from which actors and audience commanded a view of the hills round Athens, and of the "illimitable air" and "cloudless heaven" which Socrates apostrophises in his invocation to the goddesses, would add greatly to the effect of the beautiful choric songs which follow. But, on the other hand, it presents difficulties to any arrangement for the actual descent of the Clouds upon the stage. Probably their first chorus is sung behind the scenes, and they are invisible,—present to the imagination only of the audience, until they enter the orchestra in palpable human shape. Theories and guesses on these points are, after all, but waste of ingenuity. The beauty of the lines which herald their entrance (which can receive but scant justice in a translation) is one of the many instances in which the poet rises above the satirist.
(Chorus of Clouds, in the distance, accompanied
by the low rolling of thunder.[1])
Eternal clouds!
Rise we to mortal view,
Embodied in bright shapes of dewy sheen,
Leaving the depths serene
Where our loud-sounding Father Ocean dwells,
For the wood-crownèd summits of the hills:
Thence shall our glance command
- ↑ The Greek commentators inform us very particularly by what appliances thunder was imitated on the Athenian stage; either "by rolling leather bags full of pebbles down sheets of brass," or by "pouring them into a huge brazen caldron." (See note to Walsh's Aristoph., p. 302.) But Greek commentators are not to be depended upon in such matters.
