Aristophanes' CLOUDS
...ricature. Strepsiades is on the verge of bankruptcy on account of his son Pheidippides’ extravagant obsession with horses. He decides to go to Socrates’ Thinking-Shop and learn the Worse Logic----that which teaches men to speak unjustly and win. He hopes to use this new found wisdom in fooling his creditors and avoiding paying any of the debts. But Strepsiades is found to be too old and slow to learn anything, so he forces his son to go the school and study in his place. Pheidippides proves himself competent by returning to beat his father and proving that all laws, divine and human, justifies .This has similar echoes in the play Birds where Pisthetaerus, in Aristophanes’ ideal city between heaven and earth, refuses the youth who wants to beat his father to death, admission. Phedippids’ action brings his father back to his senses and he amends for his wicked ideas by burning down the Thinking-Shop. The chorus of clouds in this play represents the foggy philosophies Socrates and thereby the Sophists profess. They are the deities of those cunning but worthless beings who seek to win over the world through casuistry and verbal sleights. Aristophanes’ conservative views lead him to condemn the new education which teaches the youths to forsake all that is traditional and worthwhile, whether in religion or in other spheres. According to him, the false, circumlocutory ideas lead the young people from healthy places lik...