THE CLOUDS

The Clouds
by
Aristophanes
[420 BC]

CHARACTERS IN THE PLAY
• STREPSIADES
• PHIDIPPIDES
• SERVANT OF STREPSIADES
• DISCIPLES OF SOCRATES
• SOCRATES
• JUST DISCOURSE
• UNJUST DISCOURSE
• PASIAS, a Money-lender
• AMYNIAS, another Money-lender
• CHORUS OF CLOUDS

[Scene:-In the background are two houses, that of Strepsiades and that of Socrates, the Thoughtery. The latter is small and dingy; the interior of the former is shown and two beds are seen, each occupied.]

The text appears to be derived from the edition published in 1912 for the Athenian Society, by an anonymous translator. Some modification has since been applied, with the addition of stage directions and some updating of the language.


STREPSIADES: [sitting up]
Great gods! will these nights never end? will daylight never come? I heard the cock crow long ago and my slaves are snoring still! Ah! Ah! It wasn't like this formerly. Curses on the war! has it not done me ills enough? Now I may not even chastise my own slaves. Again there's this brave lad, who never wakes the whole long night, but, wrapped in his five coverlets, farts away to his heart's content. [He lies down] Come! let me nestle in well and snore too, if it be possible....oh! misery, it's vain to think of sleep with all these expenses, this stable, these debts, which are devouring me, thanks to this fine cavalier, who only knows how to look after his long locks, to show himself off in his chariot and to dream of horses! And I, I am nearly dead, when I see the moon bringing the third decade in her train and my liability falling due....Slave! light the lamp and bring me my tablets. [The slave obeys.] Who are all my creditors? Let me see and reckon up the interest. What is it I owe?....Twelve minae to Pasias....What! twelve minae to Pasias?....Why did I borrow these? Ah! I know! It was to buy that thoroughbred, which cost me so much. How I should have prized the stone that had blinded him!
PHIDIPPIDES: [in his sleep]
That's not fair, Philo! Drive your chariot straight, I say.
STREPSIADES:
This is what is destroying me. He raves about horses, even in his sleep.
PHIDIPPIDES: [still sleeping]
How many times round the track is the race for the chariots of war?
STREPSIADES:
It's your own father you are driving to death....to ruin. Come! what debt comes next, after that of Pasias?....Three minae to Amynias for a chariot and its two wheels.
PHIDIPPIDES: [still asleep]
Give the horse a good roll in the dust and lead him home.
STREPSIADES:
Ah! wretched boy! it's my money that you are making roll. My creditors have distrained on my goods, and here are others again, who demand security for their interest.
PHIDIPPIDES: [awaking]
What is the matter with you, father, that you groan and turn about the whole night through?

STREPSIADES:
I have a bum-bailiff in the bedclothes biting me.
PHIDIPPIDES:
For pity's sake, let me have a little sleep. [He turns over.]
STREPSIADES:
Very well, sleep on! but remember that all these debts will fall back on your shoulders. Oh! curses on the go-between who made me marry your mother! I lived so happily in the country, a commonplace, everyday life, but a good and easy one-had not a trouble, not a care, was rich in bees, in sheep and in olives. Then indeed I had to marry the niece of Megacles, the son of Megacles; I belonged to the country, she was from the town; she was a haughty, extravagant woman, a true Coesyra. On the nuptial day, when I lay beside her, I was reeking of the dregs of the wine-cup, of cheese and of wool; she was redolent with essences, saffron, voluptuous kisses, the love of spending, of good cheer and of wanton delights. I will not say she did nothing; no, she worked hard...to ruin me, and pretending all the while merely to be showing her the cloak she had woven for me, I said, "Wife you go too fast about your work, your threads are too closely woven and you use far too much wool."
[A slave enters with a lamp.]
SLAVE:
There is no more oil in the lamp.
STREPSIADES:
Why then did you light such a thirsty lamp? Come here, I am going to beat you.
SLAVE:
What for?
STREPSIADES:
Because you have put in too thick a wick....Later, when we had this boy, what was to be his name? It was the cause of much quarrelling with my loving wife. She insisted on having some reference to a horse in his name, that he should be called Xanthippus, Charippus or Callippides. I wanted to name him Phidonides after his grandfather. We disputed long, and finally agreed to style him Phidippides.... She used to fondle and coax him, saying, "Oh! what a joy it will be to me when you have grown up, to see you, like my father, Megacles, clothed in purple and standing up straight in your chariot driving your steeds toward the town." And I would say to him, "When, like your father, you will go, dressed in a skin, to fetch back your goats from Phelleus." Alas! he never listened to me and his madness for horses has shattered my fortune. [He gets out of bed.] But by dint of thinking the livelong night, I have discovered a road to salvation, both miraculous and divine. If he will but follow it, I shall be out of my trouble! First, however, he must be awakened, but it must be done as gently as possible. How shall I manage it? Phidippides! my little Phidippides!
PHIDIPPIDES: [awaking again]
What is it, father?
STREPSIADES:
Kiss me and give me your hand.
PHIDIPPIDES: [getting up and doing as his father requests]
There! What's it all about?
STREPSIADES:
Tell me! do you love me?
PHIDIPPIDES:
By Posidon, the equestrian Posidon! yes, I swear I do.
STREPSIADES:
Oh, do not, I pray you, invoke this god of horses; he is the one who is the cause of all my cares. But if you really love me, and with your whole heart, my boy, believe me.
PHIDIPPIDES:
Believe you? about what?
STREPSIADES:
Alter your habits forthwith and go and learn what I tell you.
PHIDIPPIDES:
Say on, what are your orders?
STREPSIADES:
Will you obey me ever so little?
PHIDIPPIDES:
By Bacchus, I will obey you.
STREPSIADES:
Very well then! Look this way. Do you see that little door and that little house?
PHIDIPPIDES:
Yes, father. But what are you driving at?
STREPSIADES:
That is the Thoughtery of wise souls. There they prove that we are coals enclosed on all sides under a vast snuffer, which is the sky. If well paid, these men also teach one how to gain law-suits, whether they be just or not.
PHIDIPPIDES:
What do they call themselves?
STREPSIADES:
I do not know exactly, but they are deep thinkers and most admirable people.
PHIDIPPIDES:
Bah! the wretches! I know them; you mean those quacks with pale faces, those barefoot fellows, such as that miserable Socrates and Chaerephon?


STREPSIADES:
Silence! say nothing foolish! If you desire your father not to die of hunger, join their company and let your horses go.
PHIDIPPIDES:
No, by Bacchus! even though you gave me the pheasants that Leogoras raises.
STREPSIADES:
Oh! my beloved son, I beseech you, go and follow their teachings.
PHIDIPPIDES:
And what is it I should learn?
STREPSIADES:
It seems they have two courses of reasoning, the true and the false, and that, thanks to the false, the worst law-suits can be gained. If then you learn this science, which is false, I shall not have to pay an obolus of all the debts I have contracted on your account.
PHIDIPPIDES:
No, I will not do it. I should no longer dare to look at our gallant horsemen, when I had so ruined my tan.
STREPSIADES:
Well then, by Demeter! I will no longer support you, neither you, nor your team, nor your saddle-horse. Go and hang yourself, I turn you out of house and home.
PHIDIPPIDES:
My uncle Megacles will not leave me without horses; I shall go to him and laugh at your anger.
[He departs. STREPSIADES goes over to SOCRATES' house.]
STREPSIADES:
One rebuff shall not dishearten me. With the help of the gods I will enter the Thoughtery and learn myself. [He hesitates.] But at my age, memory has gone and the mind is slow to grasp things. How can all these fine distinctions, these subtleties be learned? [Making up his mind] Bah! why should I dally thus instead of rapping at the door? Slave, slave!
[He knocks and calls.]
A DISCIPLE: [from within]
A plague on you! Who are you?
STREPSIADES:
Strepsiades, the son of Phido, of the deme of Cicynna.
DISCIPLE: [coming out of the door]
You are nothing but an ignorant and illiterate fellow to let fly at the door with such kicks. You have brought on a miscarriage-of an idea!
STREPSIADES:
Pardon me, please; for I live far away from here in the country. But tell me, what was the idea that miscarried?
DISCIPLE:
I may not tell it to any but a disciple.

STREPSIADES:
Then tell me without fear, for I have come to study among you.
DISCIPLE:
Very well then, but reflect, that these are mysteries. Lately, a flea bit Chaerephon on the brow and then from there sprang on to the head of Socrates. Socrates asked Chaerephon, "How many times the length of its legs does a flea jump?"
STREPSIADES:
And how ever did he go about measuring it?
DISCIPLE:
Oh! it was most ingenious! He melted some wax, seized the flea and dipped its two feet in the wax, which, when cooled, left them shod with true Persian slippers. These he took off and with them measured the distance.
STREPSIADES:
Ah! great Zeus! what a brain! what subtlety!
DISCIPLE:
I wonder what then would you say, if you knew another of Socrates' contrivances?
STREPSIADES:
What is it? Pray tell me.
DISCIPLE:
Chaerephon of the deme of Sphettia asked him whether he thought a gnat buzzed through its proboscis or through its anus.
STREPSIADES:
And what did he say about the gnat?
DISCIPLE:
He said that the gut of the gnat was narrow, and that, in passing through this tiny passage, the air is driven with force towards the breech; then after this slender channel, it encountered the rump, which was distended like a trumpet, and there it resounded sonorously.
STREPSIADES:
So the arse of a gnat is a trumpet. Oh! what a splendid arsevation! Thrice happy Socrates! It would not be difficult to succeed in a law-suit, knowing so much about a gnat's guts!
DISCIPLE:
Not long ago a lizard caused him the loss of a sublime thought.
STREPSIADES:
In what way, please?
DISCIPLE:
One night, when he was studying the course of the moon and its revolutions and was gazing open-mouthed at the heavens, a lizard crapped upon him from the top of the roof.
STREPSIADES:
A lizard crapping on Socrates! That's rich!
DISCIPLE:
Last night we had nothing to eat.
STREPSIADES:
Well, what did he contrive, to secure you some supper?
DISCIPLE:
He spread over the table a light layer of cinders, bending an iron rod the while; then he took up a pair of compasses and at the same moment unhooked a piece of the victim which was hanging in the palaestra.
STREPSIADES:
And we still dare to admire Thales! Open, open this home of knowledge to me quickly! Haste, haste to show me Socrates; I long to become his disciple. But do please open the door. [The door opens, revealing the interior of the Thoughtery, in which the DISCIPLES OF SOCRATES are seen in various postures of meditation and study; they are pale and emaciated creatures.] Ah! by Heracles! what country are those animals from?
DISCIPLE:
Why, what are you astonished at? What do you think they resemble?
STREPSIADES:
The captives of Pylos. But why do they look so fixedly on the ground?
DISCIPLE:
They are seeking for what is below the ground.
STREPSIADES:
Ah! they're looking for onions. Do not give yourselves so much trouble; I know where there are some, fine big ones. But what are those fellows doing, bent all double?
DISCIPLE:
They are sounding the abysses of Tartarus.
STREPSIADES:
And what are their arses looking at in the heavens?
DISCIPLE:
They are studying astronomy on their own account. But come in so that the master may not find us here.
STREPSIADES:
Not yet; not yet; let them not change their position. I want to tell them my own little matter.
DISCIPLE:
But they may not stay too long in the open air and away from school.
STREPSIADES: [pointing to a celestial globe]
In the name of all the gods, what is that? Tell me.
DISCIPLE:
That is astronomy.
STREPSIADES: [pointing to a map]
And that?

DISCIPLE:
Geometry.
STREPSIADES:
What is that used for?
DISCIPLE:
To measure the land.
STREPSIADES:
But that is apportioned by lot.
DISCIPLE:
No, no, I mean the entire earth.
STREPSIADES:
Ah! what a funny thing! How generally useful indeed is this invention!
DISCIPLE:
There is the whole surface of the earth. Look! Here is Athens.
STREPSIADES:
Athens! you are mistaken; I see no courts in session.
DISCIPLE:
Nevertheless it is really and truly the Attic territory.
STREPSIADES:
And where are my neighbours of Cicynna?
DISCIPLE:
They live here. This is Euboea; you see this island, that is so long and narrow.
STREPSIADES:
I know. Because we and Pericles have stretched it by dint of squeezing it. And where is Lacedaemon?
DISCIPLE:
Lacedaemon? Why, here it is, look.
STREPSIADES:
How near it is to us! Think it well over, it must be removed to a greater distance.
DISCIPLE:
But, by Zeus, that is not possible.
STREPSIADES:
Then, woe to you! and who is this man suspended up in a basket?
DISCIPLE:
That's himself.
STREPSIADES:
Who's himself?
DISCIPLE:
Socrates.
STREPSIADES:
Socrates! Oh! I pray you, call him right loudly for me.
DISCIPLE:
Call him yourself; I have no time to waste. [He departs. The machine swings in SOCRATES in a basket.]
STREPSIADES:
Socrates! my little Socrates!
SOCRATES: [loftily]
Mortal, what do you want with me?
STREPSIADES:
First, what are you doing up there? Tell me, I beseech you.
SOCRATES: [pompously]
I am traversing the air and contemplating the sun.
STREPSIADES:
Thus it's not on the solid ground, but from the height of this basket, that you slight the gods, if indeed....
SOCRATES:
I have to suspend my brain and mingle the subtle essence of my mind with this air, which is of the like nature, in order clearly to penetrate the things of heaven. I should have discovered nothing, had I remained on the ground to consider from below the things that are above; for the earth by its force attracts the sap of the mind to itself. It's just the same with the watercress.
STREPSIADES:
What? Does the mind attract the sap of the watercress? Ah! my dear little Socrates, come down to me! I have come to ask you for lessons.
SOCRATES: [descending]
And for what lessons?
STREPSIADES:
I want to learn how to speak. I have borrowed money, and my merciless creditors do not leave me a moment's peace; all my goods are at stake.
SOCRATES:
And how was it you did not see that you were getting so much into debt?
STREPSIADES:
My ruin has been the madness for horses, a most rapacious evil; but teach me one of your two methods of reasoning, the one whose object is not to repay anything, and, may the gods bear witness, that I am ready to pay any fee you may name.
SOCRATES:
By which gods will you swear? To begin with, the gods are not a coin current with us.
STREPSIADES:
But what do you swear by then? By the iron money of Byzantium?
SOCRATES:
Do you really wish to know the truth of celestial matters?
STREPSIADES:
Why, yes, if it's possible.
SOCRATES:
....and to converse with the clouds, who are our genii?
STREPSIADES:
Without a doubt.

SOCRATES:
Then be seated on this sacred couch.
STREPSIADES: [sitting down]
I am seated.
SOCRATES:
Now take this chaplet.
STREPSIADES:
Why a chaplet? Alas! Socrates, would you sacrifice me, like Athamas?
SOCRATES:
No, these are the rites of initiation.
STREPSIADES:
And what is it I am to gain?
SOCRATES:
You will become a thorough rattle-pate, a hardened old stager, the fine flour of the talkers....But come, keep quiet.
STREPSIADES:
By Zeus! That's no lie! Soon I shall be nothing but wheat-flour, if you powder me in that fashion.
SOCRATES:
Silence, old man, give heed to the prayers. [In an hierophantic tone] Oh! most mighty king, the boundless air, that keepest the earth suspended in space, thou bright Aether and ye venerable goddesses, the Clouds, who carry in your loins the thunder and the lightning, arise, ye sovereign powers and manifest yourselves in the celestial spheres to the eyes of your sage.
STREPSIADES:
Not yet! Wait a bit, till I fold my mantle double, so as not to get wet. And to think that I did not even bring my travelling cap! What a misfortune!
SOCRATES: [ignoring this]
Come, oh! Clouds, whom I adore, come and show yourselves to this man, whether you be resting on the sacred summits of Olympus, crowned with hoar-frost, or tarrying in the gardens of Ocean, your father, forming sacred choruses with the Nymphs; whether you be gathering the waves of the Nile in golden vases or dwelling in the Maeotic marsh or on the snowy rocks of Mimas, hearken to my prayer and accept my offering. May these sacrifices be pleasing to you.
[Amidst rumblings of thunder the CHORUS OF CLOUDS appears.]
CHORUS: [singing]
Eternal Clouds, let us appear; let us arise from the roaring depths of Ocean, our father; let us fly towards the lofty mountains, spread our damp wings over their forest-laden summits, whence we will dominate the distant valleys, the harvest fed by the sacred earth, the murmur of the divine streams and the resounding waves of the sea, which the unwearying orb lights up with its glittering beams. But let us shake off the rainy fogs, which hide our immortal beauty and sweep the earth from afar with our gaze.
SOCRATES:
Oh, venerated goddesses, yes, you are answering my call! [To STREPSIADES.] Did you hear their voices mingling with the awful growling of the thunder?
STREPSIADES:
Oh! adorable Clouds, I revere you and I too am going to let off my thunder, so greatly has your own affrighted me. [He farts.] Faith! whether permitted or not, I must, I must crap!
SOCRATES:
No scoffing; do not copy those damned comic poets. Come, silence! a numerous host of goddesses approaches with songs.
CHORUS: [singing]
Virgins, who pour forth the rains, let us move toward Attica, the rich country of Pallas, the home of the brave; let us visit the dear land of Cecrops, where the secret rites are celebrated, where the mysterious sanctuary flies open to the initiate.... What victims are offered there to the deities of heaven! What glorious temples! What statues! What holy prayers to the rulers of Olympus! At every season nothing but sacred festivals, garlanded victims, is to be seen. Then Spring brings round again the joyous feasts of Dionysus, the harmonious contests of the choruses and the serious melodies of the flute.
STREPSIADES:
By Zeus! Tell me, Socrates, I pray you, who are these women, whose language is so solemn; can they be demi-goddesses?
SOCRATES:
Not at all. They are the Clouds of heaven, great goddesses for the lazy; to them we owe all, thoughts, speeches, trickery, roguery, boasting, lies, sagacity.
STREPSIADES:
Ah! that was why, as I listened to them, my mind spread out its wings; it burns to babble about trifles, to maintain worthless arguments, to voice its petty reasons, to contradict, to tease some opponent. But are they not going to show themselves? I should like to see them, were it possible.
SOCRATES:
Well, look this way in the direction of Parnes; I already see those who are slowly descending.
STREPSIADES:
But where, where? Show them to me.


