Lines 1–223

STREPSIADES.
O dear! O dear!
O Lord! O Zeus! these nights, how long they are.
Will they ne’er pass? will the day never come?
Surely I heard the cock crow, hours ago.
Yet still my servants snore. These are new customs.
O ’ware of war for many various reasons;
One fears in war even to flog one’s servants.
And here’s this hopeful son of mine wrapped up
Snoring and sweating under five thick blankets.
Come, we’ll wrap up and snore in opposition.
[Tries to sleep]
But I can’t sleep a wink, devoured and bitten
By ticks, and bugbears, duns, and race-horses,
All through this son of mine. He curls his hair,
And sports his thoroughbreds, and drives his tandem;
Even in dreams he rides: while I—I’m ruined,
Now that the Moon has reached her twentieths,
And paying-time comes on. Boy! light a lamp,
And fetch my ledger: now I’ll reckon up
Who are my creditors, and what I owe them.
Come, let me see then. Fifty pounds to Pasias!
Why fifty pounds to Pasias? what were they for?
O, for the hack from Corinth. O dear! O dear!
I wish my eye had been hacked out before—

PHEIDIPPIDES.
[In his sleep]
You are cheating, Philon;
keep to your own side.

STREPSIADES.
Ah! there it is! that’s what has ruined me!
Even in his very sleep he thinks of horses.

PHEIDIPPIDES.
[In his sleep]
How many heats do the war-chariots run?

STREPSIADES.
A pretty many heats you have run your father.
Now then, what debt assails me after Pasias?
A curricle and wheels. Twelve pounds. Amynias.

PHEIDIPPIDES.
[In his sleep]
Here, give the horse a roll, and take him home.

STREPSIADES.
You have rolled me out of house and home, my boy,
Cast in some suits already, while some swear
They’ll seize my goods for payment.

PHEIDIPPIDES.
Good, my father,
What makes you toss so restless all night long?

STREPSIADES.
There’s a bumbailiff from the mattress bites me.

PHEIDIPPIDES.
Come now, I prithee, let me sleep in peace.

STREPSIADES.
Well then, you sleep; only be sure of this,
These debts will fall on your own head at last.
Alas, alas!
For ever cursed be that same match-maker,
Who stirred me up to marry your poor mother.
Mine in the country was the pleasantest life,
Untidy, easy-going, unrestrained,
Brimming with olives, sheepfolds, honey-bees.
Ah! then I married—I a rustic—her
A fine town-lady, niece of Megacles.
A regular, proud, luxurious, Coesyra.
This wife I married, and we came together,
I rank with wine-lees, fig-boards, greasy woolpacks;
She all with scents, and saffron, and tongue-kissings,
Feasting, expense, and lordly modes of loving.
She was not idle though, she was too fast.
I used to tell her, holding out my cloak,
Threadbare and worn; Wife, you’re too fast by half.

SERVANT.
Here’s no more oil remaining in the lamp.

STREPSIADES.
O me! what made you light the tippling lamp?
Come and be whipp’d.

SERVANT.
Why, what would you whip me for?

STREPSIADES.
Why did you put one of those thick wicks in?
Well, when at last to me and my good woman
This hopeful son was born, our son and heir,
Why then we took to wrangle on the name.
She was for giving him some knightly name,
“Callippides,” “Xanthippus,” or “Charippus,”
I wished “Pheidonides,” his grandsire’s name.
Thus for some time we argued: till at last
We compromised it in Pheidippides.
This boy she took, and used to spoil him, saying,
Oh! when you are driving to the Acropolis, clad
Like Megacles, in your purple; whilst I said
Oh! when the goats you are driving from the fells,
Clad like your father, in your sheepskin coat.
Well, he cared nought for my advice, but soon
A galloping consumption caught my fortunes.
Now cogitating all night long, I’ve found
One way, one marvellous transcendent way,
Which if he’ll follow, we may yet be saved.
So,—but, however, I must rouse him first;
But how to rouse him kindliest? that’s the rub.
Pheidippides, my sweet one.

PHEIDIPPIDES.
Well, my father.

STREPSIADES.
Shake hands, Pheidippides, shake hands and kiss me.

