XENOPHON’S SOCRATES AND DEMOCRACY

XENOPHON’S SOCRATES AND DEMOCRACY

Vivienne J. Gray1,2

Abstract: This article surveys Xenophon’s evidence for Socrates’ views on democ-racy. It offers a more balanced and complete reading of the evidence in Xenophon’sMemorabilia, and takes account of new ways to assess the definition of what is demo-cratic. It argues that Xenophon’s basic image of Socrates is democratic (d�motikos) inthe broadest sense through an investigation of topics such as Socrates’ attitudestowards democratic laws, and the use of dokimasia and the ballot, as well as his viewson oligarchic and democratic regimes of his time, the ‘royal art’ of rule, the assemblyand its decisions, and the role of the wealthy in democracy. It also argues against thegeneral view that Xenophon’s own views on democracy as expressed in his otherworks show no support for democracy.

Introduction

It seems to me that Xenophon had a democratic spirit in seeing in most people,

including women and slaves, that capacity for superior virtue that constitutes

the chief claim to leadership. Once virtue emerged, the community — whether

household, polis or empire — would recognize and follow it because it

included the virtue of looking to secure its success. Leadership in this way

secured ‘willing obedience’ that was given as long as the leader’s interest in

securing their success persisted. I think that Xenophon believed that this

democratic co-operation of leaders and followers could appear in any form of

constitution, from the rule of one to the rule of many. Xenophon applied his

theory of leadership to the full range of different political communities and

we cannot understand his views until its application over the full range of his

contexts is taken into account.3 In my comments below on recent articles, I

draw out some examples.4

POLIS. Vol. 28. No. 1, 2011

1 Department of Classics and Ancient History, The University of Auckland, Auckland1142, New Zealand. Email: [email protected]

2 Author’s Note: This article makes available the original English version (previouslyunpublished) of an essay that first appeared in French (V. Gray, ‘Le Socrate de Xénophonet la Démocratie’, in Les Écrits Socratiques de Xénophon, ed. L. Brisson and L.-A. Dorion,Special Issue of Les Études Philosophiques, 69.2 (2004), pp. 141–76). Occasional requestsfor the original prompted its publication here, slightly revised, with a new Introduction thatreviews some recent, important articles on the topic which have appeared since its firstpublication. No substantial changes have been made, in spite of some developments since2004 in my views about the democratic impulses of Xenophon’s works.

3 See V. Gray, Xenophon’s Mirror of Princes: Reading the Reflections (Oxford,2011).

4 I survey the political views of Xenophon in the general introduction to V. Gray,Xenophon on Government (Cambridge, 2007). For essays on Xenophon’s reconciliationwith democracy and his wish to reform it for the better, see P. Gauthier, ‘Le Programme

Copyright (c) Imprint Academic 2011For personal use only -- not for reproduction

Ron Kroeker has most recently engaged with Xenophon’s political

thought about democracy.5 With reference to my article (see note 2), he

argued against what he showed to be still the consensus, which is that

Xenophon is undemocratic, and he agreed that we cannot judge Xenophon’s

views until we understand the normal range of Athenian democratic ideol-

ogy. He applies the distinction between the immanent/internal critic and

the rejectionist/external critic to Xenophon’s material with very interest-

ing results. The internal critic reforms from inside and points out how

society has strayed from its foundational ideals; the external critic holds up

models of reform imported from outside. He finds the immanent critic of

democracy in much of Xenophon’s work and the rejectionist critic by

implication only when, in Constitution of the Spartans (hereafter cited as

LP), after praising the laws of the Spartans, Xenophon declares that it is

most amazing that ‘everyone praises such practices, but no polis has the

will to copy them’ (10.8).

Xenophon uses such phrases elsewhere to underscore the hardship

involved in following/imitating the best practices, without a rejectionist

implication. For instance, in Hipparchicus, after describing the ‘best’

practices of the cavalry commander, he ends with the statement: ‘almost

everyone knows these things, but not many have the will to persist in carry-

ing them out’ (4.5). Nevertheless, our evidence certainly invites us take

the comment in LP as aimed at the Athenians, but with this important pro-

viso, that we appreciate that their democratic ideology easily accommo-

dates the Spartan practices he has just described; and that highlights the

question of understanding their democratic ideology. This accommoda-

tion is shown in the conversation in Memorabilia (III 5) in which Socrates

is advising the younger Pericles how to make the Athenians militarily suc-

cessful. Here they envisage producing in the Athenian army virtues that

they explicitly associate with Sparta, and which are also found in Xenophon’s

LP (respect for elders, body-building, obedience to commanders, homonoiaabove envy). They also agree that the Athenians are reluctant to imitate the

Spartans (Mem. III 5.15–16), which again echoes the comment in LP. Yet

they do not for a moment envisage the end of democracy — as I argue

below. Moreover, though Xenophon’s idea that the Athenians should

imitate the Spartans seems rejectionist because it imports the Spartan

model, we notice that among the other models that Socrates offers for

imitation in this conversation are the Athenian navy and Athenian choral

and gymnastic competitions, as well as their own ancestral system, which

2 V.J. GRAY

de Xénophon dans les Poroi (Xenophon’s Programme in the Poroi)’, and S. Johnstone,‘Virtuous Toil, Vicious Work: Xenophon on Aristocratic Style’, reprinted in Xenophon(Oxford Readings in Classical Studies), ed. V. Gray (Oxford, 2010), pp. 113–66.

5 R. Kroeker, ‘Xenophon as a Critic of the Athenian Democracy’, History of PoliticalThought, 30.2 (2009), pp. 197–228.


XENOPHON’S SOCRATES AND DEMOCRACY 3

seems to suggest that ‘the democracy has strayed from its foundational ideals’

in the way of the immanent critic,6 but even then has not strayed completely,

as their cultural competitions and naval forces show.

Kroeker sees the freedom of the individual as essential to democratic

ideology, taking Pericles’ Funeral Speech from Thucydides as a guide, and

he opposes to this view the lack of individual freedom endorsed in LP. I

would argue rather that the ideological essence of the Spartan practices

described in LP is the obedience to the laws that the preface points to as the

secret of their success, and that Pericles shows this to be part of Athenian

democratic ideology too when he praises the Athenians’ obedience to com-

manders and laws in his articulation of that ideology in the Funeral

Speech. Both ideologies reflect Xenophon’s view that success is assured

by obedience to the authorities and to law, no matter what the political con-

stitution may be (see Mem. IV 4.16; Cyropaedia VI 1).7 If such obedience

is equated with a denial of personal freedom, then it already exists in

Athens, in those significant parts of their organization that already show

‘obedience to those in charge’ and ‘good order’ (Mem. III 5.18–21). Spar-

tan marriage laws infringed individual freedom more than Athenian mar-

riage laws, but obedience to law is a higher ideology than mere personal

freedom.

Xenophon’s democratic tendencies in Hellenica and Poroi have also

been recently addressed.8 Poroi is intended to reform the Athenian economy

in order to relieve the poverty of the demos, but its evidently democratic

endorsement has drawn special pleading to the contrary: that Xenophon

wrote it in order to secure the favour of the demos for his return from exile,

or that it conceals an attempt to disenfranchise the demos by making them

dependent on welfare. John Lewis implicitly challenges the undemocratic

interpretation when he finds the economic and political theory of Jean-

Baptiste Say in the work. Bernard Dobski focuses on Xenophon’s presen-

tation of the restored democracy at Athens, where he has Thrasybulus

endorse the qualities of the demos in order to justify the rule of the restored

democracy (Hel. II 4.40–43). As with Poroi there have been attempts to

explain away the endorsement in terms of Xenophon’s political opportun-

ism. Dobski believes to the contrary that Xenophon is in dialogue with

Thucydides about the nature of the best constitution in this episode and

that he substitutes this restored democracy as the ‘best government’ for the

6 Kroeker, ‘Xenophon as a Critic’, p. 201.7 For comments on the funeral speech, see V. Gray, ‘A Short Response to David M.

Johnson, “Xenophon’s Socrates on Law and Justice”’, Ancient Philosophy, 24 (2004),pp. 442–6.

8 B. Dobski, ‘Athenian Democracy Refounded: Xenophon’s Political History in theHellenika’; and J. Lewis, ‘Xenophon’s Poroi and the Foundations of Political Econo-my’, in The Political Thought of Xenophon, ed. D. Gish and W. Ambler, Special Issue ofPolis, 26.2 (2009), pp. 316–38, 370–88.


government of the Five Thousand that Thucydides endorses as the ‘best’

(VIII 97.2). He believes that this is because Thucydides’ best constitution

arose from necessity, 9 whereas Xenophon’s is based on traditional

authority, and he argues that Xenophon considers traditional authority to be

best able to protect philosophy as represented by Socrates — even though

this is the democracy that put him to death.

More important for me than the dialogue with Thucydides or connection

with Socrates are the direct implications for what Xenophon thought about

the restored democracy. The thrust of Thrasybulus’ comment is that superior

virtue alone justifies rule: the oligarchs have shown themselves to be infe-

rior in courage and wisdom and justice, and therefore should bow down to

the demos. This idea that those who know themselves to be inferior should

follow their betters turns out to be a general principle that can also justify

non-democratic rule. Xenophon has Cyrus the Great express the same

thought in the same shape and sentence structure as is used by Thrasybulus,

but in order to justify the rule of the Persians over subject nations (Cyr. VII

5.83).10 This makes the restored democracy only one among many ‘best

constitutions’, in all of which the ruling element demonstrates superior

virtue. Other parts of what Thrasybulus says are also general principles

that go beyond democracy, such as his idea that the oligarchs should ‘know

themselves’ in the Socratic way because they have proven inferior to the

demos (Hel. II 4.40). In Cyropaedia, Croesus the Lydian explains in simi-

lar terms how he came to ‘know himself’ to be inferior in virtue when

defeated by Cyrus, and he agrees that he must assent to his leadership as a

result (VII 2).11 Thrasybulus’ exhortation that the Athenians should keep

their oaths and obey the ancestral laws also appears in other contexts

where obedience is the key to political success (such as Mem. IV 4.16). His

endorsement makes him one of those heroes mentioned in that passage

who enforce the law and thus secure the success of their community.

Another equivalent is Cyrus, who tells the Persians that they must continue

to obey the rules that made them superior in virtue, since only such obedi-

ence can ensure their continuing virtue, which is the justification of their

rule (Cyr. VII 5.83).

4 V.J. GRAY

9 See Dobski, ‘Athenian Democracy Refounded’, pp. 336–7; cf. S. Hornblower,Commentary on Thucydides (Oxford, 2008), vol. 3 (arguing that Thucydides’ judgmenthere is based on the blending of the elements in the constitution).

10 See Gray, Xenophon’s Mirror of Princes, pp. 243–4.11 See E. Lefèvre, ‘Die Frage nach dem �� Die Begegnung zwischen

Kyros und Kroisos bei Xenophon (The Question of the �� : The Encoun-ter between Cyrus and Croesus in Xenophon)’, in Gray, Xenophon, pp. 401–17; see alsoGray, Xenophon’s Mirror of Princes, pp. 149–57.



