Baker, William W. - An Apologetic for Xenophon's Memorabilia (1917)

7/28/2019 Baker, William W. - An Apologetic for Xenophon's Memorabilia (1917)

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An Apologetic for Xenophon's MemorabiliaAuthor(s): William W. BakerReviewed work(s):Source: The Classical Journal, Vol. 12, No. 5 (Feb., 1917), pp. 293-309Published by: The Classical Association of the Middle West and SouthStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/3288050 .Accessed: 13/04/2012 00:15

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AN APOLOGETICFOR XENOPHON'S MEMORABILIA,BY WILLIAMW. BAKERHaverfordCollege

For two or three decades there has been a growing tendencyon the part of many writers about Socratesto minimizethe valueof Xenophon's contribution to our knowledge of Socrates. Attimes it has seemed as if no words were too harsh to expressthismodern contempt for Xenophon's brain-power, his method ofcomposition, and the resultant picture of Socrates which he hasgiven. It is not simply ingenious and fantastic souls like Jo6lwho have so expressedthemselves. Even scholars of high repute,Gomperz,Wendland,Heinrich Maier, Burnet, have in greater orlessdegreeassumed his attitude." Sucha situationmight,of course,have been expected to result from the exaggerated honor andreverence formerly accorded Xenophon. After constituting thesupremecourt of appeal on matters Socraticin some past genera-tions, he has, by a very human sort of reaction, not only beenremoved from the bench, but even at times thrown quite out ofcourt and denied the right to appeareither as advocate or witness.Thus it is said that Xenophon lacked any real acquaintancewith Socrates worth mentioning; that he was incapable, in anyevent, of appreciatingthe real message of Socrates to men; thathe pieced his supposed reminiscencestogether from his own non-Socratic writings as well as from Plato, Antisthenes, and others;that his work was the product,not of recollection,but rather ofmeditation-there appears to be some dispute on this point,whether Xenophon was even capableof meditating-but possibly,

xThis paperwas read, substantially n its presentform,at the meetingof theAmerican Philological Association at Princeton, December 29, 1915.'Joel, Der echte und der xenophontische Sokrates, 2 vols., Berlin, 1893, 190l;Gomperz, GreekThinkers, II, especially pp. 6i ff.; Wendland, Anaximenes von Lamp-sakos, p. 69; Heinrich Maier, Sokrates: sein Werk und seine geschichtlicheStellung,

Ttibingen, 1913; Burnet, Plato's Phaedo, Introduction, pp. xii ff., and GreekPhi-losophy, Part I, pp. 147 ff. 293


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294 THE CLASSICAL JOURNALwe may say, the product of meditation, eked out in any case byuse of shears and paste-pot. And the result of such antecedentsis that we have in the Memorabilia work not only of no historicalvalue, but full of commonplaceand triviality-fictitious, if youplease, even so-and showingus a Socrateswho is merely a tire-some pedant and moralizerand paragonof virtue.It is a few of these criticismsthat I should like to analyze orcomment upon. First then, can Xenophon qualify as a witness ?Variouswritershave estimatedthe periodof Xenophon'sacquaint-ance with Socrates at three or four years only,' but there is cer-tainly no reasonwhy the acquaintanceshould not have extendedover a decade. For we may assume,I think, that Xenophon wasborn about 430 B.c., and surely Socratesmay have been attractedto Xenophon when the latter was but eighteen or twenty quiteas easily as he was to other young men at that age, Alcibiades,forinstance, and Glauco." What "innerprobability"there is againstthis, as Maier asserts,3 have been unable to see. For Xenophonmust have been an energetic and wholesome young fellow;4theAnabasis shows that he had sufficientself-confidence o as hardlyto have been held back on his part by excess of modesty; hispracticalbent, onemight suppose,wouldhave appealedto Socratesratherthanrepelledhim; andalthoughXenophonwas, admittedly,no philosopher,yet every wordhe writes of Socratesbears witnessthat he had somehow or other been fired with a great love andadmirationfor him. Is it not most probablethat such enthusi-asm developedunderthe inspirationof fairlyclosepersonalfriend-ship? I believe then that Xenophon had adequate opportunityfor obtaininga true and deep idea of Socratesand that the "innerprobability" is at least even that he took advantage of it. Thisdoes not necessarilymean that he belonged to the mostintimatecircle of Socrates' followers. Maier is right, I believe, in sayingthat the story Xenophontells in Anabasisiii. I. 4 ff., of consulting

' Busse, Sokrates,p. 9, n. 2; Maier, Sokrates,p. 6, n. 2. I purposelyomit E.Richter'sanarchisticassertion, hat Xenophondid not know Socratesat all! (Xeno-phon-Studien,n Jakrb. . Phil., I9 Suppl.,pp. 124if.)

