Clouds - by Aristophanes

Aristophanes, a conservative young man of only 23 or so, doesn't have a very high opinion of the "New Thought" going around, expressed and promoted by the Sophists and especially by Socrates, whom Aristophanes rather unfairly lumps together with them. Clouds is a lively spoof of the new ideas about the education of the youth. Aristophanes sets out to have fun damning them and reducing the new techniques to absurdity

The story

Strepsiades is in despair because of the debts his horse-loving son - Phidippides - has landed him in. He has heard of Socrates and the Thinkpot, where for a fee one can learn to prove that wrong is right, and he decides to send his son there to be taught how to prove that a debt is not a debt; in other words: to learn how to cheat and deceive.

Sometimes later, Socrates presents Phidippides to his father as a perfect sophist.

Creditors appear one after the other clamoring for payment and Strepsiades, using the little he learned, is able to confound them each in turn. Both father and son start having disagreements, which ends in Phidippides trying to punish his father. When the former says he is going to beat his mother too, Strepsiades, horror-stricken at the reversal of values, runs to the Thinkpot and burns it down.

Best passages

The way Aristophanes describes Socrates and the Sophists

- (...) I don't exactly know but they are deep-ruminating cerebrationalists nice beautiful people

- (...) Boy, are they poison ! You are talking of a bunch of frauds: that barefoot dough-faced lot like that pitiful Socrates

- (...) Stinking liar (...) chattering charlatan, a fox, piss hole, slimy talker, a fraud

- (...) you wonderful old fraud !

Sophist's non-sense parody, in a dialogue between Strepsiades and one of his creditors

Creditor: And I'm inclined to think you're getting a writ served on you if you don't pay up.

Strepsiades: And are you inclined to think that Zeus rains freshwater every time it rains, or does te sun suck up the water that's already there ?

Creditor: I don't know and I don't care

Strepsiades: Then how can you possibly ask for money when you're so meteorogically illiterate ? (...)

Strepsiades: But do you think the sea is fuller now than it used to be ?

Creditor: Of course not, it's the same. To be fuller would be against nature.

Strepsiades: Really, you poor nit! So if the sea never gets fuller even if rivers pour into it, how can you possibly expect your money to get fuller?

The reversal of values, when Phidippides is trying to convince his father that he really deserves to be punished by him.

Phidippides: (...) did you ever spank me as a boy ?

Strepsiades: Naturally, I did, for your good because I cared.

Phidippides:Tell me then, shouldn't I now show, if spanking is evidence of caring, that I do care by giving you a spanking ? And is it fair that your carcass be spank-proof but not mine ? (...)

Strepsiades: Nowhere is there a law to treat a father in that way.

Phidippides: (...) can't I have a turn, too, at making a law to fit tomorrow's sons: one that lets them beat their fathers in return ?

Note: Adapted from Paul Roche's translation.