Plot Summary

The action is relocated to occupied Athens after the Peloponnesian War (404 BC), where Mr. S. (= Socrates, played by Paul Hörbiger) proposes double marriage for men to the Athenian parliament and the four occupying powers for hidden personal reasons. Outwardly, he is concerned with providing for the many war widows. His deeper intention is to free the beautiful slave Euritrite as a concubine alongside the quarrelsome Xanthippe. The four occupying powers of the Macedonians (= US Americans), Persians (= Russians), Cretans (= English) and Corinthians (= French) are gently teased. On Socrates' advice, the law is adopted with an anonymous dissenting vote so that everyone at home can claim that it was him. Socrates can marry Euritrite. Xanthippe, however, favors the mutual infatuation of Euritrite and Socrates' student Plato (who had already invented Platonic love out of sheer desperation), and the other women also know how to spoil their husbands' pleasure in the new law.