Two worlds collide with comic force in Aristophanes. Uneducated builder Strepsiades wants to learn "unjust argument" from intellectual Socrates in order to avoid paying his son's debts. But nothing goes as planned This play from 423 BCE addresses central conflicts playing out in Athens at the time: tradition vs. modernity, town vs. country, old vs. young, common sense vs. scholarship, faith vs. relativism.

Gerrit Kloss, Ruprecht-Karls-Universität Heidelberg, Germany.