2 Cf. Plat. Symp. 219E; Xen. Mem. iii. 6. i. 3 Loc. cit.4 Besidesthe picture n the Anabasiscf. Diog. L. ii. 6. 1-2.


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AN APOLOGETIC OR XENOPHON'S"MEMORABILIA 295Socrates about his projected visit to Asia, does not suggest thegreatest intimacy. And the Memorabiliagives one perhaps asimilar impression. Xenophon, too, was not of a temper thatwould have been satisfiedwith merely talking and thinking aboutlife for ten years with any man. His nature demanded actionalso-in which respect it was thoroughlyGreek-but this does notprecludea fair degreeof acquaintanceand friendshipbetween himand Socrates.

Xenophon'sactive military life for some years after 401, whileit gave himgreaterbreadthof view anddiscriminationof judgment,doubtless blurred somewhat the distinctness of his impressionsofSocrates. Is it likely that it destroyed their value? We maypass over the theory that Xenophon knew shorthand,'and eventhe strong probability that a man as practical as he should havemade memoranda of conversations of Socrates, as we are toldEucleidesdid, and Simon,the shoemaker:" t still remains no greatfeat foran ancient Greekmemoryto have remembered ndrecordedevents of ten or twenty years before. Even today many a manof forty could write largely from memory a small volume ofreminiscencesof some strong personality with whom he came incontact at school or college twenty years before. The date ofcompositionof the Memorabilia s of coursean importantfactor inthis question,and it appears o be impossibleof exactdetermination.We may assume that the composition of at least the first twochaptersof the Memorabiliawas due primarily3 o the publicationof the attack on Socrates by the sophist, Polycrates, about 393.If that is so, the reply would presumablyhave come from Xeno-phon soon after, for polemicsarewrittenwhile indignationis fresh.Nor can we believe that his being at his country seat at Scillus-if that was where Xenophon lived as early as 393-would havepostponed very long his getting knowledge of Polycrates' work.

. Advocated by Gitlbauer from Diog. L. ii. 6. 3 (Denksckr. . Akad.d. Wiss.,Wien, 1896,II Abh.,p. 17; cf. Wessely,op.cit., IV Abh.,44).2 Cf. Plat. Theaet. 143A; Diog. L. ii. 13. 2. It might be noted that an alterna-tive interpretation f Diog. L. ii. 6. 3 understands ust such memoranda o be therereferred o rather hanstenographic otes.3As demonstrated y Cobet,N.L., 662ff.


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296 THE CLASSICALJOURNALScilluswas too near to Olympiafor that.' For part, then, of theMemorabiliaXenophon would have had to stretch his memoryback only some ten years. One or two chapters, however, doappearmost naturally to refer to a time well on towardthe middleof the fourth century." For such parts we should suppose, then,one of two things: either a greaterelement of fiction than perhapsreaders have generallybeen accustomed to believe existed in theMemorabilia, r the use of written material.In the first connection I believe that we have often been indangerof forgetting-or at leastof forgettingto applythe thought-that to the ancient Greekthe distinction between fact and fictionis a vague one. Certainly they never drew the distinction withthe meticulous care of the modern. The essential distinction forthem was between truthand untruth. A narrative either of factor of fiction may be true, and one kind quite as well as the othermay be for all practical purposes grossly untrue. We recall, ofcourse, Thucydides' familiarwords about the speechesof his his-tory-which, while fictitious, are for the most part essentially true-and Aristotle's dictum that impossible probabilitiesare to bepreferredto possible improbabilities.3 Parts of the Memorabiliamay well be, then, what we would call fiction: they are not forthat reasonuntrue, nor unworthyof attention.

Again, Xenophonmay very probablyhave read all the existingliteraturehe could find on Socrates. In our learnedage we oughtnot to be surprisedat that. If Xenophondid, as a matter of fact,"make himself familiarwith the literatureof his subject," he didjust what a modern historian would demand that a biographershould do.4 But Xenophon is charged with using written mate-rial in a very strange,not to say stupid, sort of way. Let me givetwo examples of the way he is supposed to make use of his ownwritings. First, one from Gomperz-the only proof which headvancesfrom the Memorabiliatself to show that that work is in

xAlthoughPlutarch,De exilio6o3B (iii. 561),does alludeto it as a very smallplace.2 Most of all, perhaps, Mem. iii. 5. 3 Thuc. i. 22. I; Aristot.Poet.24. 19.4Cf. A. B. Hart, Harper's Magazine, October, 1915, p. 727a: "We expect fromwritersofpersonalmemoirs ndautobiographieshat they shallrefreshheirmemories

fromdiariesandlettersandotherdata."