Xenophon’s Socrates and Democracy

Luccioni offers the most systematic evaluation of the attitudes of Xenophon’s

Socrates towards the Athenian demos. He believes that Xenophon used Soc-

rates as his mouth-piece and calls them both ‘adversaires de la démocratie’,

arguing that Xenophon had a prejudice towards the wealthy and Socrates

taught him to support this through philosophy.12 The view has not changed in

recent times and may even have hardened. Vlastos uses the same evidence as

Luccioni to establish that Xenophon’s Socrates’ conception of the ‘royal art’

of rule was undemocratic because its practice and its benefits were limited to

an elite, whereas Plato’s conception was democratic because it was accessible

to all.13 But he leaves the passage in which Socrates describes the assembly as

superlatively weak and witless unqualified, whereas Luccioni at least noted

Socrates’ recognition of their basic ‘competence’;14 and whereas Luccioni only

tried to undermine the passage that proves Socrates’ obedience to democratic

law, through questioning his motives, Vlastos dismissed it entirely as ‘that curi-

ous piece of legal positivism’ which was unavailing against other evidence.15

This article offers a more balanced and complete reading of the evidence,

and takes account of new ways in which the definition of what is democratic

might be assessed.16 Xenophon’s Memorabilia provides the most evidence,

with more occasional insights offered in Oeconomicus, Symposium and

Apology of Socrates to the Jury. Xenophon here defends Socrates against his

conviction at the hands of an Athenian democratic court on the official

charges of not worshipping the gods of the polis, but introducing new ones,

and corrupting the youth. He does not make Socrates directly address his

dikast�rion, as Plato does in his Apology of Socrates or as Xenophon himself

does in his Apology, but he refutes the charges and presents the character of

the defendant for posthumous judgment. The work can indeed be placed in the

rhetorical tradition of the speech that defended the client against charges

raised in the process of preliminary scrutiny for office (dokimasia) in the

democracy. That speech can take the form of an argument in two phases:

12 J. Luccioni, Les Idées Politiques et Sociales de Xénophon (Paris, 1946),pp. 108–38 (‘Xénophon et la Démocratie Athénienne’); quotations are at pp. 108, 114.

13 G. Vlastos, ‘The Historical Socrates and Athenian Democracy’, Political Theory,11.4 (1983), pp. 495–516; reprinted in G. Vlastos, Socratic Studies (Cambridge, 1994),pp. 87–108.

14 Vlastos, Socratic Studies, p. 98; Luccioni, Les Idées, pp. 114–18.15 Vlastos, Socratic Studies, p. 106; Luccioni, Les Idées, pp. 130–2. A random exam-

ple of recent scholarship confirms the negative image in a passing footnote: C.J. Rowe,‘Killing Socrates: Plato’s Later Thoughts on Democracy’, Journal of Hellenic Studies,121 (2001), pp. 63–76, at p. 75 n. 43.

16 Ober is one of the leaders in this field: see J. Ober, Political Dissent in DemocraticAthens (Princeton, 1998); see also L. Kallett-Marx, ‘Institutions, Ideology, and PoliticalConsciousness in Ancient Greece: Some Recent Books on Athenian Democracy’, Jour-nal of the History of Ideas, 55.2 (1994), pp. 307–35.


refutation of specific charges, then demonstration of wider virtue.17 Memora-bilia accordingly uses rhetorical argument to refute the specific charges

against Socrates (I 1.1 — I 2.64), then goes beyond the charges and demon-

strates the positive virtue of his teaching mainly through a series of short con-

versations (I 3 — IV 8). Xenophon may encourage us to read Memorabilia as

dokimasia at the point where he is about to begin the demonstration (I 4.1); for

he invites the audience to ‘test’ the evidence ( ��). Certainly, he

ends Memorabilia with the invitation: ‘making a comparison with the charac-

ter of others, with respect to this let him judge (��)’ (IV 8.11).

IXenophon’s Memorabilia as Evidence

The rhetorical and defensive nature of Memorabilia could discredit its evi-

dence and suggest that it is a complete whitewash of the historical Socrates, in

the same way that Lysias might whitewash a client’s oligarchic tendencies

before a live courtroom. The form certainly dictates some accommodation

with democratic expectations since the charges that it refutes include those for

plain undemocratic conviction, such as Socrates’ opposition to the use of

sortition in the selection of magistrates (Mem. I 2.9–11). Ober has argued that

an accommodation is expected even where there is no live presentation, as

when Isocrates in Antidosis pretends to be on trial in a democratic court in

order to make an account of his own life and works: ‘Isocrates is forced by the

situation to show his audience that he is a loyal adherent of the democratic

politeia. In the setting of a public trial before a demotic jury, he cannot be

expected to contemplate the replacement of democracy with a politeia whose

establishment might eliminate his own raison d’être.’18

Certainly, Xenophon’s basic image of Socrates is democratic in the broad-

est sense; his central argument, in response to the implication of harm in the

official charges, is that Socrates helped the polis rather than harming it. The

speeches of Lysias also indicate that helping and not harming the demos is the

general test of the democrat.19 This mostly takes the form of personal military

service or financial support for the demos in the form of liturgies — the equip-

ping of a trireme, the production of a chorus, and so on — but other kinds of

assistance could be equally valid. Xenophon accordingly writes the first part

of the work to prove that he did not harm the polis in his religious teaching or

practice, or by encouraging or failing to restrain the bad desires of the young

for sex and food, warmth and sleep, money and clothes (I 2.1–8, cf. the con-

clusion at I 2.64) — which he takes to be the basis of corruption. He takes the

6 V.J. GRAY

17 V. Gray, The Framing of Socrates: The Literary Interpretation of Xenophon’sMemorabilia (Stuttgart, 1998), pp. 89–91.

18 Ober, Political Dissent, p. 287. Ober does not deal with Xenophon, but suggeststhat he and his Socrates are critics of democracy (p. 50 n.70).

19 See Lysias 25.4, 11, and passim.



charges to mean that Socrates harmed the community in the broadest sense

rather than the constitution in the narrow sense.20 His alleged promotion of the

beating of fathers, the dishonouring of relatives, and idle living (I 2.49–61) is

certainly more harmful to the general community than the constitution.21 He

makes corruption a political issue when Critias and Alcibiades enter politics

with their desires unrestrained, but these threaten the democracy and the oli-

garchy alike.22

The second part of Memorabilia confirms this emphasis on the general

community when it argues that Socrates used his wisdom to ‘help’ members

of the polis to improve a range of the reciprocal relationships that brought

cohesion to the community: between citizens and the gods (I 4 and IV 3), their

families and relatives (II 2–3), their friends (II 4–10), and between the leaders

and the demos itself (III 1–7); he even helped artists and prostitutes

understand their profession (III 9–10).23 Yet, though Xenophon puts Socrates in

a democratic frame, he may put the devil in the details. Ober calls Plato’s Apol-ogy ‘a demonstration of an alternative and openly critical use of the ordinarily

democratic genre of dicanic rhetoric’,24 which undermines the democratic

20 The overtly political charges, such as Socrates’ opposition to sortition (I 2.9–11)come from those who make accusations beyond the official ones; the usual view is thatthey are developing the debate about Socrates; cf. Gray, The Framing of Socrates, pp.60–73. Xenophon’s support for other interpretations could be argued, but, for example,the evidence that Socrates corrupted the young by teaching them dialectic or making theweaker argument appear the stronger is limited to the conversation between Pericles andAlcibiades (I 2.40–46).

21 The religious charges are understood in a similarly broad sense. T. Irwin, in ‘Soc-rates and Athenian Democracy’, Philosophy and Public Affairs, 18.2 (1989), pp.184–205, at pp. 189–91, refers to the notion that Socrates’ impiety was indicative of whatcaused the disastrous outcome of the Peloponnesian War — but there is nothing to sup-port this. Xenophon defends Socrates as a believer who worshipped ‘according to thecustom of the polis’ and was very ‘visible’ in his worship; his �� is also ‘publicknowledge’ (I 1.2, 10, 17–18). He re-defines �� as consulting the gods in unrea-sonable ways, thinking that everything or nothing is within the grasp of men, and investi-gating heavenly �� (I 1.9, 12). Xenophon, at Apology 14, says that he incurredjealousy for his �� because the gods seemed to be honouring him more than oth-ers, another apolitical motive for the charge. Socrates teaches men to honour the godswithout political reference (I 4 and IV 3).

22 Critias was most thieving, violent and murderous in the oligarchy, while Alcibiadeswas most uncontrolled, hybristic and violent in the democracy (I 2.12); both were mostambitious under either constitution, wanting to have everything in their hands (I 2.14, 24).

23 See Gray, The Framing of Socrates, pp. 10–11, which focuses on references to thishelpfulness. The programmatic I 3.1 identifies proving Socrates’ ‘helpfulness’ as themain point of the second part of the work (I 3–IV 8) and the conclusion recapitulates thisas his chief quality (IV 8.11). At IV 1.1, Xenophon describes associating with Socrates as‘most helpful in whatever manner and wherever pursued’; reported conversations makefrequent references to Socrates’ helpfulness or how he established this as a goal for others.

24 Ober, Political Dissent, p. 177.


c expectations of the law-courts, such as the production of children to elicit com-

passion.25 Some criticism of democracy is indeed expected from the historical

Socrates. The accepted view is that he did not try to establish a position entirely

independent of the beliefs and practices of his democratic community; but his

position rests on much more than straightforward adoption of those beliefs and

practices, for he gives a reasoned, reflective response to those beliefs and prac-

tices.26 The assessment of how democratic that response was depends ulti-

mately on how acceptable it would have been to the citizens en masse.

IISocrates and the Laws, Written and Unwritten

Attitudes to democratic laws and institutions are major tests of the democrat.27

I therefore begin with the discussion between Xenophon’s Socrates and

Hippias about justice and the laws (IV 4) taking into account Alcibiades’ con-

versation with Pericles on the same topic (I 2.40–46), and moving on to the

passage in which Socrates is said to have opposed the use of the random ballot

to choose ‘rulers’ in the democracy (I 2.9–11).

Pericles defines law in democratic terms in his conversation with his

ward Alcibiades, as the written agreements that the majority of the citizens

(��) have gathered together to approve, which indicate what to do and

what not to do (I 2.42). A further part of the definition is that laws make citi-

zens do what is good and avoid what is bad. But Alcibiades uses dialectic to

refute the definition; he proves that laws of all kinds of constitutions are not

true law because they do not secure universal agreement but force citizens to

obey them; the laws of a tyrant force all to obey, the laws of oligarchy force

the masses, and the laws of democracy force the minority, which consists of

the owners of property. Alcibiades’ arguments could be read out of context as

the views of Socrates coming out in the pupil; but though Socrates has

taught Alcibiades how to use the dialectic method, Xenophon introduces the

conversation with the proviso that he was barely twenty years old at the time,

which is short-hand for immaturity. Glaucon also attempts to advise the

assembly at this age and is laughed off the speaker’s platform because of his

immature ignorance (III 6.1). Alcibiades has the cleverness only of youth.

