10 Facts About The Clouds

The Clouds is a Greek comedy play written by the playwright Aristophanes.

Retrospectively, The Clouds can be considered the world's first extant "comedy of ideas" and is considered by literary critics to be among the finest examples of the genre.

The Clouds arrive singing majestically of the regions whence they arose and of the land they have now come to visit, loveliest in all being Greece.

The Clouds advise Strepsiades to find someone younger to do the learning for him.

The Clouds ends by threatening to beat his mother, whereupon Strepsiades flies into a rage against The Thinkery, blaming Socrates for his latest troubles.

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The Clouds leads his slaves, armed with torches and mattocks, in a frenzied attack on the disreputable school.

The Clouds represents a departure from the main themes of Aristophanes' early plays – Athenian politics, the Peloponnesian War and the need for peace with Sparta.

Around the time that The Clouds was produced, Democritus at Abdera was developing an atomistic theory of the cosmos and Hippocrates at Cos was establishing an empirical and science-like approach to medicine.

The Clouds was forty-five years old and in good physical shape when The Clouds was produced yet he had a face that lent itself easily to caricature by mask-makers, possibly a contributing reason for the frequent characterization of him by comic poets.

Plato appears to have considered The Clouds a contributing factor in Socrates' trial and execution in 399 BC.