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PLATO, XENOPHON, AND SOCRATES’ INNER CIRCLE

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  20 January 2026

Kirk R. Sanders Open the ORCID record for Kirk R. Sanders [Opens in a new window]
Kirk R. Sanders*
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University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign
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Abstract

Contemporary historians of philosophy almost universally embrace the idea that the young Plato had a close, personal relationship with the historical Socrates. Many refuse to countenance a similar status for Plato’s contemporary, Xenophon. This note takes as its focus a novel argument intended to support the claim that Xenophon was never on intimate terms with Socrates or even privy to reliable information about him. The reply offered here has implications far beyond this apparently narrow focus, however, and points to pervasive biases in Socratic studies generally that remain in sore need of correction.

Keywords

PlatoSocratesSocraticsXenophonAthenian demesErchia

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The Classical Quarterly , First View , pp. 1 - 5
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Our evidence, such as it is, that either Xenophon or Plato was especially close to the historical Socrates during the latter’s lifetime rests largely on their respective Socratic writings and the standing these enjoyed among later authors.Footnote 1 Though Xenophon was widely regarded in antiquity—at least outside the Academy—as no less an authoritative witness for Socrates than was Plato,Footnote 2 the situation is by no means the same today. In Plato’s case, there is a nearly universal tendency among historians of ancient philosophy to countenance the Platonic corpus (and much later sources clearly influenced by this) as sufficient evidence of his personal connection to Socrates. Xenophon’s Socratic writings are rarely accorded similar deference. Many scholars who are completely credulous of Plato’s role at Socrates’ trial based entirely on the self-references in Plato’s Apology, for example, nevertheless discount or dispute any and all eyewitness claims in Xenophon’s own Socratic works.Footnote 3 Some have even gone so far as to doubt that Xenophon was ever on intimate terms with Socrates or a member of his inner circle.Footnote 4

A relatively recent and comprehensive rejection of Xenophon’s Socratic bona fides along these lines can be found in the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (SEP) article on Socrates by Nails and Monoson.Footnote 5 The considerations the authors adduce there are a mixture of old—including the tendentious assertion that Xenophon’s portrait is simply too ‘pedestrian’ to account for the following and devotion the historical Socrates attracted—and new. The former have been adequately addressed elsewhere by others.Footnote 6 My concern here is rather with the novel argument on offer from Nails and Monoson in support of their potentially damning claim that ‘Xenophon could not have chalked up many hours with Socrates or with reliable informants’.

The reasons they cite are as follows: ‘[Xenophon] lived in Erchia, about 15 kilometers and across the Hymettus mountains from Socrates’ haunts in the urban areas of Athens, and his love of horses and horsemanship (on which he wrote a still-valuable treatise) took up considerable time. He left Athens in 401 on an expedition to Persia and, for a variety of reasons (mercenary service for Thracians and Spartans; exile), never resided in Athens again.’ As it turns out, almost every detail of significance in these two sentences requires either correction or qualification. Given the standing of the SEP as a leading reference work in philosophy, it seems worthwhile to attempt to set the record straight here, lest the faulty premises of this particular argument (much like the questionable conclusion they are meant to warrant) pass into the realm of opinio communis.

First, nothing supports the claim that Xenophon resided in Erchia, his ancestral deme. Membership in a particular Athenian deme entailed only that one’s relevant paternal ancestors had been resident there at the time of Cleisthenes’ democratic reforms in 508/7 b.c.e. Footnote 7 Thus we are by no means certain that Xenophon himself was even born in Erchia, much less that he lived there for any portion of his youth or adult life.Footnote 8 Socrates, for his own part, appears not to have resided as an adult in his ancestral deme of Alopeke, which also lay outside the city walls of Athens.Footnote 9 Even were there reason to believe that Xenophon had resided in Erchia, however, the considerably greater distance to urban Athens from either Megara or Thebes does not seem to have occasioned similar doubts that either Euclides or Simmias managed to be on close terms with Socrates regardless.Footnote 10

The idea that Xenophon’s ‘love of horses and horsemanship’ would have prevented him from spending significant time with Socrates is even more fanciful. An interest in horses was hardly unique among Athenian aristocrats. The more mundane and time-consuming tasks associated with horse ownership presumably fell to their slaves.Footnote 11 Nor do the well-documented equestrian interests of Alcibiades, for example, seem to have prevented him from becoming close to Socrates.Footnote 12 One can only imagine that Xenophon also found time apart from any outside interests or hobbies to spend with his friends, whoever these may have been. Moreover, a ready access to horses would presumably have made even a trip between Erchia and urban Athens easier and quicker than, say, the five-mile walk from the Piraeus Antisthenes is reported to have made daily to listen to Socrates.Footnote 13