Pericles does not refute him, but he does say that he could use dialectic just as

cleverly when he was Alcibiades’ age, which confirms that it is characteristic

of the young. The conversation is also placed in a section of the defence which

takes the charge of corruption to mean that Socrates failed to control, or posi-

tively encouraged, bad desires in the youth, and which argues that though

8 V.J. GRAY

25 Ibid., pp. 175–7.26 C. Gill, Greek Political Thought (Oxford, 1995), p. 51.27 See E. Wood and N. Wood, ‘Socrates and Democracy: A Reply to Gregory

Vlastos’, Political Theory, 14.1 (1986), pp. 55–82, at pp. 59–65 (arguing in these termsagainst Vlastos).



Socrates controlled Alcibiades and Critias in their early youth, they escaped

Socrates’ control and lost their restraint in their later youth (I 2.12–48). In this

conversation then, Alcibiades is showing the lack of respect for his guardian

that is typical of unrestrained desires, one of which is the desire to prove him-

self wiser than the father-figure.28

Alcibiades’ idea that laws are not valid unless they are based on the consent

of those who live under them recurs in the other two passages relating to the

laws, which reveal the mature views of Socrates himself. But Socrates is

unlike Alcibiades because he defines justice simply as lawfulness.29 In the

conversation with Hippias, he recommends obedience to two types of law: the

laws that members of the polis have written down for themselves in agree-

ment about what to do and what to avoid (IV 4.13), and the unwritten laws that

are universally in force everywhere and because of that seem to come from

the gods (IV 4.19). Here, whereas Pericles was defining the laws of the

democracy (�� ), Socrates defines the laws of any constitution (hoipolitai). He does however have democracy in mind, as the earlier reference to

how the new concept of justice will settle the disagreements among the votes

of dikastai (IV 4.8) and as the subsequent reference to how obedience to the

laws will win advantage in the �� (IV 4.17) show. Socrates’ position

on law indeed puts him in the camp of Pericles, who as leader of the democ-

racy made the same division and recommended the same obedience to both

kinds of law: ‘We do not act contrary to the laws, in obedience to those in

authority and the laws at any time, and especially those designed for the assis-

tance of the oppressed and the laws that though unwritten carry the agreed

penalty of shame when broken’ (Thucydides II 37.3). Pericles’ endorsement

of obedience to ‘rulers’ who implement the law is also echoed, as we will see

below, in Xenophon’s description of Socrates (IV 4.1).

Socrates defends written laws even against the charge that citizens fre-

quently scrutinize and change them (IV 4.14, using the word for ‘testing’

which Pericles had used to Alcibiades). He thinks no less well of a man who

obeys laws that are then changed than of a man who obeys military orders

before the end of a war.30 He points out that those communities which exhibit

the general habit of obedience to written law enjoy homonoia, that unity of

purpose which brings political success and prosperity. He cites the obedience

to the laws of Lycurgus in Sparta as one example of such success, but is still

thinking of other constitutions, including democracy, since he goes on to

28 More general attempts at this same game are found in the subsequent section(I 2.49–55).

29 See D. Morrison, ‘Xenophon’s Socrates on the Just and the Lawful’, Ancient Phi-losophy, 15 (1995), pp. 329–47.

30 Plato allows that laws can be badly made (Hippias Major 284d), but the usual viewwas that laws should remain unchanged: see S. Todd, ‘Lysias against Nikomachos: TheFate of the Expert in Athenian Law’, in Greek Law in its Political Setting, ed. L. Foxhalland A. Lewis (Oxford, 1996), pp. 101–31, at pp. 130–1.


describe the most successful cities in the plural as being the ones who have

most respect for law: ‘of the rulers in the cities . . . those are best who best

cause the citizens to obey the laws, and the cities in which the citizens most

obey the laws do best in peace and are invincible in war’ (IV 4.15). ‘Rulers’

include the balloted magistrates of the democracy (I 2.9, discussed below).

This homonoia is not restricted to the Spartans, though their homonoia was

legendary (see III 5.16),31 for the reference is again in the plural: ‘Homonoiaalso seems to the cities to be the greatest good and very often in them the coun-

cils of elders and the best men exhort the citizens to think alike (homonoein)

and there is a law (nomos) everywhere in Greece that the citizens swear to

think alike and everywhere they swear this oath’ (IV 4.16).

Socrates goes on to interpret this oath as a law that required obedience to

the laws and then to demonstrate the benefits of obedience, maintaining for

example that the man who obeys the laws will have more victories in the

�� and fewer defeats (IV 4.17).32 There were indeed oaths that

required obedience to the laws, such as the bouleutic oath (I 1.18) and the

jurors’ oath (IV 4.4). Moreover, Xenophon associates homonoia with the rule

of law and identifies it as characteristic of the democracy that the Athenians

re-established after their defeat of the oligarchs at the end of the Pelopon-

nesian War. Thrasybulus, the leader of the democratic resistance, recom-

mended that both parties live quietly ‘in obedience to the former laws’, and

they subsequently swore oaths ‘not to remember wrong’ (Hel. II 4.42).33

Xenophon expresses his admiration for the democracy of his own times when

he notes that the two parties still conduct their polis in togetherness and

remain by the oaths they swore. Lysias endorses this homonoia as the most

democratic feature of the democrat: ‘they think those most democratic

( ��) who, wishing you to think alike (homonoein), abide by their

oaths and agreements’ — as their ‘salvation’ and ‘guard’ (25.20, 23, 28–29).

Socrates attributes the encouragement of homonoia to what seem to be aristo-

cratic elements, but the ‘best men’ are operational even in democracy, as the

case of Thrasybulus shows: Xenophon identifies him as ‘good’ at his death

(Hel. IV 8.31).

Socrates does not spell out the relationship between written and unwritten

law, and this leaves room for speculation about possible conflict, and leads to

10 V.J. GRAY

31 See V. Gray, ‘Xenophon and Isocrates’, in The Cambridge History of Greek andRoman Political Thought, ed. M. Schofield and C. Gill (Cambridge, 2000), pp. 142–54.

32 The �� failed to reach the right judgment in Socrates’ own case, but here heendorses their operations. His case was complicated by his refusal to offer a properdefence (see Apo. 4).

33 Citizens swore oaths in support of homonoia after the return and reconciliation ofexiles to Mytilene in 324 (Inscriptiones Graecae (Berlin, 1873–), XII 2, 6, line 30); thereis also a prayer and sacrifice that the reconciliation be respected (lines 38–9). See J.Jones, Law and Legal Theory of the Greeks (Oxford, 1956), Ch. 4 (‘Eunomia, Homonoia,Isonomia’).



the debate about whether Socrates is truly a legal positivist or an idealist.34

The same distinction in the mouth of Pericles has also been thought to contain

a possible tension, and the possibility has been advanced there that his unwrit-

ten laws are undemocratic.35 However, Socrates’ examples of unwritten law

are honouring the gods, honouring parents, the law against incest, and the law

for repayment of favours, which was the foundation of justice (Mem. IV

4.20–24). These are not aristocratic. Nor can one imagine any community

endorsing incest in their written laws. Other evidence confirms that written

law does confirm unwritten law, and reveals the kind of circumstances in

which communities might write down unwritten law; that is, when it directly

affected their political and constitutional interests. In a conversation in which

he seeks to make his son repay the good care of his mother, Socrates says that

the written legislation of Athens mostly overlooks ingratitude, but makes it a

written law and inflicts the penalty of disqualification from office if a man

does not honour his parents (II 2.13). The written law may then neglect

unwritten law, perhaps culpably, where it is not relevant to political life in the

narrow sense, but it does not gainsay it — and needs to endorse it in cases

where it is of importance to political life. Xenophon agrees, in his Cyropaedia(I 2.7), that ingratitude is seldom treated as a crime in law. The main differ-

ences between written and unwritten law are compatible therefore, rather than

confrontational: unwritten laws are in force throughout the world — ‘in every

land honoured in the same way’ (Mem. IV 4.19; Hippias gives this definition,

but Socrates assents to it) — whereas written laws reflect the unique arrange-

ments of different communities; and the transgression of unwritten law brings

its own penalty (IV 4.21), whereas in written laws the penalty has to be

imposed. The advance Socrates makes on Pericles is that while he sees shame

as the penalty for transgression, Socrates envisages disadvantage of a more

tangible kind: the inbred children produced by incest, the lack of friendship

consequent on ingratitude, and so on.36

A more important tension, not revealed in the conversation with Hippias, is

the inability of law to deal with those cases where the same action could be

just and unjust depending on the use to which it was put. Socrates’ conversa-

tion with Euthydemus reveals this (IV 2.12–23), but does not relate it to the

identification of the legal with the just; he is intent instead on proving that

Euthydemus is merely ignorant of what justice is. Xenophon’s Cyropaedia

34 Morrison, in ‘Xenophon’s Socrates’, comes down on the side of legal positivism.35 Loraux attempts to show this, but in my view is not successful: see N. Loraux,

L’Invention d’Athènes: Histoire de l’Oraison Funèbre dans la “Cité Classique” (Paris,1981), pp. 185–6.

36 R. Thomas (‘Written in Stone? Liberty, Equality, Orality and the Codification ofLaw’, in Greek Law, ed. Foxhall and Lewis, pp. 9–31) confirms that a distinctionbetween written and unwritten law is expected in the process of developing a writtencode, but that the two types of law supplement rather than contradict each other; therewas no need to translate into writing those laws that carried their own automatic penalties.


(I 3.16–17) raises a slightly different tension when his young Cyrus overtly chal-

lenges the identification of justice and law in his decision not to punish the boy

with a cloak too small who took a larger cloak from a smaller boy. The law said

that the big boy’s action was unjust, but the benefit produced shows the limits of

the law in reaching a fitting conclusion. This suggests that law might not be suffi-

ciently comprehensive to take in all the relevant aspects of a case. However, it is

significant Cyrus accepts that his teachers were right to beat him for his decision,

since he was meant to be judging whether a crime had been committed, not

whether the fit was good. This might be another kind of situation in which the

need for �� prevailed over law that was less than perfect.

The written law of the democracy is not perfect, then, perhaps for reasons

that Socrates does not press, perhaps because justice in its broadest sense is

irreconcilable with the rule of written law. But the citizens may address such

imperfections and change their written laws in agreement after testing them,

perhaps even after being persuaded by politicians such as those educated by

Socrates (see the discussion below). However, the higher interests of the com-

mon good of homonoia prevail in the final analysis, and citizens may not put

their individual likes or dislikes of any particular law above the common

good; to this end they swear to ‘think alike’. Alcibiades develops the need for

persuasion too far, but it contains an essential ideal; the best that communities

could do to implement the ideal was to agree to agree to the idea of obedience,

even if not to each and every individual law. Unwritten law does not normally

impinge on the interests of the polis, but it is not undemocratic, and is trans-

lated into democratic law where the interest of the polis is sufficiently strong,

as in the case of the need to prove gratitude to parents in scrutiny for demo-

cratic office. The need to honour the gods was translated into written law in

the charges against Socrates that he did not honour the gods of the polis, but

introduced other new divinities. The law against incest might also be trans-

lated into approved law, where a community wanted to endorse a eugenic

breeding programme.

