Strepsiades: Now, after thinking all night long for a way out, I have found one path, a wonderful, extraordinary one. If I can talk this boy into it, I am saved. But first I want to wake him. How can I wake him most sweetly? How? Pheidippides! Pheidippidikins! Pheidippides: What, father?

For a moment the old farmer talks like a hero in a tragedy. "Thinking the whole night through for a road" has the rhythm of tragic verse and sounds like Oedipus telling his people how many roads his mind has wandered. What he has found at the end of it is a path, a short cut, and the audience is about to learn how crooked it is. Then he becomes a father again and has to wake a grown son without making him cross. He tries the name, and then the baby name: Pheidippidion, little Pheidippides. The son answers at once, which tells you how often the pet name has been used to get something.