SOCRATES:
They are advancing in a throng, following an oblique path across the dales and thickets.
STREPSIADES:
Strange! I can see nothing.
SOCRATES:
There, close to the entrance.
STREPSIADES:
Hardly, if at all, can I distinguish them.
SOCRATES:
You must see them clearly now, unless your eyes are filled with gum as thick as pumpkins.
STREPSIADES:
Aye, undoubtedly! Oh! the venerable goddesses! Why, they fill up the entire stage.
SOCRATES:
And you did not know, you never suspected, that they were goddesses?
STREPSIADES:
No, indeed; I thought the Clouds were only fog, dew and vapour.
SOCRATES:
But what you certainly do not know is that they are the support of a crowd of quacks, the diviners, who were sent to Thurium, the notorious physicians, the well-combed fops, who load their fingers with rings down to the nails, and the braggarts, who write dithyrambic verses, all these are idlers whom the Clouds provide a living for, because they sing them in their verses.
STREPSIADES:
It is then for this that they praise "the rapid flight of the moist clouds, which veil the brightness of day" and "the waving locks of the hundred-headed Typho" and "the impetuous tempests, which float through the heavens, like birds of prey with aerial wings loaded with mists" and "the rains, the dew, which the clouds outpour." As a reward for these fine phrases they bolt well-grown, tasty mullet and delicate thrushes.
SOCRATES:
Yes, thanks to these. And is it not right and meet?
STREPSIADES:
Tell me then why, if these really are the Clouds, they so very much resemble mortals. This is not their usual form.
SOCRATES:
What are they like then?
STREPSIADES:
I don't know exactly; well, they are like great packs of wool, but not like women-no, not in the least....And these have noses.
SOCRATES:
Answer my questions.
STREPSIADES:
Willingly! Go on, I am listening.
SOCRATES:
Have you not sometimes seen clouds in the sky like a centaur, a leopard, a wolf or a bull?
STREPSIADES:
Why, certainly I have, but what of that?
SOCRATES:
They take what metamorphosis they like. If they see a debauchee with long flowing locks and hairy as a beast, like the son of Xenophantes, they take the form of a Centaur in derision of his shameful passion.
STREPSIADES:
And when they see Simon, that thiever of public money, what do they do then?
SOCRATES:
To picture him to the life, they turn at once into wolves.
STREPSIADES:
So that was why yesterday, when they saw Cleonymus, who cast away his buckler because he is the veriest poltroon amongst men, they changed into deer.
SOCRATES:
And to-day they have seen Clisthenes; you see....they are women
STREPSIADES:
Hail, sovereign goddesses, and if ever you have let your celestial voice be heard by mortal ears, speak to me, oh! speak to me, ye all-powerful queens.
CHORUS:-LEADER
Hail! veteran of the ancient times, you who burn to instruct yourself in fine language. And you, great high-priest of subtle nonsense, tell us; your desire. To you and Prodicus alone of all the hollow orationers of to-day have we lent an ear-to Prodicus, because of his knowledge and his great wisdom, and to you, because you walk with head erect, a confident look, barefooted, resigned to everything and proud of our protection.
STREPSIADES:
Oh! Earth! What august utterances! how sacred! how wondrous!
SOCRATES:
That is because these are the only goddesses; all the rest are pure myth.
STREPSIADES:
But by the Earth! is our father, Zeus, the Olympian, not a god?
SOCRATES:
Zeus! what Zeus! Are you mad? There is no Zeus.


STREPSIADES:
What are you saying now? Who causes the rain to fall? Answer me that!
SOCRATES:
Why, these, and I will prove it. Have you ever seen it raining without clouds? Let Zeus then cause rain with a clear sky and without their presence!
STREPSIADES:
By Apollo! that is powerfully argued! For my own part, I always thought it was Zeus pissing into a sieve. But tell me, who is it makes the thunder, which I so much dread?
SOCRATES:
These, when they roll one over the other.
STREPSIADES:
But how can that be? you most daring among men!
SOCRATES:
Being full of water, and forced to move along, they are of necessity precipitated in rain, being fully distended with moisture from the regions where they have been floating; hence they bump each other heavily and burst with great noise.
STREPSIADES:
But is it not Zeus who forces them to move?
SOCRATES:
Not at all; it's the aerial Whirlwind.
STREPSIADES:
The Whirlwind! ah! I did not know that. So Zeus, it seems, has no existence, and its the Whirlwind that reigns in his stead? But you have not yet told me what makes the roll of the thunder?
SOCRATES:
Have you not understood me then? I tell you, that the Clouds, when full of rain, bump against one another, and that, being inordinately swollen out, they burst with a great noise.
STREPSIADES:
How can you make me credit that?
SOCRATES:
Take yourself as an example. When you have heartily gorged on stew at the Panathenaea, you get throes of stomach-ache and then suddenly your belly resounds with prolonged rumbling.
STREPSIADES:
Yes, yes, by Apollo I suffer, I get colic, then the stew sets to rumbling like thunder and finally bursts forth with a terrific noise. At first, it's but a little gurgling pappax, pappax! then it increases, papapappax! and when I take my crap, why, it's thunder indeed, papapappax! pappax!! papapappax!!! just like the clouds.

SOCRATES:
Well then, reflect what a noise is produced by your belly, which is but small. Shall not the air, which is boundless, produce these mighty claps of thunder?
STREPSIADES:
And this is why the names are so much alike: crap and clap. But tell me this. Whence comes the lightning, the dazzling flame, which at times consumes the man it strikes, at others hardly singes him. Is it not plain, that Zeus is hurling it at the perjurers?
SOCRATES:
Out upon the fool! the driveller! he still savours of the golden age! If Zeus strikes at the perjurers, why has he not blasted Simon, Cleonymus and Theorus? Of a surety, greater perjurers cannot exist. No, he strikes his own temple, and Sunium, the promontory of Athens, and the towering oaks. Now, why should he do that? An oak is no perjurer.
STREPSIADES:
I cannot tell, but it seems to me well argued. What is the lightning then?
SOCRATES:
When a dry wind ascends to the Clouds and gets shut into them, it blows them out like a bladder; finally, being too confined, it bursts them, escapes with fierce violence and a roar to flash into flame by reason of its own impetuosity.
STREPSIADES:
Ah, that's just what happened to me one day. It was at the feast of Zeus! I was cooking a sow's belly for my family and I had forgotten to slit it open. It swelled out and, suddenly bursting, discharged itself right into my eyes and burnt my face.
LEADER OF THE CHORUS:
Oh, mortal, you who desire to instruct yourself in our great wisdom, the Athenians, the Greeks will envy you your good fortune. Only you must have the memory and ardour for study, you must know how to stand the tests, hold your own, go forward without feeling fatigue, caring but little for food, abstaining from wine, gymnastic exercises and other similar follies, in fact, you must believe as every man of intellect should, that the greatest of all blessings is to live and think more clearly than the vulgar herd, to shine in the contests of words.
STREPSIADES:
If it be a question of hardiness for labour, of spending whole nights at work, of living sparingly, of fighting my stomach and only eating chickpease, rest assured, I am as hard as an anvil.



SOCRATES:
Henceforward, following our example, you will recognize no other gods but Chaos, the Clouds and the Tongue, these three alone.
STREPSIADES:
I would not speak to the others, even if I met them in the street; not a single sacrifice, not a libation, not a grain of incense for them!
LEADER OF THE CHORUS:
Tell us boldly then what you want of us; you cannot fail to succeed. If you honour and revere us and if you are resolved to become a clever man.
STREPSIADES:
Oh, sovereign goddesses, it is only a very small favour that I ask of you; grant that I may outdistance all the Greeks by a hundred stadia in the art of speaking.
LEADER OF THE CHORUS:
We grant you this, and henceforward no eloquence shall more often succeed with the people than your own.
STREPSIADES:
May the gods shield me from possessing great eloquence! That's not what I want. I want to be able to turn bad law-suits to my own advantage and to slip through the fingers of my creditors.
LEADER OF THE CHORUS:
It shall be as you wish, for your ambitions are modest. Commit yourself fearlessly to our ministers, the sophists.
STREPSIADES:
This I will do, for I trust in you. Moreover there is no drawing back, what with these cursed horses and this marriage, which has eaten up my vitals. [More and more volubly from here to the end of speeck] So let them do with me as they will; I yield my body to them. Come blows, come hunger, thirst, heat or cold, little matters it to me; they may flay me, if I only escape my debts, if only I win the reputation of being a bold rascal, a fine speaker, impudent, shameless, a braggart, and adept at stringing lies, an old stager at quibbles, a complete table of laws, a thorough rattle, a fox to slip through any hole; supple as a leathern strap, slippery as an eel, an artful fellow, a blusterer, a villain; a knave with a hundred faces, cunning, intolerable, a gluttonous dog. With such epithets do I seek to be greeted; on these terms they can treat me as they choose, and, if they wish, by Demeter! they can turn me into sausages and serve me up to the philosophers.


CHORUS: [singing]
Here have we a bold and well-disposed pupil indeed. When we have taught you, your glory among the mortals will reach even to the skies.
STREPSIADES: [singing]
Wherein will that profit me?
CHORUS: [singing]
You will pass your whole life among us and will be the most envied of men.
STREPSIADES: [singing]
Shall I really ever see such happiness?
CHORUS: [singing]
Clients will be everlastingly besieging your door in crowds, burning to get at you, to explain their business to you and to consult you about their suits, which, in return for your ability, will bring you in great sums.
LEADER OF THE CHORUS:
But, Socrates, begin the lessons you want to teach this old man; rouse his mind, try the strength of his intelligence.
SOCRATES:
Come, tell me the kind of mind you have; it's important that I know this, that I may order my batteries against you in the right fashion.
STREPSIADES:
Eh, what! in the name of the gods, are you purposing to assault me then?
SOCRATES:
No. I only wish to ask you some questions. Have you any memory?
STREPSIADES:
That depends: if anything is owed me, my memory is excellent, but if I owe, alas! I have none whatever.
SOCRATES:
Have you a natural gift for speaking?
STREPSIADES:
For speaking, no; for cheating, yes.
SOCRATES:
How will you be able to learn then?
STREPSIADES:
Very easily, have no fear.
SOCRATES:
Thus, when I throw forth some philosophical thought anent things celestial., you will seize it in its very flight?
STREPSIADES:
Then I am to snap up wisdom much as a dog snaps up a morsel?
SOCRATES: [aside]
Oh! the ignoramus! the barbarian! [to STREPSIADES] I greatly fear, old man, it will be necessary for me to have recourse to blows. Now, let me hear what you do when you are beaten.
STREPSIADES:
I receive the blow, then wait a moment, take my witnesses and finally summon my assailant at law.
SOCRATES:
Come, take off your cloak.
STREPSIADES:
Have I robbed you of anything?
SOCRATES:
No. but the usual thing is to enter the school without your cloak.
STREPSIADES:
But I have not come here to look for stolen goods.
SOCRATES:
Off with it, fool!
STREPSIADES: [He obeys.]
Tell me, if I prove thoroughly attentive and learn with zeal, which O; your disciples shall I resemble, do you think?
SOCRATES:
You will be the image of Chaerephon.
STREPSIADES:
Ah! unhappy me! Shall I then be only half alive?
SOCRATES:
A truce to this chatter! follow me and no more of it.
STREPSIADES:
First give me a honey-cake, for to descend down there sets me all a-tremble; it looks like the cave of Trophonius.
SOCRATES:
But get in with you! What reason have you for thus dallying at the door?
[They go into the Thoughtery.]
LEADER OF THE CHORUS:
Good luck! you have courage; may you succeed, you, who, though already so advanced in years, wish to instruct your mind with new studies and practise it in wisdom! [The CHORUS turns and faces the Audience.] Spectators! By Bacchus, whose servant I am, I will frankly tell you the truth. May I secure both victory and renown as certainly as I hold you for adept critics and as I regard this comedy as my best. I wished to give you the first view of a work, which had cost me much trouble, but which I withdrew, unjustly beaten by unskilful rivals. It is you, oh, enlightened public, for whom I have prepared my piece, that I reproach with this. Nevertheless I shall never willingly cease to seek the approval of the discerning. I have not forgotten the day, when men, whom one is happy to have for an audience, received my Virtuous Young Man and my Paederast with so much favour in this very place. Then as yet virgin, my Muse had not attained the age for maternity; she had to expose her first-born for another to adopt, and it has since grown up under your generous patronage. Ever since you have as good as sworn me your faithful alliance. Thus, like the Electra of the poets, my comedy has come to seek you to-day, hoping again to encounter such enlightened spectators. As far away as she can discern her Orestes, she will be able to recognize him by his curly head. And note her modest demeanour! She has not sewn on a piece of hanging leather, thick and reddened at the end, to cause laughter among the children; she does not rail at the bald, neither does she dance the cordax; no old man is seen, who, while uttering his lines, batters his questioner with a stick to make his poor jests pass muster. She does not rush upon the scene carrying a torch and screaming, 'Iou! Iou!' No, she relies upon herself and her verses....My value is so well known, that I take no further pride in it. I do not seek to deceive you, by reproducing the same subjects two or three times; I always invent fresh themes to present before you, themes that have no relation to each other and that are all clever. I attacked Cleon to his face and when he was all-powerful; but he has fallen, and now I have no desire to kick him when he is down. My rivals, on the contrary, now that this wretched Hyperbolus has given them the cue, have never ceased setting upon both him and his mother. First Eupolis presented his 'Maricas'; this was simply my 'Knights,' whom this plagiarist had clumsily furbished up again by adding to the piece an old drunken woman, so that she might dance the cordax. It was an old idea, taken from Phrynichus, who caused his old hag to be devoured by a monster of the deep. Then Hermippus fell foul of Hyperbolus and now all the others fall upon him and repeat my comparison of the eels. May those who find amusement in their pieces not be pleased with mine, but as for you, who love and applaud my inventions, why, posterity will praise your good taste.
FIRST SEMI-CHORUS: [singing]
Oh, ruler of Olympus, all-powerful king of the gods, great Zeus, it is thou whom I first invoke; protect this chorus; and thou too, Posidon, whose dread trident upheaves at the will of thy anger both the bowels of the earth and the salty waves of the ocean. I invoke my illustrious father, the divine Aether, the universal sustainer of life, and Phoebus, who, from the summit of his chariot, sets the world aflame with his dazzling rays, Phoebus, a mighty deity amongst the gods and adored amongst mortals.
LEADER OF FIRST SEMI-CHORUS:
Most wise spectators, lend us all your attention. Give heed to our just reproaches. There exist no gods to whom this city owes more than it does to us, whom alone you forget. Not a sacrifice, not a libation is there for those who protect you! Have you decreed some mad expedition? Well! we thunder or we fall down in rain. When you chose that enemy of heaven, the Paphlagonian tanner, for a general, we knitted our brow, we caused our wrath to break out; the lightning shot forth, the thunder pealed, the moon deserted her course and the sun at once veiled his beam threatening, no longer to give you light, if Cleon became general. Nevertheless you elected him; it is said, Athens never resolves upon some fatal step but the gods turn these errors into her greatest gain. Do you wish that his election should even now be a success for you? It is a very simple thing to do; condemn this rapacious gull named Cleon for bribery and extortion, fit a wooden collar tight round his neck, and your error will be rectified and the commonweal will at once regain its old prosperity.
SECOND SEMI-CHORUS: [singing]
Aid me also, Phoebus, god of Delos, who reignest on the cragged peaks of Cynthia; and thou, happy virgin, to whom the Lydian damsels offer pompous sacrifice in a temple; of gold; and thou, goddess of our country, Athene, armed with the aegis, the protectress of Athens; and thou, who, surrounded by the bacchants of Delphi; roamest over the rocks of Parnassus shaking the flame of thy resinous torch, thou, Bacchus, the god of revel and joy.
LEADER OF SECOND SEMI-CHORUS:
As we were preparing to come here, we were hailed by the Moon and were charged to wish joy and happiness both to the Athenians and to their allies; further, she said that she was enraged and that you treated her very shamefully, her, who does not pay you in words alone, but who renders you all real benefits. Firstly, thanks to her, you save at least a drachma each month for lights, for each, as he is leaving home at night, says, "Slave, buy no torches, for the moonlight is beautiful,"-not to name a thousand other benefits. Nevertheless you do not reckon the days correctly and your calendar is naught but confusion. Consequently the gods load her with threats each time they get home and are disappointed of their meal, because the festival has not been kept in the regular order of time. When you should be sacrificing, you are putting to the torture or administering justice. And often, we others, the gods, are fasting in token of mourning for the death of Memnon or Sarpedon, while you are devoting yourselves to joyous libations. It is for this, that last year, when the lot would have invested Hyperbolus with the duty of Amphictyon, we took his crown from him, to teach him that time must be divided according to the phases of the moon.
SOCRATES: [coming out]
By Respiration, the Breath of Life! By Chaos! By the Air! I have never seen a man so gross, so inept, so stupid, so forgetful. All the little quibbles, which I teach him, he forgets even before he has learnt them. Yet I will not give it up, I will make him come out here into the open air. Where are you, Strepsiades? Come, bring your couch out here.
STREPSIADES: [from within]
But the bugs will not allow me to bring it.
SOCRATES:
Have done with such nonsense! place it there and pay attention.
STREPSIADES: [coming out, with the bed]
Well, here I am.
SOCRATES:
Good! Which science of all those you have never been taught, do you wish to learn first? The measures, the rhythms or the verses?
STREPSIADES:
Why, the measures; the flour dealer cheated me out of two choenixes the other day.
SOCRATES:
It's not about that I ask you, but which, according to you, is the best measure, the trimeter or the tetrameter?
STREPSIADES:
The one I prefer is the semisextarius.
SOCRATES:
You talk nonsense, my good fellow.
STREPSIADES:
I will wager your tetrameter is the semisextarius.
SOCRATES:
Plague seize the dunce and the fool! Come, perchance you will learn the rhythms quicker.
STREPSIADES:
Will the rhythms supply me with food?
SOCRATES:
First they will help you to be pleasant in company, then to know what is meant by enhoplian rhythm and what by the dactylic.
STREPSIADES:
Of the dactyl? I know that quite well.
SOCRATES:
What is it then, other than this finger here?
STREPSIADES:
Formerly, when a child, I used this one.
SOCRATES:
You are as low-minded as you are stupid.
STREPSIADES:
But, wretched man, I do not want to learn all this.
SOCRATES:
Then what do you want to know?
STREPSIADES:
Not that, not that, but the art of false reasoning.
SOCRATES:
But you must first learn other things. Come, what are the male quadrupeds?
STREPSIADES:
Oh! I know the males thoroughly. Do you take me for a fool then? The ram, the buck, the bull, the dog, the pigeon.
SOCRATES:
Do you see what you are doing; is not the female pigeon called the same as the male?
STREPSIADES:
How else? Come now!
SOCRATES:
How else? With you then it's pigeon and pigeon!
STREPSIADES:
That's right, by Posidon! but what names do you want me to give them?
SOCRATES:
Term the female pigeonnette and the male pigeon.
STREPSIADES:
Pigeonnette! hah! by the Air! That's splendid! for that lesson bring out your kneading-trough and I will fill him with flour to the brim.
SOCRATES:
There you are wrong again; you make trough masculine and it should be feminine.
STREPSIADES:
What? if I say, him, do I make the trough masculine?
SOCRATES:
Assuredly! would you not say him for Cleonymus?
STREPSIADES:
Well?
SOCRATES:
Then trough is of the same gender as Cleonymus?
STREPSIADES:
My good man! Cleonymus never had a kneading-trough; he used a round mortar for the purpose. But come, tell me what I should say!
SOCRATES:
For trough you should say her as you would for Soctrate.
STREPSIADES:
Her?
SOCRATES:
In this manner you make it truly female.

