully followed their music teachers, and they learned the songs of old sung them the way they were supposed to be sung – not with a bunch of harmonic tomfoolery. Back then, Right said, boys weren’t so seductive. The old man grew misty eyed – and a little distracted – as he talked about the way boys used to be more chaste and not oil themselves so much below the belt – and, he added, boys were more obedient, and –

But Wrong could hear no more. Wrong interrupted elderly Right, saying that the old timer’s vision of the past was antiquated and idiotic. But Right interjected, and continued his reminiscences. The generation who fought the Persians, old Right said – those who lived before the Peloponnesian War and lifted Athens to its greatness – the earlier generation was more respectful, and disciplined. They didn’t chase after dancing girls. Young men needed to be healthy – they needed to run among the olive groves north of the city, to run among poplars in the autumn and planes and elms in the springtime. If young men did this, their muscles would grow strong, and their penises would be nice looking – they’d look different than modern youths, who were pale and talked too much.

The chorus of Clouds, hearing the stirring speech of stately old man Right, said that indeed he was from a bygone golden age. The Clouds said that when clever young Wrong rebutted the argument of dignified old Right, Wrong had better be careful.

But Wrong wasn’t worried in the slightest. He laid out the heart of his philosophy in his first two sentences. Wrong said, “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?” (112).

Wrong argued against Right’s opposition to young men taking hot baths. Wrong ridiculed Right’s hostility toward youths spending time in the marketplace. Wrong said being modest and decent didn’t win you an iota of profit in the end. Now, Wrong’s arguments were filled with amusing loopholes. But nonetheless, Wrong assaulted Right’s arguments vigorously.

Maybe most memorably, Wrong laid out a lurid and logically dubious dichotomy. What if, Wrong said, one wanted to have sex with a married woman? Hmm? This was quite possible, wasn’t it? And if one chose to act on one’s desires, and he were caught in the act – if this happened, the only way one could defend oneself was to be able to argue his way out of this predicament. One needed to be able to use argument to defend himself in such a case, said Wrong, because otherwise, he would be anally penetrated with a radish. A strange and gross history lesson for you here, but in ancient Athens, men who slept with married women could have their pubic hair torn out and be penetrated with a radish. And then, said Wrong, continuing his argument, the wife-seducing man who had been sodomized a radish would have the ass of a male prostitute – the same kind of ass a lawyer had, or an actor, or a politician, all of whom, evidently, frequently had things inserted into their – uh – you get the picture.

Now, at this, dignified old Right was flummoxed. What was there to say? If one did find oneself in the situation of having been caught in the act of sleeping with someone else’s wife, old Right evidently thought, then one would need some pretty sophisticated argumentative tools. Otherwise, he might face some manner of root vegetable. Right said he didn’t know if he could argue against Wrong, and he looked vaguely around, finally tossing his cloak off. Beneath his cloak, old Right wore women’s undergarments, and he hurried out into the audience, flirting with the intermittent audience member before vanishing down one of the aisles.

Wrong was thus triumphant. He turned to Strepsiades and he said he was ready to take young Pheidippides under his wing. Wrong said, “Don’t worry; when you get him back, he’ll be a top-class sophist” (115). Strepsiades said that this was what he wanted. The Clouds murmured that all might not be well after the tutelage was complete. But, following this colorful dialogue between the personifications of Right and Wrong, Pheidippides was led into the school to be taught the ways of modern argumentation. [music]

Strepsiades Uses Sophism to Fend Off His Creditors

Once Strepsiades had gone into his house, and young Pheidippides had gone into the Thinkery, the chorus of Clouds took another commercial break, in order to give Aristophanes himself a plug. In a long song, they warned the judges present at the theatrical competition that these judges had better award Aristophanes first prize. If The Clouds didn’t receive first prize, said the chorus of Clouds, then the Clouds would consider themselves disrespected, and rain and hail would soak anyone who doubted them. With this none-too-subtle piece of self-promotion complete, the play moves forward.

Old Strepsiades emerged from his house, mumbling. He was filled with renewed anxiety. The first day of the month was inbound – the day that his creditors expected their payments. He hurried over to the Thinkery and knocked on the door. Socrates answered. When asked, Socrates said that indeed, young Pheidippides had mastered the ways of fraudulent and sophistic argumentation. Strepsiades raised a cry of praise to the heavens. He said he would no longer be at the mercy of his creditors. Because now, the old farmer had a secret weapon: a rhetorically ingenious son!

