The Clouds

Describe the role played by social class in Aristophanes’s Clouds. How is Strepsiades’s desire to study at the Thinkery conditioned by his social position?

Describe Strepsiades’s goals and motivations in the play. Does Aristophanes portray Strepsiades as sympathetic? Does he ever come to understand the error of his ways?

Discuss some of the naturalistic discoveries of Socrates, Chaerephon, and the students of the Thinkery. How do these discoveries illustrate the ideas that Aristophanes considered dangerous and attributed to contemporary intellectuals such as Socrates and the sophists?