Strauss on Xenophon's Socrates Xenophon's Socratic Discourse: An ...

110 THE POLITICAL SCIENCE REVIEWER
listen to him when he would see fit to remind him of his duties"
(109). Only by the "perhaps" does <strong>Strauss</strong> permit himself to indicate
the alternative he considers-that Socrates' action is better explained
by his own love of comedies and his being more concerned with
what. he could learn from them than with alleviating the economic
difficulties of Kritoboulos-though <strong>Strauss</strong> has certainly prepared us
for the reception of this thought.°
The shape of <strong>Strauss</strong>'s discussion of Chapter III is perhaps the
most affected by his wish to demonstrate the strong link between the
Oeconomicus and the Clouds. Xenophon refers to the Clouds in
Chapter III, according to <strong>Strauss</strong>'s suggestion, not only by explicit
references to comedy, especially, as well as to tragedy, and by bringing
out the somewhat less than serious nature of Socrates' instruction
of Kritoboulos in economics.' He refers to it also be dwelling on subjects
crucial to the Clouds: horses, farming and wives (108-111). The
very lack of clarity of the order of subjects treated in Chapter III is a
pointer to the Clouds, since the darkness disappears once one thinks
of the Clouds (111-112). <strong>Strauss</strong> concludes that the Oeconomicus,
"the Socratic discourse" of Xenophon, is a response to "the Socratic
comedy," the Clouds, "a response not altogether without comical
traits" (112). Here too, in speaking of the link between the
Oeconomicus and the Clouds, <strong>Strauss</strong> continues his treatment of
Socrates' alleged transcendence of justice, since that transcendence,
as we noted before, is a fundamental premise of the Clouds.
<strong>Strauss</strong> calls our attention to the fact that Chapters I-III appear to
form a section insofar as each indicate something that must be considered
in order to understand the Oeconomicus: "not only the subject
matter strictly and narrowly understood (household management)
and the qualities of the two interlocutors (Socrates and
Kritoboulos), but the Clouds as well . . (112; cf. also the beginning
of his discussion of Chapter IV: it reads like a new beginning to
the whole discussion). <strong>Strauss</strong>, who believes that what is most im-
6. The discussion of this chapter affords another example of <strong>Strauss</strong>'s reticence: his
surprising suggestion on 110 that Socrates (whose wife was the notoriously difficult
Xanthippe) as opposed to Kritoboulos and Ischomachos, among others, is to be
understood as a master rather than a bungler in dealing with his wife-this suggestion
is explained only on 158. Cf. also "with smithing in the center" on 92 with 115 and the
references to animals on 117 and 124 with 196.
7. In a rare instance of self-awareness or prescience in this conversation, one of
whose witnesses was Xenophon, Kritoboulos "wonders whether he, the lover of
comedy, will not himself be a subject of comedy ..." (109; cf. 107).