Pheidippides emerged from the Thinkery, appearing a few shades paler than he had previously. Strepsiades said that the young man would be his salvation. Strepsiades said that the last day of the month was coming up – the day that the Greeks called “Old and New Day” (118) – and his son would save him from creditors on this day. Only – young Pheidippides objected – how could two days be a single day – how could there even be an Old and New Day? The two men discussed this, and Pheidippides’ displays in fine points of logic showed his father that the young man was indeed now schooled in rhetoric and sophistic thinking. The father and son hurried into their house to celebrate. And soon enough, the end of the month having arrived, the first of Strepsiades’ creditors showed up.

The first creditor was a very fat man, and as he hammered on the door, he said he was there, at the end of the month, on the occasion called Old and New Day, to collect 1,200 drachmas that Strepsiades had borrowed in order to buy a horse. Strepsiades said it was absurd – he didn’t like horses. The creditor asked him – would Strepsiades be willing to swear, by Zeus and every other god, that he owed nothing? Would he dare to do this?

Strepsiades scoffed. He giggled and said that these gods were a hilarious idea. The fat creditor demanded a straight answer. He noticed Strepsiades was holding a small pan – one used for kneading bread, and he asked if Strepsiades intended to pay him with a pan. A pan? said Strepsiades. Why, this wasn’t a pan! It was a miniature pan! Socrates, after all, had taught him all about the precise use of words. Strepsiades said that if his creditor didn’t even know the difference between a pan, and a miniature pan, he wouldn’t even consider paying his creditor. The first of Strepsiades’ creditors thus stormed off, promising he’d get his payment.

A moment later, Strepsiades’ second creditor appeared – a younger man. He was a little worse for the wear, looking as though he had taken a beating. He sang under his breath. This second creditor said the gods were set against him. He said Strepsiades needed to pay him. Strepsiades said the young man had lost his mind. And this downtrodden second creditor said this wasn’t the case at all – Strepsiades owed him money!

Strepsiades then began his argument. The rain, he said, came from rain that had already fallen. The sun drew up old rain from the ground and made it new again. Didn’t the second young creditor know this? The young man said actually he didn’t know this. And Strepsiades seized on the young man’s ignorance. The old farmer exclaimed, “Then how, can you claim the right to have your money back, if you have no knowledge of meteorology?” (122). The second young creditor said that Strepsiades needed to at least pay interest on the money that he’d borrowed. Hearing the word interest, Strepsiades began a second argument. Water, the old farmer said, ran into the ocean all the time. And yet the ocean stayed the same height. And so why did this absurd young man – again, Strepsiades’ second creditor – why did this absurd young man think that his money should increase, when the ocean stayed the same level? Strepsiades told him to get lost, and chased the young man away with a whip before heading back into his house. He was, it seemed, victorious, and better yet, his son shared his great verbal prowess. The door latched shut. [music]

Stepsiades and Pheidippides Debate

The chorus of Clouds, having witnessed Strepsiades’ harsh and dishonest conduct, said that the old farmer had become rather evil. He was openly refusing to pay money he had borrowed with oaths to the gods. The chorus of Clouds said that Strepsiades would soon regret the course of the day, because whatever he’d learned from Socrates over at Thinkery, his son had learned it, too.

As if on cue, sudden screams emerged from the house of Strepsiades. He ran out of his house, clutching his face, and Pheidippides came out afterwards. The son had been hitting the father! Strepsiades cursed his son and called him names, and Pheidippides said he quite loved being insulted. Also, young Pheidippides said, a son was perfectly justified in beating up his father. Strepsiades, of course objected, and father and son squared off for the final logical debate of the play, which the Clouds announced that they would moderate. First, the Clouds asked Strepsiades to explain what had happened. He did so.

Strepsiades said he had asked his son to sing a song, accompanied by a lyre, over their dinner. But Pheidippides said that doing such things was antiquated, and idiotic – especially because the poet his father had requested was an old relic whom no one cared about. Strepsiades said he’d grinded his teeth at this – but he had requested a different song – one by the Athenian playwright Aeschylus. And at this, young Pheidippides scoffed again – Aeschylus, the young said, was tiresome and overrated. This made old Strepsiades even angrier – the venerable veteran Aeschylus, after all, was of his father’s generation.