STREPSIADES:
That's it! Her for trough and her for Cleonymus.
SOCRATE:,"
Now I must teach you to distinguish the masculine proper names from those that are feminine.
STREPSIADES:
Ah! I know the female names well.
SOCRATES:
Name some then.
STREPSIADES:
Lysilla, Philinna, Clitagora, Demetria.
SOCRATES:
And what are masculine names?
STREPSIADES:
They are are countless-Philoxenus, Melesias, Amynias.
SOCRATES:
But, wretched man, the last two are not masculine.
STREPSIADES:
You do not count them as masculine?
SOCRATES:
Not at all. If you met Amynias, how would you hail him?
STREPSIADES:
How? Why, I should shout, "Hi, there, Amynia!
SOCRATES:
Do you see? it's a female name that you give him.
STREPSIADES:
And is it not rightly done, since he refuses military service? But what use is there in learning what we all know?
SOCRATES:
You know nothing about it. Come, lie down there.
STREPSIADES:
What for?
SOCRATES:
Ponder awhile over matters that interest you.
STREPSIADES:
Oh! I pray you, not there but, if I must lie down and ponder, let me lie on the ground.
SOCRATES:
That's out of the question. Come! on the couch!
STREPSIADES: [as he lies down]
What cruel fate! What a torture the bugs will this day put me to!
[Socrates turns aside.]
CHORUS: [singing]
Ponder and examine closely, gather your thoughts together, let your mind turn to every side of things; if you meet with a difficulty, spring quickly to some other idea; above all, keep your eyes away from all gentle sleep.
STREPSIADES: [singing]
Ow, Wow, Wow, Wow is me!

CHORUS: [singing]
What ails you? why do you cry so?
STREPSIADES:
Oh! I am a dead man! Here are these cursed Corinthians advancing upon me from all corners of the couch; they are biting me, they are gnawing at my sides, they are drinking all my blood, they are yanking of my balls, they are digging into my arse, they are killing me!
LEADER OF THE CHORUS:
Not so much wailing and clamour, if you please.
STREPSIADES:
How can I obey? I have lost my money and my complexion, my blood and my slippers, and to cap my misery, I must keep awake on this couch, when scarce a breath of life is left in me.
[A brief interval of silence ensues.]
SOCRATES:
Well now! what are you doing? are you reflecting?
STREPSIADES:
Yes, by Posidon!
SOCRATES:
What about?
STREPSIADES:
Whether the bugs will entirely devour me.
SOCRATES:
May death seize you, accursed man!
[He turns aside again.]
STREPSIADES:
Ah it has already.
SOCRATES:
Come, no giving way! Cover up your head; the thing to do is to find an ingenious alternative.
STREPSIADES:
An alternative! ah! I only wish one would come to me from within
these coverlets!
[Another interval of silence ensues.]
SOCRATES:
Wait! let us see what our fellow is doing! Ho! are you asleep?
STREPSIADES:
No, by Apollo!
SOCRATES:
Have you got hold of anything?
STREPSIADES:
No, nothing whatever.
SOCRATES:
Nothing at all?
STREPSIADES:
No, nothing except my tool, which I've got in my hand.
SOCRATES:
Aren't you going to cover your head immediately and ponder?
STREPSIADES:
On what? Come, Socrates, tell me.
SOCRATES:
Think first what you want, and then tell me.
STREPSIADES:
But I have told you a thousand times what I want. Not to pay any of my creditors.
SOCRATES:
Come, wrap yourself up; concentrate your mind, which wanders to lightly; study every detail, scheme and examine thoroughly.
STREPSIADES:
Alas! Alas!
SOCRATES:
Keep still, and if any notion troubles you, put it quickly aside, then resume it and think over it again.
STREPSIADES:
My dear little Socrates!
SOCRATES:
What is it, old greybeard?
STREPSIADES:
I have a scheme for not paying my debts.
SOCRATES:
Let us hear it.
STREPSIADES:
Tell me, if I purchased a Thessalian witch, I could make the moon descend during the night and shut it, like a mirror, into a round box and there keep it carefully....
SOCRATES:
How would you gain by that?
STREPSIADES:
How? why, if the moon did not rise, I would have no interest to pay.
SOCRATES:
Why so?
STREPSIADES:
Because money is lent by the month.
SOCRATES:
Good! but I am going to propose another trick to you. If you were condemned to pay five talents, how would you manage to quash that verdict? Tell me.
STREPSIADES:
How? how? I don't know, I must think.
SOCRATES:
Do you always shut your thoughts within yourself? Let your ideas fly in the air, like a may-bug, tied by the foot with a thread.


STREPSIADES:
I have found a very clever way to annul that conviction; you will admit that much yourself.
SOCRATES:
What is it?
STREPSIADES:
Have you ever seen a beautiful, transparent stone at the druggists', with which you may kindle fire?
SOCRATES:
You mean a crystal lens.
STREPSIADES:
That's right. Well, now if I placed myself with this stone in the sun and a long way off from the clerk, while he was writing out the conviction, I could make all the wax, upon which the words were written, melt.
SOCRATES:
Well thought out, by the Graces!
STREPSIADES:
Ah! I am delighted to have annulled the decree that was to cost me five talents.
SOCRATES:
Come, take up this next question quickly.
STREPSIADES:
Which?
SOCRATES:
If, when summoned to court, you were in danger of losing your case for want of witnesses, how would you make the conviction fall upon your opponent?
STREPSIADES:
That's very simple and easy.
SOCRATES:
Let me hear.
STREPSIADES:
This way. If another case had to be pleaded before mine was called, I should run and hang myself.
SOCRATES:
You talk rubbish!
STREPSIADES:
Not so, by the gods! if I were dead, no action could lie against me.
SOCRATES:
You are merely beating the air. Get out! I will give you no more lessons.
STREPSIADES: [imploringly]
Why not? Oh! Socrates! in the name of the gods!
SOCRATES:
But you forget as fast as you learn. Come, what was the thing I taught you first? Tell me.



STREPSIADES:
Ah let me see. What was the first thing? What was it then? Ah! that thing in which we knead the bread, oh! my god! what do you call it?
SOCRATES:
Plague take the most forgetful and silliest of old addlepates!
STREPSIADES:
Alas! what a calamity! what will become of me? I am undone if I do not learn how to ply my tongue. Oh! Clouds! give me good advice.
CHORUS:-LEADER
Old man, we counsel you, if you have brought up a son, to send him to learn in your stead.
STREPSIADES:
Undoubtedly I have a son, as well endowed as the best, but he is unwilling to learn. What will become of me?
CHORUS:-LEADER
And you don't make him obey you?
STREPSIADES:
You see, he is big and strong; moreover, through his mother he is a descendant of those fine birds, the race of Coesyra. Nevertheless, I will go and find him, and if he refuses, I will turn him out of the house. Go in, Socrates, and wait for me awhile.
[SOCRATES goes into the Thoughtery, STREPSIADES into his own house.]
CHORUS: [singing]
Do you understand, Socrates, that thanks to us you will be loaded with benefits? Here is a man, ready to obey you in all things. You see how he is carried away with admiration and enthusiasm. Profit by it to clip him as short as possible; fine chances are all too quickly gone.
STREPSIADES: [coming out of his house and pushing his son in front of him]
No, by the Clouds! you stay here no longer; go and devour the ruins of your uncle Megacles' fortune.
PHIDIPPIDES:
Oh! my poor father! what has happened to you? By the Olympian Zeus! You are no longer in your senses!
STREPSIADES:
Look! "the Olympian Zeus." Oh! you fool! to believe in Zeus at your age!
PHIDIPPIDES:
What is there in that to make you laugh?
STREPSIADES:
You are then a tiny little child, if you credit such antiquated rubbish! But come here, that I may teach you; I will tell you something very necessary to know to be a man; but do not repeat it to anybody.
PHIDIPPIDES:
Tell me, what is it?
STREPSIADES:
Just now you swore by Zeus.
PHIDIPPIDES:
Sure I did.
STREPSIADES:
Do you see how good it is to learn? Phidippides, there is no Zeus.
PHIDIPPIDES:
What is there then?
STREPSIADES:
The Whirlwind has driven out Zeus and is King now.
PHIDIPPIDES:
What drivel!
STREPSIADES:
You must realize that it is true.
PHIDIPPIDES:
And who says so?
STREPSIADES:
Socrates, the Melian, and Chaerephon, who knows how to measure the jump of a flea.
PHIDIPPIDES:
Have you reached such a pitch of madness that you believe those bilious fellows?
STREPSIADES:
Use better language, and do not insult men who are clever and full of wisdom, who, to economize, never shave, shun the gymnasia and never go to the baths, while you, you only await my death to eat up my wealth. But come, come as quickly as you can to learn in my stead.
PHIDIPPIDES:
And what good can be learnt of them?
STREPSIADES:
What good indeed? Why, all human knowledge. Firstly, you will know yourself grossly ignorant. But await me here awhile.
[He goes back into his house.]
PHIDIPPIDES:
Alas! what is to be done? Father has lost his wits. Must I have him certificated for lunacy, or must I order his coffin?
STREPSIADES: [returning with a bird in each hand]
Come! what kind of bird is this? Tell me.
PHIDIPPIDES:
A pigeon.
STREPSIADES:
Good! And this female?
PHIDIPPIDES:
A pigeon.