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AN APOLOGETIC OR XENOPHON'S"MEMORABILIA" 297part unhistorical. "We find a passage of the ['Memorabilia'],"he writes, "dealing with peoples of Asia Minor, the Mysians andthe Pisidians, describing the peculiarities of the country theyinhabit and the manner in which they carry on war. These sub-jects are here treated of preciselyin the same way as in the 'Ana-basis' . . . . in whichXenophon . . . . incidentallyhad occasionto give an account, based on personal observation,of the above-named tribes. The true state of the case is again as clear as day-light. It is Xenophonhimself that speaksto us throughthe mouthof Socrates."Taking these wordsat their face value and without verificationone would naturally suppose that Xenophon in the Anabasishaddescribed the peculiaritiesof the Mysians and Pisidians at somelength and from his own observations, as he does the life of theArmenians; further, that in the Memorabiliahe puts a similardetailed descriptioninto the mouth of Socrates. If that is so, theMemorabiliamust be largely discountedat once; its value for thelife and thoughts of Socrates would obviously be slight. Nowwhat are the facts? Xenophon in his travels hardly entered theconfines of either Pisidia or Mysia. His fullest "description" ofthese countriesimplicitly disclaimspersonal knowledge. In spiteof its great length-six lines-I venture to quote it entire. (Xeno-phon is reporting the speech which he himself made after beingchosen general.) "We understand,"he says, "in the case of theMysians-whom we would deny are better men than we, and whoinhabit many large and prosperouscities in the King's country-we understand ikewise in the case of the Pisidians, and in the caseof the Lycaonianswe saw personally, that they have occupiedthepositionswhichcommandthe plains and thus plunderthe Persians'

'Greek Thinkers, II, 62. As the authorized translation seems not to give theexact shades of meaning in one or two points, I append the German (GriechischeDenker, II, 50 f.): "Denn was sollen wir dazu sagen, wenn an einer Stelle [der Memo-rabilien] von kleinasiatischen V6lkerschaften-den Mysern und Pisidern--von derEigenttimlichkeit ihrer Wohnsitze und der Art ihrer Kriegsftihrung in ganz ahnlicherWeise die Rede ist wie in der sogenannten Anabasis . . . . in der Xenophon ....hierbei auch auf jene ihm durch pers6nlicheAnschauung wohlbekannten V61kerschaftenzu sprechen kommt. Auch hier ist der Sachverhalt demnach ein Sonnenklarer. Esist Xenophon selbst, der durch den Mund des Sokrates zu uns redet."


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298 THE CLASSICALJOURNALcountryof its harvests."' In two or threeotherpassagesthere arescant allusionsto the Mysians or Pisidiansbeing constant scourgesof the Persians. That is all in the Anabasis.Now in the Memorabilia he one and only passage referringtothese peoples is this: "Have you heardof the fact," asks Socratesof the youngerPericles,"that Mysians and Pisidiansin the King'scountry, by holding very strong positions, and adopting a lightarmor,are able to overrunthe King's countryand do much dam-age while themselvesliving independent?" Simply this-a briefallusion-it is obviously not a description-requiring in Greekthirty-one words: Gomperz'ostensible summary requires thirty-six. Actually then Xenophon makes Socrates say nothing whichhe is not quite likely to have said. There is no intimate personalknowledgedisplayed. Socrates'words are true to life. For in astate like Athens, with high general intelligenceand an extensivecommerce,we may fairly assume that it was a matter of commonknowledgeboth that the Mysians maintained their independenceof Persia and also how in general they did it. Certainlywe haveno adequate ground for asserting that Socrates did not actuallyspeak in substance just as Xenophon representshim. It wouldperhaps be rash to deny, in view of the ancient Greek attitudetoward the reporting of speeches, literal accuracy, and similarmatters, that it is possible we have in the Memorabiliapassageonly what Socratesmighthave said underthe given circumstances.There is, too, a generalsimilarityof thought in the passages fromAnabasis and Memorabilia, and slight verbal similarity; thephrases v r~ /3aoLXEos X pa and r~)v .... . xWC1pavccur in both;4pvpvd ppearsas a noun in the Anabasis and as an adjective inMemorabilia. But this similarity is perhaps fully accounted forpsychologically by the fact that both speeches have passedthrough one and the same mind, whoever may originally havespoken them. In any event there is no distortion of the pic-ture of Socrates involved. He does not speak in the least asa returned Asiatic traveler or a professional ethnologist, asone might suppose from Gomperz' words, but entirely true tocharacter.

IAnab. iii. 2. 23. 2 Mem. iii. 5. 26.


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AN APOLOGETICORXENOPHON'SMEMORABILIA"99Even more outrageousstatements have recently been made by

Heinrich Maier, professor of philosophy at G-ttingen, in hiselaborate volume called Sokrates. This writer has an ingeniousway of creatinghis premisesby fiat and then, in wonderfullysuc-cessful fashion, drawing conclusions therefrom. Take all hisstatements of fact as facts, and his argumentsappear conclusive.But once doubt his affidavits and proceedto verify them, and thewhole collapses. I will give just one of a half-dozenpossibleexam-ples of the way in which he deals with the Memorabilia,while heis proving-as he asserts-that it is Xenophon who speaks therefor the most part, not Socrates."Perhapsthe most strikingpartof the Memorabilia," e writes,'"is the strategicandmilitarydiscoursesof the third book. Whencedoes Socratesget such wisdom? We know today. It is derivedfrom Xenophontine sources. So, for example, the third chapter,whereSocratesenlargeson the duties of a cavalry generaland withsurprising technical knowledge goes even into the details of theservice, is entirely an extract [lediglich in Auszug]from the Hip-parchicus. ... ." Now what is this surprisingly ntimate knowl-edge of the subject (iiberraschendeachkunde)to which Maierrefers? Let me enumerate the points on which Xenophon'sSocrates touches in the chapter mentioned:i. The officeof cavalry commander nvolves commandof bothhorsesand riders.