And so Strepsiades made a final request. How about something modern? And so Pheidippides had recited something from a newfangled Euripides play – a speech from the play Aeolus, about a brother and sister having sex with one another. That was about all old Strepsiades could handle. He began shouting, and Pheidippides began shouting, and Pheidippides started physically assaulting his father. Strepsiades said that he had once taken great care of Pheidippides when the young man was a baby, bringing him milk, and bread, and cleaning up his waste, and Pheidippides had then gone and beaten his father until old Strepsiades pooped his pants!

The chorus of Clouds remarked that this assault on a parent was over the top, and they told young Pheidippides to defend himself. Pheidippides said he could absolutely do this – after all – he was now schooled in contemporary philosophy and the latest notions of morality and logic! Strepsiades said he wished the boy would just go back to his damned horses, but Pheidippides began his case against his father.

Point one. Pheidippides said that his father had once beaten him, when he was young, because the old man cared about his son’s conduct and character. Why, then, shouldn’t the son beat the father, later in life, for the same reason? Point two. Young roosters fought with their fathers all the time. It was natural for humans to do the same. Point three. Pheidippides said he was justified in beating his mother for the same reason – after all, hadn’t she abused him, too, when he was young? Point four. If all of this seemed unconventional, why, then, new laws were being created all the time!

Now, old Strepsiades’ jaw was dropping further and further as this conversation unfolded. Finally, when he saw the full extent of his son’s topsy-turvy morality, Strepsiades cursed Socrates, and newfangled philosophy, and he said that the Clouds were responsible for his son’s crooked behavior. How could they have done such a terrible thing?

Strepsiades Repents and Attacks the Thinkery

The Clouds offered the following – very important – explanation. They proclaimed, “We do the same to anyone that we / Perceive to be in love with wickedness: / We cast him into misery, so that he / May learn that it is right to fear the gods” (128). Strepsiades looked at the Clouds for a long time, and realized that he had indeed been acting very irresponsibly. All of his efforts, he said, had been in an effort to avoid paying money that he owed. The old farmer turned to his son and told young Pheidippides that it was time to murder Socrates and his henchmen. Yet Pheidippides said he’d have none of this, and further, that he still believed that Zeus was a myth. The young man went back into his house, and Strepsiades turned to a statue of the god Hermes, asking it for forgiveness. The old farmer said, “Have pity on me if a set of clever windbags made me take leave of my senses for a time” (128). He wondered if he ought to launch a lawsuit against the Thinkery.

But Strepsiades decided not to. The Thinkery deserved worse. Strepsiades summoned a slave, and he told the slave to climb up on the roof of the Thinkery and begin chopping its roof in with a mattock. Soon, the building next door was under heavy assault. The roof began to give way, and Strepsiades scrambled up a ladder with a blazing torch and set the second floor of the Thinkery on fire. He then began slamming his mattock into its timbers.

Students began rushing out of the Thinkery. A sophist asked Strepsiades what on earth he was doing as the old man dashed his mattock into the building, and Strepsiades said he was “Chopping logic. . .of course” (129). Socrates stumbled out, coughing, and another of the school’s teachers hurled himself from an upper story window. The two leading sophists coughed and groveled on the ground, and Strepsiades yelled that this was what they deserved – after all, they’d insulted the gods and delved into useless absurdities of logic. He told his slaves to chase the terrified philosophers away, and soon, Strepsaides and his household chased Socrates and company off the stage, and out of the auditorium. Seeing the pandemonium, the chorus of Clouds voiced a final couplet: “Lead the way out, we’ve done, I think I’d say, / Sufficient choral service for today” (130). And that’s the end. [music]

The Historical Reception of The Clouds

So that was Aristophanes’ play, The Clouds, again first staged in Athens in the year 423 BCE during that year’s City Dionysia festival. Now that you’ve heard the story summarized, let me tell you a bit more about the history behind this play. As you likely remember if you’ve listened to other episodes in this sequence, the City Dionysia was a competition. Tragedians and comedians staged their plays in an effort to get first prize laurels. At key moments in The Clouds, Aristophanes has his chorus jockey the audience and judges to vote for him. But although the play we just read is undeniably funny, and although it undertakes a successful satire of sophist philosophy, The Clouds, evidently, proved a flop. The Athenians who watched it in 423, for some reason, didn’t like it. Aristophanes revised it, and in a passage I didn’t quote, the chorus leader who speaks for Aristophanes recalls the experience of writing The Clouds and having it rejected during its first staging. The chorus leader says,

So may I be victorious and men think well of me,
I thought that you an audience intelligent would be,
And also thought 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. (95)

So this play that’s been the central subject of our episode – for whatever reason, this play wasn’t liked by its original Athenian audience. Let’s consider why.