STREPSIADES:
The same for both? You make me laugh! In the future you must call this one a pigeonnette and the other a pigeon.
PHIDIPPIDES:
A pigeonnette! These then are the fine things you have just learnt at the school of these sons of Earth!
STREPSIADES:
And many others; but what I learnt I forgot at once, because I am to old.
PHIDIPPIDES:
So this is why you have lost your cloak?
STREPSIADES:
I have not lost it, I have consecrated it to Philosophy.
PHIDIPPIDES:
And what have you done with your sandals, you poor fool?
STREPSIADES:
If I have lost them, it is for what was necessary, just as Pericles did. But come, move yourself, let us go in; if necessary, do wrong to obey your father. When you were six years old and still lisped, I was the one who obeyed you. I remember at the feasts of Zeus you had a consuming wish for a little chariot and I bought it for you with the first obolus which I received as a juryman in the courts.
PHIDIPPIDES:
You will soon repent of what you ask me to do.
STREPSIADES:
Oh! now I am happy! He obeys. [loudly] Come, Socrates, come! Come out quick! Here I am bringing you my son; he refused, but I have persuaded him.
SOCRATES:
Why, he is but a child yet. He is not used to these baskets, in which we suspend our minds.
PHIDIPPIDES:
To make you better used to them, I would you were hung.
STREPSIADES:
A curse upon you! you insult your master!
SOCRATES:
"I would you were hung!" What a stupid speech! and so emphatically spoken! How can one ever get out of an accusation with such a tone, summon witnesses or touch or convince? And yet when we think, Hyperbolus learnt all this for one talent!
STREPSIADES:
Rest undisturbed and teach him. He has a most intelligent nature. Even when quite little he amused himself at home with making houses, carving boats, constructing little chariots of leather, and understood wonderfully how to make frogs out of pomegranate rinds. Teach him both methods of reasoning, the strong and also the weak, which by false arguments triumphs over the strong; if not the two, at least the false, and that in every possible way.
SOCRATES:
The Just and Unjust Discourse themselves shall instruct him. I shall leave you.
STREPSIADES:
But forget it not, he must always, always be able to confound the true.
[Socrates enters the Thoughtery; a moment later the JUST and the UNJUST DISCOURSE come out; they are quarrelling violently.]
JUST DISCOURSE:
Come here! Shameless as you may be, will you dare to show your face to the spectators?
UNJUST DISCOURSE:
Take me where you will. I seek a throng, so that I may the better annihilate you.
JUST DISCOURSE:
Annihilate me! Do you forget who you are?
UNJUST DISCOURSE:
I am Reasoning.
JUST DISCOURSE:
Yes, the weaker Reasoning."
UNJUST DISCOURSE:
But I triumph over you, who claim to be the stronger.
JUST DISCOURSE:
By what cunning shifts, pray?
UNJUST DISCOURSE:
By the invention of new maxims.
JUST DISCOURSE:
.... which are received with favour by these fools.
[He points to the audience.]
UNJUST DISCOURSE:
Say rather, by these wise men.
JUST DISCOURSE:
I am going to destroy you mercilessly.
UNJUST DISCOURSE:
How pray? Let us see you do it.
JUST DISCOURSE:
By saying what is true.
UNJUST DISCOURSE:
I shall retort and shall very soon have the better of you. First, maintain that justice has no existence.
JUST DISCOURSE:
Has no existence?
UNJUST DISCOURSE:
No existence! Why, where is it?
JUST DISCOURSE:
With the gods.
UNJUST DISCOURSE:
How then, if justice exists, was Zeus not put to death for having put his father in chains?
JUST DISCOURSE:
Bah! this is enough to turn my stomach! A basin, quick!
UNJUST DISCOURSE:
You are an old driveller and stupid withal.
JUST DISCOURSE:
And you a degenerate and shameless fellow.
UNJUST DISCOURSE:
Hah! What sweet expressions!
JUST DISCOURSE:
An impious buffoon.
UNJUST DISCOURSE:
You crown me with roses and with lilies.
JUST DISCOURSE:
A parricide.
UNJUST DISCOURSE:
Why, you shower gold upon me.
JUST DISCOURSE:
Formerly it was a hailstorm of blows.
UNJUST DISCOURSE:
I deck myself with your abuse.
JUST DISCOURSE:
What impudence!
UNJUST DISCOURSE:
What tomfoolery!
JUST DISCOURSE:
It is because of you that the youth no longer attends the schools. The Athenians will soon recognize what lessons you teach those who are fools enough to believe you.
UNJUST DISCOURSE:
You are overwhelmed with wretchedness.
JUST DISCOURSE:
And you, you prosper. Yet you were poor when you said, "I am the Mysian Telephus," and used to stuff your wallet with maxims of Pandeletus to nibble at.
UNJUST DISCOURSE:
Oh! the beautiful wisdom, of which you are now boasting!
JUST DISCOURSE:
Madman! But yet madder the city that keeps you, you, the corrupter of its youth!
UNJUST DISCOURSE:
It is not you who will teach this young man; you are as old and out of date at Cronus.
JUST DISCOURSE:
Nay, it will certainly be I, if he does not wish to be lost and to practise verbosity only.
UNJUST DISCOURSE: [to PHIDIPPIDES]
Come here and leave him to beat the air.
JUST DISCOURSE:
You'll regret it, if you touch him.
CHORUS:-LEADER [stepping between them as they are about to come to blows]
A truce to your quarrellings and abuse! But you expound what you taught us formerly, and you, your new doctrine. Thus, after hearing each of you argue, he will be able to choose betwixt the two schools.
JUST DISCOURSE:
I am quite agreeable.
UNJUST DISCOURSE:
And I too.
LEADER OF THE CHORUS:
Who is to speak first?
UNJUST DISCOURSE:
Let it be my opponent, he has my full consent; then I shall follow upon the very ground he shall have chosen and shall shatter him with a hail of new ideas and subtle fancies; if after that he dares to breathe another word, I shall sting him in the face and in the eyes with our maxims, which are as keen as the sting of a wasp, and he will die.
CHORUS: [singing]
Here are two rivals confident in their powers of oratory and in the thoughts over which they have pondered so long. Let us see which will come triumphant out of the contest. This wisdom, for which my friends maintain such a persistent fight, is in great danger.
LEADER OF THE CHORUS:
Come then, you, who crowned men of other days with so many virtues, plead the cause dear to you, make yourself known to us.
JUST DISCOURSE:
Very well, I will tell you what was the old education, when I used to teach justice with so much success and when modesty was held in veneration. Firstly, it was required of a child, that it should not utter a word. In the street, when they went to the music-school, all the youths of the same district marched lightly clad and ranged in good order, even when the snow was falling in great flakes. At the master's house they had to stand with their legs apart and they were taught to sing either, "Pallas, the Terrible, who overturneth cities," or "A noise resounded from afar" in the solemn tones of the ancient harmony. If anyone indulged in buffoonery or lent his voice any of the soft inflexions, like those which to-day the disciples of Phrynis take so much pains to form, he was treated as an enemy of the Muses and belaboured with blows. In the wrestling school they would sit with outstretched legs and without display of any indecency to the curious. When they rose, they would smooth over the sand, so as to leave no trace to excite obscene thoughts. Never was a child rubbed with oil below the belt; the rest of their bodies thus retained its fresh bloom and down, like a velvety peach. They were not to be seen approaching a lover and themselves rousing his passion by soft modulation of the voice and lustful gaze. At table, they would not have dared, before those older than themselves, to have taken a radish, an aniseed or a leaf of parsley, and much less eat fish or thrushes or cross their legs.
UNJUST DISCOURSE:
What antiquated rubbish! Have we got back to the days of the festivals of Zeus Polieus, to the Buphonia, to the time of the poet Cecides and the golden cicadas?
JUST DISCOURSE:
Nevertheless by suchlike teaching I built up the men of Marathon-But you, you teach the children of to-day to bundle themselves quickly into their clothes, and I am enraged when I see them at the Panathenaea forgetting Athene while they dance, and covering their tools with their bucklers. Hence, young man, dare to range yourself beside me, who follow justice and truth; you will then be able to shun the public place, to refrain from the baths, to blush at all that is shameful, to fire up if your virtue is mocked at, to give place to your elders, to honour your parents, in short, to avoid all that is evil. Be modesty itself, and do not run to applaud the dancing girls; if you delight in such scenes, some courtesan will cast you her apple and your reputation will be done for. Do not bandy words with your father, nor treat him as a dotard, nor reproach the old man, who has cherished you, with his age.
UNJUST DISCOURSE:
If you listen to him, by Bacchus! you will be the image of the sons of Hippocrates and will be called mother's big ninny.
JUST DISCOURSE:
No, but you will pass your days at the gymnasia, glowing with strength and health; you will not go to the public place to cackle and wrangle as is done nowadays; you will not live in fear that you may be dragged before the courts for some trifle exaggerated by quibbling. But you will go down to the Academy to run beneath the sacred olives with some virtuous friend of your own age, your head encircled with the white reed, enjoying your ease and breathing the perfume of the yew and of the fresh sprouts of the poplar, rejoicing in the return of springtide and gladly listening to the gentle rustle of the plane tree and the elm. [With greater warmth from here on] If you devote yourself to practising my precepts, your chest will be stout, your colour glowing, your shoulders broad, your tongue short, your hips muscular, but your tool small. But if you follow the fashions of the day, you will be pallid in hue, have narrow shoulders, a narrow chest, a long tongue, small hips and a big thing; you will know how to spin forth long-winded arguments on law. You will be persuaded also to regard as splendid everything that is shameful and as shameful everything that is honourable; in a word, you will wallow in degeneracy like Antimachus.
CHORUS: [singing]
How beautiful, high-souled, brilliant is this wisdom that you practise! What a sweet odour of honesty is emitted by your discourse! Happy were those men of other days who lived when you were honoured! And you, seductive talker, come, find some fresh arguments, for your rival has done wonders.
LEADER OF THE CHORUS:
You will have to bring out against him all the battery of your wit, it you desire to beat him and not to be laughed out of court.
UNJUST DISCOURSE:
At last! I was choking with impatience, I was burning to upset his arguments! If I am called the Weaker Reasoning in the schools, it is just because I was the first to discover the means to confute the laws and the decrees of justice. To invoke solely the weaker arguments and yet triumph is an art worth more than a hundred thousand drachmae. But see how I shall batter down the sort of education of which he is so proud. Firstly, he forbids you to bathe in hot water. What grounds have you for condemning hot baths?
JUST DISCOURSE:
Because they are baneful and enervate men.
UNJUST DISCOURSE:
Enough said! Oh! you poor wrestler! From the very outset I have seized you and hold you round the middle; you cannot escape me. Tell me, of all the sons of Zeus, who had the stoutest heart, who performed the most doughty deeds?
JUST DISCOURSE:
None, in my opinion, surpassed Heracles.
UNJUST DISCOURSE:
Where have you ever seen cold baths called 'Bath of Heracles'? And yet who was braver than he?
JUST DISCOURSE:
It is because of such quibbles, that the baths are seen crowded with young folk, who chatter there the livelong day while the gymnasia remain empty.
UNJUST DISCOURSE:
Next you condemn the habit of frequenting the market-place, while I approve this. If it were wrong Homer would never have made Nestor speak in public as well as all his wise heroes. As for the art of speaking, he tells you, young men should not practise it; I hold the contrary. Furthermore he preaches chastity to them. Both precepts are equally harmful. Have you ever seen chastity of any use to anyone? Answer and try to confute me.
JUST DISCOURSE:
To many; for instance, Peleus won a sword thereby.
UNJUST DISCOURSE:
A sword! Ah! what a fine present to make him! Poor wretch! Hyperbolus, the lamp-seller, thanks to his villainy, has gained more than....do not know how many talents, but certainly no sword.
JUST DISCOURSE:
Peleus owed it to his chastity that he became the husband of Thetis.
UNJUST DISCOURSE:
.... who left him in the lurch, for he was not the most ardent; in those nocturnal sports between the sheets, which so please women, he possessed but little merit. Get you gone, you are but an old fool. But you, young man, just consider a little what this temperance means and the delights of which it deprives you-young fellows, women, play, dainty dishes, wine, boisterous laughter. And what is life worth without these? Then, if you happen to commit one of these faults inherent in human weakness, some seduction or adultery, and you are caught in the act, you are lost, if you cannot speak. But follow my teaching and you will be able to satisfy your passions, to dance, to laugh, to blush at nothing. Suppose you are caught in the act of adultery. Then up and tell the husband you are not guilty, and recall to him the example of Zeus, who allowed himself to be conquered by love and by women. Being but a mortal, can you be stronger than a god?
JUST DISCOURSE:
Suppose your pupil, following your advice, gets the radish rammed up his arse and then is depilated with a hot coal; how are you going to prove to him that he is not a broad-arse?
UNJUST DISCOURSE:
What's the matter with being a broad-arse?
JUST DISCOURSE:
Is there anything worse than that?
UNJUST DISCOURSE:
Now what will you say, if I beat you even on this point?
JUST DISCOURSE:
I should certainly have to be silent then.
UNJUST DISCOURSE:
Well then, reply! Our advocates, what are they?
JUST DISCOURSE:
Sons of broad-arses.
UNJUST DISCOURSE:
Nothing is more true. And our tragic poets?
JUST DISCOURSE:
Sons of broad-arses.
UNJUST DISCOURSE:
Well said again. And our demagogues?
JUST DISCOURSE:
Sons of broad-arses.
UNJUST DISCOURSE:
You admit that you have spoken nonsense. And the spectators, what are they for the most part? Look at them.
JUST DISCOURSE:
I am looking at them.
UNJUST DISCOURSE:
Well! What do you see?
JUST DISCOURSE:
By the gods, they are nearly all broad-arses. [pointing] See, this one I know to be such and that one and that other with the long hair.
UNJUST DISCOURSE:
What have you to say, then?
JUST DISCOURSE:
I am beaten. Debauchees! in the name of the gods, receive my cloak; I pass over to your ranks.
[He goes back into the Thoughtery.]
UNJUST DISCOURSE:
Well then! Are you going to take away your son or do you wish me to teach him how to speak?
STREPSIADES:
Teach him, chastise him and do not fail to sharpen his tongue well, on one side for petty law-suits and on the other for important cases.
UNJUST DISCOURSE:
Don't worry, I shall return him to you an accomplished sophist.
PHIDIPPIDES:
Very pale then and thoroughly hang-dog-looking.
LEADER OF THE CHORUS:
Take him with you. [The UNJUST DISCOURSE and PHIDIPPIDES go into the THOUGHTERY. To STREPSIADES, who is just going into his own house.] I think you will regret this. [The CHORUS turns and faces the audience.] Judges, we are all about to tell you what you will gain by awarding us the crown as equity requires of you. In spring, when you wish to give your fields the first dressing, we will rain upon you first; the others shall wait. Then we will watch over your corn and over your vinestocks; they will have no excess to fear, neither of heat nor of wet. But if a mortal dares to insult the goddesses of the Clouds, let him think of the ills we shall pour upon him. For him neither wine nor any harvest at all! Our terrible slings will mow down his young olive plants and his vines. If he is making bricks, it will rain, and our round hailstones will break the tiles of his roof. If he himself marries or any of his relations or friends, we shall cause rain to fall the whole night long. Verily, he would prefer to live in Egypt than to have given this iniquitous verdict.
STREPSIADES: [coming out again]
Another four, three, two days, then the eve, then the day, the fatal day of payment! I tremble, I quake, I shudder, for it's the day of the old moon and the new. Then all my creditors take the oath, pay their deposits, I swear my downfall and my ruin. As for me, I beseech them to be reasonable, to be just, "My friend, do not demand this sum, wait a little for this other and give me time for this third one." Then they will pretend that at this rate they will never be repaid, will accuse me of bad faith and will threaten me with the law. Well then, let them sue me! I care nothing for that, if only Phidippides has learnt to speak fluently. I am going to find out; I'll knock at the door of the school. [He knocks.].... Ho! slave, slave!
SOCRATES: [coming out]
Welcome! Strepsiades!
STREPSIADES:
Welcome! Socrates! But first take this sack [offers him a sack of flour]; it is right to reward the master with some present. And my son, whom you took off lately, has he learnt this famous reasoning? Tell me.
SOCRATES:
He has learnt it.
STREPSIADES:
Wonderful! Oh! divine Knavery!
SOCRATES:
You will win just as many causes as you choose.
STREPSIADES:
Even if I have borrowed before witnesses?
SOCRATES:
So much the better, even if there are a thousand of them!
STREPSIADES: [bursting into song]
Then I am going to shout with all my might. "Woe to the usurers, woe to their capital and their interest and their compound interest! You shall play me no more bad turns. My son is being taught there, his tongue is being sharpened into a double-edged weapon; he is my defender, the saviour of my house, the ruin of my foes! His poor father was crushed down with misfortune and he delivers him." Go and call him to me quickly. Oh! my child! my dear little one! run forward to your father's voice!
SOCRATES: [singing]
Lo, the man himself!
STREPSIADES: [singing]
Oh, my friend, my dearest friend!
SOCRATES: [singing]
Take your son, and get you gone.
STREPSIADES: [as PHIDIPPIDES appears]
Oh, my son! oh! oh! what a pleasure to see your pallor! You are ready first to deny and then to contradict; it's as clear as noon. What a child of your country you are! How your lips quiver with the famous, "What have you to say now?" How well you know, I am certain, to put on the look of a victim, when it is you who are making both victims and dupes! And what a truly Attic glance! Come, it's for you to save me, seeing it is you who have ruined me.
PHIDIPPIDES:
What is it you fear then?
STREPSIADES:
The day of the old and the new.
PHIDIPPIDES:
Is there then a day of the old and the new?
STREPSIADES:
The day on which they threaten to pay deposit against me.
PHIDIPPIDES:
Then so much the worse for those who have deposited! for it's not possible for one day to be two.
STREPSIADES:
What?
PHIDIPPIDES:
Why, undoubtedly, unless a woman can be both old and young at the same time.
STREPSIADES:
But so runs the law.
PHIDIPPIDES:
I think the meaning of the law is quite misunderstood.
STREPSIADES:
What does it mean?
PHIDIPPIDES:
Old Solon loved the people.
STREPSIADES:
What has that to do with the old day and the new?
PHIDIPPIDES:
He has fixed two days for the summons, the last day of the old moon and the first day of the new; but the deposits must only be paid on the first day of the new moon.
STREPSIADES:
And why did he also name the last day of the old?


PHIDIPPIDES:
So, my dear sir, that the debtors, being there the day before, might free themselves by mutual agreement, or that else, if not, the creditor might begin his action on the morning of the new moon.
STREPSIADES:
Why then do the magistrates have the deposits paid on the last of the month and not the next day?
PHIDIPPIDES:
I think they do as the gluttons do, who are the first to pounce upon the dishes. Being eager to carry off these deposits, they have them paid in a day too soon.
STREPSIADES:
Splendid! [to the audience] Ah! you poor brutes, who serve for food to us clever folk! You are only down here to swell the number, true blockheads, sheep for shearing, heap of empty pots! Hence I will sing a song of victory for my son and myself. "Oh! happy, Strepsiades! what cleverness is thine! and what a son thou hast here!" Thus my friends and my neighbours will say, jealous at seeing me gain all my suits. But come in, I wish to regale you first.
[They both go in. A moment later a creditor arrives, with his witness.]
PASIAS: [to the WITNESS]
A man should never lend a single obolus. It would be better to put on a brazen face at the outset than to get entangled in such matters. I want to see my money again and I bring you here to-day to attest the loan. I am going to make a foe of a neighbour; but, as long as I live, I do not wish my country to have to blush for me. Come, I am going to summon Strepsiades....
STREPSIADES: [coming out of his house]
Who is this?
PASIAS:
....for the old day and the new.
STREPSIADES: [to the WITNESS]
I call you to witness, that he has named two days. What do you want of me?
PASIAS:
I claim of you the twelve minae, which you borrowed from me to buy the dapple-grey horse.
STREPSIADES:
A horse! do you hear him? I, who detest horses, as is well known.
PASIAS:
I call Zeus to witness, that you swore by the gods to return them to me.
STREPSIADES:
Because at that time, by Zeus! Phidippides did not yet know the irrefutable argument.

PASIAS:
Would you deny the debt on that account?
STREPSIADES:
If not, what use is his science to me?
PASIAS:
Will you dare to swear by the gods that you owe me nothing?
STREPSIADES:
By which gods?
PASIAS:
By Zeus, Hermes and Posidon!
STREPSIADES:
Why, I would give three obols for the pleasure of swearing by them.
PASIAS:
Woe upon you, impudent knave!
STREPSIADES:
Oh! what a fine wine-skin you would make if flayed!
PASIAS:
Heaven! he jeers at me!
STREPSIADES:
It would hold six gallons easily.
PASIAS:
By great Zeus! by all the gods! you shall not scoff at me with impunity,
STREPSIADES:
Ah! how you amuse me with your gods! how ridiculous it seems to a sage to hear Zeus invoked.
PASIAS:
Your blasphemies will one day meet their reward. But, come, will you repay me my money, yes or no? Answer me, that I may go.
STREPSIADES:
Wait a moment, I am going to give you a distinct answer. [He goes indoors and returns immediately with a kneading-trough.]
PASIAS: [to the WITNESS]
What do you think he will do? Do you think he will pay?
STREPSIADES:
Where is the man who demands money? Tell me, what is this?
PASIAS:
Him? Why, he is your kneading-trough.
STREPSIADES:
And you dare to demand money of me, when you are so ignorant? I will not return an obolus to anyone who says him instead of her for a kneading-trough.
PASIAS:
You will not repay?

STREPSIADES:
Not if I know it. Come, an end to this, pack off as quick as you can.
PASIAS:
I go, but, may I die, if it be not to pay my deposit for a summons.
[Exit]
STREPSIADES:
Very well! It will be so much more loss to add to the twelve minae. But truly it makes me sad, for I do pity a poor simpleton who says him for a kneading-trough
[Another creditor arrives.]
AMYNIAS:
Woe! ah woe is me!
STREPSIADES:
Wait! who is this whining fellow? Can it be one of the gods of Carcinus?
AMYNIAS:
Do you want to know who I am? I am a man of misfortune!
STREPSIADES:
Get on your way then.
AMYNIAS: [in tragic style]
Oh! cruel god! Oh Fate, who hast broken the wheels of my chariot! Oh, Pallas, thou hast undone me!
STREPSIADES:
What ill has Tlepolemus done you?
AMYNIAS:
Instead of jeering me, friend, make your son return me the money he has had of me; I am already unfortunate enough.
STREPSIADES:
What money?
AMYNIAS:
The money he borrowed of me.
STREPSIADES:
You have indeed had misfortune, it seems to me.
AMYNIAS:
Yes, by the gods! I have been thrown from a chariot.
STREPSIADES:
Why then drivel as if you had fallen off an ass?
AMYNIAS:
Am I drivelling because I demand my money?
STREPSIADES:
No, no, you cannot be in your right senses.
AMYNIAS:
Why?
STREPSIADES:
No doubt your poor wits have had a shake.
AMYNIAS:
But by Hermes! I will sue you at law, if you do not pay me.
STREPSIADES:
Just tell me; do you think it is always fresh water that Zeus lets fall every time it rains, or is ill always the same water that the sun pumps over the earth?
AMYNIAS:
I neither know, nor care.
STREPSIADES:
And actually you would claim the right to demand your money, when you know not an iota of these celestial phenomena?
AMYNIAS:
If you are short, pay me the interest anyway.
STREPSIADES:
What kind of animal is interest?
AMYNIAS:
What? Does not the sum borrowed go on growing, growing every month, each day as the time slips by?
STREPSIADES:
Well put. But do you believe there is more water in the sea now than there was formerly?
AMYNIAS:
No, it's just the same quantity. It cannot increase.
STREPSIADES:
Thus, poor fool, the sea, that receives the rivers, never grows, and yet you would have your money grow? Get you gone, away with you, quick! Slave! bring me the ox-goad!
AMYNIAS:
I have witnesses to this.
STREPSIADES:
Come, what are you waiting for? Will you not budge, old nag!
AMYNIAS:
What an insult!
STREPSIADES:
Unless you start trotting, I shall catch you and stick this in your arse, you sorry packhorse! [AMYNIAS runs off.] Ah! you start, do you? I was about to drive you pretty fast, I tell you-you and your wheels and your chariot!
[He enters his house.]
CHORUS: [singing]
Whither does the passion of evil lead! here is a perverse old man, who wants to cheat his creditors; but some mishap, which will speedily punish this rogue for his shameful schemings, cannot fail to overtake him from to-day. For a long time he has been burning to have his son know how to fight against all justice and right and to gain even the most iniquitous causes against his adversaries every one. I think this wish is going to be fulfilled. But mayhap, mayhap, will he soon wish his son were dumb rather!
STREPSIADES: [rushing out With PHIDIPPIDES after him]
Oh! oh! neighbours, kinsmen, fellow-citizens, help! help! to the rescue, I am being beaten! Oh! my head! oh! my jaw! Scoundrel! Do you beat your own father?
PHIDIPPIDES: [calmly]
Yes, father, I do.
STREPSIADES:
See! he admits he is beating me.
PHIDIPPIDES:
Of course I do.
STREPSIADES:
You villain, you parricide, you gallows-bird!
PHIDIPPIDES:
Go on, repeat your epithets, call me a thousand other names, if it please you. The more you curse, the greater my amusement!
STREPSIADES:
Oh! you ditch-arsed cynic!
PHIDIPPIDES:
How fragrant the perfume breathed forth in your words.
STREPSIADES:
Do you beat your own father?
PHIDIPPIDES:
Yes, by Zeus! and I am going to show you that I do right in beating you.
STREPSIADES:
Oh, wretch! can it be right to beat a father?
PHIDIPPIDES:
I will prove it to you, and you shall own yourself vanquished.
STREPSIADES:
Own myself vanquished on a point like this?
PHIDIPPIDES:
It's the easiest thing in the world. Choose whichever of the two reasonings you like.
STREPSIADES:
Of which reasonings?
PHIDIPPIDES:
The Stronger and the Weaker.
STREPSIADES:
Miserable fellow! Why, I am the one who had you taught how to refute what is right. and now you would persuade me it is right a son should beat his father.
PHIDIPPIDES:
I think I shall convince you so thoroughly that, when you have heard me, you will not have a word to say.
STREPSIADES:
Well, I am curious to hear what you have to say.


