Question

The Clouds is a 423 BCE play by Aristophanes, originally written in ancient Greek. At the time, professional intellectuals called sophists taught customers rhetorical techniques to use in public speaking, along with providing instruction in other subjects. In the play, Aristophanes satirizes sophists as teaching students how to be persuasive without regard for what is morally good, as seen when the character _____

Which choice most effectively uses a quotation from a translation of The Clouds to illustrate the claim?

Accepted Answer

Strepsiades hires a sophist to teach his son and says to the sophist, “But see that he learns those two [styles of argument]; the better, whatever it may be; and the worse, which, by maintaining what is unjust, overturns the better. If not both, at any rate the unjust one by all means.”

Answer

Socrates, a sophist, says that he studies astronomy while in a basket hanging a few feet off the ground because “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.”

Answer

Strepsiades encourages his son to learn to be a sophist, saying, “Go, I entreat you, dearest of men, go and be taught.”

Answer

Socrates, a sophist, says to a new customer, “Come now; what do you now wish to learn first of those things in none of which you have ever been instructed?”

Question Bank

Question Bank

SAT Central Ideas and Details practice question

Explanation