Excerpt from Clouds

Aristophanes

Enter Socrates suspended over the stage on a rack by the stage crane.

STREPSIADES

Socrates! Oh Socrates!

SOCRATES

Why do you call me, ephemeral creature?

STREPSIADES

Socrates! What are you doing up there?

SOCRATES

I walk the air in order to look down on the sun.

STREPSIADES

But why do you need to float on a rack to scorn the gods? If you have to do it, why not do it on the ground?

SOCRATES

In order that I may make exact discoveries of the highest nature! Thus my mind is suspended to create only elevated notions.

SOCRATES (cont.)

The grains of these thoughts then merge with the similar atmosphere of thin air! If I had remained earthbound and attempted to scrutinize the heights, I would have found nothing; for the earth forces the creative juices to be drawn to its core, depriving one of the all-important “water on the brain!”

STREPSIADES

Eh?

You mean, you need a good brainwashing to think such thoughts?

Oh my dear Socrates, you must come down at once.

You must teach me all the things that I have come to learn.

(Socrates is lowered to the ground.)

SOCRATES

And just why have you come?

STREPSIADES

I want to learn to debate.

I’m being besieged by creditors, all my worldly goods are under threat of seizure, the bailiffs are banging on my door!

SOCRATES

Did you fail to realize you were amassing such enormous debts?

STREPSIADES

Oh, I tried to keep things on a tight rein, but it was like closing the stable door after the horse had bolted. I want you to teach me that other Argument of yours, the one that never pays its dues.

STREPSIADES (cont.)

Name your price, whatever it takes, I swear by the gods to pay you!

SOCRATES

(Laughing.) “Swear by the gods”? We don’t give credit to the gods here.

 

…

 

…

 

SOCRATES

Well, what DO you want to learn?

STREPSIADES

The other thing, you know: (Whispering.) The Wrong Argument.

SOCRATES

That’s an advanced class. You can’t just start there. You have to master the basics first, such as the correct gender affiliation of certain types of quadrupedic livestock.

Source

Aristophanes. 2002. “Clouds.” In The trials of Socrates: six classic texts, edited by C. D. C. Reeve, translated by Peter Meineck, 89–176. Indianapolis: Hackett Pub. Co.