Personajes silentes en Nubes de Aristófanes

Abstract

This article proposes that the silent characters are so owing to an economy advantage for the mise en scène and on account of the apprentice training, but also they can be a sign of the slave social and lawful situation, and in the case of freemen they can connote a submissive attitude, an attitude of sectarianism and seclusion or an attitude in support of the Spartan position. That is the case of the Socrates’ disciples in Clouds. The witness of the creditors can be also slaves or relatives who would prefer to elude the judgment: their silence could indicate their bad predisposition. In the context of the whole piece, the silence can be interpreted as an attitude adverse to the eleuthería: the man who shuts up in the presence of the falseness of the sophistic rhetoric searched by Strepsiádes runs the risk of becoming slave.