CHORUS: [singing]
Consider well, old man, how you can best triumph over him. His brazenness shows me that he thinks himself sure of his case; he has some argument which gives him nerve. Note the confidence in his look!
LEADER OF THE CHORUS:
But how did the fight begin? tell the Chorus; you cannot help doing that much.
STREPSIADES:
I will tell you what was the start of the quarrel. At the end of the meal, as you know, I bade him take his lyre and sing me the air of Simonides, which tells of the fleece of the ram. He replied bluntly, that it was stupid, while drinking, to play the lyre and sing, like a woman when she is grinding barley.
PHIDIPPIDES:
Why, by rights I ought to have beaten and kicked you the very moment you told me to sing I
STREPSIADES:
That is just how he spoke to me in the house, furthermore he added, that Simonides was a detestable poet. However, I mastered myself and for a while said nothing. Then I said to him, 'At least, take a myrtle branch and recite a passage from Aeschylus to me.'-'For my own part,' he at once replied, 'I look upon Aeschylus as the first of poets, for his verses roll superbly; they're nothing but incoherence, bombast and turgidity.' Yet still I smothered my wrath and said, 'Then recite one of the famous pieces from the modern poets.' Then he commenced a piece in which Euripides shows, oh! horror! a brother, who violates his own uterine sister. Then I could not longer restrain myself, and attacked him with the most injurious abuse; naturally he retorted; hard words were hurled on both sides, and finally he sprang at me, broke my bones, bore me to earth, strangled and started killing me!
PHIDIPPIDES:
I was right. What! not praise Euripides, the greatest of our poets?
STREPSIADES:
He the greatest of our poets? Ah! if I but dared to speak! but the blows would rain upon me harder than ever.
PHIDIPPIDES:
Undoubtedly and rightly too.
STREPSIADES:
Rightly! Oh! what impudence! to me, who brought you up! when you could hardly lisp, I guessed what you wanted. If you said broo, broo, well, I brought you your milk; if you asked for mam mam, I gave you bread; and you had no sooner said, caca, than I took you outside and held you out. And just now, when you were strangling me, I shouted, I bellowed that I was about to crap; and you, you scoundrel, had not the heart to take me outside, so that, though almost choking, I was compelled to do my crapping right there.
CHORUS: [singing]
Young men, your hearts must be panting with impatience. What is Phidippides going to say? If, after such conduct, he proves he has done well, I would not give an obolus for the hide of old men.
LEADER OF THE CHORUS:
Come, you, who know how to brandish and hurl the keen shafts of the new science, find a way to convince us, give your language an appearance of truth.
PHIDIPPIDES:
How pleasant it is to know these clever new inventions and to be able to defy the established laws! When I thought only about horses, I was not able to string three words together without a mistake, but now that the master has altered and improved me and that I live in this world of subtle thought, of reasoning and of meditation, I count on being able to prove satisfactorily that I have done well to thrash my father.
STREPSIADES:
Mount your horse! By Zeus! I would rather defray the keep of a four-in-hand team than be battered with blows.
PHIDIPPIDES:
I revert to what I was saying when you interrupted me. And first, answer me, did you beat me in my childhood?
STREPSIADES:
Why, assuredly, for your good and in your own best interest.
PHIDIPPIDES:
Tell me, is it not right, that in turn I should beat you for your good, since it is for a man's own best interest to be beaten? What! must your body be free of blows, and not mine? am I not free-born too? the children are to weep and the fathers go free? You will tell me, that according to the law, it is the lot of children to be beaten. But I reply that the old men are children twice over and that it is far more fitting to chastise them than the young, for there is less excuse for their faults.
STREPSIADES:
But the law nowhere admits that fathers should be treated thus.
PHIDIPPIDES:
Was not the legislator who carried this law a man like you and me? In those days be got men to believe him; then why should not I too have the right to establish for the future a new law, allowing children to beat their fathers in turn? We make you a present of all the blows which were received before his law, and admit that you thrashed us with impunity. But look how the cocks and other animals fight with their fathers; and yet what difference is there betwixt them and ourselves, unless it be that they do not propose decrees?
STREPSIADES:
But if you imitate the cocks in all things, why don't you scratch up the dunghill, why don't you sleep on a perch?
PHIDIPPIDES:
That has no bearing on the case, good sir; Socrates would find no connection, I assure you.
STREPSIADES:
Then do not beat at all, for otherwise you have only yourself to blame afterwards.
PHIDIPPIDES:
What for?
STREPSIADES:
I have the right to chastise you, and you to chastise your son, if you have one.
PHIDIPPIDES:
And if I have not, I shall have cried in vain, and you will die laughing in my face.
STREPSIADES:
What say you, all here present? It seems to me that he is right, and I am of opinion that they should be accorded their right. If we think wrongly, it is but just we should be beaten.
PHIDIPPIDES:
Again, consider this other point.
STREPSIADES:
It will be the death of me.
PHIDIPPIDES:
But you will certainly feel no more anger because of the blows I have given you.
STREPSIADES:
Come, show me what profit I shall gain from it.
PHIDIPPIDES:
I shall beat my mother just as I have you.
STREPSIADES:
What do you say? what's that you say? Hah! this is far worse still.
PHIDIPPIDES:
And what if I prove to you by our school reasoning, that one ought to beat one's mother?
STREPSIADES:
Ah! if you do that, then you will only have to throw yourself, along with Socrates and his reasoning, into the Barathrum. Oh! Clouds! all our troubles emanate from you, from you, to whom I entrusted myself, body and soul.
LEADER OF THE CHORUS:
No, you alone are the cause, because you have pursued the path of evil.
STREPSIADES:
Why did you not say so then, instead of egging on a poor ignorant old man?
LEADER OF THE CHORUS:
We always act thus, when we see a man conceive a passion for what is evil; we strike him with some terrible disgrace, so that he may learn to fear the gods.
STREPSIADES:
Alas! oh Clouds! that's hard indeed, but it's just! I ought not to have cheated my creditors....But come, my dear son, come with me to take vengeance on this wretched Chaerephon and on Socrates, who have deceived us both.
PHIDIPPIDES:
I shall do nothing against our masters.
STREPSIADES:
Oh show some reverence for ancestral Zeus!
PHIDIPPIDES:
Mark him and his ancestral Zeus! What a fool you are! Does any such being as Zeus exist?
STREPSIADES:
Why, assuredly.
PHIDIPPIDES:
No, a thousand times no! The ruler of the world is the Whirlwind, that has unseated Zeus.
STREPSIADES:
He has not dethroned him. I believed it, because of this whirligig here. Unhappy wretch that I am! I have taken a piece of clay to be a god.
PHIDIPPIDES:
Very well! Keep your stupid nonsense for your own consumption.
[He goes back into STREPSIADES' house.]
STREPSIADES:
Oh! what madness! I had lost my reason when I threw over the gods through Socrates' seductive phrases. [Addressing the statue of Hermes] Oh! good Hermes, do not destroy me in your wrath. Forgive me; their babbling had driven me crazy. Be my counselor. Shall I pursue them at law or shall I....? Order and I obey.-You are right, no law-suit; but up! let us burn down the home of those praters. Here, Xanthias, here! take a ladder, come forth and arm yourself with an axe; now mount upon the Thoughtery, demolish the roof, if you love your master, and may the house fall in upon them. Ho! bring me a blazing torch! There is more than one of them, arch-impostors as they are, on whom I am determined to have vengeance.
A DISCIPLE: [from within]
Oh! oh!
STREPSIADES:
Come, torch, do your duty! Burst into full flame!
DISCIPLE:
What are you up to?
STREPSIADES:
What am I up to? Why, I am entering upon a subtle argument with the beams of the house.
SECOND DISCIPLE: [from within]
Hullo! hullo who is burning down our house?
STREPSIADES:
The man whose cloak you have appropriated.
SECOND DISCIPLE:
You are killing us!
STREPSIADES:
That is just exactly what I hope, unless my axe plays me false, or I fall and break my neck.
SOCRATES: [appearing at the window]
Hi! you fellow on the roof, what are you doing up there?
STREPSIADES: [mocking SOCRATES' manner]
I am traversing the air and contemplating the sun.
SOCRATES:
Ah! ah! woe is upon me! I am suffocating!
SECOND DISCIPLE:
And I, alas, shall be burnt up!
STREPSIADES:
Ah! you insulted the gods! You studied the face of the moon! Chase them, strike and beat them down! Forward! they have richly deserved their fate-above all, by reason of their blasphemies.
LEADER OF THE CHORUS:
So let the Chorus file off the stage. Its part is played.

Aristotle's Poetics

If we are to understand how to think about Greek Poetry and its Latin offspring, we must first know what they thought of it themselves. So, here you go. Give this chap Aristotle a quick read and be prepared to discuss specific poems with reference to his ideas next week. Enjoy.

