CHAPTER IV.
THE CLOUDS.
The satire in this, one of the best-known of Aristophanes's comedies, is directed against the new schools of philosophy which had been lately developed in Athens, and which reckoned among their disciples not only the more intellectual of the rising generation, but also a good many idle young men of the richer classes, who were attracted by the novelty of the tenets which were there propounded, the eloquence of the teachers, and the richness of illustration and brilliant repartee which were remarkable features in their method. There were several reasons which would make this new learning unpopular, whatever its real merits might have been. These men controverted popular opinions, and assumed to know more than other people—which was an offence to the dignity of the great Athenian commons. The lecturers themselves were nearly all of them foreigners—Thrasymachus from Chalcedon, Gorgias from Leontini in Sicily, Protagoras from Abdera in Thrace. These, with many others of less note, had brought their
