Pheidippides: Speak then, what do you command?
90
Strepsiades: And will he persuade him?
Pheidippides: I will obey.
Pheidippides: By Dionysus!
Strepsiades: Look this way now.
Strepsiades: Do you see this little door and this little window?
Pheidippides: I see. So what is this, truly, O father?
Strepsiades: This is a study of the souls of the wise.
Strepsiades: Here, men, dwell those who [study] the sky
95
Strepsiades: saying, they persuade as if there is a drowner,
Strepsiades: And this is about us, but we are charcoal.
Strepsiades: These are the ones who teach, if someone gives money,
Strepsiades: to conquer even when speaking unfairly and unjustly.
Pheidippides: Are there some, then?
100
Strepsiades: I do not know the name precisely;
Strepsiades: caring and good and noble.
Pheidippides: Alas, they are scoundrels, I know. The impostors.
Pheidippides: 'You mean the pale-faced and barefoot ones?'
Pheidippides: of whom the wretched Socrates and Chaerephon.
105
Strepsiades: Oh, oh, be quiet; say nothing foolish.
Strepsiades: But if it troubles you in any way concerning the ancestral barley,
Strepsiades: Be a splitter of these to me, having torn open the equestrian art.
Pheidippides: Not even by Dionysus, if you were to give me just a little.
Pheidippides: the pheasants that Leogoras raises.
Strepsiades: Come, I beg you, most dear of all men to me.
110
Strepsiades: Come and teach.
Pheidippides: And what will I learn from you?
Strepsiades: they say that both of these are with them, the two arguments,
Strepsiades: the better one, whoever he is, and the worse one.
Strepsiades: this one of the two speeches, the weaker,
Strepsiades: They say that to win is to speak unjustly.
115
Strepsiades: Then, if you learn this unjust argument for me,
Strepsiades: What I owe now because of you, these debts
Strepsiades: I would not pay back not even an obol to anyone.
Pheidippides: I would not persuade [him]; for I would not dare to see.
Pheidippides: the horsemen, having their skin chafed.
120
Strepsiades: Then, by Demeter, it was not necessary for them to be mine,
Strepsiades: Neither he himself, nor the steersman, nor the helmsman;
Strepsiades: But I will throw you out into the crows from the house.
Pheidippides: But my uncle Megacles will not overlook me.
Pheidippides: Unwashed. But I will go in; I do not care about you.
125
Strepsiades: But not even I, though I have fallen, will lie down.
Strepsiades: But after praying to the gods, I will learn.
Strepsiades: walking himself to the thinking-shop.
Strepsiades: How, then, being old and forgetful and slow
Strepsiades: Will I learn the splinters of precise speeches?
130
Strepsiades: We must go. Why, while holding these things, am I being strangled?
Strepsiades: But am I not knocking on the door? Boy, boy!