2. Cavalrymenmay appear with horses that are not usable:bad in the feet or bad in the legs, or diseased, or so poorly fed asnot to be able to keep up, or so untrained as not to stand whereposted, or so intractable that they cannot be gotten into positionat all. The commandertherefore ought to have an eye for thehorses.

3. The commander houldmake his men able to mount easily.(We are not told how.)4. Maneuvers houldbeheld,not ontheparadeground,but underconditionslikely to prevail in war. (The latter are not described.)5. As many men as possibleshouldbe able to shoot fromhorse-back. (Again, there is no elaboration of this point.)I Maier,Sokrates, . 32. In my translation followthe German losely.


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300 THE CLASSICALJOURNAL6. The commandershould consider how to whet the spirits ofhis men. (No method is suggested.)7. The commandershould try to make his men obedient. In

any spheremen obey the person they think excels therein, and soin the cavalry. But they must be shown further that it is morehonorable,and saferto obey.8. The commandermust give some attention to being able tospeak, for speechis the vehicle by whichmen learnall things.

9. Just as Athenian choruses were pre-eminent in interstatefestivals, not so much fromphysical superiorityas from the ambi-tion that fired them to excel, so the Athenian cavalry might bedeveloped to superiorityin equipment,discipline,and spirit, pro-vided the men believed they could thus win praiseand honor.This is all. Is there any knowledgein the list that could notbe evolved, I will not say by a man with the general insight andveteran military experienceof Socrates,but by a modern, classi-cally trained college Senior,even, though he were city born andbred and had never had a pair of reins in his hands? I believeit is plain there is not. Even the foregoinggeneral suggestions,moreover,are in the originalput not dogmaticallyas statementsoffact, but mostly in interrogativeform: "If they bring you poorhorses what good will the cavalry be ?" "Won't you make yourmen able to mount easily?" and the like. There is certainlylittleor no enlargingon the subject; no methods, but only suggestions.There are undoubtedly a considerablenumber of parallels inthought and wordingbetween Memorabilia ii. 3 and Hipparchi-cus i. But this indicates nothing more, I believe, than that bothchaptershavepassedthroughthe mindof Xenophon: the samemanwriting about the same subject, especially one with which he isthoroughlyacquainted,will naturally say similar things and evenuse the same phrases. Further, if Xenophon's Socrates has thesame ideas that Xenophon, as we know him in his non-Socraticwritings, also has, that is not forthwith to be taken as proof thatXenophon ascribeshis own thoughts to Socrates. We must firstshow that Socrateshimself would not in all probabilityhave hadthose thoughts. For if, as most peopleassume,Xenophonenjoyedin his early manhooda fair degree of intimacy with Socrates, we


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AN APOLOGETIC OR XENOPHON'S"MEMORABILIA" 301shouldnaturally supposethat duringthat associationhe got fromSocrates many an idea which became a part of his own nature.It is indeed entirely possible that Socrates spoke substantially asXenophon reportshim in the chapterwe are considering,using thenatural and reasoned order of thought which Xenophon ascribesto him, and that Xenophon later, on writing the Hipparchicus,perhaps consciously, perhaps unconsciously,used much the sameoutline, which he then filled in. But even granting that ourMemorabiliachapter is fiction, even that it was written afterHipparchicusi and embodies in part the topical outline of thatchapter-all of which it is far fromneedful to grant-it would stillbe true fiction. Xenophonhas not, as would be imaginedfrom anuntested readingof Maier'swords, pictured Socrates as a special-ist in the handlingof cavalry. Quite the contrary; he is through-out and consistently the layman bringinghis trained mind to bearon the problemsof the professionconcerned. That he was accus-tomed to do just this with insight and helpfulnessin the case ofmany differentprofessions, s the testimony of Plato as well as ofXenophon.But Xenophon is alleged to have made very extensive use ofPlato's writings, also, in the Memorabilia. Maier gives a longseries of instances of this borrowing. Of almost each one of theseries he declares that it proves Xenophon's indebtedness, andregularly he garnishes his declarationwith a "ganz offenbar"orsome one of the other imposing expletives with which it is thefashion in some circles to attempt to bolster weak arguments.Finally' as a culminating example he takes a short passage ofa dozen lines from the close of Mem. iv. 5 and beginningof iv. 6.The latter part of this (iv. 6. i) depends, he says, quite unmis-takably on Phaedrus, 262AB (lehnt sich . . . . ganz unverkenn-bar an). Now the gist of Xenophon's passage is this: Socratesthought those who had knowledgewhat the nature of things was ineach case (Ei6'ras rt Kaaro 'Lr rc7v 6rovrw)could also instructothers; those who did not have knowledgewerenaturallydeceived(ao