I PROPOSE to treat of Poetry in itself and of its various kinds, noting the essential quality of each, to inquire into the structure of the plot as requisite to a good poem; into the number and nature of the parts of which a poem is composed; and similarly into whatever else falls within the same inquiry. Following, then, the order of nature, let us begin with the principles which come first.
Epic poetry and Tragedy, Comedy also and Dithyrambic poetry, and the music of the flute and of the lyre in most of their forms, are all in their general conception modes of imitation. They differ, however, from one another in three respects—the medium, the objects, the manner or mode of imitation, being in each case distinct.
For as there are persons who, by conscious art or mere habit, imitate and represent various objects through the medium of color and form, or again by the voice; so in the arts above mentioned, taken as a whole, the imitation is produced by rhythm, language, or ‘harmony,’ either singly or combined.
Thus in the music of the flute and of the lyre, ‘harmony’ and rhythm alone are employed; also in other arts, such as that of the shepherd’s pipe, which are essentially similar to these. In dancing, rhythm alone is used without ‘harmony’; for even dancing imitates character, emotion, and action, by rhythmical movement.
There is another art which imitates by means of language alone, and that either in prose or verse—which verse, again, may either combine different meters or consist of but one kind—but this has hitherto been without a name. For there is no common term we could apply to the mimes of Sophron and Xenarchus and the Socratic dialogues on the one hand; and, on the other, to poetic imitations in iambic, elegiac, or any similar meter. People do, indeed, add the word ‘maker’ or ‘poet’ to the name of the meter, and speak of elegiac poets, or epic (that is, hexameter) poets, as if it were not the imitation that makes the poet, but the verse that entitles them all to the name. Even when a treatise on medicine or natural science is brought out in verse, the name of poet is by custom given to the author; and yet Homer and Empedocles have nothing in common but the meter, so that it would be right to call the one poet, the other physicist rather than poet. On the same principle, even if a writer in his poetic imitation were to combine all meters, as Chaeremon did in his Centaur, which is a medley composed of meters of all kinds, we should bring him too under the general term poet.
So much then for these distinctions.
There are, again, some arts which employ all the means above mentioned—namely, rhythm, tune, and meter. Such are Dithyrambic and Nomic poetry, and also Tragedy and Comedy; but between them originally the difference is, that in the first two cases these means are all employed in combination, in the latter, now one means is employed, now another.
Such, then, are the differences of the arts with respect to the medium of imitation
II
Since the objects of imitation are men in action, and these men must be either of a higher or a lower type (for moral character mainly answers to these divisions, goodness and badness being the distinguishing marks of moral differences), it follows that we must represent men either as better than in real life, or as worse, or as they are. It is the same in painting. Polygnotus depicted men as nobler than they are, Pauson as less noble, Dionysius drew them true to life.
Now it is evident that each of the modes of imitation above mentioned will exhibit these differences, and become a distinct kind in imitating objects that are thus distinct. Such diversities may be found even in dancing, flute-playing, and lyre-playing. So again in language, whether prose or verse unaccompanied by music. Homer, for example, makes men better than they are; Cleophon as they are; Hegemon the Thasian, the inventor of parodies, and Nicochares, the author of the Deiliad, worse than they are. The same thing holds good of Dithyrambs and Nomes; here too one may portray different types, as Timotheus and Philoxenus differed in representing their Cyclopes. The same distinction marks off Tragedy from Comedy; for Comedy aims at representing men as worse, Tragedy as better than in actual life.
III
There is still a third difference—the manner in which each of these objects may be imitated. For the medium being the same, and the objects the same, the poet may imitate by narration—in which case he can either take another personality as Homer does, or speak in his own person, unchanged—or he may present all his characters as living and moving before us.
These, then, as we said at the beginning, are the three differences which distinguish artistic imitation—the medium, the objects, and the manner. So that from one point of view, Sophocles is an imitator of the same kind as Homer—for both imitate higher types of character; from another point of view, of the same kind as Aristophanes—for both imitate persons acting and doing. Hence, some say, the name of ‘drama’ is given to such poems, as representing action. For the same reason the Dorians claim the invention both of Tragedy and Comedy. The claim to Comedy is put forward by the Megarians—not only by those of Greece proper, who allege that it originated under their democracy, but also by the Megarians of Sicily, for the poet Epicharmus, who is much earlier than Chionides and Magnes, belonged to that country. Tragedy too is claimed by certain Dorians of the Peloponnese. In each case they appeal to the evidence of language. The outlying villages, they say, are by them called komai, by the Athenians demoi: and they assume that comedians were so named not from komazein, ‘to revel,’ but because they wandered from village to village (kata komas), being excluded contemptuously from the city. They add also that the Dorian word for ‘doing’ is dran, and the Athenian, prattein.
This may suffice as to the number and nature of the various modes of imitation.
IV
Poetry in general seems to have sprung from two causes, each of them lying deep in our nature. First, the instinct of imitation is implanted in man from childhood, one difference between him and other animals being that he is the most imitative of living creatures, and through imitation learns his earliest lessons; and no less universal is the pleasure felt in things imitated. We have evidence of this in the facts of experience. Objects which in themselves we view with pain, we delight to contemplate when reproduced with minute fidelity: such as the forms of the most ignoble animals and of dead bodies. The cause of this again is, that to learn gives the liveliest pleasure, not only to philosophers but to men in general; whose capacity, however, of learning is more limited. Thus the reason why men enjoy seeing a likeness is, that in contemplating it they find themselves learning or inferring, and saying perhaps, ‘Ah, that is he.’ For if you happen not to have seen the original, the pleasure will be due not to the imitation as such, but to the execution, the coloring, or some such other cause.
Imitation, then, is one instinct of our nature. Next, there is the instinct for ‘harmony’ and rhythm, meters being manifestly sections of rhythm. Persons, therefore, starting with this natural gift developed by degrees their special aptitudes, till their rude improvisations gave birth to Poetry.
Poetry now diverged in two directions, according to the individual character of the writers. The graver spirits imitated noble actions, and the actions of good men. The more trivial sort imitated the actions of meaner persons, at first composing satires, as the former did hymns to the gods and the praises of famous men. A poem of the satirical kind cannot indeed be put down to any author earlier than Homer; though many such writers probably there were. But from Homer onward, instances can be cited—his own Margites, for example, and other similar compositions. The appropriate meter was also here introduced; hence the measure is still called the iambic or lampooning measure, being that in which people lampooned one another. Thus the older poets were distinguished as writers of heroic or of lampooning verse.
As, in the serious style, Homer is pre-eminent among poets, for he alone combined dramatic form with excellence of imitation so he too first laid down the main lines of comedy, by dramatizing the ludicrous instead of writing personal satire. His Margites bears the same relation to comedy that the Iliad and Odyssey do to tragedy. But when Tragedy and Comedy came to light, the two classes of poets still followed their natural bent: the lampooners became writers of Comedy, and the Epic poets were succeeded by Tragedians, since the drama was a larger and higher form of art.
Whether Tragedy has as yet perfected its proper types or not; and whether it is to be judged in itself, or in relation also to the audience—this raises another question. Be that as it may, Tragedy—as also Comedy—was at first mere improvisation. The one originated with the authors of the Dithyramb, the other with those of the phallic songs, which are still in use in many of our cities. Tragedy advanced by slow degrees; each new element that showed itself was in turn developed. Having passed through many changes, it found its natural form, and there it stopped.
Aeschylus first introduced a second actor; he diminished the importance of the Chorus, and assigned the leading part to the dialogue. Sophocles raised the number of actors to three, and added scene-painting. Moreover, it was not till late that the short plot was discarded for one of greater compass, and the grotesque diction of the earlier satyric form for the stately manner of Tragedy. The iambic measure then replaced the trochaic tetrameter, which was originally employed when the poetry was of the satyric order, and had greater with dancing. Once dialogue had come in, Nature herself discovered the appropriate measure. For the iambic is, of all measures, the most colloquial we see it in the fact that conversational speech runs into iambic lines more frequently than into any other kind of verse; rarely into hexameters, and only when we drop the colloquial intonation. The additions to the number of ‘episodes’ or acts, and the other accessories of which tradition tells, must be taken as already described; for to discuss them in detail would, doubtless, be a large undertaking.
V
Comedy is, as we have said, an imitation of characters of a lower type—not, however, in the full sense of the word bad, the ludicrous being merely a subdivision of the ugly. It consists in some defect or ugliness which is not painful or destructive. To take an obvious example, the comic mask is ugly and distorted, but does not imply pain.
The successive changes through which Tragedy passed, and the authors of these changes, are well known, whereas Comedy has had no history, because it was not at first treated seriously. It was late before the Archon granted a comic chorus to a poet; the performers were till then voluntary. Comedy had already taken definite shape when comic poets, distinctively so called, are heard of. Who furnished it with masks, or prologues, or increased the number of actors—these and other similar details remain unknown. As for the plot, it came originally from Sicily; but of Athenian writers Crates was the first who abandoning the ‘iambic’ or lampooning form, generalized his themes and plots.
Epic poetry agrees with Tragedy in so far as it is an imitation in verse of characters of a higher type. They differ in that Epic poetry admits but one kind of meter and is narrative in form. They differ, again, in their length: for Tragedy endeavors, as far as possible, to confine itself to a single revolution of the sun, or but slightly to exceed this limit, whereas the Epic action has no limits of time. This, then, is a second point of difference; though at first the same freedom was admitted in Tragedy as in Epic poetry.
Of their constituent parts some are common to both, some peculiar to Tragedy: whoever, therefore knows what is good or bad Tragedy, knows also about Epic poetry. All the elements of an Epic poem are found in Tragedy, but the elements of a Tragedy are not all found in the Epic poem.
VI
Of the poetry which imitates in hexameter verse, and of Comedy, we will speak hereafter. Let us now discuss Tragedy, resuming its formal definition, as resulting from what has been already said.
Tragedy, then, is an imitation of an action that is serious, complete, and of a certain magnitude; in language embellished with each kind of artistic ornament, the several kinds being found in separate parts of the play; in the form of action, not of narrative; through pity and fear effecting the proper purgation of these emotions. By ‘language embellished,’ I mean language into which rhythm, ‘harmony’ and song enter. By ‘the several kinds in separate parts,’ I mean, that some parts are rendered through the medium of verse alone, others again with the aid of song.
Now as tragic imitation implies persons acting, it necessarily follows in the first place, that Spectacular equipment will be a part of Tragedy. Next, Song and Diction, for these are the media of imitation. By ‘Diction’ I mean the mere metrical arrangement of the words: as for ‘Song,’ it is a term whose sense every one understands.
Again, Tragedy is the imitation of an action; and an action implies personal agents, who necessarily possess certain distinctive qualities both of character and thought; for it is by these that we qualify actions themselves, and these—thought and character—are the two natural causes from which actions spring, and on actions again all success or failure depends. Hence, the Plot is the imitation of the action—for by plot I here mean the arrangement of the incidents. By Character I mean that in virtue of which we ascribe certain qualities to the agents. Thought is required wherever a statement is proved, or, it may be, a general truth enunciated. Every Tragedy, therefore, must have six parts, which parts determine its quality—namely, Plot, Character, Diction, Thought, Spectacle, Song. Two of the parts constitute the medium of imitation, one the manner, and three the objects of imitation. And these complete the fist. These elements have been employed, we may say, by the poets to a man; in fact, every play contains Spectacular elements as well as Character, Plot, Diction, Song, and Thought.
But most important of all is the structure of the incidents. For Tragedy is an imitation, not of men, but of an action and of life, and life consists in action, and its end is a mode of action, not a quality. Now character determines men’s qualities, but it is by their actions that they are happy or the reverse. Dramatic action, therefore, is not with a view to the representation of character: character comes in as subsidiary to the actions. Hence the incidents and the plot are the end of a tragedy; and the end is the chief thing of all. Again, without action there cannot be a tragedy; there may be without character. The tragedies of most of our modern poets fail in the rendering of character; and of poets in general this is often true. It is the same in painting; and here lies the difference between Zeuxis and Polygnotus. Polygnotus delineates character well; the style of Zeuxis is devoid of ethical quality. Again, if you string together a set of speeches expressive of character, and well finished in point of diction and thought, you will not produce the essential tragic effect nearly so well as with a play which, however deficient in these respects, yet has a plot and artistically constructed incidents. Besides which, the most powerful elements of emotional interest in Tragedy—Peripeteia or Reversal of the Situation, and Recognition scenes—are parts of the plot. A further proof is, that novices in the art attain to finish of diction and precision of portraiture before they can construct the plot. It is the same with almost all the early poets.
The plot, then, is the first principle, and, as it were, the soul of a tragedy; Character holds the second place. A similar fact is seen in painting. The most beautiful colors, laid on confusedly, will not give as much pleasure as the chalk outline of a portrait. Thus Tragedy is the imitation of an action, and of the agents mainly with a view to the action.
Third in order is Thought—that is, the faculty of saying what is possible and pertinent in given circumstances. In the case of oratory, this is the function of the political art and of the art of rhetoric: and so indeed the older poets make their characters speak the language of civic life; the poets of our time, the language of the rhetoricians. Character is that which reveals moral purpose, showing what kind of things a man chooses or avoids. Speeches, therefore, which do not make this manifest, or in which the speaker does not choose or avoid anything whatever, are not expressive of character. Thought, on the other hand, is found where something is proved to be or not to be, or a general maxim is enunciated.
Fourth among the elements enumerated comes Diction; by which I mean, as has been already said, the expression of the meaning in words; and its essence is the same both in verse and prose.
Of the remaining elements Song holds the chief place among the embellishments
The Spectacle has, indeed, an emotional attraction of its own, but, of all the parts, it is the least artistic, and connected least with the art of poetry. For the power of Tragedy, we may be sure, is felt even apart from representation and actors. Besides, the production of spectacular effects depends more on the art of the stage machinist than on that of the poet.
VII
These principles being established, let us now discuss the proper structure of the Plot, since this is the first and most important thing in Tragedy.
Now, according to our definition Tragedy is an imitation of an action that is complete, and whole, and of a certain magnitude; for there may be a whole that is wanting in magnitude. A whole is that which has a beginning, a middle, and an end. A beginning is that which does not itself follow anything by causal necessity, but after which something naturally is or comes to be. An end, on the contrary, is that which itself naturally follows some other thing, either by necessity, or as a rule, but has nothing following it. A middle is that which follows something as some other thing follows it. A well constructed plot, therefore, must neither begin nor end at haphazard, but conform to these principles.
Again, a beautiful object, whether it be a living organism or any whole composed of parts, must not only have an orderly arrangement of parts, but must also be of a certain magnitude; for beauty depends on magnitude and order. Hence a very small animal organism cannot be beautiful; for the view of it is confused, the object being seen in an almost imperceptible moment of time. Nor, again, can one of vast size be beautiful; for as the eye cannot take it all in at once, the unity and sense of the whole is lost for the spectator; as for instance if there were one a thousand miles long. As, therefore, in the case of animate bodies and organisms a certain magnitude is necessary, and a magnitude which may be easily embraced in one view; so in the plot, a certain length is necessary, and a length which can be easily embraced by the memory. The limit of length in relation to dramatic competition and sensuous presentment is no part of artistic theory. For had it been the rule for a hundred tragedies to compete together, the performance would have been regulated by the water-clock—as indeed we are told was formerly done. But the limit as fixed by the nature of the drama itself is this: the greater the length, the more beautiful will the piece be by reason of its size, provided that the whole be perspicuous. And to define the matter roughly, we may say that the proper magnitude is comprised within such limits, that the sequence of events, according to the law of probability or necessity, will admit of a change from bad fortune to good, or from good fortune to bad.
VIII
Unity of plot does not, as some persons think, consist in the unity of the hero. For infinitely various are the incidents in one man’s life which cannot be reduced to unity; and so, too, there are many actions of one man out of which we cannot make one action. Hence the error, as it appears, of all poets who have composed a Heracleid, a Theseid, or other poems of the kind. They imagine that as Heracles was one man, the story of Heracles must also be a unity. But Homer, as in all else he is of surpassing merit, here too—whether from art or natural genius—seems to have happily discerned the truth. In composing the Odyssey he did not include all the adventures of Odysseus—such as his wound on Parnassus, or his feigned madness at the mustering of the host—incidents between which there was no necessary or probable connection: but he made the Odyssey, and likewise the Iliad, to center round an action that in our sense of the word is one. As therefore, in the other imitative arts, the imitation is one when the object imitated is one, so the plot, being an imitation of an action, must imitate one action and that a whole, the structural union of the parts being such that, if any one of them is displaced or removed, the whole will be disjointed and disturbed. For a thing whose presence or absence makes no visible difference, is not an organic part of the whole.
IX
It is, moreover, evident from what has been said, that it is not the function of the poet to relate what has happened, but what may happen—what is possible according to the law of probability or necessity. The poet and the historian differ not by writing in verse or in prose. The work of Herodotus might be put into verse, and it would still be a species of history, with meter no less than without it. The true difference is that one relates what has happened, the other what may happen. Poetry, therefore, is a more philosophical and a higher thing than history: for poetry tends to express the universal, history the particular. By the universal I mean how a person of a certain type on occasion speak or act, according to the law of probability or necessity; and it is this universality at which poetry aims in the names she attaches to the personages. The particular is—for example—what Alcibiades did or suffered. In Comedy this is already apparent: for here the poet first constructs the plot on the lines of probability, and then inserts characteristic names—unlike the lampooners who write about particular individuals. But tragedians still keep to real names, the reason being that what is possible is credible: what has not happened we do not at once feel sure to be possible; but what has happened is manifestly possible: otherwise it would not have happened. Still there are even some tragedies in which there are only one or two well-known names, the rest being fictitious. In others, none are well known—as in Agathon’s Antheus, where incidents and names alike are fictitious, and yet they give none the less pleasure. We must not, therefore, at all costs keep to the received legends, which are the usual subjects of Tragedy. Indeed, it would be absurd to attempt it; for even subjects that are known are known only to a few, and yet give pleasure to all. It clearly follows that the poet or ‘maker’ should be the maker of plots rather than of verses; since he is a poet because he imitates, and what he imitates are actions. And even if he chances to take a historical subject, he is none the less a poet; for there is no reason why some events that have actually happened should not conform to the law of the probable and possible, and in virtue of that quality in them he is their poet or maker.
Of all plots and actions the episodic are the worst. I call a plot ‘episodic’ in which the episodes or acts succeed one another without probable or necessary sequence. Bad poets compose such pieces by their own fault, good poets, to please the players; for, as they write show pieces for competition, they stretch the plot beyond its capacity, and are often forced to break the natural continuity.
But again, Tragedy is an imitation not only of a complete action, but of events inspiring fear or pity. Such an effect is best produced when the events come on us by surprise; and the effect is heightened when, at the same time, they follows as cause and effect. The tragic wonder will then be greater than if they happened of themselves or by accident; for even coincidences are most striking when they have an air of design. We may instance the statue of Mitys at Argos, which fell upon his murderer while he was a spectator at a festival, and killed him. Such events seem not to be due to mere chance. Plots, therefore, constructed on these principles are necessarily the best.
X
Plots are either Simple or Complex, for the actions in real life, of which the plots are an imitation, obviously show a similar distinction. An action which is one and continuous in the sense above defined, I call Simple, when the change of fortune takes place without Reversal of the Situation and without Recognition
A Complex action is one in which the change is accompanied by such Reversal, or by Recognition, or by both. These last should arise from the internal structure of the plot, so that what follows should be the necessary or probable result of the preceding action. It makes all the difference whether any given event is a case of propter hoc or post hoc.
XI
Reversal of the Situation is a change by which the action veers round to its opposite, subject always to our rule of probability or necessity. Thus in the Oedipus, the messenger comes to cheer Oedipus and free him from his alarms about his mother, but by revealing who he is, he produces the opposite effect. Again in the Lynceus, Lynceus is being led away to his death, and Danaus goes with him, meaning to slay him; but the outcome of the preceding incidents is that Danaus is killed and Lynceus saved.
Recognition, as the name indicates, is a change from ignorance to knowledge, producing love or hate between the persons destined by the poet for good or bad fortune. The best form of recognition is coincident with a Reversal of the Situation, as in the Oedipus. There are indeed other forms. Even inanimate things of the most trivial kind may in a sense be objects of recognition. Again, we may recognize or discover whether a person has done a thing or not. But the recognition which is most intimately connected with the plot and action is, as we have said, the recognition of persons. This recognition, combined with Reversal, will produce either pity or fear; and actions producing these effects are those which, by our definition, Tragedy represents. Moreover, it is upon such situations that the issues of good or bad fortune will depend. Recognition, then, being between persons, it may happen that one person only is recognized by the other—when the latter is already known—or it may be necessary that the recognition should be on both sides. Thus Iphigenia is revealed to Orestes by the sending of the letter; but another act of recognition is required to make Orestes known to Iphigenia.