IIISocrates’ Obedience to the Athenians’ Laws

Xenophon demonstrates at the beginning of the conversation with Hippias

that Socrates was scrupulous in his own obedience to the laws: ‘in private life

his dealings with others were lawful and helpful, and in public life he obeyed

the rulers and whatever the laws instructed, giving obedience within the polis

and keeping in order alongside the others in military campaigns’ (Mem. IV

4.1–4).37 It has not been noticed that this language recalls the ephebic oath,

which survives in fourth-century inscriptions and is first mentioned in the

12 V.J. GRAY

37 Socrates’ own practice is important. Irwin (‘Socrates’, p. 197) distinguishesundemocratic conviction, such as criticism of government, from undemocratic activity,such as its overthrow.



law-courts by Lycurgus (1.77).38 Ephebes also swore to obey the rulers and

the laws, and not to abandon the man who fought alongside him. Socrates’

allegiance to this oath, which he had himself sworn as a hoplite, might well

provide a firm basis for his allegiance to law. Lycurgus confirms that it held

the democracy together (1.79: �� ), and he goes on

to claim that the archon, the juror and the private citizen take the oath as a

pledge of lawfulness. It could certainly require citizens to obey even those

laws to which they did not individually consent. Xenophon also notes that

Socrates ‘did not allow the people’ to put the vote about the proposal to con-

demn the generals of Arginousai en bloc because it contravened the existing

law (Hel. I 7.15, 20–26). He attributes this refusal to his bouleutic oath (Mem.

I 1.18), but the ephebic oath also required the citizen to prevent others over-

throwing the laws.39 Finally, he observed the jurors’ oath when he refused to

appeal for favour at his own trial because this was also ‘contrary to the law’ —

as is confirmed by Lysias: ‘but if, though having no justice, they tell you to

give them a favour, remember that they are teaching you to break your oath

and disobey the laws’ (14.20–22). Plato’s Socrates in his Apology (35b–d)

agrees that the jurors’ oath was to judge ‘according to the laws’, not to bargain

for favour.40

Xenophon also includes in Memorabilia a brief statement of Socrates’

resistance to the illegalities of the oligarchy, which produces an important

proviso on his attitude to laws. He says that Socrates disobeyed the ‘instruc-

tions’ of the oligarchy to bring in citizens for summary execution and not to

talk to the young. He calls their instructions ‘contrary to the laws’, which

means that his disobedience is not unlawful, but it is not clear from this brief

statement how their instructions are contrary to the laws, and there is a further

difficulty if this statement is compared with the earlier account of his dealings

with the oligarchs (Mem. I 2.31–39); for Xenophon had there called the

instruction about the young a ‘law’ and called its author, Critias, a ��of the Thirty (I 2.31).

The reason why Xenophon now includes that ‘law’ as ‘contrary to the laws’

can be found in the conversation that Socrates then had about that law with

Critias and his fellow ��, Charicles. Socrates occupies his usual

position when he begins his challenge by indicating that he is ready to obey

the laws, but he seeks clarification about this law’s precise meaning (I 2.34).

He uses his dialectic method to bring these nomothetai to agree that what their

38 For the text, see P. Siewert, ‘The Ephebic Oath in Fifth-Century Athens’, Journalof Hellenic Studies, 97 (1977), pp. 102–11.

39 Ephebes swore ‘I shall not allow’ anyone to overthrow the laws, neither alone norwith others. Socrates opposed the people ‘alone’ on this occasion, but ‘with the help ofthe laws’.

40 On the jurors’ oath, see D. MacDowell, The Law in Classical Athens (London,1978), p. 44.


law intends is that he ‘avoid’ (the word used to define law at IV 4.13) the cob-

blers, builders and metalworkers, which they agree further means avoiding

‘justice and holiness and connected matters’ (I 2.37). Xenophon does not say

here that Socrates disobeyed the law; he keeps that revelation for the conver-

sation with Hippias. But it is clear that a law that keeps him away from justice

in the sense of not being able to discuss it, also keeps others away from the

justice they might have learned from his discussions of it, and therefore con-

tradicts the definition of law, which tells people to pursue the good.41 Dialec-

tic has tested this law and found it contrary to the definition of law. The

‘testing’ and approval that Pericles says that democratic citizens must give to

their laws would in its ideal philosophic form be the dialectic ‘testing’ that

Socrates uses here.

The need for laws to meet the definition in order to have status as law is an

important proviso on Socrates’ readiness to obey the laws. To judge by his

attitude to oligarchic law, his chosen option where law failed the definition

was to criticize and try to change the laws; if he failed to convince the

law-makers, he honoured his oath to respect laws that were properly consti-

tuted. Socrates might disobey those improperly constituted, but evidence (dis-

cussed below) indicates that he would never resort to violence. The higher

principle that citizens should obey laws in the interest of homonoia evidently

does not apply to laws that defy the definition. Socrates might have found

democratic law more just. Pericles maintains that the democratic majority

makes laws that pursue justice and avoid injustice; that is, they are honestly

intended. The democracy at least did not make conversation with the young

illegal or licence summary execution as the oligarchs did, and the agreement

of the majority meant that individual grudges could not be pushed through,

nor indiscriminate massacre. An easier way of explaining why Xenophon

calls the oligarchs’ instructions ‘contrary to the laws’ might be that their laws

were contrary to the previously existing laws of the democracy. Xenophon

himself distinguishes between the oligarchs’ ‘new laws’ and the democracy’s

‘old laws’ (Hel. II 3.51, 4.42). There is also the possibility that he wrote this

sentence without much thought, but this still leaves the problem in the earlier

passage of the status of a law that obliges citizens to refrain from having dis-

cussions with the young that are designed to promote justice.

IVSocrates and Democratic Ballot

There is a need to consider in this context the accusers’ earlier allegations that

Socrates taught his pupils to violate the established laws by declaring that it

was foolish to choose ‘rulers’ (archontas) by the process of sortition (Mem.

I 2.9). The connection between contempt for the laws and opposition to

14 V.J. GRAY

41 Cf. L.-A. Dorion, Xénophon: Mémorables (Paris, 2000).



sortition is that the rulers chosen by sortition are despised because they have

no necessary expertise. Since ‘rulers’ tell you what to do and what not to do

(III 9.11), which is the function of the laws (I 2.42, IV 4.13; cf. IV 4.15),

contempt for them is synonymous with contempt for the laws. Much has

been made of the fact that Xenophon does not deny that Socrates opposed

sortition.42 Indeed, Socrates considers it one of a range of invalid devices for

choosing leaders: neither sortition nor election, neither the bean nor the scep-

tre, can define the real ruler, said Socrates; the only valid test is knowledge

(III 9.10). Xenophon however does go on to say that Socrates did not teach

violent overthrow of the laws, but the way of persuasion, which implies the

desire to gain the consent of the governed. This persuasion, which emerges

from many other passages, is directed at the citizens through the democratic

assembly; it is expressed in this passage as ‘teaching the citizens’ (didaskeintous politas). The conversation with Hippias confirms that the citizens may

change the established laws if they wish and this can be the result of persua-

sion. The conversation between Alcibiades and Pericles certainly shows the

need for persuasion to make the laws valid. There is nothing inherently

undemocratic about wishing to change the constitution with the agreement of

the citizens.43 Until such time as persuasion works, Socrates worked within

the system, defending the laws as a balloted member of the council for

instance during the trial of the generals who fought at Arginousai (Hel. I 7).

Sortition may be thought today too fundamental to abandon without

destroying the democracy, but this is not in line with other evidence.44

Isocrates argues that it is essentially undemocratic because it allows oligarchs

to reach office (Areopagiticus 22–3). Ober considers this argument spe-

cious,45 but Lysias (26.9) in a democratic law-court also qualifies the merit of

sortition when he puts forward the argument that the process of dokimasiaalone ensures the exclusion of oligarchs from balloted office, and then from

the exalted heights of the Areopagus, into which archons passed at the end of

their year in office. Socrates modifies the bad effects of the ballot in the same

way when he argues in his conversation with Pericles that the Areopagus con-

sists of ‘those who have passed dokimasia’, who, for this reason, in spite of

their selection by the ballot, judge with justice and dignity and respect for the

laws (Mem. III 5.20). His developed position on the selection of magistrates

through the ballot then, if these two insights are combined, is that it was fool-

ish, but that preliminary scrutiny limited the damage by preventing undesirable

42 Vlastos, Socratic Studies, p. 89.43 Plato’s Socrates also envisages two alternatives: obeying the laws of the polis, or

persuading the polis what justice consists in. See M. Schofield, ‘I. F. Stone and GregoryVlastos on Socrates and Democracy’, Apeiron, 34 (2000), pp. 281–301, at p. 282.

44 H. Erbse, ‘Die Architektonik im Aufbau von Xenophons Memorabilien’, Hermes,89 (1961), pp. 257–87, at p. 261 (also finding reasons to soften the effect).

45 Ober, Political Dissent, p. 280.


citizens from attaining power. Since this scrutiny represented the judgment of

the demos (as is made clear at II 2.13), Socrates thinks that democracy miti-

gated the worst effects. Lysias shows that this was indeed the purpose of

dokimasia.

Xenophon does not offer this argument in mitigation of sortition in the

original passage in Memorabilia (I 2.9) because of his greater focus there on

the corruption of the youth and his concern to argue against the charge that

Socrates taught political violence. Nor does he need to rehearse the draw-

backs of sortition in the second passage (III 5.20), which focuses on proving

how dokimasia ensures excellence. This is one of the problems in Memora-bilia — the evidence is contextualized within separate conversations with

separate agenda. The gaps allow us to speculate that Socrates might have

opposed sortition not only because of the need for experts, but also in the

higher interests of obedience to the laws, on the grounds that people disobey

the laws if those who implement them do not command respect.46 Socrates

adds that those ‘rulers’ in any constitution are best who best cause the citizens

to obey the laws (IV 4.15). The ballot did not always secure such people. Soc-

rates championed the laws against the demos when he presided as balloted

member of the council in the trial of the Arginousai generals. In a curious

way, this vindicates his criticism, since the demos did not respect him as their

balloted officer or the laws he championed; they pushed the illegal motion

through. Xenophon says that any other balloted person in this situation would

have caved in to the demos (IV 4.2).

VSocrates’ Views on Oligarchy and Democracy in Athens

In the time of Socrates, the reaction of an Athenian to the oligarchic regime

installed by the Spartans at the end of the Peloponnesian War was a part of the

test of the democrat.47 It has been argued that Socrates proved his hostility to

democracy merely by remaining in Athens and presumably being enrolled as

one of the Three Thousand.48 However, Lysias shows a more sophisticated

appreciation of democratic behaviour. He defines �� as participating

in this oligarchy (26.21), but his speeches do not automatically condemn a man

who merely remained in the city under their rule; it depends on what he did

there: particularly whether he served in their cavalry, or on their council, or

co-operated in their persecutions (25.1–2, 15–16). It is, therefore, significant

16 V.J. GRAY

46 In his Constitution of the Spartans (8.1, 3), Xenophon indicates — in a passagedevoted to their obedience — that the ephors needed to be able to ‘terrify the citizens’ toachieve this end.

47 This attitude continued to be a test of the democrat for Isocrates (Areopagiticus64–69).

48 Schofield, ‘Stone and Vlastos’, p. 287; Wood and Wood, ‘Socrates and Democ-racy’, pp. 70–5.



that Xenophon shows that Socrates gave them no co-operation, but quite the

opposite. Indeed he suggests that Socrates did not leave Athens because he

believed in critical engagement (Mem. I 2.29–38); he desired to reform the

oligarchs, and defied their instructions at risk to his life when they failed to

respond. Socrates not only criticized their laws but the unrestrained lust of

their leader Critias for Euthydemus and the entire nature of the regime, which

murdered and corrupted the citizens and failed to meet the basic test of suc-

cessful government, which was to make the citizens more numerous and more

just (I 2.32; see Hel. II 3.11–4.42).

