3.

SOCRATES IN THE CLOUDS

KENNETII J. DOVER

Socrates was seventy at the time of his trial in 399 B.C.,1

and therefore forty-five when Aristophanes conceived
and composed the original version2 of the Clouds. He
was physically hard,s and we should certainly not imag-
ine that he had more fat and less muscle than other Athe-
nians;4 in the autumn of 424 he fought as a hoplite at
Delion and took part in the gruelling retreat. 5 It is prob-
able that his hair was greying noticeably;6 the allegation
that he was bald (which can be traced back to a story
told by Hegesandros of Delphi [second century B.C.], ap.
Ath. 507AH.) may be only an inference from Clouds 147
about Socrates in old age (cf. scholion), and even if it
were better founded than that it would not mean that
he was already bald in his forties. His eyes were promi-
nent, his nose upturned, and lips thick-features cus-
tomarily attributed by the Athenians to satyrs and
silenoi.1
This essay is a part of the Introduction to the Cloods of Aristoph-
anes, edited with Introduction and Commentary by Kenneth J.
Dover (Clarendon Press, Oxford, 1968). It is reprinted (with slight
changes made by the author) by permission of the publishers and
the author.
1 Pl. Ap. 17D; Apollodoros 34; Demetrios of Phaleron fro 10
[Wehrli]; Favorinus ap. Diog. Laert. ii. 39.
2 The version which we possess is revised by the poet.
3 It is therefore wrong, in staging the play, to portray Socrates
as a white-bearded 'professor', but some editors seem to have
visualized him so; Blaydes on 887 refers to Strepsiades and Soc-
rates as 'the two old men'.
4 He is sometimes visualized by modem writers as fat
5 Cf. below, p. 60.
6 Aischines i. 49 contrasts his own numerous grey hairs, at forty-
five, with Misgolas' lack of them at the same age.
1 PI. Smp. 21513, Tht. 143E, Xen. Smp. 4.19, 5.7. Satyrs are
sometimes depicted on vases as having a very high hair-line, and
this may be the origin of the idea that Socrates was bald.

G. Vlastos (ed.), The Philosophy of SOCRATES

© Gregory Vlastos 1971
Socrates in the Clouds
Since there is no reference to his physiognomy in
Clouds, it may be that he was ugly only by the high
aesthetic standards of the aristocratic company which he
keeps in the pages of Plato and Xenophon, and that he
would not have seemed particularly ugly to the man in
the street. The actor who took the part of Socrates in
the play may have worn a portrait-mask. Aelian, in tell-
ing the story of how Socrates answered the question
whispered among the foreigners in the audience, 'Who
is this man Socrates?', by silently standing up (Var. Hist.
ii. 13), assumes (but does not know) that a portrait-
mask was worn; but the story loses little or none of its
point if there was no portrait-mask. s If Socrates was
really ugly, and his ugliness was of the conventional sa-
tyric type, a portrait of him would have been hard to
distinguish from a characteristic comic mask designed
for a :6ctitious character.9
Socrates in Clouds is the head of a school; Chaire-
phon, who seems in 104, 144 If., 830 f., 1465 to be treated
as his equal, is classed in 502 If. among his students, and
has no part in the teaching of Strepsiades or Pheidip-
pides. The students, unlike the boys who journey to and
from conventional schools every day (964 f. ), live in; the
student who shows Strepsiades round speaks of 'us' as
'having nothing for dinner last night' (175), and we are
clearly meant to imagine (1131 If.) that when Strepsi-
ades comes to collect Pheidippides he has not seen him
for some time.
Socrates and his students are pale from their indoor
life (103, 119 f., 198 f., 1112, 1171), and Chairephon in
particular is 'half-dead' (504). They are unkempt and
dirty (836 f. ), they wear no sandals (103, 362), their
S Webster, Greek Theatre Production (London, 1956), 60, says
that Socrates stood UP 'so that the audience could see his likeness
to the actor'. It seems to me that Aelian may have thought that
Socrates stood up for precisely the opposite reason, to imply 'Do I
look like the sort of man who's playing the fool on stage?'
9 Cf. especially the Lyme Hall relief (Webster, op. cit., pI. 16);
and on the general question of portrait masks cf. Dover in Komoi-
dotragemata (Groningen, 1967), 16 If.