Two parts, then, of the Plot—Reversal of the Situation and Recognition—turn upon surprises. A third part is the Scene of Suffering. The Scene of Suffering is a destructive or painful action, such as death on the stage, bodily agony, wounds, and the like.
XII
The parts of Tragedy which must be treated as elements of the whole have been already mentioned. We now come to the quantitative parts—the separate parts into which Tragedy is divided—namely, Prologue, Episode, Exode, Choric song; this last being divided into Parode and Stasimon. These are common to all plays: peculiar to some are the songs of actors from the stage and the Commoi.
The Prologue is that entire part of a tragedy which precedes the Parode of the Chorus. The Episode is that entire part of a tragedy which is between complete choric songs. The Exode is that entire part of a tragedy which has no choric song after it. Of the Choric part the Parode is the first undivided utterance of the Chorus: the Stasimon is a Choric ode without anapaests or trochaic tetrameters: the Commos is a joint lamentation of Chorus and actors. The parts of Tragedy which must be treated as elements of the whole have been already mentioned. The quantitative parts—the separate parts into which it is divided—are here enumerated.
XIII
As the sequel to what has already been said, we must proceed to consider what the poet should aim at, and what he should avoid, in constructing his plots; and by what means the specific effect of Tragedy will be produced.
A perfect tragedy should, as we have seen, be arranged not on the simple but on the complex plan. It should, moreover, imitate actions which excite pity and fear, this being the distinctive mark of tragic imitation. It follows plainly, in the first place, that the change of fortune presented must not be the spectacle of a virtuous man brought from prosperity to adversity: for this moves neither pity nor fear; it merely shocks us. Nor, again, that of a bad man passing from adversity to prosperity: for nothing can be more alien to the spirit of Tragedy; it possesses no single tragic quality; it neither satisfies the moral sense nor calls forth pity or fear. Nor, again, should the downfall of the utter villain be exhibited. A plot of this kind would, doubtless, satisfy the moral sense, but it would inspire neither pity nor fear; for pity is aroused by unmerited misfortune, fear by the misfortune of a man like ourselves. Such an event, therefore, will be neither pitiful nor terrible. There remains, then, the character between these two extremes—that of a man who is not eminently good and just, yet whose misfortune is brought about not by vice or depravity, but by some error or frailty. He must be one who is highly renowned and prosperous—a personage like Oedipus, Thyestes, or other illustrious men of such families.
A well-constructed plot should, therefore, be single in its issue, rather than double as some maintain. The change of fortune should be not from bad to good, but, reversely, from good to bad. It should come about as the result not of vice, but of some great error or frailty, in a character either such as we have described, or better rather than worse. The practice of the stage bears out our view. At first the poets recounted any legend that came in their way. Now, the best tragedies are founded on the story of a few houses—on the fortunes of Alcmaeon, Oedipus, Orestes, Meleager, Thyestes, Telephus, and those others who have done or suffered something terrible. A tragedy, then, to be perfect according to the rules of art should be of this construction. Hence they are in error who censure Euripides just because he follows this principle in his plays, many of which end unhappily. It is, as we have said, the right ending. The best proof is that on the stage and in dramatic competition, such plays, if well worked out, are the most tragic in effect; and Euripides, faulty though he may be in the general management of his subject, yet is felt to be the most tragic of the poets.
In the second rank comes the kind of tragedy which some place first. Like the Odyssey, it has a double thread of plot, and also an opposite catastrophe for the good and for the bad. It is accounted the best because of the weakness of the spectators; for the poet is guided in what he writes by the wishes of his audience. The pleasure, however, thence derived is not the true tragic pleasure. It is proper rather to Comedy, where those who, in the piece, are the deadliest enemies—like Orestes and Aegisthus—quit the stage as friends at the close, and no one slays or is slain.
XIV
Fear and pity may be aroused by spectacular means; but they may also result from the inner structure of the piece, which is the better way, and indicates a superior poet. For the plot ought to be so constructed that, even without the aid of the eye, he who hears the tale told will thrill with horror and melt to pity at what takes Place. This is the impression we should receive from hearing the story of the Oedipus. But to produce this effect by the mere spectacle is a less artistic method, and dependent on extraneous aids. Those who employ spectacular means to create a sense not of the terrible but only of the monstrous, are strangers to the purpose of Tragedy; for we must not demand of Tragedy any and every kind of pleasure, but only that which is proper to it. And since the pleasure which the poet should afford is that which comes from pity and fear through imitation, it is evident that this quality must be impressed upon the incidents.
Let us then determine what are the circumstances which strike us as terrible or pitiful.
Actions capable of this effect must happen between persons who are either friends or enemies or indifferent to one another. If an enemy kills an enemy, there is nothing to excite pity either in the act or the intention—except so far as the suffering in itself is pitiful. So again with indifferent persons. But when the tragic incident occurs between those who are near or dear to one another—if, for example, a brother kills, or intends to kill, a brother, a son his father, a mother her son, a son his mother, or any other deed of the kind is done—these are the situations to be looked for by the poet. He may not indeed destroy the framework of the received legends—the fact, for instance, that Clytemnestra was slain by Orestes and Eriphyle by Alcmaeon—but he ought to show of his own, and skilfully handle the traditional. material. Let us explain more clearly what is meant by skilful handling.
The action may be done consciously and with knowledge of the persons, in the manner of the older poets. It is thus too that Euripides makes Medea slay her children. Or, again, the deed of horror may be done, but done in ignorance, and the tie of kinship or friendship be discovered afterwards. The Oedipus of Sophocles is an example. Here, indeed, the incident is outside the drama proper; but cases occur where it falls within the action of the play: one may cite the Alcmaeon of Astydamas, or Telegonus in the Wounded Odysseus. Again, there is a third case—[to be about to act with knowledge of the persons and then not to act. The fourth case] is when some one is about to do an irreparable deed through ignorance, and makes the discovery before it is done. These are the only possible ways. For the deed must either be done or not done—and that wittingly or unwittingly. But of all these ways, to be about to act knowing the persons, and then not to act, is the worst. It is shocking without being tragic, for no disaster follows It is, therefore, never, or very rarely, found in poetry. One instance, however, is in the Antigone, where Haemon threatens to kill Creon. The next and better way is that the deed should be perpetrated. Still better, that it should be perpetrated in ignorance, and the discovery made afterwards. There is then nothing to shock us, while the discovery produces a startling effect. The last case is the best, as when in the Cresphontes Merope is about to slay her son, but, recognizing who he is, spares his life. So in the Iphigenia, the sister recognizes the brother just in time. Again in the Helle, the son recognizes the mother when on the point of giving her up. This, then, is why a few families only, as has been already observed, furnish the subjects of tragedy. It was not art, but happy chance, that led the poets in search of subjects to impress the tragic quality upon their plots. They are compelled, therefore, to have recourse to those houses whose history contains moving incidents like these.
Enough has now been said concerning the structure of the incidents, and the right kind of plot.
XV
In respect of Character there are four things to be aimed at. First, and most important, it must be good. Now any speech or action that manifests moral purpose of any kind will be expressive of character: the character will be good if the purpose is good. This rule is relative to each class. Even a woman may be good, and also a slave; though the woman may be said to be an inferior being, and the slave quite worthless. The second thing to aim at is propriety. There is a type of manly valor; but valor in a woman, or unscrupulous cleverness is inappropriate. Thirdly, character must be true to life: for this is a distinct thing from goodness and propriety, as here described. The fourth point is consistency: for though the subject of the imitation, who suggested the type, be inconsistent, still he must be consistently inconsistent. As an example of motiveless degradation of character, we have Menelaus in the Orestes; of character indecorous and inappropriate, the lament of Odysseus in the Scylla, and the speech of Melanippe; of inconsistency, the Iphigenia at Aulis—for Iphigenia the suppliant in no way resembles her later self.
As in the structure of the plot, so too in the portraiture of character, the poet should always aim either at the necessary or the probable. Thus a person of a given character should speak or act in a given way, by the rule either of necessity or of probability; just as this event should follow that by necessary or probable sequence. It is therefore evident that the unraveling of the plot, no less than the complication, must arise out of the plot itself, it must not be brought about by the Deus ex Machina—as in the Medea, or in the return of the Greeks in the Iliad. The Deus ex Machina should be employed only for events external to the drama—for antecedent or subsequent events, which lie beyond the range of human knowledge, and which require to be reported or foretold; for to the gods we ascribe the power of seeing all things. Within the action there must be nothing irrational. If the irrational cannot be excluded, it should be outside the scope of the tragedy. Such is the irrational element the Oedipus of Sophocles.
Again, since Tragedy is an imitation of persons who are above the common level, the example of good portrait painters should be followed. They, while reproducing the distinctive form of the original, make a likeness which is true to life and yet more beautiful. So too the poet, in representing men who are irascible or indolent, or have other defects of character, should preserve the type and yet ennoble it. In this way Achilles is portrayed by Agathon and Homer.
These then are rules the poet should observe. Nor should he neglect those appeals to the senses, which, though not among the essentials, are the concomitants of poetry; for here too there is much room for error. But of this enough has been said in our published treatises.
XVI
What Recognition is has been already explained. We will now enumerate its kinds.
First, the least artistic form, which, from poverty of wit, is most commonly employed—recognition by signs. Of these some are congenital—such as ‘the spear which the earth-born race bear on their bodies,’ or the stars introduced by Carcinus in his Thyestes. Others are acquired after birth; and of these some are bodily marks, as scars; some external tokens, as necklaces, or the little ark in the Tyro by which the discovery is effected. Even these admit of more or less skilful treatment. Thus in the recognition of Odysseus by his scar, the discovery is made in one way by the nurse, in another by the swineherds. The use of tokens for the express purpose of proof—and, indeed, any formal proof with or without tokens—is a less artistic mode of recognition. A better kind is that which comes about by a turn of incident, as in the Bath Scene in the Odyssey.
Next come the recognitions invented at will by the poet, and on that account wanting in art. For example, Orestes in the Iphigenia reveals the fact that he is Orestes. She, indeed, makes herself known by the letter; but he, by speaking himself, and saying what the poet, not what the plot requires. This, therefore, is nearly allied to the fault above mentioned—for Orestes might as well have brought tokens with him. Another similar instance is the ‘voice of the shuttle’ in the Tereus of Sophocles.
The third kind depends on memory when the sight of some object awakens a feeling: as in the Cyprians of Dicaeogenes, where the hero breaks into tears on seeing the picture; or again in the Lay of Alcinous, where Odysseus, hearing the minstrel play the lyre, recalls the past and weeps; and hence the recognition.
The fourth kind is by process of reasoning. Thus in the Choephori: ‘Some one resembling me has come: no one resembles me but Orestes: therefore Orestes has come.’ Such too is the discovery made by Iphigenia in the play of Polyidus the Sophist. It was a natural reflection for Orestes to make, ‘So I too must die at the altar like my sister.’ So, again, in the Tydeus of Theodectes, the father says, ‘I came to find my son, and I lose my own life.’ So too in the Phineidae: the women, on seeing the place, inferred their fate—‘Here we are doomed to die, for here we were cast forth.’ Again, there is a composite kind of recognition involving false inference on the part of one of the characters, as in the Odysseus Disguised as a Messenger. A said [that no one else was able to bend the bow; ... hence B (the disguised Odysseus) imagined that A would] recognize the bow which, in fact, he had not seen; and to bring about a recognition by this means—the expectation that A would recognize the bow—is false inference.
But, of all recognitions, the best is that which arises from the incidents themselves, where the startling discovery is made by natural means. Such is that in the Oedipus of Sophocles, and in the Iphigenia; for it was natural that Iphigenia should wish to dispatch a letter. These recognitions alone dispense with the artificial aid of tokens or amulets. Next come the recognitions by process of reasoning.
XVII
In constructing the plot and working it out with the proper diction, the poet should place the scene, as far as possible, before his eyes. In this way, seeing everything with the utmost vividness, as if he were a spectator of the action, he will discover what is in keeping with it, and be most unlikely to overlook inconsistencies. The need of such a rule is shown by the fault found in Carcinus. Amphiaraus was on his way from the temple. This fact escaped the observation of one who did not see the situation. On the stage, however, the Piece failed, the audience being offended at the oversight.
Again, the poet should work out his play, to the best of his power, with appropriate gestures; for those who feel emotion are most convincing through natural sympathy with the characters they represent; and one who is agitated storms, one who is angry rages, with the most lifelike reality. Hence poetry implies either a happy gift of nature or a strain of madness. In the one case a man can take the mould of any character; in the other, he is lifted out of his proper self.
As for the story, whether the poet takes it ready made or constructs it for himself, he should first sketch its general outline, and then fill in the episodes and amplify in detail. The general plan may be illustrated by the Iphigenia. A young girl is sacrificed; she disappears mysteriously from the eyes of those who sacrificed her; she is transported to another country, where the custom is to offer up an strangers to the goddess. To this ministry she is appointed. Some time later her own brother chances to arrive. The fact that the oracle for some reason ordered him to go there, is outside the general plan of the play. The purpose, again, of his coming is outside the action proper. However, he comes, he is seized, and, when on the point of being sacrificed, reveals who he is. The mode of recognition may be either that of Euripides or of Polyidus, in whose play he exclaims very naturally: ‘So it was not my sister only, but I too, who was doomed to be sacrificed’; and by that remark he is saved.
After this, the names being once given, it remains to fill in the episodes. We must see that they are relevant to the action. In the case of Orestes, for example, there is the madness which led to his capture, and his deliverance by means of the purificatory rite. In the drama, the episodes are short, but it is these that give extension to Epic poetry. Thus the story of the Odyssey can be stated briefly. A certain man is absent from home for many years; he is jealously watched by Poseidon, and left desolate. Meanwhile his home is in a wretched plight—suitors are wasting his substance and plotting against his son. At length, tempest-tost, he himself arrives; he makes certain persons acquainted with him; he attacks the suitors with his own hand, and is himself preserved while he destroys them. This is the essence of the plot; the rest is episode.
XVIII
Every tragedy falls into two parts—Complication and Unraveling or Denouement. Incidents extraneous to the action are frequently combined with a portion of the action proper, to form the Complication; the rest is the Unraveling. By the Complication I mean all that extends from the beginning of the action to the part which marks the turning-point to good or bad fortune. The Unraveling is that which extends from the beginning of the change to the end. Thus, in the Lynceus of Theodectes, the Complication consists of the incidents presupposed in the drama, the seizure of the child, and then again ... [the Unraveling] extends from the accusation of murder to the end.
There are four kinds of Tragedy: the Complex, depending entirely on Reversal of the Situation and Recognition; the Pathetic (where the motive is passion)—such as the tragedies on Ajax and Ixion; the Ethical (where the motives are ethical)—such as the Phthiotides and the Peleus. The fourth kind is the Simple. [We here exclude the purely spectacular element], exemplified by the Phorcides, the Prometheus, and scenes laid in Hades. The poet should endeavor, if possible, to combine all poetic elements; or failing that, the greatest number and those the most important; the more so, in face of the caviling criticism of the day. For whereas there have hitherto been good poets, each in his own branch, the critics now expect one man to surpass all others in their several lines of excellence.
In speaking of a tragedy as the same or different, the best test to take is the plot. Identity exists where the Complication and Unraveling are the same. Many poets tie the knot well, but unravel it Both arts, however, should always be mastered.
Again, the poet should remember what has been often said, and not make an Epic structure into a tragedy—by an Epic structure I mean one with a multiplicity of plots—as if, for instance, you were to make a tragedy out of the entire story of the Iliad. In the Epic poem, owing to its length, each part assumes its proper magnitude. In the drama the result is far from answering to the poet’s expectation. The proof is that the poets who have dramatized the whole story of the Fall of Troy, instead of selecting portions, like Euripides; or who have taken the whole tale of Niobe, and not a part of her story, like Aeschylus, either fail utterly or meet with poor success on the stage. Even Agathon has been known to fail from this one defect. In his Reversals of the Situation, however, he shows a marvelous skill in the effort to hit the popular taste—to produce a tragic effect that satisfies the moral sense. This effect is produced when the clever rogue, like Sisyphus, is outwitted, or the brave villain defeated. Such an event is probable in Agathon’s sense of the word: ‘is probable,’ he says, ‘that many things should happen contrary to probability.’
The Chorus too should be regarded as one of the actors; it should be an integral part of the whole, and share in the action, in the manner not of Euripides but of Sophocles. As for the later poets, their choral songs pertain as little to the subject of the piece as to that of any other tragedy. They are, therefore, sung as mere interludes—a practice first begun by Agathon. Yet what difference is there between introducing such choral interludes, and transferring a speech, or even a whole act, from one play to another.
XIX
It remains to speak of Diction and Thought, the other parts of Tragedy having been already discussed. concerning Thought, we may assume what is said in the Rhetoric, to which inquiry the subject more strictly belongs. Under Thought is included every effect which has to be produced by speech, the subdivisions being: proof and refutation; the excitation of the feelings, such as pity, fear, anger, and the like; the suggestion of importance or its opposite. Now, it is evident that the dramatic incidents must be treated from the same points of view as the dramatic speeches, when the object is to evoke the sense of pity, fear, importance, or probability. The only difference is that the incidents should speak for themselves without verbal exposition; while effects aimed at in should be produced by the speaker, and as a result of the speech. For what were the business of a speaker, if the Thought were revealed quite apart from what he says?
Next, as regards Diction. One branch of the inquiry treats of the Modes of Utterance. But this province of knowledge belongs to the art of Delivery and to the masters of that science. It includes, for instance—what is a command, a prayer, a statement, a threat, a question, an answer, and so forth. To know or not to know these things involves no serious censure upon the poet’s art. For who can admit the fault imputed to Homer by Protagoras—that in the words, ‘Sing, goddess, of the wrath, he gives a command under the idea that he utters a prayer? For to tell some one to do a thing or not to do it is, he says, a command. We may, therefore, pass this over as an inquiry that belongs to another art, not to poetry.
XX
Language in general includes the following parts: Letter, Syllable, Connecting Word, Noun, Verb, Inflection or Case, Sentence or Phrase.
A Letter is an indivisible sound, yet not every such sound, but only one which can form part of a group of sounds. For even brutes utter indivisible sounds, none of which I call a letter. The sound I mean may be either a vowel, a semivowel, or a mute. A vowel is that which without impact of tongue or lip has an audible sound. A semivowel that which with such impact has an audible sound, as S and R. A mute, that which with such impact has by itself no sound, but joined to a vowel sound becomes audible, as G and D. These are distinguished according to the form assumed by the mouth and the place where they are produced; according as they are aspirated or smooth, long or short; as they are acute, grave, or of an intermediate tone; which inquiry belongs in detail to the writers on meter.
A Syllable is a nonsignificant sound, composed of a mute and a vowel: for GR without A is a syllable, as also with A—GRA. But the investigation of these differences belongs also to metrical science.
A Connecting Word is a nonsignificant sound, which neither causes nor hinders the union of many sounds into one significant sound; it may be placed at either end or in the middle of a sentence. Or, a nonsignificant sound, which out of several sounds, each of them significant, is capable of forming one significant sound—as amphi, peri, and the like. Or, a nonsignificant sound, which marks the beginning, end, or division of a sentence; such, however, that it cannot correctly stand by itself at the beginning of a sentence—as men, etoi, de.
A Noun is a composite significant sound, not marking time, of which no part is in itself significant: for in double or compound words we do not employ the separate parts as if each were in itself significant. Thus in Theodorus, ‘god-given,’ the doron or ‘gift’ is not in itself significant.
A Verb is a composite significant sound, marking time, in which, as in the noun, no part is in itself significant. For ‘man’ or ‘white’ does not express the idea of ‘when’; but ‘he walks’ or ‘he has walked’ does connote time, present or past.
Inflection belongs both to the noun and verb, and expresses either the relation ‘of,’ ‘to,’ or the like; or that of number, whether one or many, as ‘man’ or ‘men’; or the modes or tones in actual delivery, e.g., a question or a command. ‘Did he go?’ and ‘go’ are verbal inflections of this kind.
A Sentence or Phrase is a composite significant sound, some at least of whose parts are in themselves significant; for not every such group of words consists of verbs and nouns—‘the definition of man,’ for example—but it may dispense even with the verb. Still it will always have some significant part, as ‘in walking,’ or ‘Cleon son of Cleon.’ A sentence or phrase may form a unity in two ways—either as signifying one thing, or as consisting of several parts linked together. Thus the Iliad is one by the linking together of parts, the definition of man by the unity of the thing signified.
XXI
Words are of two kinds, simple and double. By simple I mean those composed of nonsignificant elements, such as ge, ‘earth.’ By double or compound, those composed either of a significant and nonsignificant element (though within the whole word no element is significant), or of elements that are both significant. A word may likewise be triple, quadruple, or multiple in form, like so many Massilian expressions, e.g., ‘Hermo-caico-xanthus [who prayed to Father Zeus].’
Every word is either current, or strange, or metaphorical, or ornamental, or newly-coined, or lengthened, or contracted, or altered.
By a current or proper word I mean one which is in general use among a people; by a strange word, one which is in use in another country. Plainly, therefore, the same word may be at once strange and current, but not in relation to the same people. The word sigynon, ‘lance,’ is to the Cyprians a current term but to us a strange one.
