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

STRAUSS ON XENOPHON 127
for it" (137, my emphasis). And he reports to Socrates (without objecting
to them) remarks made by the boatswain of a Phoenician
ship which imply a doubt "about evil befalling only the bad, i.e.,
about whether one can speak in strict parlance of divine punishment"
and in which "the gods are mentioned only as disturbers of
order" (143; cf. 162). (The absence of any sign that he also reported
these remarks to his wife when he recounted to her what he had
learned from his visit to the Phoenician ship, tends to confirm that
his lectures to her reflect an "improved" version of his true views
144.) But whatever Ischomachos's doubts may have been, either
about nature or the gods, they remained within certain limits and
thus left a basis for his hopefulness (cf. 133, 161-162). <strong>Strauss</strong> points
this out by contrasting the conclusion which Socrates would have
drawn-from the observation that some of those who act against
"the divine or natural order," i.e., the order on which the law has
put the stamp of the noble, are not punished by the gods-with the
conclusion which as we have seen, Ischomachos draws. Socrates
would not have balked at the thought that the gods are aware of the
actions which they fail to punish (137; cf. Herakleitos B 102).
If this difference were a purely theological one, if it rested on
nothing but differing assessments or experiences of the divine, it
might well be unresolvable. There would be no ground common to
Ischomachos and Socrates on which to base a reasonable decision.
Each could continue to maintain his position indefinitely, in what
would amount to a mere test of wills. But the situation is altogether
different if their disagreement regarding the gods rests on differing
assessments of that which the law declares to be noble, and if the
question of the truth or genuineness of this nobilty is open to discussion.
Ischomachos's vulnerability on that score becomes clear when
one puts together his strong disapproval of cosmetics or "spurious
beauty," of boasting or deception as opposed to truth (X as a whole,
also XI.25 and 166), with the indication given in Chapter XI
(165-166) that he, as opposed to Socrates has not investigated what
justice is. Given the intimate connection of the just and the noble
(cf. 134), we can assume that the same holds for nobility, as far as he
is concerned. Indeed, this is already suggested by his deference,
regarding the noble, to the law. The situation is altogether different
that is if the "evidence for the gods (as Ischomachos conceives them
to be) consists in his concern for what the law declares to be noble
(in all its dignity but also in its need of support to secure the
deference it claims as its due but does not sufficiently elicit on its