¹ References in parentheses refer to the Memorabilia. I use the Greek text edited by Hude, Karl (Xenophontis Commentarii [Stuttgart, Germany: Teubner, 1934])Google Scholar, and the excellent English translation by Bonnette, Amy L. (Xenophon: Memorabilia [Ithaca, New York: Cornell University Press, 1994])Google Scholar.

² Xenophon is agreed to be primarily responsible for the view that Socratic philosophy is moral and political philosophy. See Guthrie, W. K. C., Socrates (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1971), 100CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Pangle, Thomas L., “Socrates in the Context of Xenophon's Political Writings,” in The Socratic Movement, ed. Waerdt, Paul A. Vander (Ithaca, New York: Cornell University Press, 1994), 127–50Google Scholar, at 129; Sallis, John, Being and Logos: Reading the Platonic Dialogues, 3rd ed. (Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press, 1996), 36–38Google Scholar; and Zuckert, Catherine, “The Socratic Turn,” History of Political Thought 25, no. 2 (2004): 189–90Google Scholar.

³ It is emphatically not the purpose of this essay to investigate Socrates' own motives for undertaking to investigate the human things, that is, the so-called Socratic Turn, which seems to have originated in Socrates' prior preoccupation with natural science. See Plato, Phaedo 96aff., as well as Christopher Bruell, “Xenophon,” in History of Political Philosophy, ed. Cropsey, Joseph and Strauss, Leo, 3rd ed. (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1987), 108–11Google Scholar; Sallis, Being and Logos, 38–43; and Zuckert, “Socratic Turn,” 190ff.

⁴ See Strauss, Leo, Xenophon's Socrates (South Bend, IN: St. Augustine's Press, 1998), 55Google Scholar, which calls attention to the importance of this stipulation by noting that such an introduction is unique in the Memorabilia.

⁵ Almost no scholarly attention has been paid to this section of the Memorabilia. I have not been able to find a single interpretation of this part of the Memorabilia that was ever published in a scholarly journal. The only in-depth consideration is Strauss, Xenophon's Socrates, 55–73. In addition, brief summaries of this section appear in Christopher Bruell, “Introduction: Xenophon and his Socrates,” in Xenophon: Memorabilia, ed. Bonnette, xix–xx; Gray, Vivienne, The Framing of Socrates: The Literary Interpretation of Xenophon's Memorabilia (Stuttgart, Germany: F. Steiner, 1998), 138–41Google Scholar; and Buzzetti, Eric, “Introduction: The Political Life and the Socratic Education,” in Xenophon: The Anabasis of Cyrus, trans. Ambler, Wayne (Ithaca, New York: Cornell University Press, 2008), 31–32Google Scholar. I discuss these interpretations in the corresponding parts of my argument. My view that these conversations deserve more serious scholarly attention than they have previously received is the result of my attention to Xenophon's manner of writing, that is, to the dramatic action of the conversations as well as the information that Socrates conveys to his interlocutors. This manner of interpreting Xenophon's Socratic writings remains controversial: see, for example, the recent criticism of this interpretive approach by Gray, Vivienne, “A Short Response to David M. Johnson, ‘Xenophon's Socrates on Law and Justice,’” Ancient Philosophy 24, no. 2 (2004): 442–46Google Scholar, as well as the persuasive response by Johnson, David, “Reply to Vivienne Gray,” Ancient Philosophy 24, no. 2 (2004): 446–48Google Scholar. This essay follows most closely the interpretive approach of the essays on Xenophon's shorter Socratic writings in Bartlett, Robert C., ed., Xenophon's Shorter Socratic Writings (Ithaca, New York: Cornell University Press, 1996)Google Scholar, which are models of how to study Xenophon's Socratic writings and whose example I have tried to apply to the study of the Memorabilia. The classic example of this approach is Strauss, Leo, On Tyranny (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2000)Google Scholar.

