Summary: This note tries to cover some of the meanings of the word ἀτραπόϛ regularly
signifying some kind of path, which might have been chosen by Aristophanes in order to
play on its philosophical meaning, the path of the (Pythagorean) philosopher, its martial
meaning of backstabbing, the path of Ephialtes, and its proverbial contrast with ὁδόϛ.
νῦν οὖν ὅλην τὴν νύκτα φροντίζων ὁδοῦ
μίαν ηὗρον ἀτραπὸν δαιμονίως ὑπερφυᾶ,
ἥν ἢν ἀναπείσω τουτονὶ, σωθήσομαι. (Nu. 75-77)
The purpose of this note is to dicuss the word ἀτραπόϛ in Aristophanes’
Clouds and its associations which I suspect are more profound than Dover’s
‘something smaller than ὁδόϛ’. Why has Aristophanes chosen this word and not for example πόρος or one of its cognates,or βούλευμα or μηχανή which he uses elsewhere? What is the special meaning of the word ἀτραπόϛ? Dover is of course right: it is a narrow path and often in a rocky environment, judging from the
predicate κρημνώδης regularly applied to it, but in the context of the
Clouds, as A.M. Bowie has shown in his seminal work on the context of the
plays of Aristophanes, there is a hidden treasure of semantic relations which
still has to be excavated. Besides the meaning of ἀτραπόϛ regularly signifying
some kind of path in the wilderness5 or a desert or the like, there are two distinct meanings which might have influenced Aristophanes in the
process of composing the Clouds. First of all I will investigate the ancient
conceptions of the word concerning the proverbial use, secondly a martial
connotation which we find in historical writtings, and thirdly explore the
more philosophical or metaphorical meaning of the word. In the conclusion
I will incorporate these different meanings within the context of the Clouds.
