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!
SOCRATES Mortal! why call’st thou me?
STREPSIADES O, first of all, please tell me what you are doing.
SOCRATES I walk on air, and contemplate the Sun.
STREPSIADES O then from a basket you contemn the Gods, And not from the earth, at any rate?
SOCRATES Most true. I could not have searched out celestial matters Without suspending judgement, and infusing My subtle spirit with the kindred air. If from the ground I were to seek these things, I could not find: so surely doth the earth Draw to herself the essence of our thought. The same too is the case with water-cress.”
STREPSIADES Hillo! what’s that? Thought draws the essence into water-cress? Come down, sweet Socrates, more near my level, And teach the lessons which I come to learn.
SOCRATES And wherefore art thou come?
STREPSIADES To learn to speak. For owing to my horrid debts and duns, My goods are seized, I’m robbed, and mobbed, and plundered.
SOCRATES How did you get involved with your eyes open?
STREPSIADES A galloping consumption seized my money. Come now: do let me learn the unjust Logic That can shirk debts: now do just let me learn it. Name your own price, by all the Gods I’ll pay it.
SOCRATES The Gods! why you must know the Gods with us Don’t pass for current coin.
STREPSIADES Eh? what do you use then? Have you got iron, as the Byzantines have?
SOCRATES Come, would you like to learn celestial matters, How their truth stands?
STREPSIADES Yes, if there’s any truth.
SOCRATES And to hold intercourse with yon bright Clouds, Our virgin Goddesses?
STREPSIADES Yes, that I should.
SOCRATES Then sit you down upon that sacred bed.
STREPSIADES Well, I am sitting.
SOCRATES Here then, take this chaplet.
STREPSIADES Chaplet? why? why? now, never, Socrates: Don’t sacrifice poor me, like Athamas.
SOCRATES Fear not: our entrance-services require All to do this.
STREPSIADES But what am I to gain?
SOCRATES You’ll be the flower of talkers, prattlers, gossips: Only keep quiet.
STREPSIADES Zeus! your words come true! I shall be flour indeed with all this peppering.
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