⁶ Compare Anabasis III 1.4–7. For the superiority of Charmides, see especially III 6.1, 7.3 and 7.7. The observation that Charmides is the only person whom Xenophon's Socrates encourages to enter public life is Strauss's (Xenophon's Socrates, 72).

⁷ Strauss (Xenophon's Socrates, 74) supports this view by suggesting that Xenophon might have presented a conversation in this section of the Memorabilia with a more philosophically inclined interlocutor than Charmides, but that he fails to do so. As for the reason why Socrates does not advise Charmides to turn to political philosophy, see Nicholas Starr, “Tyranny and Nobility” (MA thesis, Boston College, 2007), 21–41.

⁸ According to Xenophon, as a rule Socrates' conversations take place in public (I 1.10). The only unequivocal exception to this rule in the Memorabilia is the first conversation between Socrates and Euthydemus (IV 2.8).

⁹ I follow Buzzetti (“Introduction,” 31–32 and 260n68), who refers to these conversations in the course of arguing that Xenophon's leadership in the Anabasis is based on his Socratic education. Buzzetti maintains that the central problem in the Socratic investigation of virtue is how “to reconcile … the often conflicting demands of the noble and the good,” and refers the reader to this section of the Memorabilia for an exposition of the problem.

¹⁰ Whether or not the interlocutors benefited from this guidance, as Xenophon claims that the men who long for noble things did, is more difficult to determine (III 1.1). Of the four named interlocutors, nothing more is known of Nicomachides; Pericles is executed, but Socrates concludes the conversation in a way that suggests that this fate cannot be avoided (III 5.28; Strauss, Xenophon's Socrates, 68); and as far as we know Glaucon stays out of politics as Socrates intends, but it is unclear whether he is benefited by this (III 6.1; Nails, Debra, The People of Plato: A Prosopography of Plato and Other Socratics [Indianapolis: Hackett, 2002], 154–56Google Scholar). The most difficult case is Charmides (see the thoughtful discussion by Starr, “Tyranny and Nobility,” 21–41). Finally, Strauss (Xenophon's Socrates, 59–60) invites the reader to consider the possibility that the cavalry commander is Xenophon himself (but see n. 18 below); if this is the case, the benefit that is conferred on him is the one that this essay aims to describe.

¹¹ Irwin, Terence, “Review of Xenophon's Socrates by Leo Strauss,” The Philosophical Review 83, no. 3 (1974): 412CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

¹² Even the initial analogy between generals and shepherds suggests that a general should be more selfless than a shepherd actually is, because a shepherd cares for the sheep for the sake of the shepherd and not for the sake of the sheep. See Eric Buzzetti, “The ‘Middle Road’ of Socratic Political Philosophy: Xenophon's Presentation of Socrates' View of Virtue in the Memorabilia” (PhD diss., Boston College, 1998), 161, and Strauss, Xenophon's Socrates, 59, as well as Xenophon Cyropaideia VII 2.14 and Plato Republic 343a–b.

¹³ Buzzetti, “Middle Road,” 158–59; Strauss, Xenophon's Socrates, 59.

¹⁴ The subdued manner in which Xenophon refers to the personal sacrifices that political and military leadership can entail is consistent with the rhetorical preference for speaking of “good things rather than bad ones,” which according to Strauss (On Tyranny, 185) is a key feature of Xenophon's manner of writing (see Anabasis V 8.20).

