ΠΟΛΛΗ ΑΓΡΟΙΚΙΑ: Rudeness and Irony in Plato's Gorgias

which is speckled with light spots that resemble a field of stars.4 The student's account, as interpreted by the audience, would suggest that Socrates, while plotting the course of the moon against the background stars, was led toward the starry gecko. Confused or astonished, he opens his mouth. The word KXqv6,to ("gaping") is commonly used to indicate eager expectation about an event or discovery (the yv6uiv Ly?7kfv of which Socrates was deprived).5 Thus, the point of the joke, which is richly appreciated by Strepsiades (174), is that Socrates' seemingly brilliant observation of a new constellation is nothing more than the inability to recognize a gecko when he sees one, and to get out of the way of its falling excrement.6