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302 THE CLASSICALJOURNALthe other hand, in the middle of the Phaedrus remarks that theability to mislead (airarav)in speech depends on knowledge ofsimilaritiesand differencesof things, by which knowledgeone canlittle by little lead one's hearers away from reality. "The manwho is not acquaintedwith what the nature of things in each caseis" (6 I '7YVWptKWS 6 Eru'V Karo70VrO, V7Vrwv) ill not be able todo this.

Practically, then, the similarities of these two passages are:first, a very Socratic emphasis upon knowledge; secondly, threeGreekwords. It is, of course,conceivable hat Xenophonhad readthe Phaedrus, and that the idea of knowledge of ZKaoYrov7v 6vrwvhad stuck in his mind, but that seems rather a difficult way ofaccounting orthe situation.' Is it so strange,really,that two men,both supposedly engaged in reporting the life and words of thesame great original, should at times produce passages containingsome ikeness n thoughtand a phraseof two or threewordsverballyidentical? Rather one would suppose that just this thing wouldoccurmany times.Maier goes on to allege that Plato's Sophist 253D is "unmis-takably Xenophon'ssource" in the earlierpart of the Memorabiliapassage (iv. 5. i2). The latter is the section with the strangeetymological explanation of &aXM'-yeoOat,s meaning to deliberate bypicking things out by classes (&aX4yovrasKaTry&7 ra'rp'pyl.ara).In Plato, without any attempt at etymologizing or at definition,we have the query raised whether division by classes is a part ofthe science of dialectic (r6 Kard ydCr8LaLpelOaLoibrjs &aLXEKrtLKe

Oiop/evirE'rjT?17s'Lva;). In other words, the proof of borrowingis again a commonplacephrase and remote likenessof thought.But Maier is not through with this bit of the Memorabilia,only a dozen lines in all. Most strikingof all (amfrappantesten)is its connection with Politikos 285D-287A. Within the limitsof these two pages of Plato, Maier finds these phrasesverballyidentical with Xenophon's: robs uvbv'ras .... . . aXEKTLKCtrpovsand TrCovrwov. (Apparently he forgets that r&cv6v'rovhas alreadybeen used to prove that Xenophon in this same passage borrowed

I L. Robin, in L'Annie Philosophique, XXI (19Io), 40-41, writes sensibly on thispoint.


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AN APOLOGETIC OR XENOPHON'S"MEMORABILIA" 303from anotherdialogue of Plato!) Besides there is the generalidea in both passages that Socrates gave his followersability indialectic. What a laboriouscento, then, we are asked to believethat Xenophon made up with the help of Plato! An idea here,an idea there, a phrasefrom this book and a phrasefromthat, andso at last he got a paragraph! This seems, indeed, to be exactlyMaier's idea: "One can see here," he says (p. 6i), "right into theworkshopof the author of the Dialogue-collection,' and can fol-low most beautifully how he works with the fruits of his reading,his borrowed thoughts and thought-sequences, expressions andphrases." "More importantstill," he concludes,"is the fact thatthe dependenceof the Xenophontine dialectic (Begriffsdialektik)upon the Platonic, as the latter is developed in the dialectic dia-logues, Phaedrus, Sophist, and Politicus, has been quite con-clusively proven" (villig stringentbewiesen). All the steps in thiscompelling"proof" I have obviously not given here. In its com-plete form it is made to appear plausible by almost systematicdistortion of the facts and constant magnifying of remote possi-bilities into assured certainties. Those who would see how exten-sive this is must follow Maier's argumentsstep by step, with thetexts of supposedoriginaland supposed mitator open beforethem.While I am far fromdenyingoffhand that Xenophon may haveread, and also used, Plato's Socratic writings, I do maintain thatsimilarity of thought and similarity of phrase in any such degreeas has, so far as I know, ever been shown, is no adequate proof ofany connection between Xenophon and Plato, except the connec-tion given by common discipleshipwith Socrates. Beyond doubtSocrates had his favorite turns of expression and his unconsciousmannerismsof speechlike othermen, andit can hardlybe supposedthat these were not rememberedby Socrates' followers,alongwiththe substance of his observations and questions. I think, too,that teachers,at least, would generallyagree, on the basis of theirown experience, that the trivial in such cases is very apt to berememberedalong with the important.With this rather brief considerationof Xenophon's workman-ship in Memorabilia,I should now like to pass to the picture of

zThis is Maier'sway of designatingall of the Memorabiliaxcepti. i and 2.


