Xenophon - Estate Management and Symposium

Xenophon was born in Athens in the last third of the fifth century bce . Antiquity knew him in the first place as a philosopher. Making Xenophon the subject of one of his Lives of the Philosophers, the ancient biographer Diogenes Laertius described his first encounter with the individual who would most profoundly influence his life and his literary output:

The story goes that Socrates met Xenophon in a narrow street, and that [Socrates] stretched out his staff to bar the way, and inquired where every kind of food was sold. Upon receiving his answer, he put another question, And where do human beings become good and honourable [kaloi kagathoi]? Xenophon was at a loss; Follow me then, said Socrates, and learn. From that time on he was a student of Socrates. He was the first to note down and publish the conversation of Socrates (2.48)

While doubtless apocryphal, the anecdote captures essential aspects of Xenophons Socrates, and of Xenophons preoccupations more generally. The first question, about food, ascribes to Socrates a topic that is real-world, accessible, egalitarian: this basic human need overrides social distinctions. Xenophon in his literary works writes lucidly and accessibly about everyday topics of fundamental importance. He returns time and again to analogies that are familiar and real for his readers: and his expression of ideas is all the more effective for this. Xenophons recording of Socrates assumption in his second question that human beings (anthrpoi) have the potential to become kaloi kagathoigood and honourablecaptures Xenophons interest in and transformation of the concept of gentlemanliness. He sidelines its traditional class connotations in applying it with purely moral reference to people of both genders and across social statuses, as illustrated in the works translated in this volume.

Xenophons are the only Socratic dialogues aside from Platos that survive in full. A Socratic dialogue is a literary work that depicts Socrates in conversation with others. The genre of logoi Skratikoi, or Socratic literature, is probably fictional in essence: what we have are creative soundings, in which an author uses Socrates as the vehicle for exploring his own ideas and preoccupations, albeit anchored to specific historical moments, and peopled with historical individuals. Xenophon plays with this issue of historicity in having the narrator claim to have been an eyewitness to the symposium that is described in one of the works included in this volume: I should like to describe the company I was in when I came to this conclusion (Symposium I.1). Attentive readers will realize that Xenophon the author was a child at the time; he cannot have been present.

Xenophon was not in Athens for Socrates trial before an Athenian democratic jury court in 399 bce , the guilty verdict, and his executionevents that cast a dark shadow over the end of the fifth century, and profoundly shaped the outlooks of all those of Socrates circle. Xenophon had already left to join the Ten Thousand Greek mercenaries who fought alongside the Persian prince Cyrus in his attempt to usurp the throne from his brother, Artaxerxes. Xenophon had discussed this venture with Socrates, who correctly augured that his friendship with Cyrus might create problems for Xenophon in relation to the Athenians (