Metaphor is the application of an alien name by transference either from genus to species, or from species to genus, or from species to species, or by analogy, that is, proportion. Thus from genus to species, as: ‘There lies my ship’; for lying at anchor is a species of lying. From species to genus, as: ‘Verily ten thousand noble deeds hath Odysseus wrought’; for ten thousand is a species of large number, and is here used for a large number generally. From species to species, as: ‘With blade of bronze drew away the life,’ and ‘Cleft the water with the vessel of unyielding bronze.’ Here arusai, ‘to draw away’ is used for tamein, ‘to cleave,’ and tamein, again for arusai—each being a species of taking away. Analogy or proportion is when the second term is to the first as the fourth to the third. We may then use the fourth for the second, or the second for the fourth. Sometimes too we qualify the metaphor by adding the term to which the proper word is relative. Thus the cup is to Dionysus as the shield to Ares. The cup may, therefore, be called ‘the shield of Dionysus,’ and the shield ‘the cup of Ares.’ Or, again, as old age is to life, so is evening to day. Evening may therefore be called, ‘the old age of the day,’ and old age, ‘the evening of life,’ or, in the phrase of Empedocles, ‘life’s setting sun.’ For some of the terms of the proportion there is at times no word in existence; still the metaphor may be used. For instance, to scatter seed is called sowing: but the action of the sun in scattering his rays is nameless. Still this process bears to the sun the same relation as sowing to the seed. Hence the expression of the poet ‘sowing the god-created light.’ There is another way in which this kind of metaphor may be employed. We may apply an alien term, and then deny of that term one of its proper attributes; as if we were to call the shield, not ‘the cup of Ares,’ but ‘the wineless cup’.
A newly-coined word is one which has never been even in local use, but is adopted by the poet himself. Some such words there appear to be: as ernyges, ‘sprouters,’ for kerata, ‘horns’; and areter, ‘supplicator’, for hiereus, ‘priest.’
A word is lengthened when its own vowel is exchanged for a longer one, or when a syllable is inserted. A word is contracted when some part of it is removed. Instances of lengthening are: poleos for poleos, Peleiadeo for Peleidou; of contraction: kri, do, and ops, as in mia ginetai amphoteron ops, ‘the appearance of both is one.’
An altered word is one in which part of the ordinary form is left unchanged, and part is recast: as in dexiteron kata mazon, ‘on the right breast,’ dexiteron is for dexion.
Nouns in themselves are either masculine, feminine, or neuter. Masculine are such as end in N, R, S, or in some letter compounded with S—these being two, PS and X. Feminine, such as end in vowels that are always long, namely E and O, and—of vowels that admit of lengthening—those in A. Thus the number of letters in which nouns masculine and feminine end is the same; for PS and X are equivalent to endings in S. No noun ends in a mute or a vowel short by nature. Three only end in I—meli, ‘honey’; kommi, ‘gum’; peperi, ‘pepper’; five end in U. Neuter nouns end in these two latter vowels; also in N and S.
XXII
The perfection of style is to be clear without being mean. The clearest style is that which uses only current or proper words; at the same time it is mean—witness the poetry of Cleophon and of Sthenelus. That diction, on the other hand, is lofty and raised above the commonplace which employs unusual words. By unusual, I mean strange (or rare) words, metaphorical, lengthened—anything, in short, that differs from the normal idiom. Yet a style wholly composed of such words is either a riddle or a jargon; a riddle, if it consists of metaphors; a jargon, if it consists of strange (or rare) words. For the essence of a riddle is to express true facts under impossible combinations. Now this cannot be done by any arrangement of ordinary words, but by the use of metaphor it can. Such is the riddle: ‘A man I saw who on another man had glued the bronze by aid of fire,’ and others of the same kind. A diction that is made up of strange (or rare) terms is a jargon. A certain infusion, therefore, of these elements is necessary to style; for the strange (or rare) word, the metaphorical, the ornamental, and the other kinds above mentioned, will raise it above the commonplace and mean, while the use of proper words will make it perspicuous. But nothing contributes more to produce a cleanness of diction that is remote from commonness than the lengthening, contraction, and alteration of words. For by deviating in exceptional cases from the normal idiom, the language will gain distinction; while, at the same time, the partial conformity with usage will give perspicuity. The critics, therefore, are in error who censure these licenses of speech, and hold the author up to ridicule. Thus Eucleides, the elder, declared that it would be an easy matter to be a poet if you might lengthen syllables at will. He caricatured the practice in the very form of his diction, as in the verse:
Epicharen eidon Marathonade badizonta,
I saw Epichares walking to Marathon,
or,
ouk an g’eramenos ton ekeinou elleboron.
Not if you desire his hellebore.
To employ such license at all obtrusively is, no doubt, grotesque; but in any mode of poetic diction there must be moderation. Even metaphors, strange (or rare) words, or any similar forms of speech, would produce the like effect if used without propriety and with the express purpose of being ludicrous. How great a difference is made by the appropriate use of lengthening, may be seen in Epic poetry by the insertion of ordinary forms in the verse. So, again, if we take a strange (or rare) word, a metaphor, or any similar mode of expression, and replace it by the current or proper term, the truth of our observation will be manifest. For example, Aeschylus and Euripides each composed the same iambic line. But the alteration of a single word by Euripides, who employed the rarer term instead of the ordinary one, makes one verse appear beautiful and the other trivial. Aeschylus in his Philoctetes says:
phagedaina d’he mou sarkas esthiei podos.
The tumor which is eating the flesh of my foot.
Euripides substitutes thoinatai, ‘feasts on,’ for esthiei, ‘feeds on.’ Again, in the line,
nun de m’eon oligos te kai outidanos kai aeikes,
Yet a small man, worthless and unseemly,
the difference will be felt if we substitute the common words,
nun de m’eon mikros te kai asthenikos kai aeides.
Yet a little fellow, weak and ugly.
Or, if for the line,
diphron aeikelion katatheis oligen te trapezan,
Setting an unseemly couch and a meager table,
we read,
diphron mochtheron katatheis mikran te trapezan.
Setting a wretched couch and a puny table.
Or, for eiones booosin, ‘the sea shores roar,’ eiones krazousin, ‘the sea shores screech.’
Again, Ariphrades ridiculed the tragedians for using phrases which no one would employ in ordinary speech: for example, domaton apo, ‘from the house away,’ instead of apo domaton, ‘away from the house;’ sethen, ego de nin, ‘to thee, and I to him;’ Achilleos peri, ‘Achilles about,’ instead of peri Achilleos, ‘about Achilles;’ and the like. It is precisely because such phrases are not part of the current idiom that they give distinction to the style. This, however, he failed to see.
It is a great matter to observe propriety in these several modes of expression, as also in compound words, strange (or rare) words, and so forth. But the greatest thing by far is to have a command of metaphor. This alone cannot be imparted by another; it is the mark of genius, for to make good metaphors implies an eye for resemblances.
Of the various kinds of words, the compound are best adapted to dithyrambs, rare words to heroic poetry, metaphors to iambic. In heroic poetry, indeed, all these varieties are serviceable. But in iambic verse, which reproduces, as far as may be, familiar speech, the most appropriate words are those which are found even in prose. These are the current or proper, the metaphorical, the ornamental.
Concerning Tragedy and imitation by means of action this may suffice.
XXIII
As to that poetic imitation which is narrative in form and employs a single meter, the plot manifestly ought, as in a tragedy, to be constructed on dramatic principles. It should have for its subject a single action, whole and complete, with a beginning, a middle, and an end. It will thus resemble a living organism in all its unity, and produce the pleasure proper to it. It will differ in structure from historical compositions, which of necessity present not a single action, but a single period, and all that happened within that period to one person or to many, little connected together as the events may be. For as the sea-fight at Salamis and the battle with the Carthaginians in Sicily took place at the same time, but did not tend to any one result, so in the sequence of events, one thing sometimes follows another, and yet no single result is thereby produced. Such is the practice, we may say, of most poets. Here again, then, as has been already observed, the transcendent excellence of Homer is manifest. He never attempts to make the whole war of Troy the subject of his poem, though that war had a beginning and an end. It would have been too vast a theme, and not easily embraced in a single view. If, again, he had kept it within moderate limits, it must have been over-complicated by the variety of the incidents. As it is, he detaches a single portion, and admits as episodes many events from the general story of the war—such as the Catalogue of the ships and others—thus diversifying the poem. All other poets take a single hero, a single period, or an action single indeed, but with a multiplicity of parts. Thus did the author of the Cypria and of the Little Iliad. For this reason the Iliad and the Odyssey each furnish the subject of one tragedy, or, at most, of two; while the Cypria supplies materials for many, and the Little Iliad for eight—the Award of the Arms, the Philoctetes, the Neoptolemus, the Eurypylus, the Mendicant Odysseus, the Laconian Women, the Fall of Ilium, the Departure of the Fleet.
XXIV
Again, Epic poetry must have as many kinds as Tragedy: it must be simple, or complex, or ‘ethical,’or ‘pathetic.’ The parts also, with the exception of song and spectacle, are the same; for it requires Reversals of the Situation, Recognitions, and Scenes of Suffering. Moreover, the thoughts and the diction must be artistic. In all these respects Homer is our earliest and sufficient model. Indeed each of his poems has a twofold character. The Iliad is at once simple and ‘pathetic,’ and the Odyssey complex (for Recognition scenes run through it), and at the same time ‘ethical.’ Moreover, in diction and thought they are supreme.
Epic poetry differs from Tragedy in the scale on which it is constructed, and in its meter. As regards scale or length, we have already laid down an adequate limit: the beginning and the end must be capable of being brought within a single view. This condition will be satisfied by poems on a smaller scale than the old epics, and answering in length to the group of tragedies presented at a single sitting.
Epic poetry has, however, a great—a special—capacity for enlarging its dimensions, and we can see the reason. In Tragedy we cannot imitate several lines of actions carried on at one and the same time; we must confine ourselves to the action on the stage and the part taken by the players. But in Epic poetry, owing to the narrative form, many events simultaneously transacted can be presented; and these, if relevant to the subject, add mass and dignity to the poem. The Epic has here an advantage, and one that conduces to grandeur of effect, to diverting the mind of the hearer, and relieving the story with varying episodes. For sameness of incident soon produces satiety, and makes tragedies fail on the stage.
As for the meter, the heroic measure has proved its fitness by hexameter test of experience. If a narrative poem in any other meter or in many meters were now composed, it would be found incongruous. For of all measures the heroic is the stateliest and the most massive; and hence it most readily admits rare words and metaphors, which is another point in which the narrative form of imitation stands alone. On the other hand, the iambic and the trochaic tetrameter are stirring measures, the latter being akin to dancing, the former expressive of action. Still more absurd would it be to mix together different meters, as was done by Chaeremon. Hence no one has ever composed a poem on a great scale in any other than heroic verse. Nature herself, as we have said, teaches the choice of the proper measure.
Homer, admirable in all respects, has the special merit of being the only poet who rightly appreciates the part he should take himself. The poet should speak as little as possible in his own person, for it is not this that makes him an imitator. Other poets appear themselves upon the scene throughout, and imitate but little and rarely. Homer, after a few prefatory words, at once brings in a man, or woman, or other personage; none of them wanting in characteristic qualities, but each with a character of his own.
The element of the wonderful is required in Tragedy. The irrational, on which the wonderful depends for its chief effects, has wider scope in Epic poetry, because there the person acting is not seen. Thus, the pursuit of Hector would be ludicrous if placed upon the stage—the Greeks standing still and not joining in the pursuit, and Achilles waving them back. But in the Epic poem the absurdity passes unnoticed. Now the wonderful is pleasing, as may be inferred from the fact that every one tells a story with some addition of his knowing that his hearers like it. It is Homer who has chiefly taught other poets the art of telling lies skilfully. The secret of it lies in a fallacy For, assuming that if one thing is or becomes, a second is or becomes, men imagine that, if the second is, the first likewise is or becomes. But this is a false inference. Hence, where the first thing is untrue, it is quite unnecessary, provided the second be true, to add that the first is or has become. For the mind, knowing the second to be true, falsely infers the truth of the first. There is an example of this in the Bath Scene of the Odyssey.
Accordingly, the poet should prefer probable impossibilities to improbable possibilities. The tragic plot must not be composed of irrational parts. Everything irrational should, if possible, be excluded; or, at all events, it should lie outside the action of the play (as, in the Oedipus, the hero’s ignorance as to the manner of Laius’ death); not within the drama—as in the Electra, the messenger’s account of the Pythian games; or, as in the Mysians, the man who has come from Tegea to Mysia and is still speechless. The plea that otherwise the plot would have been ruined, is ridiculous; such a plot should not in the first instance be constructed. But once the irrational has been introduced and an air of likelihood imparted to it, we must accept it in spite of the absurdity. Take even the irrational incidents in the Odyssey, where Odysseus is left upon the shore of Ithaca. How intolerable even these might have been would be apparent if an inferior poet were to treat the subject. As it is, the absurdity is veiled by the poetic charm with which the poet invests it.
The diction should be elaborated in the pauses of the action, where there is no expression of character or thought. For, conversely, character and thought are merely obscured by a diction that is over-brilliant
XXV
With respect to critical difficulties and their solutions, the number and nature of the sources from which they may be drawn may be thus exhibited.
The poet being an imitator, like a painter or any other artist, must of necessity imitate one of three objects—things as they were or are, things as they are said or thought to be, or things as they ought to be. The vehicle of expression is language—either current terms or, it may be, rare words or metaphors. There are also many modifications of language, which we concede to the poets. Add to this, that the standard of correctness is not the same in poetry and politics, any more than in poetry and any other art. Within the art of poetry itself there are two kinds of faults—those which touch its essence, and those which are accidental. If a poet has chosen to imitate something, [but has imitated it incorrectly] through want of capacity, the error is inherent in the poetry. But if the failure is due to a wrong choice—if he has represented a horse as throwing out both his off legs at once, or introduced technical inaccuracies in medicine, for example, or in any other art—the error is not essential to the poetry. These are the points of view from which we should consider and answer the objections raised by the critics.
First as to matters which concern the poet’s own art. If he describes the impossible, he is guilty of an error; but the error may be justified, if the end of the art be thereby attained (the end being that already mentioned)—if, that is, the effect of this or any other part of the poem is thus rendered more striking. A case in point is the pursuit of Hector. if, however, the end might have been as well, or better, attained without violating the special rules of the poetic art, the error is not justified: for every kind of error should, if possible, be avoided.
Again, does the error touch the essentials of the poetic art, or some accident of it? For example, not to know that a hind has no horns is a less serious matter than to paint it inartistically.
Further, if it be objected that the description is not true to fact, the poet may perhaps reply, ‘But the objects are as they ought to be’; just as Sophocles said that he drew men as they ought to be; Euripides, as they are. In this way the objection may be met. If, however, the representation be of neither kind, the poet may answer, ‘This is how men say the thing is.’ applies to tales about the gods. It may well be that these stories are not higher than fact nor yet true to fact: they are, very possibly, what Xenophanes says of them. But anyhow, ‘this is what is said.’ Again, a description may be no better than the fact: ‘Still, it was the fact’; as in the passage about the arms: ‘Upright upon their butt-ends stood the spears.’ This was the custom then, as it now is among the Illyrians.
Again, in examining whether what has been said or done by some one is poetically right or not, we must not look merely to the particular act or saying, and ask whether it is poetically good or bad. We must also consider by whom it is said or done, to whom, when, by what means, or for what end; whether, for instance, it be to secure a greater good, or avert a greater evil.
Other difficulties may be resolved by due regard to the usage of language. We may note a rare word, as in oureas men proton, ‘the mules first [he killed],’ where the poet perhaps employs oureas not in the sense of mules, but of sentinels. So, again, of Dolon: ‘ill-favored indeed he was to look upon.’ It is not meant that his body was ill-shaped but that his face was ugly; for the Cretans use the word eueides, ‘well-flavored’ to denote a fair face. Again, zoroteron de keraie, ‘mix the drink livelier’ does not mean ‘mix it stronger’ as for hard drinkers, but ‘mix it quicker.’
Sometimes an expression is metaphorical, as ‘Now all gods and men were sleeping through the night,’ while at the same time the poet says: ‘Often indeed as he turned his gaze to the Trojan plain, he marveled at the sound of flutes and pipes.’ ‘All’ is here used metaphorically for ‘many,’ all being a species of many. So in the verse, ‘alone she hath no part... , oie, ‘alone’ is metaphorical; for the best known may be called the only one.
Again, the solution may depend upon accent or breathing. Thus Hippias of Thasos solved the difficulties in the lines, didomen (didomen) de hoi, and to men hou (ou) kataputhetai ombro.
Or again, the question may be solved by punctuation, as in Empedocles: ‘Of a sudden things became mortal that before had learnt to be immortal, and things unmixed before mixed.’
Or again, by ambiguity of meaning, as parocheken de pleo nux, where the word pleo is ambiguous.
Or by the usage of language. Thus any mixed drink is called oinos, ‘wine’. Hence Ganymede is said ‘to pour the wine to Zeus,’ though the gods do not drink wine. So too workers in iron are called chalkeas, or ‘workers in bronze.’ This, however, may also be taken as a metaphor.
Again, when a word seems to involve some inconsistency of meaning, we should consider how many senses it may bear in the particular passage. For example: ‘there was stayed the spear of bronze’—we should ask in how many ways we may take ‘being checked there.’ The true mode of interpretation is the precise opposite of what Glaucon mentions. Critics, he says, jump at certain groundless conclusions; they pass adverse judgement and then proceed to reason on it; and, assuming that the poet has said whatever they happen to think, find fault if a thing is inconsistent with their own fancy.
The question about Icarius has been treated in this fashion. The critics imagine he was a Lacedaemonian. They think it strange, therefore, that Telemachus should not have met him when he went to Lacedaemon. But the Cephallenian story may perhaps be the true one. They allege that Odysseus took a wife from among themselves, and that her father was Icadius, not Icarius. It is merely a mistake, then, that gives plausibility to the objection.
In general, the impossible must be justified by reference to artistic requirements, or to the higher reality, or to received opinion. With respect to the requirements of art, a probable impossibility is to be preferred to a thing improbable and yet possible. Again, it may be impossible that there should be men such as Zeuxis painted. ‘Yes,’ we say, ‘but the impossible is the higher thing; for the ideal type must surpass the realty.’ To justify the irrational, we appeal to what is commonly said to be. In addition to which, we urge that the irrational sometimes does not violate reason; just as ‘it is probable that a thing may happen contrary to probability.’
Things that sound contradictory should be examined by the same rules as in dialectical refutation—whether the same thing is meant, in the same relation, and in the same sense. We should therefore solve the question by reference to what the poet says himself, or to what is tacitly assumed by a person of intelligence.
The element of the irrational, and, similarly, depravity of character, are justly censured when there is no inner necessity for introducing them. Such is the irrational element in the introduction of Aegeus by Euripides and the badness of Menelaus in the Orestes.
Thus, there are five sources from which critical objections are drawn. Things are censured either as impossible, or irrational, or morally hurtful, or contradictory, or contrary to artistic correctness. The answers should be sought under the twelve heads above mentioned.
XXVI
The question may be raised whether the Epic or Tragic mode of imitation is the higher. If the more refined art is the higher, and the more refined in every case is that which appeals to the better sort of audience, the art which imitates anything and everything is manifestly most unrefined. The audience is supposed to be too dull to comprehend unless something of their own is thrown by the performers, who therefore indulge in restless movements. Bad flute-players twist and twirl, if they have to represent ‘the quoit-throw,’ or hustle the coryphaeus when they perform the Scylla. Tragedy, it is said, has this same defect. We may compare the opinion that the older actors entertained of their successors. Mynniscus used to call Callippides ‘ape’ on account of the extravagance of his action, and the same view was held of Pindarus. Tragic art, then, as a whole, stands to Epic in the same relation as the younger to the elder actors. So we are told that Epic poetry is addressed to a cultivated audience, who do not need gesture; Tragedy, to an inferior public. Being then unrefined, it is evidently the lower of the two.
Now, in the first place, this censure attaches not to the poetic but to the histrionic art; for gesticulation may be equally overdone in epic recitation, as by Sosistratus, or in lyrical competition, as by Mnasitheus the Opuntian. Next, all action is not to be condemned—any more than all dancing—but only that of bad performers. Such was the fault found in Callippides, as also in others of our own day, who are censured for representing degraded women. Again, Tragedy like Epic poetry produces its effect even without action; it reveals its power by mere reading. If, then, in all other respects it is superior, this fault, we say, is not inherent in it.
And superior it is, because it has an the epic elements—it may even use the epic meter—with the music and spectacular effects as important accessories; and these produce the most vivid of pleasures. Further, it has vividness of impression in reading as well as in representation. Moreover, the art attains its end within narrower limits for the concentrated effect is more pleasurable than one which is spread over a long time and so diluted. What, for example, would be the effect of the Oedipus of Sophocles, if it were cast into a form as long as the Iliad? Once more, the Epic imitation has less unity; as is shown by this, that any Epic poem will furnish subjects for several tragedies. Thus if the story adopted by the poet has a strict unity, it must either be concisely told and appear truncated; or, if it conforms to the Epic canon of length, it must seem weak and watery. [Such length implies some loss of unity,] if, I mean, the poem is constructed out of several actions, like the Iliad and the Odyssey, which have many such parts, each with a certain magnitude of its own. Yet these poems are as perfect as possible in structure; each is, in the highest degree attainable, an imitation of a single action.
If, then, tragedy is superior to epic poetry in all these respects, and, moreover, fulfills its specific function better as an art—for each art ought to produce, not any chance pleasure, but the pleasure proper to it, as already stated—it plainly follows that tragedy is the higher art, as attaining its end more perfectly.
Thus much may suffice concerning Tragic and Epic poetry in general; their several kinds and parts, with the number of each and their differences; the causes that make a poem good or bad; the objections of the critics and the answers to these objections....
THE END