Athens was in the middle of the Peloponnesian War when The Clouds was first performed, and so it's not super shocking that war comes up here and there. And not just as an aside or afterthought. The play is pretty focused on morals, education, and philosophy, but the topic of war is actually related to those other things.
How so, you ask? Well, when Better Argument and Worse Argument start duking it out over which school of thought is best, one of the arguments Better Argument keeps coming back to is that his attention to morals, tradition, and physical discipline/exercise is better for producing good warriors. Worse Argument, by contrast, is better for producing pasty couch potatoes who don't give a hoot about whether something is moral.
Questions About War and Violence
- Why do you think that the more morally oriented school of thought is also all about prepping guys for war and physical activity/violence? Do those things seem naturally linked to you? Or is the relationship weird?
- How do you think Socrates and Worse Argument would prepare their students to deal with war/international conflict? Obviously they're not into physical fitness, so what would their approach be?
- Why are there so many references to beatings and other (non-war) types of violence? What do those references do for your overall understanding of the play?
Chew on This
The frequent references to other types of violence draw our attention back to the fact that there's a larger conflict (i.e., the Peloponnesian War) going on.
Socrates and Worse Argument would probably say that fighting a war is silly—diplomacy achieved through communication (or rhetorical manipulation) would do the trick.