Livio Rossetti – A School Founded and Directed by Socrates? – July 17, 2026

Respondent: Alessandro Stavru (University of Verona)

Abstract:

My paper focuses on Aristophanes’ Clouds. What I aim to determine is whether Aristophanes imagined, or instead drew upon, reports of a school founded and directed by Socrates. Scholars have devoted very little attention to the second possibility. One exception was Alfred E. Taylor, whose suggestions, so far as I know, gave rise to little or no debate, as though there were no reason to take them seriously. More recently, however, Alessandro Stavru, in his paper Socrate nella commedia antica (2025: 185), has drawn attention to the cursus studiorum that a mathētēs describes to Strepsiades in considerable detail at Nub. 133–220. The idea of a well-structured cursus studiorum is particularly illuminating, since it seems to go beyond the immediate theatrical needs of the comedy.
We find, in fact, a student providing a wealth of information about what one can learn and experience in this educational institution. There is nothing comparable in Aristophanes’ other comedies: not the graceless competition between Paphlagon and the sausage maker, not Nephelokokkugia, not the otherworldly contest between Aeschylus and Euripides, nor the revolt of the wives. A considerable difference of scale is immediately apparent. The portrayal of the cursus studiorum is extensive, so detailed, and so plausible that it is difficult to regard it as merely one tessera in the comic mosaic. What, then, if a real school lay behind Aristophanes’ portrayal?
Further considerations point in the same direction. In the Hippias Major, Hippias is expected to ‘lecture’ ἐν τῷ Φειδοστράτου διδασκαλείῳ. This Didaskaleion is not a school for paides such as that mentioned by Thucydides (7.29.5), but rather an institution where a renowned intellectual is invited to share elements of his epistēmē. In the Lysis, Socrates asks: ‘Who is teaching here?’ (διδάσκει δὲ τίς αὐτόθι;). This is a palaestra, and although the nature of the institution remains unclear, Socrates describes Miccus as ‘a serious person and a competent instructor’ (οὐ φαῦλός γε ἁνήρ, ἀλλ’ ἱκανὸς σοφιστής). These passages provide a context within which the Phrontistērion may be understood not simply as a comic fiction, but as a possible reflection of reality, despite the Socratics’ silence.

Bio:

Livio Rossetti is Professor Emeritus of Ancient Philosophy at the University of Perugia. For several decades he held the chair of Storia della Filosofia Antica at that institution. Socrates has been a central focus of his research, to which he has devoted dozens of articles as well as major works such as Aspetti della letteratura socratica antica (1977) and Le dialogue socratique (2011). He is currently working on a monograph tentatively entitled Questions Instead of Answers: Socrates and His World. In 2023 he published Ripensare i presocratici. Da Talete (anzi, da Omero) a Zenone. He is a founding member of both the International Plato Society and the ISSS.

Alessandro Stavru is Professor of Ancient Philosophy at the University of Verona. His research focuses on Socrates and the Socratic tradition, Pythagoras and the Pythagoreans, ancient and modern aesthetics, and the history of classical scholarship, with particular emphasis on Walter F. Otto. A former Alexander von Humboldt Research Fellow (2010–2012), he has taught Ancient Philosophy, Aesthetics, and History of Religions at the Universities of Naples, Berlin, Milan, Rome, and Verona. He served on the Executive Committee of the International Society for Socratic Studies from 2018 to 2025 and was co-organizer of the Socratica colloquia (2005, 2008, 2012), as well as co-editor of the conference proceedings.