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Aristophanes' Socrates walks on air

423 BCE, Athens (Theatre of Dionysus). Aristophanes’ Socrates, in the Clouds.

Where and when

423 BCEAthens (Theatre of Dionysus)

2,448 years ago

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Aristophanes

, Athens (Theatre of Dionysus)Aristophanes’ Socrates, in the Clouds

In plain words, ours

I am up here in the air, thinking about the sun.

I am walking in the air, and speculating about the sun.

Aristophanes, Clouds line 225Translated by William James Hickie (1853)Read the full passage (Aristophanes, Clouds line 225, opens scaife.perseus.org)

Answered by Socrates, set in 399 BCE

What was going on, our summary

In Aristophanes' comedy the Clouds, Strepsiades comes looking for Socrates and finds him hanging overhead in a basket. Asked what he is doing, this stage Socrates answers, then says thought must be suspended in the air to discover things above.

Checked claim by claim against: the passage around the quote.

Why it matters

The basket-borne Socrates is part of the play's notorious caricature of him, and Plato cites the play in the Apology as a contributing factor to Socrates' trial and execution.

Based on Wikipedia: The Clouds

The play also, however, remains notorious for its caricature of Socrates, and is cited by Plato in the Apology as a contributing factor to the philosopher's trial and execution.

Socrates appears overhead, wafted in a basket at the end of a rope, the better to observe the Sun and other meteorological phenomena.

Wikipedia, The Clouds (opens en.wikipedia.org), as of 2026-03-30. Text CC BY-SA 4.0. Our line is checked against these sentences only.

Related moments

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  13. set in 399 BCE24 years later Socrates on Aristophanes' comedy Answered by Socrates

Just before and after

The text around the quote, word for word from the same translation.

Show the passageHide the passage

Strepsiades: What say you? I don’t believe you; for I do not see the Dicasts sitting.

Disciple: Be assured that this is truly the Attic territory.

Strepsiades: Why, where are my fellow-tribesmen of Cicynna?

Disciple: Here they are. And Euboea here, as you see, is stretched out a long way by the side of it to a great distance.

Strepsiades: I know that; for it was stretched by us and Pericles. But where is Lacedaemon?

Disciple: Where is it? Here it is.

Strepsiades: How near it is to us! Pay great attention to this, to remove it very far from us.

Disciple: By Jupiter, it is not possible.

Strepsiades: Then you will weep for it. Looking up and discovering Socrates. Come, who is this man who is in the basket?

Disciple: Himself.

Strepsiades: Who’s Himself?

Disciple: Socrates.

Strepsiades: O Socrates! Come, you sir, call upon him loudly for me.

Disciple: Nay, rather, call him yourself; for I have no leisure.

Exit Disciple.

Strepsiades: Socrates! My little Socrates!

Socrates: Why callest thou me, thou creature of a day?

Strepsiades: First tell me, I beseech you, what are you doing.

The quote: Socrates: I am walking in the air, and speculating about the sun.

Strepsiades: And so you look down upon the gods from your basket, and not from the earth?

Socrates: For I should not have rightly discovered things celestial if I had not suspended the intellect, and mixed the thought in a subtle form with its kindred air. But if, being on the ground, I speculated from below on things above, I should never have discovered them. For the earth forcibly attracts to itself the meditative moisture. Water-cresses also suffer the very same thing.

Strepsiades: What do you say? Does meditation attract the moisture to the water-cresses?

Aristophanes, Clouds lines 207–235Translated by William James Hickie (1853)Read the full passage (opens scaife.perseus.org)

When, and whose words

Date
423 BCE. Clouds was first staged in 423 BCE; the text that survives is a partial revision Aristophanes made a few years later, which was never staged.
Whose words
Aristophanes’ Socrates, in the Clouds.
How this post was checked
  • The plain-words line was read against the quote alone by a second, independent pass, which found it adds no claim the quote does not make (2026-10-03).
  • Each claim in the summary was checked by an independent pass against only the material it cites.
  • The quote itself is checked by the build: word for word, once, at the cited section of the stored translation.

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