When a play, like Medea or The Clouds – a play that we read and respect today – didn’t take first prize in Classical Athens, there is always a chance that it was simply upstaged by something really fantastic that’s now lost to us. And there’s always a chance that a choregoi – or one of the play’s producers, was disliked by the general public, and so his play would be voted down. But there may be more specific reasons why Aristophanes’ The Clouds was a flop. First. The Clouds is a piece of intellectual satire. It’s not a comedy with a stock plot, and archetypical characters. To understand The Clouds, you do have to know what sophism is, and how it works. It’s hard to imagine that the middle- and lower-class members of Aristophanes’ audience cared too much about how rich youths in the city were being tutored. So it’s possible that this play, in spite of its bathroom humor, was still a bit too intellectual to hit the audience’s comedic sweet spot.

There’s another, simpler reason why The Clouds may not have been a big hit at its world premiere. Maybe Aristophanes’ audience in 423 BCE found the play offensive. Now, if other surviving comedies can be relied on, Aristophanes’ audience wouldn’t have been offended by bathroom humor, or any of the stuff about backsides, and seductive young boys. All that was humdrum and fair game in classical Athenian comedy. If The Clouds proved offensive, it might have been because of this. The play is bristling with sacrilege. The Thinkery quickly convinces the old farmer Strepsiades that Zeus doesn’t exist, and that Clouds and a Great Vortex are what drive all motion and existence. Strepsiades recants in the end, but maybe – maybe for the everyday pious masses in the audience, the damage had been done by then. To less educated audience members, then, The Clouds might have been a mixture of religious impiety on one hand, and incomprehensible philosophical satire on the other.

To the aristocrats in Aristophanes’ audience, the play might have been offensive for a different reason, still. Maybe to the aristocrats in the audience, the satire of Socrates and his sophism more generally hit a bit close to home. Many of these people, after all, had been trained with sophist methods, and they had had their kids trained by sophists. Some of these aristocrats might have been uncomfortable with the depiction of their city’s most beloved sophist as a bamboozler whose face gets pooped on by a lizard.

So, those are some possible for the failure of The Clouds – one, it was too intellectually dense, two, it seemed sacrilegious to the masses, and three, its satirical targets may have been too close to home for the aristocracy. But there’s another, major reason – one which is more obvious. And this third reason is that maybe, in spite of Socrates’ notorious ugliness, and the fact that even his disciple Plato conceded that Socrates didn’t bathe often enough, or wear shoes, even though it was really easy to make fun of him, maybe people really liked Socrates. Maybe, in spite of his unorthodoxy, Socrates made a living in the city of Athens because he was a wonderful, fascinating person, and people loved him. Maybe Aristophanes’ audience in 423 BCE watched the vicious, no-holds-barred satire of Socrates, and they said, “Hey, come on. Be nice.” Maybe they said, “Sure, Socrates isn’t much to look at, and he could use a bath, and he can be aggravating. But he’s our Socrates. He’s our pesky, dirty local philosopher. Go easy on him.” I think that’s possible, too.

To Plato, who was born right around the year that The Clouds premiered, the play was way too harsh on Socrates. Plato, during his early- to mid-twenties, saw Socrates executed by the Athenian state. To Plato, Aristophanes’ The Clouds was not a light piece of philosophical satire. To Plato, The Clouds kicked off an avalanche of inaccurate slanders of his beloved teacher, slanders which would eventually lead to Socrates’ death in prison in 399. Let’s talk for a moment about the later life of Socrates. [music]

