What did Xenophon write about socrates?

Xenophon, answered from the texts and cited to the page.

Xenophon answers

I wrote four books about him, and they are all of a piece: I set down the man I knew, so that the city's verdict might be weighed against his life. The Memorabilia opens with the indictment and my wonder that anyone was persuaded by it. A man who never ventured one impious word or deed against the gods, whose speech and conduct matched in every point what we count the devoutest piety, was charged with impiety.¹

Equally strange to me was the charge that he corrupted the young. He kept his appetites under strict control, bore winter's cold and summer's heat and every toil, and so schooled himself to want little that the scantiest means never left him short.² He never undertook to be a teacher of virtue. Being evidently virtuous himself, he made those who kept his company hope that by imitating him they might come to resemble him.²

On Critias and Alcibiades, the two whose crimes were laid at his door, I say that they were the most ambitious men Athens ever bred. They sought him out for his independent life on the scantiest means, his self-mastery, and his power in debate, and I judge that had the gods offered them the choice between living as he lived to the end and dying, they would have chosen death.³

While they were with him they were temperate, because they were persuaded for the moment of the excellence of such conduct.³ Then wealth, pride of birth, power and flatterers did their work, and they were long parted from him.⁴ If a harp-master's pupil goes to another teacher and turns out a failure, we do not blame the first. A father whose son stays honest with one friend and goes to ruin with another praises the first friend the more.⁴

The right test for Socrates was whether he himself did anything base, and he never faltered in sobriety from beginning to end.⁴ I also show him taking no wages. He called those who sold their company vendors of their own persons, since they were bound to talk to please their paymasters. He thought the reward of virtue was an honest friend.² He was useful in every way.

To be with him, wherever and in whatever circumstances, was a priceless gain, and even the remembrance of him benefited those who had grown used to him.⁵ When he said he was in love with someone, it was the soul's promise he meant, a quickness to learn and a memory for what was learned, and a hunger for what serves the good management of a house or a state.⁵

I also report his talk with Euthydemus, at which I was present. He would not hurry his companions toward cleverness in speech and action without a foundation of self-control, since such gifts in a man lacking it only make him worse and more able to do harm.⁶ So he began with the gods, asking Euthydemus whether he had ever noticed what pains they have taken to supply man's needs, with light and the rest of the night with its stars to mark the watches.⁶

My other books on him are the Apology, which shows that he chose his death deliberately, the Symposium, and the Oeconomicus, in which he teaches the management of a house and a life. My Memorabilia gives the Socrates of the conversations, the pious and self-controlled man who made others useful.

Sources

1. A man who never ventured one impious word or deed against the gods we worship, but whose whole language concerning them, and his every act, closely coincided, word for word, and deed for deed, with all we deem distinctive of devoutest piety.

   The Memorabilia

2. not indeed that he ever undertook to be a teacher of virtue, but being evidently virtuous himself he made those who associated with him hope that by imitating they might at last resemble him.

   The Memorabilia

3. For my part I believe that if the choice from Heaven had been given them to live such a life as they saw Socrates living to its close, or to die, they would both have chosen death.

   The Memorabilia

4. Would a master of the harp or flute, would a teacher of any sort who has turned out proficient pupils, be held to account because one of them goes away to another teacher and turns out to be a failure?

   The Memorabilia

5. to be with Socrates, and to spend long time in his society (no matter where or what the circumstances), was indeed a priceless gain.

   The Memorabilia

6. It may be inferred that Socrates was in no hurry for those who were with him to discover capacities for speech and action or as inventive geniuses, without at any rate a well-laid foundation of self-control.

   The Memorabilia