Having addressed the social prejudices against him, Socrates addresses the first accusation — the moral corruption of Athenian youth — by accusing his accuser, Meletus, of being indifferent to the persons and things about which he professes to care. Whilst interrogating Meletus, Socrates says that no one would intentionally corrupt another person — because the corrupter later stands to be harmed in vengeance by the corrupted person. The matter of moral corruption is important for two reasons: (i) the accusation is that Socrates corrupted the rich, young men of Athens by teaching atheism; (ii) that if he is convicted of corruption, it will be because the playwright Aristophanes already had corrupted the minds of his audience, when they were young, by lampooning Socrates as the "Sophistical philosopher" in "The Clouds", a comic play produced about twenty-four years earlier.