Aristophanes’ Socrates: A Philosopher of Physis with Atheistic Tendencies

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Martí Duran 

Most of what we know about Socrates comes from three of his contemporaries: the historian Xenophon, the comic playwright Aristophanes, and the philosopher Plato. However, these sources provide conflicting portrayals: while Plato and Xenophon present an idealised philosopher unjustly condemned, Aristophanes ridicules his teachings, depicting him as absurd and even harmful.

The Platonic view has largely dominated history, portraying Socrates as primarily concerned with ethics. He emerges as the first theorist of the good and justice as universal ideals, advocating for individual conscience as a guiding principle. According to this perspective, adhering to law and justice ensures inner harmony: one must pursue the goods of the spirit under the disciplined rule of reason, as opposed to surrendering to unchecked instincts—an ideal that, twenty centuries later, would provoke Nietzsche’s scorn.

In Plato’s account, virtue is equated with knowledge: to understand the good is to be compelled to practise it, as right thinking inevitably leads to right action. When reason is clear, it inclines towards virtue—a principle encapsulated in the doctrine of moral intellectualism. A just person will be happy, respected, and honoured, for their actions are righteous. To do evil is merely to lack knowledge, leading Socrates to uphold an extraordinarily optimistic thesis on human nature: no one is truly wicked, only ignorant, unaware that wrongdoing—however gratifying in the moment—ultimately leads to suffering. This view affirms an inherent link between reason, virtue, and happiness.

By contrast, Aristophanes’ The Clouds presents an entirely different Socrates. The play, a sharp critique of youth education, launches an unrelenting attack on the sophists, among whom Aristophanes includes Socrates (as many of his contemporaries likely did). The plot follows the farmer Strepsiades, ruined by the absurd expenses of his wife and their horse-obsessed son Pheidippides. To free himself from his creditors, he needs the help of a skilled and unscrupulous lawyer, so he tries to make Pheidippides a disciple of Socrates. As such, he will learn the art of winning lawsuits by fair means or foul. Since the young man refuses to undertake such training, Strepsiades decides to attend the sophist’s lessons himself, but poor Strepsiades understands nothing of what the master tries to teach him; he gives up on the lessons and finally manages to get his son Pheidippides to take his place as a disciple. Armed with his newly acquired rhetorical skills, Pheidippides helps his father outwit his creditors, only to later assault Strepsiades in an argument. Realising the corrupting influence of such teachings, he burns down Socrates’ Thinkery in revenge.

As Sourvinou-Inwood has observed in relation to Euripides, caution is necessary when interpreting Aristophanes, for his works do not provide an accurate representation of the authors he critiques, but rather a selection of arguments—often taken out of context—that lend themselves to comedic effect. Such is the nature of comedy. Nevertheless, some of his claims are of considerable interest, and they arguably provide a perspective on the historical Socrates that is closer to reality than the idealised portrayals offered by other authors.

In The Clouds, Socrates appears as a sophist, closely associated with his disciple Chaerephon. Aristophanes repeatedly emphasises that Socrates charges for his teachings. In line with the common portrayal of sophists, he is characterised as a deceitful manipulator, skilled in rhetoric but whose teachings are ultimately fruitless and subversive. In The Clouds, Aristophanes claims that Socrates worships only three deities: the Void, The Clouds, and the Tongue. The latter likely alludes to the notion of convoluted chatter that he attributes to Socrates. Socrates’ followers are called “sons of the earth” while this phrase connotes rusticity, it also alludes to the battle of the Titans—offspring of the Earth—against the Olympian gods, thus reinforcing the depiction of Socrates and his adherents as enemies of the gods, genuine theomachoi or adversaries of the divine order.

Aristophanes describes some of Socrates’ supposed teachings, particularly in the first part of the play, when Strepsiades, enamoured with incomprehensible knowledge, holds it in high regard. Beneath the comedy, one can discern Socrates’ interest in astronomy, mathematics (such as calculating how many times a flea jumps along its leg to cover a certain distance), and geometry. His school also offers training in grammar, rhetoric, and logic—staples of sophist education—as seen in an extended dialogue on grammatical gender. Socrates also frequently engages with theological questions, linking them to astronomical phenomena.

Aristophanes associates Socrates with various intellectual influences, referencing figures such as Hippon of Rhegium, Anaximenes, which suggests air as the fundamental principle, Prodicus, and Diagoras, where Socrates is mockingly called “the Melian”, linking him to Diagoras of Melos, a notorious atheist. These thinkers characterise by having interpreted reality independently of the gods or by having directly denied them.

From these references, a picture emerges of Socrates as a rationalist pursuing a physical explanation of the world, following the tradition of Anaximenes and other pre-Socratic thinkers. Here, the true divinities are the Clouds. In Aristophanes’ satire of Socratic theology, Socrates is humorously depicted suspended in a basket, searching for a clearer view of the heavens. The Clouds are presented as sources of wisdom. Similarly, in an Anaxagorean vein, the play seeks a principle of motion, though instead of nous, it offers the “Aerial Whirlwind” which occasionally replaces Zeus himself.

All natural phenomena, such as lightning and thunder, are rationally explained, without recourse to Zeus. Notably, the notion is entertained that Zeus does not wield his power (lightning) justly, failing to punish perjurers like Simon, Cleonymus, or Theorus, while instead striking his own temple at Cape Sounion—an observation that casts doubt upon his rationality and justice. This passage has parallels where the Weaker Argument critiques the traditional narratives about the gods, akin to the reasoning found in Plato’s Euthyphro.

The traditional gods, therefore, lose their significance in this new rational interpretation. Thus, it is unequivocally stated that “Zeus does not exist,” or, as we have noted, it is asserted that Socrates recognises only three divinities: the Void, the Clouds, and the Tongue—an assertion which, though not without irony, clearly demonstrates that Socrates rejects the gods of tradition. The chorus leader of the clouds laments that, as the most beneficial of the gods, they are the only ones who do not receive libations.

If Socrates dismisses the religion of the polis, it logically follows that he does not offer prayers to the traditional gods. Thus, we find a prayer to the Air. Similarly, he does not swear by these gods but rather by other entities. There is a beautiful invocation to the clouds, to which sacrifices and sacred rites are offered. We are informed that the sophists (Aristophanes is referring to Socrates here) do not make sacrifices, but instead devote the time for sacrifices to engaging in legal debates. Strepsiades refuses to make sacrifices to the traditional gods.

Finally, it is clear that these teachings are easily transmitted to his disciples. Thus, Strepsiades tells his son Pheidippides that he does not believe in Olympian Zeus, and he mocks the creditor for swearing by Zeus and all the gods. Later on, it is Pheidippides who, having been convinced by Socrates’ theories, debates them with his father. Only in the final lines does Strepsiades admit that he was wrong to follow Socrates and to believe that the Ether Whirlpool was Zeus.

In sum, in Aristophanes, we encounter a Socrates more in keeping with the pre-existing philosophy of physis, one whose atheism, though more or less veiled, is nonetheless plainly evident to any reader willing to look between the lines.

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[1] Sourvinou-Inwoood, C., “Euripidean Tragedy and Religious Exploration”, in Tragedy and Athenian Religion, Lanham, 2003, pág. 291-411.

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