The Nexus Archive
Socratic Texts · Memoir
Memorabilia
by Xenophon
Featuring Socrates
- Advanced
- c. 370 BCE
- ~4 hr 15 min read
- 6 chapter guides
- Public domain
Start reading · Read the Book I.1 — The Charges Against Socrates guide free
Before the text
Editor's Prelude
A Defense Made of Memories
Athens executed Socrates for impiety and for corrupting the young. Xenophon answers that judgment by bringing the accused man back into view: at sacrifice, among friends, with ambitious pupils, in workshops, and in arguments about appetite, duty, command, and death. The defense rests less on a single speech than on the accumulated pressure of a life.
Memorabilia is a sequence of remembered encounters. Xenophon had known Socrates before becoming a soldier, commander, and historian, and his Socrates has the same practical cast: he asks what a general must know, what friendship demands, how a household survives, and whether confidence has been earned. The conversations can feel plainer than Plato's dialogues, but their plainness is strategic. Xenophon wants usefulness, self-command, and reverence to become evidence.
The legal charges frame a larger question: what kind of education makes a person free, capable, and good? These encounters test the answer through work, friendship, public responsibility, and the pressure of death.
The opening pages
Book I.1 — The Charges Against Socrates
I have often wondered by what arguments those who indicted Socrates could have persuaded the Athenians that his life was justly forfeit to the state. The indictment was to this effect: "Socrates is guilty of crime in refusing to recognise the gods acknowledged by the state, and importing strange divinities of his own; he is further guilty of corrupting the young."
In the first place, what evidence did they produce that Socrates refused to recognise the gods acknowledged by the state? Was it that he did not sacrifice? or that he dispensed with divination? On the contrary, he was often to be seen engaged in sacrifice, at home or at the common altars of the state. Nor was his dependence on divination less manifest. Indeed that saying of his, "A divinity gives me a sign," was on everybody's lips. So much so that, if I am not mistaken, it lay at the root of the imputation that he imported novel divinities; though there was no greater novelty in his case than in that of other believers in oracular help, who commonly rely on omens of all sorts: the flight or cry of birds, the utterances of man, chance meetings, or a victim's entrails. Even according to the popular conception, it is not the mere fowl, it is not the chance individual one meets, who knows what things are profitable for a man, but it is the gods who vouchsafe by such instruments to signify the same. This was also the tenet of Socrates. Only, whereas men ordinarily speak of being turned aside, or urged onwards by birds, or other creatures encountered on the path, Socrates suited his language to his conviction. "The divinity," said he, "gives me a sign." Further, he would constantly advise his associates to do this, or beware of doing that, upon the authority of this same divine voice; and, as a matter of fact, those who listened to his warnings prospered, whilst he who turned a deaf ear to them repented afterwards. Yet, it will be readily conceded, he would hardly desire to present himself to his everyday companions in the character of either knave or fool. Whereas he would have appeared to be both, supposing the God-given revelations had but revealed his own proneness to deception. It is plain he would not have ventured on forecast at all, but for his belief that the words he spoke would in fact be verified. Then on whom, or what, was the assurance rooted, if not upon God? And if he had faith in the gods, how could he fail to recognise them?
Chapter guides · 6
Book I.1 — The Charges Against Socrates
Xenophon Answers the Charge
Xenophon argues that Socrates honored the gods in both worship and conduct.
Piety in practice
Xenophon answers the charge of impiety with Socrates's sacrifices and use of divine signs. Other Athenians also seek signs through divination, the interpretation of messages from the gods. Socrates treats his own divine warning as guidance from the same gods.
Knowledge and its limits
Socrates distinguishes skills people can learn from outcomes beyond human knowledge. He recommends consulting the gods about those uncertain outcomes. His ordinary discussions concern human conduct and government, rather than theories about how the universe works.
An oath before popular pressure
In a closing example, Socrates refuses to put a collective death sentence for the generals to a vote. He keeps his sworn duty to the law despite threats and public anger. Xenophon connects this conduct to his belief that the gods know every deed, word and private thought. Xenophon closes by insisting that Socrates's words and deeds honored the gods.
Book I.5–7 — Self-Control and Empty Expertise
Discipline Becomes Evidence
Self-control and real ability matter more than comfort, fees or the appearance of expertise.
Freedom through self-control
Socrates makes self-control the basis of being trustworthy. Someone ruled by appetite is a poor choice to lead an army or care for a family. Such a person harms himself as well as those who depend on him.
The answer to Antiphon
The sophist Antiphon criticizes Socrates's poor living and refusal to charge fees. Socrates answers that few needs, practice and endurance give him freedom. Taking no payment also lets him choose his companions. He finds pleasure in improving himself and his friends, and says preparing others for public life is itself political work.
False expertise puts others at risk
A man pretending to be a flute-player wastes money and invites ridicule. A false pilot or general can ruin the people placed in his care. Socrates ends by calling the person who claims the ability to lead a state without that knowledge the greatest impostor.
Book II.7–10 — Need, Work, and Mutual Aid
Friendship Turns Practical
Socrates connects useful work and mutual help to the problems of four acquaintances.
Book III.12–14 — Body, Irritation, and Appetite
Discipline in Ordinary Life
Socrates applies self-control to physical training, daily annoyances and shared meals.
Book IV.2 — Euthydemus and Self-Knowledge
Self-Knowledge Cuts Deeper
Euthydemus discovers the limits of his judgment and returns to Socrates to learn.
Book IV.7–8 — Useful Learning and Death
The Defense Ends as a Portrait
Xenophon closes by returning to the character of Socrates under the pressure of death.
Questions readers ask
- How long does it take to read Memorabilia?
- About 4 hr 15 min in total.
- How difficult is Memorabilia?
- Advanced. A long memoir; about 4 hours of reading.
- Which translation is this?
- The Henry Graham Dakyns translation from the Ancient Greek. The text follows The Works of Xenophon, Volume III, Part I: The Memorabilia and Apology, the Economist, the Symposium, and Hiero (1897).
- Can I read Memorabilia for free?
- Yes. Memorabilia is free to read with a Nexus account.
- How many chapter guides are there?
- 6 chapter guides, written by the Nexus editors. Two open in full here; the rest show their opening line.
About Socrates
Socrates spent his life questioning citizens in the public spaces of Athens. He wrote nothing himself; what survives comes mainly through Plato and other students. Convicted of impiety and corrupting the young, he refused escape and died by drinking hemlock.
“What do you mean by that?”
Socrates makes thinking dangerous. He shows that a civilization can be powerful, cultured, and still unable to answer basic questions about justice, virtue, and the good life.
Source text: public domain. Chapter guides: original Nexus writing. Memorabilia is part of The Nexus Archive, guided Quests through the great works.