It is well known that Aristophanes chose Socrates as a representative of the modern movement. In him he embodies all the faults with which he wished to pick a quarrel in the fashionable philosophy of the day. On the other hand, the essence of Socratic teaching is entirely absent from Aristophanes’s representation; of that he had hardly any understanding, and even if he had he would at any rate not have been able to make use of it in his drama. We need not then in this connexion consider Socrates himself at all; on the other hand, the play gives a good idea of the popular idea of sophistic. Here we find all the features of the school, grotesquely mixed up and distorted by the farce, it is true, but nevertheless easily recognisable: rhetoric as an end in itself, of course, with emphasis on its immoral aspect; empty and hair-splitting dialectics; linguistic researches; Ionic naturalism; and first and last, as the focus of all, denial of the gods. That Aristophanes was well informed on certain points, at any rate, is clear from the fact that the majority of the scientific explanations which he puts into the mouth of Socrates actually represent the latest results of science at that time—which in all probability did not prevent his Athenians from considering them as exceedingly absurd and ridiculous. What matters here, however, is only the accusation of atheism which he made against Socrates. It is a little difficult to handle, in so far as Aristophanes, for dramatic reasons, has equipped Socrates with a whole set of deities. There are the clouds themselves, which are of Aristophanes’s own invention; there is also the air, which he has got from Diogenes of Apollonia, and finally a “vortex” which is supposed to be derived from the same source, and which at any rate has cast Zeus down from his throne. All this we must ignore, as it is only conditioned partly by technical reasons—Aristophanes had to have a chorus and chose the clouds for the purpose—and partially by the desire to ridicule Ionic naturalism. But enough is left over. In the beginning of the play Socrates expressly declares that no gods exist. Similar statements are repeated in several places. Zeus is sometimes substituted for the gods, but it comes to the same thing. And at the end of the play, where the honest Athenian, who has ventured on the ticklish ground of sophistic, admits his delusion, it is expressly said: “Oh, what a fool I am! Nay, I must have been mad indeed when I thought of throwing the gods away for Socrates’s sake!” Even in the verses with which the chorus conclude the play it is insisted that the worst crime of the sophists is their insult to the gods.