Memorabilia (Xenophon)

Memorabilia (original title in Greek: Ἀπομνημονεύματα, Apomnemoneumata) is a collection of Socratic dialogues by Xenophon, a student of Socrates. The lengthiest and most famous of Xenophon's Socratic writings, the Memorabilia is essentially an apologia (defense) of Socrates, differing from both Xenophon's Apology of Socrates to the Jury and Plato's Apology mainly in that the Apologies present Socrates as defending himself before the jury, whereas the former presents Xenophon's own defense of Socrates, offering edifying examples of Socrates' conversations and activities along with occasional commentary from Xenophon.

Memorabilia is also known by its Latin title Commentarii and a variety of English translations (Recollections, Memoirs, Conversations of Socrates, etc.).

The Memorabilia was probably completed after 371 BC, as one passage (III.5) appears to assume the military situation after the Spartan defeat at the battle of Leuctra in that year.

The Memorabilia contains 39 chapters broken into four books; Book I contains 7 chapters, Book II contains 10 chapters, Book III contains 14 chapters, and Book IV contains 8 chapters.

The overall organization of the Memorabilia is not always easy to make out :

In the lengthy first two chapters of the work, Xenophon argues that Socrates was innocent of the formal charges against him: failure to recognize the gods of Athens, introduction of new gods, and corruption of the youth. In addition to arguing that Socrates was most pious, and, as the most self-controlled of men, the least likely to corrupt the youth, Xenophon deals with informal political accusations not directly addressed in the Apology of Plato (or Xenophon's own Apology). Xenophon defends Socrates against the charge that he led the youth of Athens to despise democracy as a regime, and defends Socrates' association with Critias, the worst of the Thirty Tyrants who briefly ruled Athens in 404-403, and Alcibiades, the brilliant renegade democratic politician and general. It has often been argued that Xenophon is here responding not to charges in the air at time of the trial of Socrates in 399 BCE, but to charges made some years later by the Athenian sophist Polycrates in his Accusation of Socrates. But Polycrates' work is lost, and our sources for reconstructing it are late and unreliable. The assumption that Xenophon was responding to Polycrates point by point may be driven as much by the traditionally low esteem for Xenophon's literary powers as to any historical influence from Polycrates. The role of Polycrates is one item in the debate over whether Xenophon's treatment of Socrates reflects the historical Socrates, or is a largely fictional contribution to the literary debate about Socrates. This debate is in turn an important element in our understanding the Trial of Socrates, and in particular to the debate over whether the religious terms of the official accusation against Socrates (impiety) were a cover for political animosity against him.

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