Clueless Strepsiades, Clueless Scribes? Recovering Two Lost Jokes in Aristophanes’ Clouds (234, 380–81)

I propose two emendations in Aristophanes’ Clouds: τὰ κάρδαμα (234) should be read
as τἀγκάρδια (i.e. τὰ ἐγκάρδια), and Δῖνος (“Whirl”) at 380–81 as Δεῖνος, an ordinary
personal name derived from δεινός. Both passages rely on the same comic mechanism:
Strepsiades mishears a technical term (medical or cosmological) as a familiar everyday
word or proper name. As often happens in the transmission of comedy, some scribe
who failed to see the joke “corrected” a pun into an apparent repetition of the same
word. Restoring these jokes sharpens the contrast between Socrates’ intellectual
pretension and Strepsiades’ comic cluelessness.