The Clouds

Socrates is one of the central figures of Clouds. Socrates was likely played by the Tritagonist, the same actor who would have played Strepsiades’s slave and the First Creditor, and possibly Wrong. Aristophanes’s Socrates is portrayed as a dishonest sophist who heads the disreputable Thinkery (a fiction invented by Aristophanes: The historical Socrates had no such school). In the hands of Aristophanes’s impious Socrates, the Thinkery becomes an educational cult, with its own deities and initiation rituals.

Like his pupils, Socrates is an amoral figure interested only in acquiring prestige and wealth. His misleading arguments and impractical experiments impress the rustic Strepsiades. Socrates’s interests—which incline heavily to meteorological matters—makes the character appear more ridiculous. In this respect, among others, Aristophanes fudged the facts; the historical Socrates appears to have emphatically shunned natural philosophy to pursue ethical philosophy. The historical Socrates also appears to have refused payment for his lessons, much unlike the greedy character imagined by Aristophanes.

Despite the differences between the Socrates of the play and the real Socrates, Aristophanes’s Socrates contributed to the Athenians’ suspicions, which culminated in Socrates’s trial and execution in 399 BCE.

Pheidippides is the son of Strepsiades, likely played by the Deuteragonist. His aristocratic passion for horses—encouraged by his mother—does not match his financial circumstances. Though horrified at the idea of being associated with the Thinkery, Pheidippides obeys his father. When he emerges from the Thinkery after the second parabasis, Pheidippides is transformed into one of the Thinkery’s typical pale initiates.

More intelligent than his father, Pheidippides is able to master the dishonest arguments employed by the Thinkery and championed by the Wrong Argument. He also becomes so arrogant than he beats his father over a disagreement in poetic taste, and even convinces his father that he is justified in doing so. He goes too far by threatening to beat his mother, impelling Strepsiades to attack the Thinkery. When Strepsiades asks for Pheidippides’s help, Pheidippides refuses, exclaiming: “I couldn’t harm my teachers!” (1467).

Pheidippides shows more loyalty to his teachers than his own family, a hallmark of what Aristophanes saw as the problematic and dangerous value system propagated by the sophists. However, Pheidippides does nothing to help Socrates and the Thinkery, going back inside as his father sets out to burn his school to the ground. Pheidippides, like Socrates and his father, is a flat character whose value system doesn’t change throughout the play.

The Chorus, made up of feminine-appearing Clouds, is the guiding force and moral center of the play. Socrates introduces them as the gods of the Thinkery, yet it becomes apparent from their first appearance that the Clouds honor the traditional gods, whom they invoke reverentially.

By the second half of the play, it becomes increasingly clear that the Clouds have little sympathy for Socrates and his school. In the agon between Right and Wrong, for instance, they clearly prefer Right, even though Wrong typifies the Thinkery’s values. In the play’s concluding scenes, the Clouds reveal that they have deliberately misled Strepsiades, as they mislead all those whom they find to be “in love with wickedness” (1459), wishing to teach them the power of the traditional gods.

Right is one of the two personified Arguments housed at the Thinkery and is the antithesis of Wrong. In the revised form of the play, which was never performed, he may have been played by a fourth actor. Right was probably represented as an elderly and stately gentleman. In his agon, or debate, with Wrong, Right advocates for traditional values, customs, and beliefs undermined by the Thinkery and the “New Education.” His models are the heroic and disciplined figures of Athens’ past, including the often-praised Athenians who fought at the Battle of Marathon in 490 BCE:

Right is a figure of the past, the source of “the glorious and ancient virtues” now lost because of Wrong and his followers (959). Right argues for the importance of worshiping the traditional gods, obeying the laws, and living a restrained and healthy life. The Clouds alone seem to sympathize with his case, and Right himself admits defeat when Wrong points to the audience and shows that most contemporary Athenians have turned away from Right to embrace a life of pleasure. Through Right, Aristophanes illustrates how the popular opinion is not necessarily the just one.

Wrong is one of the two Arguments housed at the Thinkery. Had the revised Clouds ever been performed, he may have been played by the Tritagonist, the same actor who would have played Socrates. Wrong, seemingly imagined as a young man, uses dishonest arguments. He advocates for the opportunistic and amoral hedonism embodied by Socrates and the Thinkery. He dismisses the traditional values championed by Right as old-fashioned and outmoded, and even convinces Right to come to his side. Through him, Aristophanes shows how words can be dangerous and give a shine to false and superficial beliefs.