THE CLOUDS. 109

This took place in 399 B.c., whereas the play was acted in 423. Still
it helped in producing the great prejudice which undoubtedly existed
and which resulted in his being put to death. To this fact Socrates is
represented: as referring in the defence or apology which Plato puts
into his mouth. He says: — :

“T have had many to accuse me to you, This they have done for
many years, saying things about me, not one of which was true. And
of these enemies I am more afraid than I am of Anytus and his fellow-
accusers, though these, too, are formidable. But, gentlemen, these old
enemies are more formidable. These have represented to you in your
childhood a false story, how that there is a certain Socrates, or wise
man, who speculates on things above the earth, and searches into
things under the earth, and makes the worse appear the better reason.
It is they, men of Athens, who by spreading about this report of me,
have been my really dangerous accusers; for those who listen to them
hold that they who busy themselves with such speculations do not even
believe in the gods.” sg A

And a little later he says: “ You yourselves have seen this in Aris-
tophanes’s comedy, in which a certain Socrates is introduced, saying
that he ‘walks in air,’ and talking much other nonsense on subjects on
which I do not profess to know much or little.”

However much Aristophanes was mistaken in his estimate of Soc-
rates’s character and teaching, it was the estimate commonly held.
Indeed, there is no reason to suppose that the story sometimes told of
the Athenians. having repented of their condemnation of their great
countryman, is true.

STREPSIADES, once a wealthy Athenian land-owner,
but now reduced by losses that followed the war
and by his son’s extravagance to great distress, was
meditating sadly on his troubles as he lay awake in
the early morning. “Will it never be light?”. he
said to himself; “and yet I’m sure I heard the cock
crow a long time ago. All the slaves are snoring,
and,one can’t thrash them now, thanks to that de-
testable war. And there’s my son. there; nothing