Aristophanes Clouds 1345-1451

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.) — 1345 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.) — 1345 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

1356. mvp-tlg0019-tlg003-sanjaya-com-eng1-91

Line 1356

ᾆσαι Σιμωνίδου μέλος, τὸν Κριὸν ὡς ἐπέχθη.
The phrase 'τὸν Κριὸν ὡς ἐπέχθη' alludes to a specific fragment of Simonides (PMG 558) describing the constellation Aries, which the chorus of Clouds is mimicking. The verb ἐπέχθη (aorist passive of ἐπέχω) here is used in the sense of 'standing out' or 'rising above' (the stars), a usage rare in this specific astronomical context for Simonides, who typically describes the constellation's position relative to the ecliptic or its mythological origin. Aristophanes compresses the original hymnic narrative into a fragmentary reference, relying on the audience's familiarity with the 'song of the Ram' to evoke the Clouds' pretension to cosmic knowledge.

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Line 1367

ψόφου πλέων ἀξύστατον στόμφακα κρημνοποιόν;
The phrase ψόφου πλέων (full of noise/clatter) modifies στόμφακα (a mocking, scolding, or noisy mouth/tongue). The adjective πλέων (full) is used with the genitive of the thing possessed, a construction that, while not unique to this passage, is notably vivid here in characterizing the 'mouth' not merely as the source of noise but as saturated with it. More critically, στόμφακα is an extremely rare hapax legomenon in Aristophanes (and arguably in the entire extant corpus outside of this specific line's context or close variants) meaning a 'noisy mouth' or 'scolding tongue,' derived from στόμμιον (mouth) with a pejorative intensifier. Its compound nature and specific application to a 'cliff-making' (κρημνοποιόν) entity (referring to the Clouds or the sophist Socrates' influence) requires specific lexical attention as it is not a standard Attic collocation found in intermediate grammars. The combination of this rare noun with the genitive construction creates a dense, almost technical description of the 'clamorous mouth' that precipitates the downfall (cliff) of the city or the student.

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Line 1372

ἀδελφὸς ὦλεξίκακε τὴν ὁμομητρίαν ἀδελφήν.
The compound verb ὤλεξεν (aorist of ὀλλύναι, 'to destroy') is used here with a double accusative object: the direct object τὴν ὁμομητρίαν ἀδελφήν and the subject of the infinitive clause implied in the context of the speaker's curse. However, the syntax is more specifically an instance of the 'double accusative' construction where the verb ὀλλύναι takes two accusatives, one of the person destroyed and the other of the thing destroyed (or in this case, the relationship itself), though the latter is often elided or absorbed. More critically, the word ὁμομητρίαν is a hapax legomenon in Aristophanes and a rare compound (ὁμός + μήτηρ) meaning 'having the same mother', here used substantively to mean 'sister'. The phrase τὴν ὁμομητρίαν ἀδελφήν is thus a pleonasm or emphatic apposition, stressing the specific type of sisterhood (uterine) in a context where the speaker is cursing a brother for destroying his own uterine sister. The construction is syntactically dense and relies on the audience's understanding of the specific familial relationship being targeted.

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Line 1382

εἰ μέν γε βρῦν εἴποις, ἐγὼ γνοὺς ἂν πιεῖν ἐπέσχον·
The clause presents a striking example of the optative of potentiality in a protasis (εἰ μέν γε βρῦν εἴποις) followed by a periphrastic future perfect construction in the apodosis (ἐγὼ γνοὺς ἂν πιεῖν ἐπέσχον). The verb ἐπέσχον (aorist indicative) here functions as a gnomic aorist or a specific historical aorist of the narrator's past action, yet it is governed by the conditional particle ἄν attached to the participle γνοὺς, creating a hybrid construction where the apodosis describes a completed action (holding back) that was contingent upon a hypothetical condition. This syntactic blending of the aorist indicative with the optative conditional framework is rare in Attic prose and distinctively characteristic of Aristophanic comedy, where the speaker (Strepsiades) mimics the convoluted, hyper-logical rhetoric of the Sophists while simultaneously admitting to a literal, physical reaction to the absurdity of the word 'cloud' (βρῦν) being spoken.

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Line 1387

χεζητιῴην, οὐκ ἔτλης
The form χεζητιῴην is a rare Doric aorist optative of ζητέω (or possibly a dialectal variant of ζητήσοιμι), reflecting the strong Doric coloring of Aristophanes' comic dialogue here; the juxtaposition of this optative with the aorist indicative ἔτλης creates a syntactic tension that may signal a shift from wishful thinking to immediate reproach, a feature characteristic of Aristophanic dialogue where grammatical mood often tracks the speaker's rhetorical pivot.

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Line 1397

σὸν ἔργον ὦ καινῶν ἐπῶν κινητὰ καὶ μοχλευτὰ
The phrase κινητὰ καὶ μοχλευτὰ presents a striking syntactic and semantic anomaly. While the first participle (kinēta) functions adjectivally to describe 'works' (ergon) as 'shakable' or 'unstable'—a standard metaphor for rhetorical instability—the second (mochleuta) is a hapax legomenon in this context, derived from mochleuo ('to work a lever' or 'to pry'). Aristophanes here employs a rare, compound verbal noun in the accusative to personify the 'works' as active agents of prying or manipulation, creating a deliberate pun on the physical act of leverage and the rhetorical 'leveraging' of arguments. This construction is not merely a standard adjectival modifier but a marked rhetorical device where the abstract 'work' is grammatically treated as a mechanical operator, reflecting the play's broader satire on the Sophists' manipulation of language.

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Line 1407

ἵππων τρέφειν τέθριππον ἢ τυπτόμενον ἐπιτριβῆναι.
The phrase τυπτόμενον ἐπιτριβῆναι presents a striking syntactic and semantic difficulty: τυπτόμενον (a present middle/passive participle of τυπτω) typically means 'being struck' or 'beaten', yet here it modifies the action of ἐπιτριβῆναι ('to be rubbed upon'). This construction implies a paradoxical image of a horse being 'rubbed while being struck,' which has led scholars to conjecture that τυπτόμενον may be a corruption of τριβόμενον ('being rubbed') or that the text preserves a deliberate, ironic wordplay on the physical abuse of the horse in the training regimen. The ambiguity is significant because it touches on the literal versus metaphorical understanding of the horse's suffering in the context of the Sophists' absurd teachings.