Luccioni used a conversation between Socrates and the son of the great

Pericles (Mem. III 5) to maintain that Socrates deplored the ‘disorder of cus-

toms and ideas’ in the contemporary democracy.49 Yet in this conversation it

is Pericles who describes the indiscipline of Athenians and Socrates who has

faith that it can be remedied; moreover, indiscipline is among the hoplites and

cavalry. Socrates appears to think that the lower economic classes do show

discipline in their various corporate activities. This turns out to be that disci-

plined obedience to lawful authority which is the mark of the good citizen.

The younger Pericles, who has been elected general, complains to Socrates

about the quality of the armed forces. Socrates replies that they would

improve if they emulated the achievements of their ancestors or other appro-

priate models (he means the Spartans) and he cites as proof of their ancestral

military excellence the topoi that are traditionally found in the Athenian

epitaphios (III 5.9–12).50 In response to Pericles’ further complaints that in

contemporary Athens there is no respect for elders or exercise, no obedience

and no homonoia — such as is found in Sparta (III 5.15–17), Socrates praises

contemporary naval practices, athletic and choral competitions; how the

Athenians are ‘obedient to commands’ in the fleets, and ‘obedient to com-

mands and to authorities’ in gymnastic competitions, and how they ‘obey

49 Luccioni, Les Idées, pp. 118–19.50 The epitaphios praised the military strength of the Athenian ancestors. It often ‘de-

mocratized’ earlier forms of government, and even praised contemporary democracy;but this praise regularly ignored features which might be considered definitive fordemocracy (such as the ballot, rotation of office and accountability), or the navy — as inThucydides’ version of Pericles’ epitaphios. See Loraux, L’Invention d’Athènes, pp.175–224. Socrates’ instances of ancestral achievement are: the judgment of the gods inthe time of Cecrops (presumably in the dispute between Ares and Poseidon concerningrape and murder on Areopagus: see F. Jacoby, Die Fragmente der griechischenHistoriker (Leiden, 1923–58), 239, 3); the birth and nurture of Erechtheus under the pro-tection of Athena, and the wars he fought against his neighbours; wars subsequentlyfought on behalf of the Heraclids and those fought by Theseus; the Persian Wars; theautochthony retained through military excellence; the Athenians’ role as arbitrators ofaffairs of others and Athens as a place of refuge for the oppressed.


their trainers’ in the choruses, no less than any others (III 5.18).51 This

eutaxia is a quality Socrates himself showed on military campaigns (IV 4.1:

��). In the polis too citizens had to obey such instructions as were

issued by the overseers of their corporate activities, such as naval and choral

activities. Pericles recognizes that Socrates is attributing this discipline to the

common people when he laments that though ‘men of that sort’ show the

desired qualities, the cavalry and the hoplites, who are generally considered

the cream of the citizens, do not. Socrates, in response to that complaint,

points to the members of the Areopagus who have passed dokimasia (and are

in that sense the best citizens) and who uphold the laws and justice with integ-

rity. He uses this example to dispel Pericles’ final worries.

This admiration for the discipline of ordinary Athenians seems remarkably

different from the usual view of the ordinary people attributed to Socrates. Ref-

erences to the discipline of their navy are also exceptional. The hoplites and

cavalry remained important in the democracy of Socrates’ time even though

their roles gradually became more defensive52 — roles that Socrates envisages

them playing in this conversation (III 5.25–28). Socrates’ faith in the discipline

of contemporary democratic institutions should not of course be read out of

context. He is arguing against a man who is disillusioned and needs encourage-

ment. There is also some irony in having Socrates praise the Athenian ancestors

to the younger Pericles since Thucydides had the father of this Pericles deliver

praise of contemporary Athenians too. Thus there seems no real reason to ques-

tion Socrates’ exemplification of obedience to the laws of Athens.

VISocrates and the ‘Royal Art’

Vlastos has argued that the earlier Platonic dialogues offer the truest represen-

tation of the ‘historical’ Socrates and reveal a ‘royal art’ of government that is

democratic because accessible to everyone — making him d�motikos and

�� , instead of �� .53 In Vlastos’ view, Xenophon’s version of

the ‘royal art’ is oligarchic because it restricts rulership to the few (‘stipulating

the conditions of legitimacy of the tenure of political power’), and produces

political expertise rather than morality in the ruler, and material happiness

18 V.J. GRAY

51 See [Xenophon], Constitution of the Athenians, 1.13 (showing that the poor didtake part).

52 V. Hanson, ‘Hoplites into Democrats: The Changing Ideology of Athenian Infan-try’, in ��: A Conversation on Democracies, Ancient and Modern, ed. J. Oberand C. Hedrick (Princeton, 1996), pp. 289–312, at pp. 295–9.

53 Vlastos, Socratic Studies, p. 105. Wood and Wood (‘Socrates and Democracy’,pp. 66–7) argue that Vlastos’ theory could not accommodate democracy before themasses completed their own education in this art, and ask: ‘what are for Socrates theappropriate political arrangements before the happy day of universal virtue arrives?’.See Schofield, ‘Stone and Vlastos’, pp. 294–7.



rather than virtue in the communities they rule.54 Yet this version does require

dialectical knowledge of virtue, and it produces eudaimonia for the commu-

nity which makes them virtuous, even if through habituation rather than true

knowledge.55 Socrates teaches Euthydemus that the ‘royal art’ (Mem. IV 2.11:

��) requires knowledge of justice (IV 2), piety (IV 3) and the self-

control or self-rule that is the sine qua non for dialectic inquiry (IV 5, esp.

5.11–12). The dialectic discussions that follow (IV 6) reveal the role of this

inquiry in defining the virtues. As for its function in producing virtue in those

under rule, Socrates uses Agamemnon to show that the good leader achieves

eudaimonia for his community by feeding it, keeping it secure and ensuring

that it defeats its enemies, but also by securing ‘the best life’ possible, which

suggests a moral dimension (III 2.1–4). His criticism of the oligarchs for

diminishing the numbers of the citizens by executing good men and diminish-

ing the moral qualities of those who remained by turning them towards ‘injus-

tice’ (I 2.32) confirms that good government means making citizens just. In

an unfinished conversation designed to illustrate his method of dialectic

rather than produce a full definition, Socrates defines the good citizen as one

who makes the polis materially prosperous (IV 6.14), but this does not

exclude the possibility that a more complete form of the conversation would

require a good citizen to have knowledge of virtue and an ability to make the

citizens virtuous.

As for accessibility, Xenophon’s Socrates makes ‘royal’ rulers out of women

and perhaps slaves; in fact, when he declares that knowledge alone legiti-

mizes rule, which is so often taken to be exclusive, Socrates extends the prin-

ciple to women, who rule men in woolwork (III 9.10–11). His belief that the

same art was exercised in the polis as in the household or other ‘associations’

made it accessible to a wide variety of people (III 4.16). Ischomachus

explains to Socrates that he exercises the art in his household and invites his

wife to exercise it too, not only over their household servants but also over

himself (Oeconomicus 7.42). He further claims he has taught the art to slaves

in his household, including self-control and justice and the other virtues, and that

they in turn teach these same qualities to those they rule (9.11–13, 12.1–15.1).

Socrates appears to endorse the teaching of virtue to slaves when he blames the

master for the greed and laziness of his servant (Mem. III 13.4: ��). Their

opposite qualities — such as restraint of the appetites and endurance of toil — are

the virtues that elsewhere he requires of rulers (II 1.1–3).

54 Vlastos, Socratic Studies, pp. 96–105.55 Dorion argues that the ‘royal art’ does not amount to a ‘savoir moral’ but rather a

‘disposition morale’ which comes from self-control: see L.-A. Dorion, ‘Socrate et la�� : essai d’exégèse comparative’, in Socrates: 2400 Years Since His Death,ed. V. Karasmanis (Athens, 2004), pp. 51–62.


VIISocrates and the Assembly

The relationship of ‘leaders and followers’ is problematic for democracy.56

The division that Xenophon’s Socrates endorses between rulers and the ruled

might produce an undemocratic relationship between the demos in Assembly

and its leaders. Yet he insists that leaders should persuade the citizens to fol-

low their policies, and this makes the ‘rulers’ less than autocratic and the

‘ruled’ more than authoritative. Moreover, recent opinion recognizes the

greater executive activity of the wealthy and discrimination against thetes (the

lowest class of citizens at Athens) as a pragmatic fact of life in Athens.57 One

modern theory is that the demos were their own masters, learning the business

of politics through their daily administration of the deme or council or their

committees,58 but even in speeches addressed to the demos in the law-courts

Lysias recognizes the wealthy as those who ‘do politics’ (16.21: �� !�� ), while the role of the demos is,

in his view, to retain ultimate power as their ‘judges’ (kritai). In the Assembly

too those who spoke were men of wealth, but the demos had the final say.59

The poverty of the demos is a distinction that no amount of pay for office

could remedy. Pericles even distinguished those whose ‘care’ for politics is

synonymous with care for their own affairs, from those who work for their

living and are merely ‘not deficient in understanding politics’ (Thu. II 40.2).

He may further extend the distinction between those who do politics and those

who judge them when he adds: ‘We judge rightly or we reflect rightly.’60

20 V.J. GRAY

56 M. Finley, Democracy Ancient and Modern (London, 1985), pp. 3–37, esp. pp.11–12.

57 P. Cartledge, ‘Athenian Democratic Equality’, in ��, ed. Ober andHedrick, pp. 179–80: ‘In practice, however, Athenian citizens neither were, nor wereconsidered for all purposes to be, exactly equal, identical and the same, in all relevantrespects. They were not so, most conspicuously, with respect to their executive capabil-ity, especially since political capacity was deemed to depend crucially on wealth. Hencethe Athenians’ pragmatic resort to election rather than sortition for the greatest militaryand financial offices of government . . . The other side of this elitist pragmatism, perhaps,is the negative ideological discrimination against Athenians of the lowest socio-economicclasses, the thetes.’ See K. Raaflaub, ‘Equalities and Inequalities in Athenian Democ-racy’, in ��, ed. Ober and Hedrick, pp. 139–174, at p. 155, which refers to ‘in-equalities despite democracy’. The theory is that thetes acquired power under the democ-racy because they rowed the ships and demanded equal privilege with those who servedas hoplites, but the property qualification was retained for council; thetes appear not tohave had a separate register of individual �� either, as hoplites and cavalry did.

58 On the various roles the demos could collectively play, see S. Wolin, ‘Transgres-sion, Equality and Voice’, in ��, ed. Ober and Hendrick, pp. 63–90.

59 See Finley, Democracy, p. 24.60 See Loraux, L’Invention d’Athènes, pp. 185–6.



Xenophon’s Socrates makes the same distinction between those who ‘do

politics’ and those who ‘judge’ it in his conversation with Charmides (Mem.

III 7). He tells Antiphon that he educated some people to ‘do politics’ rather

than engaging in politics on his own because this had greater impact (I 6.15).