¹⁵ The fact that Xenophon's Socrates holds that nobility entails this concern with others illuminates one of the key ongoing debates over the interpretation of the Memorabilia. The debate pertains to the utilitarian view of the noble that Xenophon's Socrates often advances (most clearly in III 8 and Symposium 5): the view that noble things, and moral actions in particular, “necessarily benefit us, where benefit is understood, for Xenophon, in fairly commonsensical terms” (Johnson, David M., “Xenophon's Socrates on Law and Justice,” Ancient Philosophy 23, no. 2 [2003]: 270CrossRefGoogle Scholar). Scholars differ over whether Socrates holds that this view is correct. Some, including Johnson, hold that this is indeed the case. Others hold that this view is only one aspect of a more complex outlook that Xenophon's Socrates holds, and that to mistake the so-called “commonsensical” utilitarian view for the entire Socratic position is to distort that position. See, for example, Morrison, Donald R., “On Professor Vlastos' Xenophon,” Ancient Philosophy 7 (1987): 10CrossRefGoogle Scholar, which argues that the utilitarian moral view is intended to be understood as a paradox. See also the discussion of Socrates' utilitarian or “mercenary” view of friendship (which is called noble at II 5.4 and II 10.4–5) in Bruell, “Introduction,” xi–xii. Bruell notes that Xenophon himself calls this view vulgar (Hellenica VII 3.14), and suggests that Xenophon attributes it to Socrates in order to “offend” and “provoke” his “better readers.” My interpretation of this chapter, according to which Socrates holds the noble dimension of politics to consist specifically in the services that one performs for others regardless of the consequences of those services for oneself, supports the views of Morrison and Bruell. Nor is this view called into question by the argument of the next chapter, which shows that one's attachment to the noble is bound up with one's concern with one's own happiness. For even though the men who long for noble things will prove to hope to find happiness in their noble pursuits, insofar as they truly long for the noble they could not be deterred from a pursuit that they deem noble by the consideration that it is not good in any particular way, commonsensical or otherwise; they could only be deterred by the discovery that it is not noble.

¹⁶ Gray (Framing, 140) notes that the cavalry commander has “failed to think through even the most basic duties of the office which [he] sought,” and claims further (but does not show) that this is a characteristic error of the ambitious men with whom Socrates converses.

¹⁷ For an explanation of euandria, see Smith, Josiah Renick, ed., Xenophon: Memorabilia (New York: Arno Press, 1979), 141Google Scholar: “the handsomest men were chosen to lead the procession” of the festival delegation to Delos, and “at the Panathenaic festival, the bearers of the sacred olive branch were chosen from among the finest-looking old men.”

¹⁸ Strauss (Xenophon's Socrates, 60–61) refers to the moral deficiency of the cavalry commander by noting that the failure of the cavalry commander to find praise and honor to be sufficiently attractive compensations for military service (rather than his inadequate knowledge of his other responsibilities) calls into question his qualifications for his job.

¹⁹ My interpretation of the relation between the noble willingness to suffer harm and the belief that the noble is good follows Bruell, Christopher, On the Socratic Education: An Introduction to the Shorter Platonic Dialogues (Lanham, MD: Rowman and Littlefield, 1999), 27–30Google Scholar.

²⁰ According to this interpretation, the conversation with the cavalry commander is a preeminent example of the “Socratic moral advice” that, according to Donald R. Morrison, “Xenophon's Socrates gives in passage after passage throughout the Memorabilia and elsewhere … with all the emphasis on care of the soul and disdain for material well-being that one has learned to expect from Plato's Socrates” (“Xenophon's Socrates as Teacher,” in The Socratic Movement, ed. Vander Waerdt, 191).

²¹ Military examples provide particularly vivid illustrations of the necessity to choose between one's own welfare and the welfare of others, but they are by no means the only examples (see Plato Republic 343e1–6). Indeed, the only example in this section of the Memorabilia of an interlocutor who is actually harmed by his ambition for military office is the younger Pericles, and he is not harmed in combat but rather in a court of law (Strauss, Xenophon's Socrates, 68; Xenophon, Hellenica I 7).

²² Compare Plutarch, Coriolanus §14. Smith (Memorabilia, 142) ignores this qualification and comments instead, “Nicomachides bases his claim … simply on his long service as private, captain and colonel.”

²³ Strauss, Xenophon's Socrates, 63–64.

²⁴ I follow Strauss (Xenophon's Socrates, 63–64 and 77), who holds that the account of moral life in these conversations seems to deny that such an investigation is necessary, but not that Socrates holds that this account of moral life is adequate. See especially Strauss's (admittedly enigmatic) reference to the “neglected side of the noble” as well as n. 15 above.