ABSTRACT
ONE OF THE PEAKS of the Athenian theater, Aristophanes's great comedy The Clauds, contains the earliest recorded attack on the ideal of a life dedicated to introspection. In his brilliant parody of the private encounters between Socrates and his students, Aristophanes provided a description that bears an uncanny resemblance to the setting of contemporary psychoanalysis. 1 A representative of the most conservative circles of the Athenian empire, Aristophanes disapproved of the Socratic goal of perpetual self-examination, although he may have been a personal friend of the philosopher. Paradoxically, his satire on the attempt to understand oneself turned into an accurate prediction of the judicial murder of Socrates at the hands of the Athenian democrats some 25 years later.