To ‘do politics’ required in its most illustrious form implementation of the

‘royal art’, which required the moral knowledge gained through dialectic and

the practical knowledge gained through expertise. The demos ordinarily

lacked this education and knowledge, but Xenophon’s Socrates believes that

they were competent judges of those who addressed them in their Assembly.

He describes them elsewhere as ‘obeying the wisest of those who speak’ and

electing those whom they believe to be �� in military matters too

(Apo. 20). Their preference for the wise is evidently based on their ability to

recognize wisdom, since Socrates sets it against any natural preference for

their own relatives or others with less appropriate qualifications. For he

declares that people do not turn to their relatives to cure their medical ills, but

to those who know about such things (doctors), and the same applies in all

walks of life, including politics (Mem. I 2.51–55). Nor are members of the

demos deluded in their preferences: the demos exercise right judgment

against one who is not wise, rightly laughing the ignorant Glaucon off the

speaker’s platform (III 6). Socrates seems to endorse their wisdom when he

shows Glaucon to be ignorant of the income and expenditures of Athens, and

of other things, that those possessing the ‘royal art’ should know. They again

quite rightly pass over the man with distinguished military service and choose

Antisthenes as general, because he can collect revenue and manage choruses

(III 4). Socrates again shows that the demos has chosen well, saying that

Antisthenes has the kind of experience that will serve the army too.

Socrates thinks that the demos in Assembly reaches correct opinion about

its leaders through their experience of them. This is the case with Antisthenes

and Glaucon. Socrates seems to reflect their experience when he wonders

how Glaucon will ever persuade the polis to let him look after their collective

estates, when he has not even been able to persuade his uncle to let him experi-

ment on his (III 6.15). Another passage (I 7.3–4) confirms that experience

will identify for the demos those who are unable to carry out their assigned

tasks and they will get no forgiveness from those they have deceived. In Sym-posium, Socrates indicates that aristocratic credentials of lineage, priesthood

and physical strength will make the polis put itself into the hands of Callias as

their champion, likening the leader to the aristocratic lover and the polis to the

beloved (8.40–43). But the requirement that the lover ‘please’ the beloved is

not corrupt flattery, as Plato would have it; this pleasure is to come from vir-

tue, and the polis will see through a champion who has no virtue because it

will be proved from ‘experience’ of him (Sym. 8.43).

But although proving them astute judges, Socrates describes the Assembly

(Mem. III 7.5) as made up of those who make and sell things, middlemen who


buy cheap and sell dear, and farmers and traders, and he calls these ‘those with

fewest resources or wits’ — this is his most celebrated undemocratic image.61

The traditional contempt for the minds and bodies of those who practice the

banausic trades explains the description, but the inclusion of the farmers is

odd, since farming promotes admirable qualities (Oec. 4.2, 5–6). The focus of

the description may rather be the other part of the traditional criticism: that

those who work for a living lack leisure to look after friends and polis, which

means to ‘do politics’ (Oec. 4.3). This is how their description is glossed in

the Memorabilia passage: ‘those who have never given thought to politics’

(III 7.7). Poverty is also the basis of the distinction that Thucydides’ Pericles

makes between citizens who ‘care for politics’ as their own affairs, and those

who are ‘turned to the pursuit of trades’ and merely ‘not deficient’ in under-

standing politics.

Socrates’ description is nevertheless a fairly brutal statement of reality. Some

explanation of the context softens this impression. Socrates is trying to make

Charmides give the public Assembly the sound advice and criticism that he

gives more powerful men in private meetings (III 7.3). Charmides resists doing

this because he fears the disgrace that would come from the contempt and

laughter of the Assembly. It is in order to dispel this fear that Socrates draws his

analogy between the men of power and wisdom who ‘do politics’ and whom

Charmides does not hesitate to advise, on the one hand, and the members of the

Assembly, whom he fears to advise because of their judgment, on the other. It is

in this context of polarity that he describes the first group as ‘most powerful and

quick-witted’ and the other as ‘most weak and foolish’. Such polarity produces

extremes, and due account should be made of the strength of Charmides’ fear

and the empowering effect that Socrates’ abuse of the demos will have on him.

Some account should also be made of the metaphor that drives the conversation.

Politics is represented as a wrestling match (III 7.1) in which the demos will

laugh at the loser; yet they are amateurs, while Charmides is a professional (III

7.7). Socrates’ description of them fits their metaphorical role as amateurs,

lacking in the strength or the skill that the competition requires, and if his

description is contemptuous of them, it is only a fair response to their contemp-

tuous laughter at those who fail to impress them.

Xenophon’s Socrates thus emerges as one who engages with the demos as

it is in order to improve it. He does not criticize their role as judges.

Charmides points out that they can laugh at good advice as well as bad, but

Socrates retorts that this is true of the men of power as well, and since

Charmides deals with them, he can deal with the demos (III 7.8). He accepts

that ridicule and uproar are the legitimate weapons of the demos in judging

policies,62 but he does blame the man of talent for not having the courage to

22 V.J. GRAY

61 Luccioni, Les Idées, pp. 114–15; Vlastos, Socratic Studies, pp. 98–9.62 Ober (Political Dissent, p. 235) calls this laughter the ‘awesome hegemonic power

of popular ideology’. See Plato, Republic 492b–d.



persist with it. He in effect asks Charmides to be a philosophic missionary in

his own style, enduring their noise and ridicule as he does at his own trial

(Apo. 14–15). Socrates does not suggest that it is futile to give the demos good

advice or that ‘doing politics’ has fatal consequences; or if he does, he thinks

the risks worth taking.

Socrates sees self-interest as the reason why people should ‘do politics’. He

describes Charmides as hesitating to ‘take the affairs of the polis in hand, even

though he must have a share in them since he is a citizen’ (Mem. III 7.2).

Self-interest dictates the need to participate, Socrates tells Charmides directly:

‘don’t neglect the affairs of the polis, if there is something you can improve; if

the affairs of the polis prosper, not only the other citizens, but your friends, and

you yourself not least of all, will benefit’ (III 7.9). Socrates insists in other con-

versations too that his associates engage with democracy. For instance, when

the untutored Aristippus characterizes the demos as tyrant, making demands of

their leaders as of slaves and punishing them if they fail to meet them, Socrates

directs his attention to the benefits of serving the demos voluntarily (II 1.8–9,

18–19), pointing out also that he is bound to share in the polis because it is not

possible to live in security outside it (II 1.11–16).63 Charmides must endure

their laughter; Aristippus is to endure their punishment of him, if he fails them.

Charmides presents the same image of the demos as tyrant in Symposium(4.29–33) and has Callias recognize this as the relationship he also has with

the demos (4.45), but once again Socrates urges Callias to serve the demos

throughout his final speech (8.7–43), using the more positive image of Callias

as the lover of the polis, with the polis as his beloved.

VIIISocrates as ��

The definitions of the democrat in the discussions of Plato’s Socrates go

beyond support for democratic laws, institutions and processes to include

democratic values such as philanthropy. Socrates’ dialectic method has itself

been read as an essentially democratic discourse because it seeks to see things

from another’s perspective, and his dramatic polyphony has yielded ambiva-

lent readings which do not support the simple undemocratic image; but his

63 Socrates’ distinction between ruling and being ruled may appear to contradictdemocratic principles (cf. Aristotle, Politics 1317b19–20), but Socrates’ conversation isdesigned expressly to prevent Aristippus from being ruled. He proposes the division on apurely theoretical level. Moreover, his distinction does not produce a class who will bebarred from ruling by outside authorities; rather he distinguishes between those who willbe fit to rule and those who will ‘not even claim to rule’ (II 1.1, cf. 1.7) because they willhave been educated to a life of pleasure, and will find rule to be a barrier to this — asAristippus himself does (II 1.8–9). Aristippus also calls this second group directly ‘thosewho do not wish to rule’ (II 1.8).


discourse is also read as the opposite of openness.64 However, the importance

of philanthropy for the democratic image is uncontested: ‘The demotic public

fora required that speakers adhere to prescribed forms . . . But especially for

those who could point to a record of philanthropy, the required level of adher-

ence did not constitute a very tight-fitting straightjacket.’65 It is significant

therefore that Xenophon refers to Socrates as ‘both democratic and philan-

thropic’ (Mem. I 2.60: �� ).66 This seems prime

evidence for the democratic image.67

This affirmation of Socrates as �� occurs in the last part of Xenophon’s

defence of Socrates against the charge that he used Hesiod and Homer to

make his associates ‘tyrannical wrong-doers’ (I 2.56–61). The accusers have

said that Socrates used Hesiod’s phrase ‘work is no shame but worklessness is

shame’ to teach people that they should shrink from no ‘work’ at all, however

shameful, as long as it brought profit; but Socrates, Xenophon argues, defined

‘work’ as that which was by definition honourable.68 True to his interpreta-

tion, Socrates later endorses putting even free-born women to woolwork to

support a household, defending the work as not disgraceful for women and as

encouraging learning and memory, developing physical condition and keep-

ing you from dishonest gain (II 7.7–9). Work also benefits the polis since it

makes the household able to undertake many liturgies (II 7.6). The poor

already work for their living, so the exhortation is appropriately addressed to

the leisured rich. Socrates thus endorses the honest ‘revalorisation du travail’

which Loraux calls an ‘essential characteristic of democracy’.69

The ‘work’ that the wealthy might do is further addressed in Socrates’

interpretation of the passages from Homer (Iliad 2.188–191, 198–202). The

accusers say Socrates taught people to beat their fathers and used this passage

to teach them to beat ordinary members of the demos as well. Their identifica-

tion of these as ‘poor and common’ (Mem. I 2.59) points to the political reading;

the terms are synonymous because poverty defined the demos (IV 2.37–9).

Beating was of course unlawful in the democracy, the ultimate demonstration

of that violence which Socrates is shown to have curbed. The charge of hybrisprotected poor and rich alike before the laws against the physical abuse that

24 V.J. GRAY

64 J. Euben, ‘Reading Democracy: “Socratic” Dialogues and the Political Educationof Democratic Citizens’, in ��, ed. Ober and Hedrick, pp. 327–60; cf. B. Bar-ber, ‘Misreading Democracy: Peter Euben and the Gorgias’, in ��, ed. Oberand Hedrick, pp. 361–76.

65 Ober, Political Dissent, p. 288.66 Vlastos (Socratic Studies, pp. 106) argues that Plato’s Socrates is ‘demotic’

though Plato never uses that term, and that Xenophon’s Socrates is not ‘demotic’ thoughMem. calls him that.

67 On this passage, with bibliography, see Dorion, Xénophon, pp. 118–22.68 This accords with his definition of ‘leisure’ elsewhere (Mem. III 9.9). Dorion dis-

cusses Critias’ interpretation of the same line in Plato’s Charmides (163b).69 Loraux, L’Invention d’Athènes, pp. 184–5, with p. 418 n.63.



denied them the freedom of their persons. Yet the lines quoted from Homer

are about the differing treatments of two classes of men when they wish to

abandon the common cause of the Greeks at Troy.70 Odysseus discourages the

‘kings’ ‘with gentle words’, but threatens with Agamemnon’s sceptre ‘the

man of the demos’ when he lifts his voice, calling him ‘unwarlike and cow-

ardly’ and telling him to listen to his betters.

