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

128 THE POLITICAL SCIENCE REVIEWER
own), if it is such concern which calls forth belief and which sustains
it, in however modified a form, through the all but inevitable disappointments
(see again 99 and 123). In that case, a conversation
which led "Ischomachos" to a different, more adequate view of the
noble (a conversation made possible by Socrates' learning through
"hearing" Ischomachos's original view) would change the basis on
which evidence bearing on the question of the gods is assessed by
him.
It is not clear that Socrates ever had such a conversation with
Ischomachos. If he did, it surely is not the conversation presented in
the Oeconoinicus, where Socrates may have wished only to confirm
its possibility in principle-which would not mean that it is in fact
possible to have such a conversation in every particular case (cf.
What is Political Philosophy? 94). The course it might take is indicated
to some extent by the discussion of Chapter VIII. The subject
of that chapter seems to be especially the beauty of order (cf.
146, i.e. its subject is beauty (nobility) as well as order. Ischomachos
had seen a particularly beautiful example of order aboard the
Phoenician merchant ship. After discussing Ischomachos's account
of this example, <strong>Strauss</strong> compares it with the story of Cyrus and his
pleasure garden, which Lysander had so admired for its beauty
(118), a beauty consisting in no small part in its orderliness
(IV.21-22):
In both cases barbarians are presented as models in regard to order. In both
cases the order is of human origin. Yet in the Persian story the ordered thing is
the pleaure garden, and the orderer is a man who was almost a king; in the
Phoenician story the ordered thing is a merchantman, and the orderer is a
nameless boatswain. In the Persian story the order belongs together with Cyrus'
resplendent adornments of all kinds; in the Phoenician story the splendor is
altogether replaced by utility (143). 'Q
An earlier remark of <strong>Strauss</strong>'s seems to suggest that the noble
(beautiful) is that which one can be concerned with "for its own
sake," as well as for one ' s own sake (117). Ischomachos seems to hold
this to be true of that which the law declares to be noble. His limitation
of increase of wealth to noble or just increase (134) is not for the
sake of greater gain in the future; "he cannot plead his cause well if
12. This opposition is clearly not identical to that developed in the discussion of
Chapters IV-V, for the point of view of the free man and the gentleman farmer (IV)
cannot be identified with that of the boatswain (but of. 160 and 201). Also " Persia"