Socrates and Aristophanes (review)

Book Reviews Socrates and Aristophanes. By Leo Strauss. (New York: Basic Books, Inc., 1966.) One of the most interesting riddles of Athens of the fifth century B.c. is the relationship between Socrates, the iconoclastic teacher, and Aristophanes, the iconoclastic comic poet. Did they know each other? Was there personal bitterness in the caricaturization of The Clouds? Is the ostensive camaraderie of Plato's Symposium a true account of their acquaintance ? A most welcome, though not definitive, addition to the study of this riddle is the recent examination of these two classical figures in Socrates and Aristophanes by Leo Strauss, who is Robert M. Hutchins Distinguished Service Professor of Political Science at the University of Chicago. His book is pleasing to the eye in format and inviting to the intellect. It contains 314 pages, divided into an eight-page introduction and a fourpage conclusion, with the remainder devoted to The Clouds (forty-four pages) and the other ten extant plays of Aristophanes. In addition, there are notes and an index. Strauss notes that the modern reader is confronted with two different pictures of Socrates: the idealized portrait by the artist, Plato; and the Aristophanic cartoon. Reconciliation between these two perspectives might be found by identifying one with the "late" Socrates and the other with the "early" Socrates. Aristophanes' attack, therefore, can be understood as a condemnation, of which Plato himself would have approved, of a youthful , boastful, superficial, sophistic debunker. Strauss proposes that a more accurate historical Socrates is to be found in Xenophon. Modern scholars, however, have hesitated, for good reason, to travel this path with Strauss. As John Burner says in Greelr Philosophy, after examining some of the difficulties with Xenophon's picture (w 115), "it seems hardly possible to doubt that Xenophon got the greater part of his information about Sokrates [sic] from the dialogues of Plato." Anna Banjamin, Professor of Classics at Rutgers, points out in her recent Library of Liberal Arts edition of Xenophon that, by his own words, he admits no firsthand knowledge of Socrates' last days, but draws on information provided by Hermogenes, a Cynic, and even admits in section 22 that his account is not complete. In spite of the fact that the "real" Socrates is as elusive as ever, there can be no doubt that a devastating attack was made on him by Aristophanes. Why? The reader is apprised early in the book of a bias, if one may call it that, which Strauss pursues hopefully as explanatory: he sees Socrates as the founder of political philosophy. The Clouds takes on particular importance in attempting a probe into the relationship between these two men because it is the first reference in classical literature to Socrates. He is presented there, of course, not in a political role, but in an absurdly befuddled, pseudo-scholarly role, humiliated in the end by having his school burned down by an irate father. As Maurice Croiset pointed out in Aristophanes and the Political Parties in Athens (a valuable reference noticeably absent in our current book), there is only one political allusion in the whole play, at line 581ff., probably inserted just before the competition in the Dionysia in 423 s.c., in which the play was judged a failure. This is a trenchant reference to Cleon, and an appeal to the people to get rid of the "robber" as quickly as possible. The Clouds, therefore, is notably different from such obvious political satires as The Knights or The Acharnians, the only two Aristophanic plays in which contemporary political figures were characterized on the stage. C. M. Bowra pointed out in chapter 5 of Ancient Greek Literature (another useful reference not mentioned by Strauss) that The Clouds calls attention to the destructive effects of the new Sophistic education by contrasting it with an idealized picture of traditional Athenian life. Consequently, any political significance in The Clouds must be [287] 288 HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY found in the fact that, under Democracy, unjust speech flourished and subverted the traditional values and virtues. Yet, if Aristophanes admired the "good old days" of the aristocracy, it should be noted that it was that very aristocracy which paid enormous fees to the...