Aristophanes Clouds 814

ed. F. W. Hall, ed. William M. Geldart

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Clouds. Aristophanes. ed. F. W. Hall, ed. William M. Geldart. Oxford. 1906.

Sponsored by Perseus Project, Tufts University.

Funding provided by The Annenberg CPB/Project.

Current edition Perseus

Νεφέλαι (Greek) (Aristophanes. Aristophanis Comoediae, Vol. 1. Hall, F. W. and Geldart, William M., editors. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1906.)

Translations (2)
Clouds Perseus (Aristophanes. The Comedies of Aristophanes, Vol. I. Hickie, William James, translator. Bohn: London, 1853.) — 814 focus
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.) — 814 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 827

οὐκ ἔστιν ὦ Φειδιππίδη Ζεύς.
The sentence presents a crux of textual and theological interpretation central to the play's climax. While the transmitted text reads οὐκ ἔστιν ὦ Φειδιππίδη Ζεύς ('There is no Zeus, O Pheidippides'), some editors have proposed emending the verb to οὐκ ἔστιν (existential) in favor of οὐκ ἔστιν (locative 'is not present') or, more radically, altering the predicate to οὐκ ἔστιν (is not true) or even suggesting a lacuna. However, the more significant issue is the theological shock value: in the context of the play, this is the conclusion of the 'Stronger Argument' (the New Education) which has just argued that the traditional gods are not the true gods, but rather the clouds (Νεφέλαι) are the true deities. The statement is not merely a denial of Zeus's existence in a philosophical sense (as a Sophist might argue about the nature of the divine), but a performative negation of the city's civic religion, which is why Strepsiades' subsequent reaction is one of horror and the final invocation of the clouds. The syntax is straightforward, but the semantic weight of the existential denial in a comedy that otherwise relies on the audience's knowledge of the Olympian pantheon creates a deliberate paradox that drives the play's satire on the erosion of traditional piety by Sophistic rationalism.

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Line 830b

Σωκράτης ὁ Μήλιος
The epithet 'the Milesian' (ὁ Μήλιος) is a deliberate comic distortion by Aristophanes. The historical Socrates was the son of Sophroniscus, a stonemason from the deme of Alopece in Athens. By assigning him a Milesian patronymic or demotic, Aristophanes exploits the contemporary Athenian stereotype of the Milesians as sophists, cosmopolitans, and representatives of the 'new learning' associated with Ionian natural philosophy (e.g., Anaxagoras). This misattribution serves to blur the line between the specific character of Socrates and the broader, often satirized, figure of the Ionian intellectual, thereby reinforcing the play's thematic conflation of Socratic inquiry with the foreign and subversive doctrines of the Sophists.

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Line 831

καὶ Χαιρεφῶν, ὃς οἶδε τὰ ψυλλῶν ἴχνη.
This phrase relies on a specific, well-known anecdote about the philosopher Chairephon recorded in Xenophon's Memorabilia (1.2.45) and Plato's Apology (21a–b). Chairephon was the individual who famously asked the Delphic oracle if anyone was wiser than Socrates, to which the Pythia replied 'no one.' The mention of 'knowing the tracks of fleas' (τὰ ψυλλῶν ἴχνη) is a biting Aristophanic caricature of this intellectual pursuit, reducing the philosopher's inquiry into the nature of wisdom to a trivial, pedantic, or hyper-specialized observation of minute details, a trope that would have been immediately recognizable to an Athenian audience familiar with the historical Chairephon's association with Socrates.