Life

Details about Socrates are derived from three contemporary sources: the dialogues of Plato and Xenophon (both students of Socrates), and the plays of Aristophanes. He has been depicted by some scholars, including Eric Havelock and Walter Ong, as a champion of oral modes of communication, standing up at the dawn of writing against its haphazard diffusion.

Satirical Playwrights

He was prominently lampooned in Aristophanes' comedy The Clouds, produced when Socrates was in his mid-forties; he said at his trial (according to Plato) that the laughter of the theater was a harder task to answer than the arguments of his accusers.

Soren Kierkegaard believed this play was a more accurate representation of Socrates than those of his students.

In the play, Socrates is ridiculed for his dirtiness, which is associated with the Laconizing fad; also in plays by Callias, Eupolis, and Telecleides.

In all of these, Socrates and the Sophists were criticised for "the moral dangers inherent in contemporary thought and literature."