On trial for corrupting the young and for not believing in the
traditional gods, Socrates points out in Plato’s Apology that people confuse
him with sophists, rhetoricians, and natural philosophers, but that he is
none of these things (Apology 20a-c; 17a-18a; and 26d). Socrates traces these
long-standing misconceptions and prejudices to Aristophanes’ comedy the
Clouds (Apology 18d and 19c), where Socrates is called a sophist, investigates
natural phenomena, looks down on traditional gods, and corrupts a young
man by exposing him to an unjust rhetoric that can argue all sides of an
issue (see Clouds 225-26; 367; 1310; 1331-38). While Aristophanes blurs
the distinction between philosophy and these other activities, Plato often
dramatizes Socratic philosophizing in contradistinction to the sorts of
men with whom Socrates was confused, especially the sophists. This is
true of the Euthydemus, where Socrates meets two brothers, Euthydemus
and Dionysodorus, sophists who claim to teach virtue (273d), men clever
in fighting with words who can refute any argument, whether true or false
(272a-b), and who claim to know everything, even how many stars appear
in the heavens (271b-c; 272a-b, and 294b).1
In the Euthydemus Plato clearly indicates the shortcomings of the
sophists, and reveals the unsettling implications of their arguments.
He portrays them as treating lightly both family relations and ancestral
gods, while portraying Socrates as defending the beautiful (or noble) and
the good against the brothers’ debasement of them.2 In the course of the
dialogue, Socrates points out the ways in which they contradict themselves
and undermine their own arguments, and in this way seems to come out
the winner in the exchange. Plato’s Euthydemus therefore seems staunchly
to defend Socrates against the charges brought against him at his trial, and
to offer a portrayal of Socrates that distinguishes him from the sophists
and thus responds to Aristophanes’...