Aristophanes was loyal to the true interests of his country, and declined the flattering invitations of Dionysius to dwell in ease at Syracuse with the luminaries of his age. He longed for the glorious Athens of the past, and attacked whatever conflicted with his conservative ideas. None escaped his well-aimed shafts. He was specially severe on the Sophists, a new class of teachers at Athens, whose forte lay in chopping logic and splitting hairs, and who taught the tricks of rhetoric rather than practical morality. In his “Clouds” he derides their sharp practices and unsound system of education, striking them over the head of Socrates, the exponent of true philosophy, whose life was devoted to combating the false teachings of these very pretenders.
That Socrates was merely the scape-goat is plain, for he and Aristophanes were intimate friends. When the play was first exhibited, the philosopher, who was in the audience, took it all in good part, and even rose that the people might compare him with the caricature presented, which exaggerated his eccentricities of dress and figure—his pug-nose, thick lips, shabby garments, and absent-minded stare. The chorus of changing clouds symbolized the meretricious charms of sophistry.
“The Clouds” opens in the sleeping-apartment of Strepsi’ades, an Athenian citizen, his son Pheidippides occupying a pallet near him. The slaves of the household are abed in an adjoining room. Strepsiades, oppressed by debt incurred through the extravagance of his “precious son,” a fast young man addicted to fast horses, is disturbed by the recollection of numerous outstanding bills and notes about to mature. He wakes before daylight and calls a slave:—
“Boy! light a lamp;
Bring me my pocket-book, that I may see
How my accounts stand, and just cast them up. [Slave obeys.]
Let’s see now. First, here’s Prasias, fifty pounds.
Now, what’s that for? When did I borrow that?
Ah! when I bought that gray. O dear! O dear!
I shall grow gray enough, if this goes on.