Xenophon has two answers to this charge. The first is that Socrates could

not have endorsed beating the ‘poor and common’ without considering him-

self worthy of that beating — because he was poor. But of course Socrates is

poor and common in a way different from the masses, in his deliberate adop-

tion of poverty and his re-definition of the concept.71 He said that those who

were able to live within their means were not poor, however meagre their pos-

sessions, while those of great wealth who could not live happily on their

greater means, were poor; the tyrant could be poor and the commoner wealthy

by this definition (IV 2.37–39).72 One could consider his identification with

the demos a subversion of a truly democratic character, which insulted the real

poverty and material aspirations of the demos. Yet in the defence Xenophon

will go on to present Socrates as a patron who serves to remedy their poverty

and improve their prosperity. He does not devalue their poverty either when

he adopts Hesiod’s principle of measuring a person’s contribution in sacrifice

‘according to ability’, which gives more value to the poor man who gives to

the best of his ability and less value to the rich man if he does not sacrifice

according to the greater ability of his greater resources (I 3.3 and IV 3.15–16).

Socrates’ interpretation of Homer’s lines therefore transfers attention to the

rich chiefly and endorses the need of both rich and poor to make their contri-

bution to the common cause, but particularly the rich. Socrates said that those

who were capable of helping ‘the army, polis, or the demos itself, should the

need arise’ should be ‘checked’ (��) if they do not give assistance —

70 The selective quotation omits material that could be said to be undemocratic (seeDorion’s discussion), but it seems to be the accusers who make the selection; the reasonfor the omission cannot therefore be in order to conceal undemocratic material. On thesepassages, see Gray, Xenophon’s Mirror of Princes, pp. 119–32.

71 Other features of Socrates also identify him with the poor and common. SeeK. Dover, Greek Popular Morality in the Time of Plato and Aristotle (Oxford, 1974),p. 201 n.10, suggesting that Socrates’ �� is democratic in its refusal to assertsuperior knowledge. His �� is the desirable opposite of ‘fraudulence’ (alazoneia):see Mem. I 7.5.

72 Socrates’ service as a hoplite at Potidea and Delium is held to support the notionthat he was moderately wealthy, but A. Jones, Athenian Democracy (Oxford, 1957), pp.31–2, proves there were poor hoplites who could not afford to support their militaryexpeditions. In a context which mentions Cyrus’ association with Lysander and suggeststhe closing stages of the Peloponnesian war (Oec. 2.3), Socrates says that his estate con-sisted of a house and its goods, and was worth five minae, whereas Critobulus’ estate wasworth five hundred. Jones (Athenian Democracy, pp. 79–81) says that only a bachelorcould survive on twenty minae.


‘particularly if’ they were ‘bold’ (thraseis), ‘even if’ they were ‘rich’ (I 2 59).

In his defence against the charge of corruption of the young, Xenophon says

Socrates ‘checks’ bad desires and encourages good ones. Here, those who fail

to contribute to the common cause should be checked regardless of their class

if they do not contribute. Homer’s Odysseus also ‘rebukes and checks’ both

rich and poor, even though he uses different manners of rebuke. Xenophon’s

‘particularly if’ they are bold and ‘even if’ they are rich acknowledge that

commoners should be checked, but that the role of the wealthy is a more

important issue.73 The need for those who have the means to make their con-

tribution is the principle according to which Socrates ‘checks’ Charmides

(III 7) for his unwillingness to serve the demos as advisor even though he was

capable of it.74

This interpretation may be thought too ingenious, but Antisthenes, who

was a leading interpreter of Homer and a close associate of Socrates (Sym.

4.34–44, 8.4–6), allegorized whole Homeric scenes to make them mean other

than what they appear to mean,75 as Socrates does in our passage. Antisthenes

was particularly interested in Odysseus, and Xenophon’s Socrates shares this

interest: he interprets Circe’s inability to turn Odysseus into a pig as an alle-

gory for his self-control rather than the effect of the potion the god had given

him (Odyssey 1.281 ff.; cf. Mem. I 3.7), and the Sirens’ formulaic description

of Odysseus as an allegory of how to win friends through praise rather than as

proof of the power of song as in Homer (Ody. 12.184 ff.; cf. Mem. II 6.11).

Socrates also turns Odysseus into a proto-philosopher: his ‘safe oratory’ is

taken to be the habit of proceeding through agreed stages in the process of

dialectic (Ody. 8.165 ff.; cf. Mem. IV 6.15), even though Homer defines it as

oratory that uses gentle words (Ody. 8.236).76

It might even be argued that Socrates’ interpretation is so true to the known

tendencies of his associate Antisthenes that it must be historical. Socrates’

obedience to military commands (Mem. IV 4.1) and his general endorsement

26 V.J. GRAY

73 Socrates confirms (Mem. III 5.5) that boldness leads to disobedience. Homer’sThersites, who continues to disobey Odysseus and whose name recalls ‘boldness’(tharsos) exemplifies this.

74 There was a special form of contribution from the rich to the ‘army, polis, demos’through the liturgies. Socrates confirms this democratic expectation of service (Oec.2.6), mentioning the burdensome contributions to the rearing of horses (hippotrophia),the production of a dramatic chorus (��!��) and gymnastic competitions (gymnasi-archia), presidencies, the upkeep of a trireme (��) and war-taxes (eisphora).

75 See N. Richardson, ‘Homeric Professors in the Age of the Sophists’, Proceedingsof the Cambridge Philological Society, 201 (1975), pp. 65–81, p. 67; L. Navia,Antisthenes of Athens: Setting the World Aright (London, 2001), pp. 39–52.

76 Odysseus was not the only exemplum. Epithets for Agamemnon suggest the defi-nition of a good leader in the Socratic mould (Mem. III 2) and Socrates etymologizesGanymede’s name to prove that Zeus was attracted by his intellectual rather than hisphysical beauty (Sym. 8.30).



of the law, probably mean that he did endorse the beating of the man of the

demos who refused to obey military commands. Xenophon himself defends

this in a crisis — in the common interest (Anabasis V 8). Even Homer’s ‘mul-

titude’ laughs to see Thersites beaten for continuing to refuse to serve the

common cause (Il. 2.212–277).77 The ability of the poor to make a military

contribution has been called ‘an ideological battle-ground’,78 but Socrates

does not disempower the demos on these grounds. He presents the demos as

an entity to be passively ‘assisted’ by the wealthy, but this is in the nature of

the democratic paradigm of the liturgist. The demos itself is presumably

obliged to assist to the best of its own ability, which means obeying com-

mands, something that Socrates thought they did quite well (Mem. III 5). Par-

ticipation in the rowing of a trireme has been thought to have taught the poor

the power of corporate solidarity that they transferred to their political opera-

tions.79 Yet what they learned on the trireme and in choral and other competi-

tions was that obedience to those with expertise did achieve the best results

(III 9.10).

Xenophon further judges Socrates by his own principle of service to the

demos to be both democratic and philanthropic because he gave ‘his resources’

to any citizen or foreigner who wanted them, and never made a profit (see I

2.7–8), while others took these from him for free and sold them on at a great

price to others, which made them undemocratic.80 Socrates’ ‘resources’ are of

course his wisdom, so that, though poor by the ordinary definition, he fulfilled

his own service to the demos ‘according to his ability’ — massaging the defi-

nition of wealth in order to produce a democratic currency that included the

wisdom of his company. Indeed, he gave of this wisdom not only according to

his ability, but ‘abundantly’ (I 2.60).81 One could argue that the poor would

find this generosity cold because they wanted material prosperity. Similar

claims to generosity in Plato’s Apology have been considered subversive

because Socrates does not supply the material support that is normally

77 His beating would be even more significant if he were not a man of the demos but achieftain: see G. Kirk, The Iliad: A Commentary, vol. I (Cambridge, 1985).

78 Raaflaub, ‘Equalities and Inequalities’, p. 155.79 B. Strauss, ‘The Athenian Trireme School of Democracy’, in ��, ed.

Ober and Hedrick, pp. 313–26.80 Dover sees ‘philanthropy’ as a democratic value and ‘democratic’ as the ‘generous

treatment of the ordinary individual’ (Greek Popular Morality, pp. 177, 201, 289). SeeDorion, Xénophon, pp. 120–1. Xenophon attributes ‘philanthropy’ to the gods (Mem. IV3.6,7), to Cyrus the Great (Cyr. I 2.1) and to the ps�phismata of the Assembly that werepassed to win the support of the metics (Poroi 3.6).

81 Louis-André Dorion pointed out to me that Socrates here assists his friends furtherthan even he recommended at Mem. II 7.1. Gray (Xenophon’s Mirror of Princes,pp. 304–12) discusses the importance of the concept of ‘according to ability’ mentionedhere.


expected of a patron, nor even the advice that might lead to this.82 Xenophon’s

Socrates is different from Plato’s however, in that he does use his wisdom to

assist the demos to secure material prosperity. He achieves this through his

endorsement of political service to Aristippus and Charmides, and his endorse-

ment of material prosperity as part of the eudaimonia that the demos achieves

through such leadership (see III 2).

ConclusionXenophon and Socrates

The undemocratic interpretation of Xenophon’s Socrates takes heart from the

assumption that Xenophon’s life and works show that he was also undemo-

cratic. Some comment is thus also needed on this impression.83 In fact,

Xenophon’s own attitudes to democracy are even more democratic that those

of his Socrates. If he learned these from Socrates, then his (adequately) demo-

cratic presentation of the master is accurate. If he developed them himself,

then he may have made his master in his own image.

Xenophon, for example, is said to have been disaffected from the Athenian

democracy that exiled him and executed Socrates. Yet he gives the restored

democracy that was responsible for both these events a good press, while

painting a black picture of the oligarchy that preceded it (Hel. II 3–4). Within

the oligarchy he has Critias show unrestrained violence against innocent peo-

ple and execute his former friend Theramenes contrary even to the laws that

he has made himself (II 3.9–56). He admires Theramenes’ self-control in the

face of death (II 3.56) and has been credited with sympathy for his preferred

constitution, which is based on enfranchising ‘those who have the power to

assist with horses and shields’ (II 3.48), but this occupies the broad ground

between the two extremes of enfranchising ‘slaves and those who through

28 V.J. GRAY

82 Ober, Political Dissent, pp. 175–7.83 See Luccioni, Les Idées. Diogenes Laertius (2.48–59) offers a summary of

Xenophon’s life, based especially on Anabasis (III 1.4–7; V 3.4–13; VII 7.57). The casefor the undemocratic life is briefly: (a) the possibility that he was wealthy and served inthe oligarchic cavalry; (b) his departure from Athens to pursue a friendship with theyounger Cyrus of Persia, an enemy who had helped defeat Athens in the PeloponnesianWar and a Persian prince who sought to become the King; (c) his subsequent exile by thedemocracy for this friendship and service under the Spartans, old enemies of Athens;(d) his establishment as their colonist at Scillus. It is admitted that he eventually returnedfrom exile and was reconciled with the democracy, but this is seen as grudging, eventhough his son died fighting for the Athenians at the battle of Mantinea in 362 (Hel. VII5.19–25). Xenophon’s life could be presented with more sympathy however: (a) wealthwas not automatically associated with oligarchic leanings; (b) he presents his decision tojoin Cyrus not as the result of disaffection from democracy, but as the rash decision of ayoung man who ignored Socrates’ prediction of the outcome (Ana. III 1.4–7); (c) heshows no bitterness about his exile; (d) he presents his early relationship with the Spar-tans as most insecure (Ana. IV 6.14–16; VI 1.26–29, 6.12–16; VII 1.25–31).



poverty would sell the polis for a drachma’ and the tyranny of the very few.

