There in the jocund spring,
Great Bacchus, festive king,
With dance and tuneful flute his Chorus leads along.”
W. L. Collins.
But though the Clouds assist Socrates in teaching Strepsiades, the pupil proves an utter dunce. Finally, in a moment of impatience, Socrates kicks him out of the school.
At last Pheidippides is prevailed upon to study with the Sophists. He proves an apt scholar, rapidly developing into an unprincipled scamp. When his education as a sharper is completed, he brings to bear his specious arguments against the creditors, and cheats them out of their dues. So far, so good; but his notions of filial duty have also been greatly modified by the instructions of Socrates. A quarrel arising in the family, he hesitates not to fall upon his father with a cudgel, and threatens to do the same by his mother if she provokes him.
With a curse upon Socrates, the outraged old gentleman calls his slaves, hurries to the Thinking-school, and sets fire to the building. Thus the play ends.
Beneath the pleasantry of Aristophanes is a substratum of solid sense; as is apparent in “the Birds,” an ingenious play in which the woodland songsters take characters. It was produced at a time when the Athenians, puffed up with vanity, confidently looked for the reduction of Sicily and the dominion of Greece. Aristophanes alone, at this critical period, ventured to raise the note of warning, and satirize their foolish ambition. The choruses in this drama ring with the sweet music of the wild woods; they were rendered by twenty-four performers plumed so as to represent as many different kinds of birds. The Hoopoe thus calls his fellows to a mass-meeting:—
“Hoop! hoop!