Socrates's Political Legacy: Xenophon's Socratic Characters in Hellenica I and II

This essay seeks to illuminate and interpret Xenophon's portrayal of active Socratic politics in the first part of the Hellenica by means of analyses of three characters associated with Socrates. First, I review the speeches and deeds of the two figures who are presented elsewhere by Xenophon as having been Socratic pupils, Alcibiades and Critias. Next, I offer a close reading of the only passage in the Hellenica featuring an explicit mention of Socrates, Euryptolemus's defense of the Arginusae generals. I argue that these three figures exemplify three different ways to put Socratic insight to work in the political realm-as a general, as a tyrant, and as an orator-and that each is beset by characteristic difficulties and un-Socratic errors of thought or judgment.