While it is true that Xenophon left Athens in 401 b.c.e., around two years before Socrates’ trial and execution, this fact by itself says little about the amount of time Xenophon could have spent in the company of Socrates, either in absolute terms or in comparison to Plato, who may have been Xenophon’s junior by several years.Footnote 14 Recall in this regard the story that Xenophon himself tells about his decision to join the Greek mercenary army being assembled by the Persian prince Cyrus. According to Anabasis 3.1.4–8,Footnote 15 Xenophon first conferred with Socrates on the matter and heeded his advice to consult the Delphic Oracle. In doing so, however, Xenophon effectively guaranteed a response that supported his own antecedent desire to enlist by asking the Oracle ‘to which of the gods he should sacrifice and pray in order to most successfully and satisfactorily embark on the journey he had in mind’ (τίνι ἂν θεῶν θύων καὶ εὐχόμενος κάλλιστα καὶ ἄριστα ἔλθοι τὴν ὁδὸν ἣν ἐπινοεῖ, 3.1.6). Socrates rebuked Xenophon for not having asked instead whether it would be better for him to stay or go but then added: ‘Since you did put the question in that way, you ought to do everything the god commanded’ (ἐπεὶ μέντοι οὕτως ἤρου, ταῦτ᾽, ἔφη, χρὴ ποιεῖν ὅσα ὁ θεὸς ἐκέλευσεν, 3.1.7). Xenophon’s story does not paint an especially flattering portrait of his younger self. It does, however, illustrate perfectly the kind of advice Xenophon elsewhere claims that Socrates regularly gave to his ‘close friends’ (ἐπιτηδείους): ‘on day-to-day matters, he advised them to do as he thought would be best; but on matters whose outcome was uncertain, he sent them to consult an oracle about what should be done’ (τὰ μὲν γὰρ ἀναγκαῖα συνεβούλευε καὶ πράττειν ὡς ἐνόμιζεν ἄριστ᾽ ἂν πραχθῆναι· περὶ δὲ τῶν ἀδήλων ὅπως ἀποβήσοιτο μαντευσομένους ἔπεμπεν, εἰ ποιητέα, Mem. 1.1.6).

Finally, the assertion that Xenophon ‘never resided in Athens again’ after 401 b.c.e. is also at least subject to doubt. The available evidence suggests that Xenophon was reconciled with Athens and saw his exile revoked long before his death.Footnote 16 We know that his sons served in the Athenian cavalry in the 360s, which presumably provides a terminus ante quem for the revocation of Xenophon’s own exile.Footnote 17 That Xenophon also spent time in Athens during this same period or thereafter cannot be ruled out. Certainly, the contents of both Hipparchicus and Poroi suggest an awareness of issues and developments in Athens during the 360s and 350s.Footnote 18 But Xenophon would hardly have needed to return to Athens in order to have access to reliable, supplemental information regarding Socrates. In the more than two decades during which Xenophon lived in Scillus, just a few miles south of Olympia, he could easily have had personal interactions with other Socratics. His own Socratic writings also indicate a familiarity with a variety of reports or writings by other friends and followers of Socrates.Footnote 19

In sum, the considerations adduced by Nails and Monoson in their SEP article provide no better cause to doubt either Xenophon’s proximity to, or access to reliable information about, the historical Socrates than do the bald assertions often found in earlier secondary literature on the subject. That so many scholars nevertheless continue to deny Xenophon a standing comparable to the one they uncritically embrace for Plato speaks to a pervasive bias in Socratic studies that remains in sore need of correction.

Footnotes

*

I thank both the organizers of and my fellow participants in the first triennial conference of the International Xenophon Society, held in Buenos Aires in November 2024, where I received helpful comments and criticisms on a presentation that incorporated an early version of the present paper. I also thank Vitor Milione for his comments on a revised version of the paper in its current form, as well as CQ’s reader.

