Aristophanes’ Education of Socrates
Jeremy J. Mhire
Louisiana State University
Scholars have long believed that Aristophanes’ comedy Clouds represents a hostile, if not
mean-spirited, attack on the philosophy and manner of Socrates.
1
This belief is not without
merit, for in the Clouds we have a caricature of Socrates so far removed from the gentleman-
philosopher of Plato and Xenophon that its author must have surely been one of Socrates’ chief
adversaries. Despite this long-standing attitude in the Aristophanic scholarship, however, more
recent studies have begun to question the status of Aristophanes’ caricature, wondering whether
the play as a whole might not suggest a far more intimate relationship between the comic poet
and the philosopher than at first thought.
2
Building off of this recent literature, this paper will
attempt to portray the Clouds as a complete comedy, complete in the sense that it is equidistant
from both Socrates’ philosophy and the political context of Athens. As such, the Clouds presents
itself not as an attack on philosophy but as a warning, a warning that exhorts both philosopher
and city alike to self-knowledge.
Setting the Stage
1
For example, Maurice Croiset is characterizing Aristophanes’ comedy as a spirited attack
on Socratic sophistry and its political implications as early as 1909. Maurice Croiset,
Aristophanes and the Political Parties at Athens, trans. James Loeb (London: Macmillan and
Co., 1909). More recently, Daphne O’Regan echoes these sentiments while broadening the
scope, suggesting that Socrates represents a more general, intellectual movement. Daphne
O’Regan, Rhetoric, Comedy, and the Violence of Language in Aristophanes’ Clouds (New York:
Oxford University Press, 1992).
2
Leo Strauss was one of the first scholars to suggest this relationship. For those interested
in the origins of this approach, one would do well to consult Leo Strauss, Socrates and
Aristophanes (Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 1966), and The Rebirth of Classical
Political Rationalism (Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 1989).
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Convention