About the work
The comedy premiered at the City Dionysia in 423 BC and came only third out of three entries. Disappointed, Aristophanes revised it between about 420 and 417 BC for a planned second production that never took place; only this revised version survives.
Plot
The debt-ridden farmer Strepsiades sends his son Pheidippides to Socrates' Thinkery to learn how to turn the weaker argument into the stronger one in court and so fend off his creditors. Pheidippides masters the new rhetoric brilliantly – but turns it against his own father, justifying a beating with sophistic arguments. In despair, Strepsiades burns down Socrates' school.
Cultural significance
The Clouds is the only written portrait of Socrates to survive from his own lifetime, and according to Plato's Apology it was among the sources of the prejudice that led to Socrates' trial and execution in 399 BC.