Plato’s Take on Aristophanes

Socrates, as most people know, was executed for crimes against the city of Athens. When Plato attended the trial of his teacher Socrates in 399, Plato wasn’t allowed to speak. We have no idea what was said there, but in Plato’s Apology, written some time later in the 390s, Plato vindicated his earlier silence by saying quite a bit. Plato’s Apology is one of the most famous texts in philosophy – the Apology is a dialogue that a lot of us read in junior high or high school, and it’s Socrates’ long and frustrating explanation of why he’s willing to die for what appear to be false charges against him. In this dialogue, Socrates mentions none other than the playwright Aristophanes, and alludes to Aristophanes’ play The Clouds. Socrates says in the Apology:

What do the slanderers say? They shall be my prosecutors, and I will sum up their words in an affidavit. “Socrates is an evil-doer, and a curious person, who searches into things under the earth and in heaven, and he makes the worse appear the better cause; and he teaches the aforesaid doctrines to others.” That is the nature of the accusation, and that is what you have seen yourselves in the comedy of Aristophanes, who has introduced a man whom he calls Socrates, going about and saying that he can walk in the air, and talking a deal of nonsense concerning matters of which I do not pretend to know either much or little—not that I mean to say anything disparaging of any one who is a student of natural philosophy.⁹

In the Apology, then, Plato’s Socrates laments that he’s been egregiously misrepresented. Plato’s Socrates thinks that Aristophanes, and The Clouds, are major reasons why the Athenian public has a distorted view of him. He emphasizes that his slow decline in reputation has been a result of the uncomprehending mockery with which he’s been portrayed in popular culture.

As sad as the story is that’s told in the Apology, it’s important to remember that the Apology, like Aristophanes’ The Clouds, is a literary text with its own agenda and ideological axe grinding. The Apology may be telling a very sad truth – that Socrates’ delicate reputation was besmirched by a work of comedy that portrayed him as a bizarre huckster. Whatever actually happened, in addition to trying to vindicate his teacher in the Apology, Plato also followed Aristophanes’ example, and he maligned Aristophanes right back. Plato, around ten years after he wrote the Apology in the 490s, wrote a famous dialogue called the Symposium in the 480s. And in the Symposium, Aristophanes is a character – and not a very appealing one.

In Plato’s Symposium, Aristophanes shows up to a philosophical conversation hung over. He’s said to always be keeping company with Dionysus, the god of wine, and Aphrodite, the goddess of sex and love. At one point, Plato’s Aristophanes is unable to speak because he’s eaten so much that he has the hiccups. Eventually, Aristophanes gives a rambling talk about the creation of mankind, but after Aristophanes’ meandering discourse, Socrates gives the company a much more climactic speech that ties together many themes in the collective conversation. Aristophanes refuses to acknowledge Socrates’ masterful wit, and ends up passing out drunk by dawn. The Symposium doesn’t have the satirical brutality of The Clouds, but the message is still clear. Plato’s Socrates is a dignified and sober pursuer of the truth, and Plato’s Aristophanes is a glutton, drunkard, and second-rate intellect.

The Later Life of Socrates

So which is the real Socrates? And which is the real Aristophanes? And – and maybe this is the heart of the matter – did Aristophanes’ play The Clouds have something to do with the decline of Socrates’ reputation in Athens at the end of the 400s? Did a play involving farts, and lizard poop, and a stupid old farmer actually lead to the demise of a very remarkable person?

Well, we can’t say for sure. The Clouds certainly depicts Socrates as an iconoclast – the sort of man who teaches youths to dismantle the beliefs and worldviews of their parents. The Clouds also shows Socrates as an impious person who rejects the conventional Athenian pantheon. These were the state’s reasons for his execution in 399, according to the work of Plato and his contemporary Xenophon. But Aristophanes, rather than inventing these dangerous characteristics in Socrates, might have just been recording and embellishing something already there. And additionally, Plato’s charges against Aristophanes may have been overblown for another reason. The justification that we hear for Socrates’ execution was that he was “corrupting the youth of Athens.” But a quick look into the late history of the Peloponnesian War shows us much more specific reasons for the persecution of Socrates by the Athenian state.

