Aristophanes’ Socrates in Context

by Dr Rosa Andújar

If we believe Plato’s claims in the Apology, Aristophanes’ Clouds was the first
nail in Socrates’ coffin. Throughout his version of Socrates’ defence speech,
the philosopher emphasises the play’s damning role on Socrates’ reputation.
In Apology 19c, for example, we learn that the comedy acquainted its view-
ing audience with ‘a certain Socrates who was being carried about, who pro-
claimed that he was treading on air and a great deal of other such non-
sense.’ Despite these dramatic claims, Clouds was itself a failure at the time
of its production in the City Dionysia of 423 BC: it placed third and last in the
comic competition that year. A few years later, Aristophanes revised Clouds
with a view to restaging it, but the play once again proved unsuccessful:
when he submitted the new version to the Athenian archons responsible for
selecting the plays that would be performed at the upcoming Dionysian fes-
tivals, the new Clouds (the version that survives today!) was not among
those chosen. Given its track record, how likely was it that this twice ‘failed’
play did in fact have the influence Plato claims that it had? A brief look at
the at the larger context in which Aristophanes caricatured Socrates sug-
gests that despite Plato’s persistent characterisation of the play as a decisive
factor in Socrates’ death, Aristophanes’ Clouds did not kill Socrates.

Recent scholarly insights on Greek Old Comedy (in which Aristophanes is un-
fortunately the sole surviving author) reveal that it was a genre that liberally
made fun of prominent individuals and especially intellectuals, and that it did
so in quite similar ways. In the fragments of other Athenian comic play-
wrights, such as Cratinus and Eupolis, scholars have found evidence of other
unflattering portrayals of intellectuals that likewise hinge on irreverence and
grandiose statements: in Eupolis’ lost Kolakes (fr. 157), for example, the
sophist Protagoras of Teos is described as an impious impostor who derides
the heavens while enjoying the fruits of the earth, much like Aristophanes’
Socrates. An ancient scholion (explanatory comment on the text) to Clouds
line 96, which describes the sky as a ‘barbecue lid’ which covers us coals,
states that Cratinus (in Panoptai, an earlier — and sadly lost — play) had not
only made the very same joke against the philosopher Hippon, but also that
the comedian had equally charged the philosopher with teaching the weaker
argument. These examples indicate that Clouds should not be taken as a
straightforward expression of Athenian public opinion on Socrates, but rather
that Aristophanes’ caricature of Socrates was instead a variation of a com-
mon theme.
In addition to adapting a familiar theme, Aristophanes deliberately — and
erroneously — associates Socrates with the sophistic movement that domi-
nated later fifth-century Athens, and in particular with the many reductive
stereotypes that were connected to it. In the play the poet portrays the phi-
losopher as the master of a school that is populated by pale, unathletic
geeks who not only fill their hours in the useless pursuit of esoteric knowl-
edge, but who are also silly enough to pay for such frivolity. The school de-
picted in the Clouds is in essence a cult: these students renounce the tradi-
tional gods and lead ascetic lives. The play, which focuses on the experi-
ence of a ‘normal’ family as they are exposed to such ‘quackeries’, can there-
fore be read as a demonstration of how fraudulent and disastrous this new
‘sophistic’ teaching can be. In reality, Socrates differed in crucial respects
from the sophists. These men were predominantly foreign ‘performers’ who
claimed to be able to impart to students (for an exorbitant fee!) the arts of
rhetoric and political governance. It is not surprising that they were natu-
rally drawn to a wealthy and democratic city such as Athens, which had a
growing need for political and rhetorical training. Men such as Protagoras
and Gorgias of Leontini were in fact polymaths who were interested in a va-
riety of fields of knowledge, including astronomy, linguistics, and mathemat-
ics, but since they were the first to teach rhetoric in a systematic way, they
became associated exclusively with flashy argumentation. Unlike these men,
Socrates was an Athenian who rarely ventured outside the city walls (and
even then only on a handful of occasions, all for military service, such as the
Athenian campaigns against Potidaea in 431 and Delion in 424 BC). He
claimed to have no special knowledge nor even an intellectual product to sell
and moreover did not properly ‘teach’; instead he talked freely and gratis
with all his fellow citizens anywhere and everywhere (venues included, but
were not limited to, the gym, the marketplace, private homes). In fact, it
was most likely Socrates’ overly familiar presence in the city and his instant-
name recognition that led Aristophanes to choose him for his stage as repre-
senting an intellectual who corrupts the young for profit, despite the fact
that the philosopher’s practices in no way resembled the customs of the men
that such a stereotype satirised.

When looking for a more fleshed out portrait of Socrates, one of the most
elusive figures in antiquity, we moderns frequently turn to Aristophanes’
stereotypical portrait of him to fill the gaps. Unfortunately, as scandalously
appealing as Aristophanes’ Socrates might be, we should recall that the poet
was taking part in a city-wide comic competition in which entertaining hu-
mour ruled, and not realistic plot. And as for Plato and the charges he lays
against Aristophanes’ Clouds in the Apology: these ‘exaggerations’ seem to
be conveniently forgotten in the Symposium, where our comic poet and the
founder of Western philosophy drink amiably side by side.
Study Questions

1. How does Plato characterise Aristophanes’ Clouds in the Apology?

2. How did Greek Old comedy portray intellectuals?

3. Who were the sophists? Why did they come to Athens in the fifth-
century?

4. In what way was the historical Socrates different from the sophists?

The Clouds Team deliberating at auditions