‘He shall wear a good sheep-skin coat, like his own father,
And drive his goats to market from the farm.’”
Strepsiades finally bethinks him of a plan for paying his debts. He will have his son trained by the Sophists; and when the creditors bring the case into court, Pheidippides shall plead his cause, and defeat them with fallacious arguments even in the face of a thousand witnesses. Father and son at once arise, dress, and walk out in the direction of the Sophists’ school. Arrived in front of it, Strepsiades remarks:—
“That’s the great Thinking-school of our new philosophers;
There live the men who teach that heaven around us
Is a vast oven, and we the charcoal in it.
And they teach too—for a consideration, mind—
To plead a cause and win it, right or wrong.
Pheidippides [carelessly].—Who are these fellows?
Strepsiades.—I don’t quite remember