EVEN before Socrates was sentenced to death by poison, people already thought of him as virtually dead. In a drama performed 423 BC, Aristophanes imagined Socrates as a hated teacher: the crowd sets fire to his school, called the “Thinkery”. Socrates escapes.

Aristophanes had reasons for writing this comedy: he violently opposed the philosophy teacher so revered by the youth. Aristophanes was a conservative. He did not believe in the skeptic