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304 THE CLASSICALJOURNALSocrateswhich is given in the same work. Oneof the most notice-able words in the Memorabilia s the adjective '4yXLtosand itscognates. The idea of utility, indeed, runs like a thread throughthe whole work, and perhaps as much as any one thought givesunity to the whole. The thoughtof what is pleasurable, oo, is notinfrequentlyconsideredand emphasized. It is perhapsthis aspectwhich has led some moderns to distort the facts in their reportofXenophon's representation of Socrates. Thus again Maier-Iquote from him often becausehis work, Sokrates,better and moreelaborately than any other that I know, gathers together recentworkon Socratesand is in considerablemeasuretypical of its trend-Maier, then, says (pp. 306 f.): "The way in which the view-point of utility and happinessprevails throughouthas a startlingeffect. Egoism as the principleof the morallife has not been pro-claimedin morecrass fashioneven by a Mandeville,a Bolingbroke,a Chesterfield.' . ... In short it appears quite as if the final goalof all human will and action were for the Socratesof the Memora-bilia, the attainment of the most lasting and intensive joys pos-sible.", Thisharsh-and absurd-judgment is somewhatqualifiedlater, but the grossness of the distortion it contains is apparentwhen we recall the idealistic Socrates that the Memorabiliaalsopresents, who "never chose the more pleasurable nstead of whatwas better" (iv. 8. 11); who "counted it of greater importanceto keep his oath than he did to conciliate the populace contraryto right, or to guard himself against his intimidators" (i. . 18);who "chose ratherto observe the laws and die than to breakthemand live" (iv. 4. 4.).3 The truth of the matter is, as Maier also(pp. 312-14) is obliged to recognize, that Socrates was utilitarian,hedonist, and idealist all in one; followingthe ideal of high prin-

xPerhaps there is no significance in the fact, but it may be noted in passing thatall three of Maier's examples are Englishmen.2 Mahaffy, Classical GreekLiterature, II, ii, 79, has a similar statement: "[Soc-

rates'] philosophy [is] represented as a mere refined and calm Hedonism."aAmong other passages that might be cited are iv. 5. ii, r& . . . . dYa&7rpoatpedIuOatin contrast to r& 6tT7a); iii. 9. 4, KLX\ re K'iyacO& LyVPdTKOV7TXpo-Oac~,nd 5, r& ... 1LKaca... KaXd re Kac7ya0& dac; ii. I. 28, v .ciyac0^VKaiKaXWVv lv dev r6vov Ka1 t7rteXelaCKTX., and indeed the whole of the"Choice of Heracles"; i. 2. 63, KaKOV0?6ev6 . . . . arIOS KTrXi. 7. io, 6Odvaro*.... rpoapereovJv.


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AN APOLOGETIC OR XENOPHON'S"MEMORABILIA" 305ciple was for him the most truly and most permanently happycourse; it was the course which he believed brought the greatestgain. Xenophon may not sum up the matter quite in this way,but his words clearly lead hither,' and they are, moreover,despitesome differenceof emphasis,substantiallyin agreementwith thoseof Plato on this point.2The religiousside of Socratesalso may be touchedupon. Hereagain Xenophon is said to caricature Socrates and attribute tohim his own grossly superstitious ideas.3 Incidentally it mightbe remarked that one who speaks of the superstitionof Xenophonreally puts himself intellectually, if not also religiously, in a pastage. Even the fairly conservative revisers of our English Biblemay suggest this to us, when in the AmericanRevision they changethe older wording and make Paul speak of the Athenians nolonger as "too superstitious,"but as "very religious." The latterseems the properterm to apply both to Xenophon and to Socrates.They were religious, not always exactly as we now practice reli-gion, yet from the standpointof their age certainly truly religious.For Socrates himself with all his rationalizingwas, theologically,far frombeing a rationalist. There was in his nature a very deepstrainof religiousfeeling,not to say mysticism. Indeed,one wouldthink that no fact is better evidenced about Socrates than hisimplicit belief in, and relianceupon, divine direction in all phasesof his life. Even the evidence of Plato alone shows us howthoroughlythe religionof Socrates was permeatedby a character-istically Greek conservatism. We find Plato's Socrates, for ex-ample, praying to the sun, as well as distinctly implying that thesun was a god, and flouting Anaxagoras' heory that it was a stone;4

x Cf. (e.g.) Mem. iv. 5. 12, Aptorovs Te Kcalebi6oveordrou . .... Ka ....8vuarwi-drovs.2 Plato's Socrates,also, is both utilitarian(cf. the argumentof Crito,53B-54A;Protag. 333D; Meno, 87E) andhedonist(Protag.354BC; Repub.354A), as well asidealist.3Cf. Gomperz, GreekThinkers, II, 87; 135; L. Robin, in L'Ann6e PhilosophiqueXXI (1910o), 14; Maier, Sokrates, 6.4 Plat. Symp. 220D; Apol. 26DE (cf. Phaedo 97C-99D; Xen. Mem. iv. 7. 7).In the face of this attitude on Socrates'part, Gomperzdares to chargeXenophon

with being "uninfluenced by . ... Anaxagoras" (p. 135).


