The Clouds Summary

The Clouds is a satire of Socrates and the Sophists of Athens at the time of Aristophanes. It begins with the old man Strepsiades watching his son, Pheidippides sleep soundly while cursing his son for getting him into debt. Pheidippides loves racing horses and has spent all of Strepsiades' money paying for horses and racers. So much so that the old man is now in a great deal of debt. At wits end, Strepsiades begins to beat his son, waking the younger man who protests that his beating is undeserved. Eventually the father relents and decides that he will try to find a way to get rid of his debts. Having heard that the sophist Socrates teaches a kind of logic that allows his students to get out of their debts and turn bad arguments into good ones, Strepsiades tries to...