Aristophanes Clouds 291

William James Hickie (Translator)

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Clouds. Aristophanes. William James Hickie (Translator). London. 1853.

Sponsored by Perseus Project, Tufts University.

Funding provided by The Annenberg CPB/Project.

Current edition Perseus

Clouds (English) (Aristophanes. The Comedies of Aristophanes, Vol. I. Hickie, William James, translator. Bohn: London, 1853.)

Editions (1)
Νεφέλαι Perseus (Aristophanes. Aristophanis Comoediae, Vol. 1. Hall, F. W. and Geldart, William M., editors. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1906.) — 261b-355 focus
Translations (1)
English (Sanjaya, generated; selected passages) (OCR draft) Experimental (Source: pnadelofficial/aristophanes-sanjaya, commit c319590c139e5603e71f0699caa0663d823af8ad. Machine-generated source annotations retained; see Sanjaya import audit for coverage and limitations.) — 291 focus

Commentary

Commentary (Sanjaya, generated; selected passages) (OCR draft) (Source: pnadelofficial/aristophanes-sanjaya, commit c319590c139e5603e71f0699caa0663d823af8ad. Machine-generated source annotations retained; see Sanjaya import audit for coverage and limitations.) focus

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Line 293

καὶ σέβομαί γʼ ὦ πολυτίμητοι καὶ βούλομαι ἀνταποπαρδεῖν
The verb ἀνταποπαρδεῖν is a hapax legomenon in Aristophanic comedy, constructed from ἀντα- (back/against), ἀπο- (away), and παρδεῖν (to fart). This rare compound verb functions as a grotesque, hyperbolic response to the Clouds' demand for reverence, utilizing the highest register of scatological humor to invert the solemnity of the preceding σέβομαί (I revere). Its syntactic construction as a future infinitive dependent on βούλομαι (I wish/want) is grammatically standard, but the lexical formation itself is a deliberate comic distortion of formal compounds, marking the moment where the character Strepsiades attempts to appease the divine entities through the most vulgar of oaths.

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κεἰ θέμις ἐστίν, νυνί γʼ ἤδη, κεἰ μὴ θέμις ἐστί, χεσείω.
The sentence presents a crux regarding the manuscript reading of the first word. While some editions (e.g., Dobree) have conjectured κεἰ (a variant of καί with elision) to mean 'and if', the manuscript tradition is divided, with some witnesses reading κἄν (if even) or simply καί. The ambiguity is critical: if κεἰ is read as 'and if', the speaker is adding a hypothetical condition to a previous argument; if it is a corruption of κἄν, it introduces a concessive clause ('even if') which drastically alters the rhetorical force of the threat that follows. The form κεἰ is also notable for its dialectal coloring (Aeolic or Doric influence in the contraction of εἰ + καί) which Aristophanes employs to mark the character's rustic or archaic tone, though the syntactic function depends entirely on the accepted reading.