References

1 Plato never mentions Xenophon, and Xenophon in his entire collected works mentions Plato only once, in passing (at Mem. 3.6.1). While the fragments and testimonia of the so-called ‘Minor Socratics’ contain numerous references to Plato’s own philosophical views or his disagreements with his fourth-century b.c.e. contemporaries, none speaks to a close, personal relationship with Socrates himself. Xenophon, unlike Plato, does at least feature in the extant fragments of a dialogue by another early Socratic: on the basis of Cic. Inv. rhet. 1.51–3 (= Socratis et Socraticorum Reliquiae 6.A.70), we know that Aeschines’ Aspasia contained a conversation, narrated by Socrates, between Aspasia, Xenophon and Xenophon’s wife. We also have reports of rivalries among the early Socratics that may well have influenced which of their contemporaries each chose to reference and how; for a representative sampling of the relevant evidence see G. Boys-Stones and C. Rowe (edd.), The Circle of Socrates (Indianapolis, 2013), 293–7. Regarding the possible rivalry between Plato and Xenophon specifically, see Diog. Laert. 3.34, Ath. Deipn. 11.504c–505b and Gell. 14.3.

2 On the importance of Xenophon’s Socratic writings for Hellenistic philosophers, see A.A. Long, ‘Socrates in Hellenistic philosophy’, CQ 38 (1988), 150–71. Diogenes Laertius, writing sometime in the third century c.e., notably places Xenophon’s biography first among those of Socrates’ followers. On Diogenes’ approach and value as a historian of philosophy, see J. Warren, ‘Diogenes Laërtius, biographer of philosophy’, in J. König and T. Whitmarsh (edd.), Ordering Knowledge in the Roman Empire (Cambridge, 2007), 133–49.

3 For an extensive discussion of attitudes toward Xenophon’s various eyewitness claims both in Memorabilia and in his Socratic works more generally, see M. Bandini and L.-A. Dorion, Xénophon Mémorables. Tome 1. Introduction générale, Livre I (Paris, 2000), xxxix–lii.

4 See e.g. J. Burnet (ed.), Plato: Phaedo (Oxford, 1911), xviii; H. Maier, Sokrates, sein Werk und seine geschichtliche Stellung (Tübingen, 1913), 7–8; L. Robin, La pensée grecque et les origines de l’esprit scientifique (Paris, 1923), 187–8; A.E. Taylor, Socrates (Edinburgh, 1932), 18; W. Jaeger, Paideia: The Ideals of Greek Culture, Vol. 2: In Search of the Divine Center (Oxford, 1943), 20; A.-H. Chroust, Socrates, Man and Myth: The Two Socratic Apologies of Xenophon (South Bend, IN, 1957), 9; G. Vlastos, Socrates: Ironist and Moral Philosopher (Ithaca, NY, 1991), 103 with n. 87; and C. Kahn, Plato and the Socratic Dialogue: The Philosophical Use of a Literary Form (Cambridge, 1996), 15 n. 28.

5 D. Nails and S.S. Monoson, ‘Socrates’, The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (Summer 2022 Edition), ed. E.N. Zalta, https://plato.stanford.edu/archives/sum2022/entries/socrates/; accessed 31 March 2025. Though Monoson is listed as co-author in the most recent revision of this article, both the claim and the arguments meant to support it discussed below also appear in earlier versions, which were attributed to Nails alone. (The first version of the SEP ‘Socrates’ entry was published in 2005; the revision in which Monoson was first listed as co-author appeared in 2022.)

6 There has been a resurgence of interest in Xenophon’s Socratic works over the past fifty years, thanks in no small part to the pioneering work of such scholars as Livio Rossetti, Donald Morrison, Louis-André Dorion and Claudia Mársico. The collected essays in G. Danzig, D. Johnson and D. Morrison (edd.), Plato and Xenophon: Comparative Studies (Leiden, 2017) offer a useful starting point.

7 See D. Whitehead, The Demes of Attica, 508/7–ca. 250 b.c.: A Political and Social Study (Princeton, 1986), 67–8.

8 Cf. J.W.I. Lee, ‘Xenophon and his time’, in M. Flower (ed.), The Cambridge Companion to Xenophon (Cambridge, 2017), 15–36, at 19.

9 See K.R. Sanders, ‘Swearing by Hera redux: further speculation on the origin of the oath νὴ τὴν Ἥραν’, Mnemosyne 68 (2015), 121–6, at 125 with n. 24.

10 See e.g. the comments regarding Euclides and Simmias by Nails herself in D. Nails, The People of Plato: A Prosopography of Plato and Other Socratics (Indianapolis, 2002), 145 and 261, respectively.