PHEIDIPPIDES.
There; what’s the matter?

STREPSIADES.
Dost thou love me, boy?

PHEIDIPPIDES.
Ay! by Poseidon there, the God of horses.

STREPSIADES.
No, no, not that: miss out the God of horses,
That God’s the origin of all my evils.
But if you love me from your heart and soul,
My son, obey me.

PHEIDIPPIDES.
Very well: what in?

STREPSIADES.
Strip with all speed, strip off your present habits,
And go and learn what I’ll advise you to.

PHEIDIPPIDES.
Name your commands.

STREPSIADES.
Will you obey?

PHEIDIPPIDES.
I will,
By Dionysus!

STREPSIADES.
Well then, look this way.
See you that wicket and the lodge beyond?

PHEIDIPPIDES.
I see: and prithee what is that, my father?

STREPSIADES.
That is the thinking-house of sapient souls.
There dwell the men who teach—aye, who persuade us,
That Heaven is one vast fire-extinguisher
Placed round about us, and that we’re the cinders.
Aye, and they’ll teach (only they’ll want some money),
How one may speak and conquer, right or wrong.

PHEIDIPPIDES.
Come, tell their names.

STREPSIADES.
Well, I can’t quite remember,
But they’re deep thinkers, and true gentlemen.

PHEIDIPPIDES.
Out on the rogues! I know them. Those rank pedants,
Those palefaced, barefoot vagabonds you mean:
That Socrates, poor wretch, and Chaerephon.

STREPSIADES.
Oh! Oh! hush! hush! don’t use those foolish words;
But if the sorrows of my barley touch you,
Enter their Schools and cut the Turf for ever.

PHEIDIPPIDES.
I wouldn’t go, so help me Dionysus,
For all Leogoras’s breed of Phasians!

STREPSIADES.
Go, I beseech you, dearest, dearest son,
Go and be taught.

PHEIDIPPIDES.
And what would you have me learn?

STREPSIADES.
’Tis known that in their Schools they keep two Logics,
The Worse, Zeus save the mark, the Worse and Better.
This Second Logic then, I mean the Worse one,
They teach to talk unjustly and—prevail.
Think then, you only learn that Unjust Logic,
And all the debts, which I have incurred through you,
I’d never pay, no, not one farthing of them.

PHEIDIPPIDES.
I will not go. How could I face the knights
With all my colour worn and torn away!

STREPSIADES.
O! then, by Earth, you have eat your last of mine,
You, and your coach-horse, and your sigma-brand:
Out with you! Go to the crows, for all I care.

PHEIDIPPIDES.
But uncle Megacles won’t leave me long
Without a horse: I’ll go to him: good-bye.

STREPSIADES.
I’m thrown, by Zeus, but I won’t long lie prostrate,
I’ll pray the Gods and send myself to school:
I’ll go at once and try their thinking-house.
Stay: how can I, forgetful, slow, old fool,
Learn the nice hair-splittings of subtle Logic?
Well, go I must. ’Twon’t do to linger here.
Come on, I’ll knock the door. Boy! Ho there, boy!

STUDENT.
[Within]
O, hang it all! who’s knocking at the door?

STREPSIADES.
Me! Pheidon’s son: Strepsiades of Cicynna.

STUDENT.
Why, what a clown you are! to kick our door,
In such a thoughtless, inconsiderate way!
You’ve made my cogitation to miscarry.

STREPSIADES.
Forgive me: I’m an awkward country fool.
But tell me, what was that I made miscarry?

STUDENT.
’Tis not allowed: Students alone may hear.

STREPSIADES.
O that’s all right: you may tell me: I’m come
To be a student in your thinking-house.

STUDENT.
Come then. But they’re high mysteries, remember,
’Twas Socrates was asking Chaerephon,
How many feet of its own a flea could jump.
For one first bit the brow of Chaerephon,
Then bounded off to Socrates’s head.

STREPSIADES.
How did he measure this?

STUDENT.
Most cleverly.
He warmed some wax, and then he caught the flea,
And dipped its feet into the wax he’d melted:
Then let it cool, and there were Persian slippers!
These he took off, and so he found the distance.

