How we cite our quotes: Line
Quote #1
I heard the cock crow quite a while ago, / but the slaves are snoring. They wouldn't in the old days. / Damn the war, it's messed up a lot of things. (4-6)
This play was written and first performed while the Peloponnesian War was in full swing. As a result, war, patriotism, bravery, etc., is very much in the minds of the characters.
Quote #2
Oh dammit, why'd you light the thirsty lamp? Come here and take your beating! (57-58)
Strepsiades is a fairly violent dude, apparently. Here, the slave made the wrong call regarding which lamp to light, and Strepsiades is eager to suggest beating him. Sheesh, calm down, dude.
Quote #3
They look like prisoners of war, the ones from Sparta. / But why are they peering at the ground like that? (186-187)
See, didn't we tell you that the characters have war on the brain? Here, even though Strepsiades is staring at a line of pasty students frozen in a ridiculous pose (i.e., butts to the air), he thinks straightaway of Spartan POWs… which seems like a leap.
Quote #4
How's that? You wanna make war on me? My god! (481)
Socrates has just threatened to use "pedagogical artillery" on Strepsiades, so naturally Strepsiades is alarmed. Again, all the war metaphors manage to sneak their way into even benign circumstances like these.
Quote #5
Isn't that precisely how my generation's education / bred the men of Marathon? / You, by contrast, teach our boys to swaddle up in cloaks from birth, / such a turn-off when they're dancing at Athena's festival, / one of them with his shield held low, afraid he'll get his hambone poked! (985-989)
Better Argument is arguing (you're shocked, we know) with Worse Argument about their respective schools of thought and their impact on today's students. Better Argument's concern is that Worse Argument's form of education is likely to make men go soft (whereas his methods were the kind used to breed the men who fought at Marathon several years prior).
Quote #6
Because they're utterly base and make a warrior a pussy. (1046)
Worse Argument has been dogging Better Argument for thinking that students shouldn't bathe in hot water, and he's asked BA to explain his reasoning. Again, Better Argument seems to value things that would make a "warrior" less, er, warrior-like.
Quote #7
Move out! You want a whipping? / You want me to jam this up your thoroughbred ass? / Just look at him run! I knew I'd get you moving, / for all your chariot wheels and teams of steeds. (1299-1302)
Uh oh, Strepsiades is threatening to beat people again—this time, it's his son, Pheidippides. He's pretty violent, as you can probably tell.
Quote #8
Help! Help! / Oh neighbors, kinsmen, fellow villagers! / I need your help right now, I'm being beaten! / Oh Lord! My unlucky head! My face! My jaw! / You scum! You'd beat your father? (1321-1324)
Now Strepsiades is having the tables turned on him—his son, Pheidippides is beating him. Oh, karma . . .
Quote #9
You're the one who ought to have been stomped and beaten then and there, / asking me to sing a song, as if you're entertaining crickets! (1359-1360)
Apparently, when Pheidippides was ungrateful and surly at the banquet that Strepsiades threw in his honor after finishing the Thinkery, Strepsiades started to beat him… but Pheidippides thought it should be the other way around and started beating him instead.
Quote #10
Let's return to my earlier point, the one you made me interrupt; / answer me this, to start things off: did you beat me when I was small? (1407-1408)
Oh, who's that knocking? It's karma again. Pheidippides is using his newly learned rhetoric skills (courtesy of dad) to argue that he had the right to beat his father. As he gets warmed up, he gets his dad to admit that he used violence against him as a child.