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284 considered it the best thing he had ever written. Besides the 'parabasis,' two scenes in our Clouds are stated not to have occurred in the original play—the dialogue between the Just Cause and the Unjust Cause, and the rather effective close where Socrates's house is burnt. The present play is manifestly unfinished and does not hang together, but the interest taken by posterity in the main character has made it perhaps the most celebrated of all Aristophanes's works. The situation—an old man wishing to learn from a sophist the best way to avoid paying his debts—is not really a very happy one; and, in spite of the exquisite style which Aristophanes always has at command, and the humour of particular situations, the play is rather tame. Socrates must have done something to attract public notice at this time, since he was also the hero of the Connus.* Ameipsias described him as a poor, hungry, ragged devil, who 'insulted the bootmakers' by his naked feet, but nevertheless 'never deigned to flatter.' That caricature is nearer to the original than is the sophist of the Clouds, who combines various traits of the real Socrates with all the things he most emphatically disowned—the atheism of Diagoras, the grammar of Protagoras, the astronomy and physics of Diogenes of Apollonia. However, the portrait is probably about as true to life as those of Cleon, Agathon, or Cleonymus, and considerably less ill-natured.

In 422 Aristophanes returned again from the movement of thought to ordinary politics. The Wasps is a satire on the love of the Athenians for sitting in the jury courts and trying cases. It must have been a fascinating occupation to many minds: there was intellectual interest in it, and the charm of conscious power.