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306 THE CLASSICAL JOURNALpraying also to Pan and the nymphs; asserting his belief, in anespecial degree, in the gods; showing profoundconfidencein thegod of Delphi, and, what to us perhapsseems equally strange, indreams; believing apparentlyalso in the value of sacrificeand ofdivination; saying, further, that God's will had been revealed tohim not only "from oraclesand fromdreams,"but "in every wayin which a divine appointmentever came to any man to do any-thing whatsoever."' This is enough,I think, to showthat Socrateshad the same kind of "superstition" in him as did Xenophon.

Perhaps the worst example, however, in this particulardirec-tion of the perverted sort of report of the Memorabiliawhich isoften given is in a little book by A. Busse, entitled Sokrates-a notuninteresting,though very careless, sketch publishedin 1914 andpresenting Socrates as the great teacher. Busse writes: "Therelation between the gods and men Xenophon would have usbelieve that Socrates presented as a sort of contractual relation,on the basis of which those who bring the largest sacrificesmayalso counton the greatestservices n return,in the shapeof prophe-cies and blessingsof every sort."' Now Xenophonwas no mystic;his senses were keenly alive, as indeed those of most Greekswereto this present world, but he and his Socratesstood at the widestremove from any such conceptionof religionas this. On the onehand the two passagesfromMemorabiliawhichBusse cites, i. 4. 18and iv. 3. 17, are far from proving his statement. In the formerSocratessays in effect: When you do a service to a man you findout whetherhe is grateful; in the same way make trial, by doingthe gods service, and see whether they are willing to give youcounsel about matters which are hidden from men and you willcome to feel that the divine power is both omniscient and omni-

xCf. Plat. Phaedrus 279B; Apol. 35D; (on Delphi) Apol. 2oE-2IB; Phaedrus244AB; Repub. 427B; (dreams) Crito 44A; Phaedo 6oE; (sacrifice) Phaedo 118,io8A; (divination) Ion 534CD; Phaedrus 244BC, Symp. 188B (cf. what seem to bePlato's own more skeptical ideas of divination in Phileb. 67B; Politicus 290C; Tim.7ID-72B; Laws 913B); Apol. 33C.

2 Busse, Sokrates, p. 198: "Die Beziehung zwischen den G6ttern und Menschensoll er als eine Art Kontraktverhtiltnis dargestellt haben, auf Grund dessen derjenige,welcher die gr6ssten Opfer darbringe, auch auf die grdssten Gegendienste in Formvon Weissagungen und allerlei Glticksgiitern rechnen dtirfe." Gomperz, GreekThinkers,I, 136,is almostas farfromthe truth.


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AN APOLOGETIC OR XENOPHON'S"MEMORABILIA" 307present. And in the other passage: When a man offers sacrificeshe must do it accordingto his ability; for if he falls short of this,thereis plainlyno honor to the gods in the offering; but if one doeshonor the gods unstintingly (Kara&bvaitv) one may confidentlyhope for the greatest blessings. Such doctrine is not perhapsfashionable n certain circles at the presentday, yet even so I thinkit is safe to say that Xenophon's statements requireonly minorchanges,of formratherthan of spirit, to bringthem into conformitywith the belief of the vast majorityof modern Christians. On thepositive side in refutation of Busse's assertion it seems sufficientto cite just one passage from Memorabilia(i. 3. 3). The repu-diation of the mechanicaltype of religioncouldhardlybe put morestrongly than it is here: "Life," says Xenophon'sSocrates,"wouldnot be worth living for men, if the size of the sacrificedeterminedthe favorof the gods,"and as nearlyas a devout man may, he saysalso that it would not, in that case, be worth living by the godseither!

Finally a few words need to be said about the general qualityof Xenophon's picture of Socrates. We are told that it is trivialand commonplace; this Socrates is merely the correct and law-abidingburger; a matter-of-factpreacherof morals; an obtrusivepedant; a very philistineof a schoolmaster; a tiresomepattern ofvirtue.' The trouble with most of these criticisms of Xenophonis that they really hit, not him, but Socrates,much as their authorswould probably deny any such intention. Plato's Apology andCritofurnish abundant evidence for just the same sort of Socrates-a Socrateswho insists, with wearisomeelaborationof argument,on obeying the laws of the state to his own hurt, instead of over-riding them as does any truly strong man; who is eternallyharping on the subject of mere morality and neglecting-evendenouncing-that pursuit of wealth fromwhich of course all prog-ress in civilization issues; who splits hairs and quibbles evenwhen on trial for his life; who is entirely lacking in tact and

1 Cf. Gomperz,GreekThinkers, II, 137 f.; "loyalenundkorrekten taatsbiirger,""philistr6sen Sittenprediger"(Busse, Sokrates, p. ii); "aufdringlicher edant,""philisterhafter Schulmeister," "langweiliger Tugendspiegelund unertraglicherTugendschwatzer" Maier, Sokrates,p. 6). SimilarlyWendland,AnaximenesvonLampsakos, p. 70.


