It has long been observed that there is something comedic in the writings of Plato. Yet Plato’s dialogue with Greek Comedy is not limited to his colorful characters, unusual settings, and witty conversations: it is rather in exposing the pretensions of Athenian public figures that Plato and the writers of Old Comedy have perhaps the most in common. Between around 430 B.C. and the end of the fifth century, a series of intellectuals and educators were parodied on the comic stage, including of course Socrates, the target of what Aristophanes called his "most sophisticated" comedy: Clouds of 423 B.C. But despite this claim, Clouds belongs to a comic tradition about Socrates and his associates that is well attested in the fragmentary works of Aristophanes’ comedian-rivals. An examination of these lost comedies not only enables us to reconstruct a once-popular comic subgenre, but also deepens our understanding of the figure of Socrates and enriches our readings of the Platonic corpus.