Twenty years or so after The Clouds was first staged, in other words, around 404 or 403 BCE, Socrates had some unfortunate political connections that would have made his life in Athens dangerous. As students of ancient Greek history know, Sparta won the Peloponnesian War – this war that unfortunately dominated the lives of both Aristophanes and Socrates. When Sparta won the Peloponnesian War, Sparta set up a bloody, ruthless oligarchy called the Thirty Tyrants. These pro-Spartan rulers were in power between 404 and 403 BCE, and they killed and shackled proponents of Athenian democracy. Thousands of Athenians died. And during this oligarchy’s awful reign, many pro-democratic citizens of Athens fled to Thebes, where they would not be executed for their political beliefs. But Socrates did not flee. For whatever reason, Socrates stayed under the anti-democratic regime of the Thirty Tyrants. And when the short reign of the Thirty Tyrants ended, and the pro-democratic elites poured back into Athens, Socrates might have been tainted with allegiances to the ousted tyrannical regime.

Apart from all of this, Socrates had also had a long and torrid relationship with a man named Alcibiades. Alcibiades was Athenian, but he switched sides multiple times during the Peloponnesian War. Back in 415, Alcibiades had been implicated in a flagrant piece of blasphemy, when many Athenian statues of Hermes – statues with penises protruding from their bases, were mutilated. Hermes statues had their penises broken off, and as odd as this sounds to our modern ears, Athenians considered this vandalism an ill omen and act of blasphemy, and Alcibiades was blamed. Socrates, who already evidently had a reputation for sacrilege, was likely also tainted by this famous scandal.

So when Socrates was put on trial in 399 and executed, there were many forces acting against him. Some of these forces were philosophical, but others political and endemic to the ideological microclimates of war-torn Athens at the close of the 400s. Aristophanes might have been a small part of the general sentiment against the famous philosopher, but the active, colorful, outspoken life Socrates had led had unfortunately made him a few too many enemies. [music]

Old Comedy and New Comedy

So now, you know The Clouds. You also know that Plato’s Socrates was a fictional character, just as Aristophanes’ Socrates was a fictional character, and that the real Socrates is hidden somewhere behind all of the fictional and philosophical accounts of him.

We’ve covered a decent amount of ground in this program so far, but I have one more piece of information for you. This piece of information will be the difference between what is called Old Comedy, and then New Comedy, the two most important terms for understanding humor in ancient Greek literature. In our analysis of Aristophanes’ Clouds, we’ve explored the play as a piece of satire. Satire was the main agenda of the comedy of the classical period of ancient Greece. The plays that have survived from Aristophanes, and anecdotes about other comedic works from the 400s BCE, suggest that classical Athenian comedy had satire as its main agenda, and not just satire, but satire of contemporary Athenian people and institutions. Literary historians call Aristophanic comedy “Old Comedy.” Old Comedy, once again, was, generally speaking, political in nature. Sometimes bordering on what we would call libel, Old Comedy was frequently harsh, full of specific references to current events, and extremely crude. Playwrights like Aristophanes used Old Comedy to make fun of real people and institutions in the ancient Greek world in order to get a laugh.

Now, comedy comes in all shapes and sizes, and none of it is right or wrong. But if you think about it, Old Comedy, like that of Aristophanes, can only exist in a democratic society with a lot of shared cultural references, like the city of Athens in 423 BCE. After the classical period, as the model of the city-state gave way to intercontinental empires ruled by autocrats and their deputies, social satire became increasingly dangerous. Dictators do not appreciate being satirized. And furthermore, when imperial conquests and enslavements are tossing people all over the place, any given citizen body that shows up is going to be less homogenous than Aristophanes’ audience was in 423 BCE. In other words, Aristophanes knew he could make fun of Socrates, because everyone in the city knew who Socrates was. Later playwrights, however, living in Hellenistic and Roman empires, could not count on their audiences all having the same shared body of myths, or knowing the same contemporary history, because citizens of empires come from all over the place. Aristophanes wrote Old Comedy in a world in which bawdy contemporary satire worked. But a century after The Clouds, a theatrical genre called New Comedy began flourishing.

New Comedy is the most important literary genre that most of us have never heard of. New Comedy plays, the first of which survives from 316 BCE, are, to put it simply, like Shakespearean comedies and modern romcoms. New Comedy plays use stock characters like lovely village maidens, dapper bachelors, clever slaves, grumpy old men, town drunks, and so on, and they frequently have happy endings involving family reunions and marriages. Less incendiary and offensive than Old Comedy, and more generic in their plots, New Comedy was a genre for a larger, more imperial world, and a number of later comic playwrights whom we’ll cover, including Menander, Plautus, and Terence told endearing stories about goodhearted protagonists finding home and happiness. From these stories came ancient Greek novels like Daphnis and Chloe and the Aethiopica, which themselves influenced renaissance writers like Cervantes, Shakespeare, and Molière. So, to review, Old Comedy is ferocious contemporary social satire – that of Aristophanes. New Comedy is basically Shakespeare’s As You Like It, only with togas and sandals. Old Comedy and New Comedy won’t be on today’s test, by the way, class, but, extra credit if you remember that distinction, because New Comedy will be coming up soon, and then again and again after that.