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308 THE CLASSICALJOURNALtaste, yet feels himself so much too good for the generation towhich he belongs, that he refuses to conciliatethe jury of his peersas any sensible man would, but instead defies them and insolentlydemands to be made a state pensioner-in return, if you please,for subverting the very fundamentals of the democracy and itsreligion. Can we not still hear "the practical man," the mate-rialist, the sleek ultra-orthodox church-goer of ancient Athensapplying such language to that ancient Billy Sunday who gavethem no peace, but bored them by everlastingly talking of thebourgeoisvirtues, and in such vulgar fashion, too, with constantreferencesto cobblers and tanners and asses and manure-basketsand the itch and what not ?

But in a sense Xenophon's tale of Socrates is trivial and com-monplace. Thoughit doesnot lack its flashesof fire,yet comparedwith Plato's work it is in many parts very matter of fact. Never-theless, I venture to say that it is an immeasurably reaterSocratesthat is known to us becauseof Xenophon'sbook. It is one thingto be able to wrestle with the great problems of human life, ofsociety-that is, in summary, Plato's Socrates: grand, inspiring,but in many ways essentially removed from the petty round ofevery day--very largely a superman. Xenophon shows us thestill greater man, who can walk both in the higher world of ideasand also in this vexing and more pressingworld in which most ofus live; who, further,was not above being touched by the lesserproblemsof individual humans,but, on the contrary,in the midstof such problems always showed the true spirit of helpfulness.I believe that the Socrateswho broughtphilosophydown to earthwould own that this also was a true photograph.Only so of course is Plato's. And just this is what I wouldurge in conclusion: that this great figureof Socrates was not one-sided but many-sided-not a very startling conclusion,to be sure.Indeed it has been many times expressedbefore.' Yet even thosewho have made it have often failed to formulate, or at least inpractice to recognize, what is, I think, a real corollary, viz., if

xE.g., by I. Bruns, Lit. Portrat, pp. 375 f.; E. Boutroux, Atudes d'Histoire de laPhilosophie, p. 89; C. M. Bakewell, Intern. Jour. of Ethics, XX, 12; Busse, Sokrates,Vorwort; Maier, Sokrates, p. 166.


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AN APOLOGETICORXENOPHON'SMEMORABILIA"09Socrates was many-sided, it is natural that men who themselveshad differenttastes and interests should have seen differentsides.Thereforethe pictures they draw, though different,may yet be en-tirely true,provided only Socrateswas really great enoughto havehad more than one side. And I think we all agreethat he was.May we not then hope that the time will come when scholarswill cease to say, "Plato knew Socrates most intimately and hadhimself the greatest mind of any of Socrates' followers: thereforehe comprehendedhim best and his writingsonly shall be our test-stone";" or, in the case of others, "Xenophon was sane and prac-tical and not given to airy flights of imagination: therefore he islikely to have given us Socrates as he really was";2 or still again,"Aristotle with his cold, logical mind, and removedsufficientlyintime to have true perspective, is best qualifiedto give us the trueSocrates: by him will we test all other reports" 3 or again, "Awaywith these professionaldefenderswith their idealized and largelyimaginary portrayals of Socrates: the Socrates whom Aristo-phanes caricatured n the Clouds s the real Socrates."4 Shall wenot, I say, cease to take such attitudes, and believe rather thatXenophon and Plato, Antisthenes and Aeschines (so far as we canknow the contents of their work), Aristotle, yes, and Aristophanestoo, all throwlightsforus upon that great, and for this very reasonpuzzling, figure? Should not the norm for critical purposes be,not any singlewriter'sphotograph,but a composite icture, n whicheach particularpicture enters in full measure?

xSo, in substance, Burnet and Maier.2Cf. A. Dbring, Die Lehre des Sokrates; Pfleiderer, Sokrates und Plato, p. io7;

and, in part, E. Boutroux, Atudesd'Histoire de la Philosophie, p. 17.3So, in part, Gomperz, GreekThinkers, II, 64 f.; Windelband, Hist. of Anc. Phil.,p. 124; Epstein, Studien zur Gesch. u. Kritik der Sokratik, p. 19; Joel.4 Cf. Starkie, ed. Aristoph. Clouds, pp. xxx ff.s Gercke's idea (Einleitung in die Altertumswissenschaft, II, 366) that none of ourwitnesses are of any value, that "truth and fiction are so inextricably interwoven inthe Socratic dialogue-literature, that, except the execution, hardly anything is certain"in the statements about Socrates' life, we may perhaps, without being thought cavalier,decline to consider. One wonders, indeed, how Gercke could bring himself to accepteven the execution as historic. R. Pbhlmann in his Sokratische Studien is almost

equally skeptical.

Documents

Baker, William W. - An Apologetic for Xenophon's Memorabilia (1917)