Much controversy continues over Socrates's attitude towards democracy. I.F. Stone, embarrassed that the first democracy should have killed a man for exercising freedom of speech and freedom of religion, attempted to justify this by going after Socrates as an enemy of democracy (The Trial of Socrates); but since Stone was busy defending Josef Stalin back in the Thirties, and even wrote a book in 1952, the Hidden History of the Korean War, defending the communist …showed first 75 words of 6303 total…

…showed last 75 words of 6303 total…ike the Thesmophoria. Aristophanes exploits this kind of thing for its comic possibilities (as he does in Lysistrata, where the women of Athens go on a sex strike until the men agree to end the war with Sparta), but such themes also have a serious side, i.e. the implied judgment that Athenian men have so botched political affairs that it is time for the women to put in their two cents