STREPSIADES.
O Zeus and king, what subtle intellects!

STUDENT.
What would you say then if you heard another,
Our Master’s own?

STREPSIADES.
O come, do tell me that.

STUDENT.
Why, Chaerephon was asking him in turn,
Which theory did he sanction; that the gnats
Hummed through their mouth, or backwards, through the tail?

STREPSIADES.
Aye, and what said your Master of the gnat?

STUDENT.
He answered thus: the entrail of the gnat
Is small: and through this narrow pipe the wind
Rushes with violence straight towards the tail;
There, close against the pipe, the hollow rump
Receives the wind, and whistles to the blast.

STREPSIADES.
So then the rump is trumpet to the gnats!
O happy, happy in your entrail-learning!
Full surely need he fear nor debts nor duns,
Who knows about the entrails of the gnats.

STUDENT.
And yet last night a mighty thought we lost
Through a green lizard.

STREPSIADES.
Tell me, how was that?

STUDENT.
Why, as Himself, with eyes and mouth wide open,
Mused on the moon, her paths and revolutions,
A lizard from the roof squirted full on him.

STREPSIADES.
He, he, he, he. I like the lizard’s spattering Socrates.

STUDENT.
Then yesterday, poor we, we’d got no dinner.

STREPSIADES.
Hah! what did he devise to do for barley?

STUDENT.
He sprinkled on the table—some fine ash—
He bent a spit—he grasped it compass-wise—
And—filched a mantle from the Wrestling School.

STREPSIADES.
Good heavens! Why Thales was a fool to this!
O open, open, wide the study door,
And show me, show me, show me Socrates.
I die to be a student. Open, open!
O Heracles, what kind of beasts are these!

STUDENT.
Why, what’s the matter? what do you think they’re like?

STREPSIADES.
Like? why those Spartans whom we brought from Pylus:
What makes them fix their eyes so on the ground?

STUDENT.
They seek things underground.

STREPSIADES.
O! to be sure,
Truffles! You there, don’t trouble about that!
I’ll tell you where the best and finest grow.
Look! why do those stoop down so very much?

STUDENT.
They’re diving deep into the deepest secrets.

STREPSIADES.
Then why’s their rump turned up towards the sky?

STUDENT.
It’s taking private lessons on the stars.
[To the other Students]
Come, come: get in: He’ll catch us presently.

STREPSIADES.
Not yet! not yet! just let them stop one moment,
While I impart a little matter to them.

STUDENT.
No, no: they must go in: ’twould never do
To expose themselves too long to the open air.

STREPSIADES.
O! by the Gods, now, what are these? do tell me.

STUDENT.
This is Astronomy.

STREPSIADES.
And what is this?

STUDENT.
Geometry.

STREPSIADES.
Well, what’s the use of that?

STUDENT.
To mete out lands.

STREPSIADES.
What, for allotment grounds?

STUDENT.
No, but all lands.

STREPSIADES.
A choice idea, truly.
Then every man may take his choice, you mean.

STUDENT.
Look; here’s a chart of the whole world. Do you see?
This city’s Athens.

STREPSIADES.
Athens? I like that.
I see no dicasts sitting. That’s not Athens.

STUDENT.
In very truth, this is the Attic ground.

STREPSIADES.
And where then are my townsmen of Cicynna?

STUDENT.
Why, thereabouts; and here, you see, Euboea:
Here, reaching out a long way by the shore.

STREPSIADES.
Yes, overreached by us and Pericles.
But now, where’s Sparta?

STUDENT.
Let me see: O, here.

STREPSIADES.
Heavens! how near us. O do please manage this,
To shove her off from us, a long way further.

STUDENT.
We can’t do that, by Zeus.

STREPSIADES.
The worse for you.
Hallo! who’s that? that fellow in the basket?

STUDENT.
That’s HE.

STREPSIADES.
Who’s HE?

STUDENT.
Socrates.

STREPSIADES.
Socrates!
You sir, call out to him as loud as you can.

STUDENT.
Call him yourself: I have not leisure now.

STREPSIADES.
Socrates! Socrates!
Sweet Socrates!