Clouds

Acts

• Prologue

  Strepsiades cannot sleep — his son has ruined him with debts. He decides to enrol at Socrates' "Thinkery."

  295 lines
• Parodos

  The Clouds descend — goddesses of intellectual fraud. Patron deities of sophists.

  100 lines
• First Episode

  Socrates, suspended in a basket, introduces Strepsiades to the new learning. The old man is hopeless.

  120 lines
• First Parabasis

  The chorus addresses the audience. This play was rejected at its first performance.

  39 lines
• Second Episode

  Socrates tries to teach grammar, metre, and logic. Strepsiades is expelled.

  115 lines
• First Stasimon

  The Clouds reflect on the comedy of an old man trying to cheat his creditors through philosophy.

  306 lines
• Third Episode

  Strepsiades sends his son Pheidippides to the Thinkery instead.

  230 lines
• The Debate

  Right Argument and Wrong Argument compete. Wrong Argument wins with sophistry.

  8 lines
• Second Stasimon

  The Clouds warn that cleverness has consequences.

  17 lines
• Fourth Episode

  Strepsiades defeats his creditors using rhetorical tricks.

  200 lines
• Third Stasimon

  Strepsiades' triumph is premature.

  16 lines
• Fifth Episode

  Pheidippides beats his father and uses logic to prove it is his right.

  31 lines
• The Mother-Beating

  Pheidippides argues he should beat his mother too.

  115 lines
• Sixth Episode

  Strepsiades takes a torch and sets fire to the Thinkery.

  62 lines
• Exodos

  The sophists flee. The Clouds approve — abandon false wisdom, return to honest dealing.

  2 lines