so he may learn to fear the gods.
O dear. That’s harsh, you Clouds, but fair enough. I shouldn’t have kept trying not to pay that cash I borrowed. Now, my dearest lad, come with me—let’s exterminate those men, the scoundrel Chaerephon and Socrates, the ones who played their tricks on you and me.
But I couldn't harm the ones who taught me.
Yes, you must. Revere Paternal Zeus.
Just listen to that—Paternal Zeus. How out of date you are! Does Zeus exist?
He does.
No, no, he doesn’t—there's no way,
for Vortex has now done away with Zeus and rules in everything.
He hasn’t killed him.
I thought he had because that statue there, the cup, is called a vortex. What a fool to think this piece of clay could be a god!
Stay here and babble nonsense to yourself.
My god, what lunacy. I was insane to cast aside the gods for Socrates.
But, dear Hermes, don’t vent your rage on me, don’t grind me down. Be merciful to me. Their empty babbling made me lose my mind.
for Vortex has now done away with Zeus and rules in everything.
He hasn’t killed him.
I thought he had because that statue there, the cup, is called a vortex. What a fool to think this piece of clay could be a god!
Stay here and babble nonsense to yourself.
My god, what lunacy. I was insane to cast aside the gods for Socrates.
But, dear Hermes, don’t vent your rage on me, don’t grind me down. Be merciful to me. Their empty babbling made me lose my mind.
for Vortex has now done away with Zeus and rules in everything.
He hasn’t killed him.
I thought he had because that statue there, the cup, is called a vortex. What a fool to think this piece of clay could be a god!
Stay here and babble nonsense to yourself.
My god, what lunacy. I was insane to cast aside the gods for Socrates.
But, dear Hermes, don’t vent your rage on me, don’t grind me down. Be merciful to me. Their empty babbling made me lose my mind.
Give me your advice. Shall I lay a charge, go after them in court. What seems right to you?
You counsel well. I won’t launch a law suit. I’ll burn their house as quickly as I can, these babbling fools.
Xanthias, come here. Come outside—bring a ladder—a mattock, too. then climb up on top of that Thinkery and, if you love your master, smash the roof, until the house collapses in on them.
Someone fetch me a flaming torch out here. They may brag all they like, but here today
I’ll make somebody pay the penalty for what they did to me.
Help! Help!
Come on, Torch, put your flames to work.
You there, what are you doing?
What am I doing? What else but picking a good argument with the roof beams of your house?
Help! Who’s setting fire to the house?
It’s the man whose cloak you stole.
We’ll die. You’ll kill us all!
That’s what I want—unless this mattock disappoints my hopes or I fall through somehow
and break my neck.
What are you doing up on the roof?
I walk on air and contemplate the sun.
This is bad—I’m going to suffocate.
What about poor me? I’ll be burned up.
Why were you so insolent with gods in what you studied and when you explored the moon’s abode? Chase them off, hit them, throw things at them—for all sorts of reasons, but most of all for their impiety.
Lead us on out of here. Away! We’ve had enough of song and dance today.
Frederick William Hall (1865–1948) was a classical scholar and Fellow of St John's College, Oxford. Together with William Martin Geldart, he produced the Oxford Classical Text of several authors. Hall was a careful editor known for his thorough collation of manuscripts and his conservative approach to textual criticism.
The Hall–Geldart editions in the Oxford Classical Texts series provide reliable critical texts with selective apparatus criticus. The OCT series, established in 1894 as the Scriptorum Classicorum Bibliotheca Oxoniensis, aims to present the best available Greek and Latin texts in a format suitable for both scholarly use and teaching. Each volume provides a clean text with the most significant manuscript variants recorded at the foot of each page.
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