11 As Xenophon himself suggests at Eq. 4.4.

12 Both Plato and Xenophon attest to Socrates’ relationship with Alcibiades. Besides the two dialogues attributed to Plato that bear Alcibiades’ name (but whose authorship is disputed), see Pl. Grg. 481d, Prt. 309a–b, Symp. 212d–223b and Xen. Mem. 1.2.12–48. Among other Socratics, Aeschines, Antisthenes, Euclides and Phaedo are all reported to have authored a work entitled Alcibiades. In the cases of both Euclides and Phaedo, only the title is attested; see Diog. Laert. 2.108 (= SSR 2.A.10) and Suda s.v. Phaedo (= SSR 3.A.8), respectively. (But Alcibiades apparently also featured alongside Socrates in Phaedo’s Zopyrus and Simon; see L. Rossetti, ‘“Socratica” in Fedone di Elide’, StudUrb(B) 47 [1973], 364–81, at 370–3 and the extensive collection of texts and commentary regarding Zopyrus in particular in L. Rossetti, ‘Ricerche sui “Dialoghi Socratici” di Fedone e di Euclide’, Hermes 108 [1980], 183–200, at 183–98). On Antisthenes’ Alcibiades, see Diog. Laert. 6.18 (= SSR 5.A.41) and the discussion in S. Prince, Antisthenes of Athens: Texts, Translations, and Commentary (Ann Arbor, MI, 2015), 162. The evidence regarding Aeschines’ Alcibiades is more extensive: see Kahn (n. 4), 19–23 and F. Pentassuglio, Eschine di Sfetto. Tutte le testimonianze (Turnhout, 2017), 64–119, 252–66, 394–429.

13 See Diog. Laert. 6.2 (= SSR 5.A.12).

14 Though Plato’s birth year is often listed as c. 428/7 b.c.e., he is more likely to have been born as late as 424/3. For the evidence, see R. Waterfield, Plato of Athens: A Life in Philosophy (Oxford, 2023), 51–4; cf. Nails (n. 10), 243–7. Xenophon’s exact dates are uncertain. Some scholars put his birth year as early as 440 b.c.e., though the consensus is for a date somewhere between 430 and 425. Nails (ibid., 301) is among those favouring a date at the later end of this spectrum; cf. Lee (n. 8), 16–17.

15 For a recent and detailed discussion of this passage, see L.-A. Dorion, ‘The reception and interpretation of Xenophon’s discussion with Socrates in the Anabasis (3.1.4–8)’, in T. Rood and M. Tamiolaki (edd.), Xenophon’s Anabasis and its Reception (Berlin, 2022), 85–103.

16 See e.g. Diog. Laert. 2.59.

17 Cf. C. Tuplin, ‘Xenophon and Athens’, in M. Flower (ed.), The Cambridge Companion to Xenophon (Cambridge, 2017), 338–59, at 339.

18 Tuplin (n. 17), 344–5; cf. Lee (n. 8), 34.

19 Xenophon explicitly credits Hermogenes as the source for much of his Apology and the corresponding material in Mem. 4.8. Hermogenes’ own close connection to Socrates is attested not only by Plato (who lists Hermogenes among those present at Socrates’s death at Phd. 59b and makes him one of Socrates’s primary interlocutors in Cra.) and Xenophon (who names Hermogenes in Mem. 1.2.48 as a ‘disciple’ [ὁμιλητής] of Socrates and makes him one of the members of Socrates’ entourage in Symp.) but also by Aeschines, in whose Telauges Hermogenes apparently served to introduce Socrates and the titular character to one another as their mutual friend (see Procl. In Crat. 21 [= SSR 6.A.83] and the discussions in H. Dittmar, Aischines von Sphettos: Studien zur Literaturgeschichte der Sokratiker [Berlin, 1912], 229 and Pentassuglio [n. 12], 208). In addition to having a familiarity with various Platonic dialogues, Xenophon was also clearly conversant with, for example, the work of Antisthenes, who seems to have been regarded as the most important Socratic in the decade following Socrates’ death. Kahn (n. 4), 393–401 contains a list of passages in Xen. Mem. and Symp. that may reflect an awareness of, and even dependence on, some of Plato’s writings. On the relationship between Xenophon and Antisthenes, see Prince (n. 12), especially 13–14. Our primary evidence for Antisthenes’ preeminence among Socratics during the 390s b.c.e. comes from Isoc. C. soph., on which see e.g. C. Eucken, Isokrates: seine Positionen in der Auseinandersetzung mit den zeitgenössischen Philosophen (Berlin, 1983), 18–27 and D.J. Murphy, ‘Isocrates as a reader of Socratic dialogues’, in A. Stavru and C. Moore (edd.), Socrates and the Socratic Dialogue (Leiden, 2017), 105–25, at 105–10.