Old Comedy – that rip-roaring burlesque style practiced by Aristophanes and his generation of Athenians, with all of its harshness and butt stuff – Old Comedy has often had a sketchy reputation in later literary history. It can be pretty mean. It likelly did ruin the reputations of some eccentric, but decent people. But it was also part of the greatness of antiquity’s most famous democratic society. Neither leaders, nor heads of industry, nor puffed-up intellectuals, nor artists should ever be exempt from healthy and well-intentioned satire.

And while Aristophanes’ assessment of sophistry as a “Great Thundercrap” is pervasive throughout The Clouds, I think there’s just a bit more to The Clouds than brutal satire. Aristophanes mocks sophistry, but he also finds that he has a lot in common with it. Because if sophistry aims to dismantle all argumentation for the sake of advancing a position, Aristophanes’ comedy also seeks to dismantle all argumentation – only – for the sake of producing laughter. The play does end on a conservative note – old Strepsiades repents to the gods and literally begins burning down the sophist school next door. And yet throughout The Clouds, Aristophanes engages in sophistry with all the zest and enthusiasm of a sophist, gleefully dismissing the notion of gods, and advancing controversial arguments against everything from language to parenting, from the gods of Mount Olympus to the farts of gnats. For this reason, I think, The Clouds is far more than a conservative play leveled against new intellectual movements in Athens. Plato might have thought Aristophanes was a villain who drove Socrates to his demise, but the real Aristophanes must have looked at the real Socrates as something of a kindred spirit. Comedians and philosophers might have their differences, but both are in the business of turning things on their heads, and taking a good, long look at the fleas, and gnats, and poopy lizards that lie beneath. [music]

Moving on to Lysistrata

Next time, we’re going to read Aristophanes’ most famous play, Lysistrata. Lysistrata, which premiered twelve years after The Clouds, shows us a whole different kind of satire. While The Clouds takes as its target the emerging ranks of the sophists, Lysistrata pokes fun at the enterprise of making war. Our next program will take us through the plot and history of this most famous ancient Greek comedy. But we’ll also learn a bit more about Old Comedy as a genre. Old Comedy could be ruthless, disgusting, and petty. Old Comedy could also be absolutely heroic. And while we’ll learn about Lysistrata in our next show, we’ll also get acquainted with Aristophanes’ biography, and his long career as a political satirist – one who took huge personal risks to denigrate warmongering opportunists, and when threatened with imprisonment and worse, refused to back down. So in the next episode, you’ll laugh, you’ll cry – you’ll be made to feel slightly morally uncomfortable, because it’s an ancient Greek comedy, and you never know what to expect. I have a quiz on this program available in the notes section of your podcast app, if you’d like to take a moment to review what you’ve learned. Thanks for listening to Literature and History, and I’ve got a song for you if you want to hear it. If not, see you next time for Lysistrata.

Still here? Okay. Well, doing a comedy song at the end of a comedy play is mildly redundant and – well – following the jokes of Aristophanes is fairly intimidating. But I thought I’d give it a shot and do a really short little ditty to celebrate Aristophanes. One of the things Aristophanes does in The Clouds is that he has two different moments of shameless self-promotion – even threatening the audience with rain and storms if they don’t vote his play first place. I got to thinking – what if I got to go back in time and help Aristophanes write a song about himself to put in one of his plays? Not that he would need me – of course – the guy could obviously handle himself, but anyway, I thought that in the entirely possible and very realistic event that I were shipped 2,500 years into the past and then commissioned to write a brief choral interlude to an Aristophanes play, this would be the one that I would write. It’s an a capella tune called “Aristophanes Barbershop,” harkening back to my days of high school choir when I and other likeminded idiots would arrange funny songs and sing them for people. I hope it’s fun, and next time, once again, Aristophanes is going to bring the house down with Lysistrata.



References

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