He writes only three speeches in his account in Hellenica of the civil war at

Athens, all of them against the oligarchy and in favour of the democracy.

Cleocritus, the herald of the mysteries, finds the oligarchs responsible for the

breaking-down of the homonoia in the civil war that the citizens had enjoyed

under democracy (II 4.20–22). Thrasybulus delivers two speeches, one before

the battle of Munychia to the democratic partisans, whom he calls ‘warriors’

and ‘citizens’, even though they include ‘missile men’, peltasts, javelin

throwers and stone throwers (II 4.12); these defeat the oligarchs and resist the

Spartans (II 4.33). In the other speech he reminds the survivors of the oligar-

chy that they lack the justice, courage and wisdom of these poorer men (II

4.40–42). He secures a reconciliation in which both parties adopt the old laws

and swear oaths ‘not to remember wrong’; and in a rare narrative prolepsis,

Xenophon commends the democrats of his own time too: ‘they still live

together now as citizens and the demos remains in its oaths’ (II 4.43). This

good impression of the restored democracy continues when Thrasybulus

repays the Thebans with greater favours than Athens has received (III 5.16),

endorsing Socrates’ ‘unwritten law’ about the importance of gratitude (Mem.

IV 4.24) as well as Pericles’ praise of Athenian magnanimity (Thu. II 40.4).

Xenophon praises him as a ‘good man’ at his death (Hel. IV 8.31). In the end

Xenophon presents Athens itself as made moderate through suffering and

rising to match her mythical greatness as the champion of the oppressed (VI

3.10–11, 5.33–52).

In Poroi, Xenophon adopts the role that Socrates assigned to those who ‘do

politics’ in the democracy. He says in his introduction that the leaders

(prostatai) of the demos have claimed that they cannot feed the demos with-

out unjustly exploiting the allies, but he will show how the politai can be fed

from their own resources — which he calls ‘most just’ — and how to remedy

their unpopularity with their allies — whom they currently exploit unjustly

(1.1). He offers economic advice designed to do that: he associates prosperity

with justice towards their imperial allies, thus confirming the connection

between the material and moral aims of the ‘royal art’. The details of his

reform show an impressive command of economic expertise that goes well

beyond the ignorance of young Glaucon (discussed above), such as the advan-

tages of their geography (1), measures to improve conditions for the metics to

encourage them in commerce and trade (2.1–7), ways to encourage commerce

and raise capital for trading ventures (3.1–14), and how to maximize profits

from the Athenian silver mines (4). Peace according to Xenophon will pre-

serve the Athenians’ prosperity and their empire more than war (5). The pro-

cesses that Xenophon recommends to implement these evidently democratic

reforms are also democratic ones, such as the ‘philanthropic decrees’ he men-

tions (3.6). While he does not directly advise the Assembly, others could put

the measures before them — ‘if these measures seem good to you to do’ (6.2).


The result of Xenophon’s proposed reforms will be a prospering democracy

in which ‘the demos will be well-fed, and the rich will be spared the expense

of war; and further, with a lot of surplus, we will conduct feasts even more

magnificent than now, we will build temples, re-build walls and dockyards,

give their ancestral due to priests and council, magistrates and cavalry’ (6.1).

The distinctions between the demos, the rich and ‘we’ indicate that the author

identifies with a united Athenian polis, as an advisor with the interests of both

classes at heart.

Luccioni explained the democratic sympathies of Poroi as the result of a

period in Xenophon’s life when he was seeking the favour of the democracy

for his return from exile.84 This would mean that he also wrote Hipparchicusfor the same reason, since he seeks to improve the standards of a cavalry com-

mander in Athens, as is made clear in references to ��"�, �� and

festivals of the Athenians (1.9, 13, 17; 3.1; 7.2). Democratic sympathies in

Hellenica, which is dated to the same period, might be similarly explained

away.85 Yet the argument risks wearing thin when too many works are

involved. Cyropaedia shares some democratic features too. This work more-

over creates a utopia in which Xenophon is almost entirely free to express his

ideals. It is therefore significant that this work shows how the common man

could achieve equality with a previously existing elite under the guidance of

an expert practitioner of the ‘royal art’ in Cyrus the Great, the Persian King.86

In Cyropaedia, Xenophon takes democratic thinking beyond the realities

of democracy, in which the poor were never quite as equal as the rich, and he

directly tackles the question of the way in which poverty ordinarily prevented

the common man from having access to privilege and an education in the

royal art. Xenophon credits the Persians with an education system that allows

every citizen access, produces virtue and places a man among the elite: ‘none

is driven out by law from honours and offices, but it is open to all Persians to

send their sons to the schools of justice’ (Cyr. I 2.15). However, in practice,

‘those who are able to support their children without working send them, but

those who have no means do not’ (II 3.7), and these end up making their living

from farming or industry and supporting the elite. Pheraulas is one such ‘man

of the demos’ (II 1.15), the son of a farmer who could not afford to keep him at

school for long because of his poverty (VIII 3.37). Yet Cyrus breaks with tra-

dition when he promotes him to equality with the elite and makes him embody

the democratic ideal of Thucydides’ Pericles (II 37.1–2) in which no-one is

prevented by poverty from making a political contribution. He does so in

order to create the warriors he needs to defend the land against its enemies. He

30 V.J. GRAY

84 J. Luccioni, Xenophon et le Socratisme (Paris, 1953), pp. 161–3. Poroi 5.8–9 datesthis work to 355. For a more democratic reading, see Gauthier, ‘Le Programme’.

85 Hel. 6.4.37 dates this work to c.357–5.86 On the elevation of Pheraulas, see Gray, Xenophon’s Mirror of Princes, pp. 283–8,

376; but cf. C. Nadon, Xenophon’s Prince (Berkeley, CA, 2001), pp. 63–76, 150–2.



tells the commoners that their inequality is not the result of natural inferiority

of mind or body, but merely of their poverty and their need to earn a living,

and he makes them the military equals of his former peers when he supplies

them with the same armour and training (Cyr. II 1.14–19). Pheraulas, indeed,

is said to have a body and a soul ‘like that of a not ignoble warrior’ (II 1.15).

Xenophon shows how Cyrus translated theoretical equality into hard reality in

the training programmes that he develops to level inequalities (II 1.20–31),

and in the use of humour to break down class barriers (II 2). Pheraulas plays

his part in continuing to break down these barriers through his own deferential

character (VIII 3.5–8). He has philanthropy, like Cyrus, and practices that

reciprocal friendship that secures the willing obedience essential to rule (I

6.20–25); his success with the Sacian, to whom he gives over the management

of his new-found wealth in order to pursue friendship, suggests that he has

learned that part of the ‘royal art’ (I 3.8–13; cf. VII 3.37–49).

Cyrus thus elevates the commoners from the sub-class of producers to a

position of honour and power and wealth among the military and administra-

tive elite. Instead of relying on the goods that the commoners once produced,

the ‘Equals’ now secure the willing obedience of other nations who produce

the goods, and these goods now support the commoners as well as the peers —

the imperial vision of happiness. Pheraulas secures advancement because of

the same usefulness that Socrates endorses as the main claim to honour and

advancement (Mem. I 2.51–55).87 The poverty that prevented the advance-

ment of a commoner like Pheraulas was also the barrier to advancement in the

democracy, but Thrasybulus had demonstrated that the poor had an equal con-

tribution to make when he marshalled them alongside the hoplites to defeat

the oligarchs in the civil war; they had been long-range fighters (Hel. II 4.12,

33) like the Persian commoners (Cyr. II 1.11). Xenophon explores the notion

of equality even further when he has Pheraulas endorse equal opportunity for

all in the new army, but equal outcomes only according to merit when he says

that the individual’s share of the profits should depend on the part that he

played in securing them, since this will be an incentive to individual effort

(II 3.7–15).88 There is a strong school of thought89 that seeks irony in

Xenophon’s praise of monarchs, such as Hiero and Cyropaedia; but even

such a reader admits of the portrayal of Pheraulas that

In all of classical literature it is difficult to find a more sympathetic portraitof the plight and potential of the exploited classes. That we should find it inthe pages of a book written by an author whose views are routinely

87 See Gray, The Framing of Socrates, pp. 51–3.88 See F. Harvey, ‘Two Kinds of Equality’, Classica et Mediaevalia, 26 (1965),

pp. 101–46, at pp. 126–7.89 See W. Higgins, Xenophon the Athenian (New York, 1977); see also L. Strauss, On

Tyranny (Ithaca, NY, 1963) and Nadon, Xenophon’s Prince.


considered to be nothing more than an expression of oligarchic class preju-dices only confirms the need to re-consider Xenophon’s reputation.90

* * *

The Athenians had practised democracy for over one hundred years before

they executed Socrates, with the exception of only two short periods of oligar-

chy. The democratic currency is so strong in most forms of their discourse that

it democratizes even archaic Athens, making Theseus himself the founder of

democracy.91 So it is with Xenophon’s Socrates. Xenophon gives no complete

whitewash of his Socrates, but makes him an adequate democrat within the

terms of normal democratic ideology. Xenophon’s Socrates emerges as an

unusual patron of the demos, teaching his associates to enrich the demos in

ways that were material as well as moral and endorsing their political engage-

ment for this purpose regardless of the risks. If he abused the demos in Assem-

bly as Odysseus abused the commoners, he did so with the higher democratic

interest of getting capable men to serve them. He admired the discipline of the

demos and respected their mass judgments, even while hoping to improve

them. He supported the unwritten laws and the laws that citizens agreed on,

which he saw as compatible, but he also endorsed the processes that led to

peaceful change of the written laws because he acknowledged their imperfec-

tions. He believed that obedience to any system of law was a good thing, but

he did not obey instructions that contradicted the requirement of law to pursue

justice. He opposed sortition, perhaps because it reduced respect for the

laws as well as admitting those who had no expert knowledge, yet he saw

dokimasia as a way of limiting the damage. He also sought to show wealthy

individuals how to secure their own success through virtue, but some of the

obligations they learned were service to the army, polis and demos. Xenophon

seems to have written Poroi as a Socratic practitioner of those obligations.92

Vivienne J. Gray THE UNIVERSITY OF AUCKLAND

32 V.J. GRAY

90 Nadon, Xenophon’s Prince, p. 73 n.29.91 Loraux, L’Invention d’Athènes, pp. 107–8, 207–8 (citing Euripides, Suppliants,

and Isocrates, Panathenaicus 126–8).92 Editor’s Note: Polis would like to express thanks to the editors of Les Etudes

Philosophiques and its publisher (Presses Universitaires de France), for their permissionto publish this revised English version of Professor Gray’s 2004 essay. Special thanks aredue to Dustin Gish who has put in so much hard work in supervising this project and edit-ing the article for press.


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XENOPHON’S SOCRATES AND DEMOCRACY