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

132 THE POLITICAL SCIENCE REVIEWER
"the economist Ischomachos" is described as a "freeman who is a
member of a republic, a commonwealth, and who minds his own
business" (161). Earlier we had been told that "the successful practitioner"
of economics "seemed to be the free man, the man in no way
enslaved bylow desires, not to say by prejudices of any kind" (102).
But we were also told that this assessment was made before such a
man was compared with Socrates. As we suspected even then, when
compared with Socrates or looked at from Socrates ' perspective, the
gentleman's freedom from prejudices comes to light as less than
complete. In Chapter XI, Socrates seems to go so far as to understand
"honoring the gods magnificently as part of adorning [or
strengthening-cf. XI.13 with .10] the city" (163), i.e., as serving an
essentially political function. (Among other things, it supports the
gentleman's way of life, a way of life so conducive to citizenship in a
republic.)
Having delved thus far into these matters, <strong>Strauss</strong> turns to a comparison
of the Oeconomicus with Aristophanes' Clouds (the occasion
for which is provided by a line of Chapter XI which is almost literally
a quotation from the Clouds):
The Aristophanean Socrates corrupted completely a youth who was already
half-corrupted by horsemanship and who was the son of a farmer; the
Xenophontic Socrates leads a young man who is the son of a gentleman-farmer,
and who is in danger of losing himself in frivolities, back to farming or saved
him from corruption by teaching him, among other things, the rudiments of
farming. In contradistinction to the Aristophanean Socrates, who is nothing but
a teacher, the Xenophontic Socrates is in the first place a pupil, not of idle
talkers, i.e., of alien sophists or students of nature, but of the most perfect
gentleman in Athens (163-164).
This comparison must strike us as very strange. To say nothing of the
question of the seriousness or earnestness of Socrates' attempt to
reform Kritoboulos (cf. 169, 191), Xenophon's Socrates has been
transformed from the critic of Ischomachos into his pupil (cf. 130,
162). What is the meaning of this change? <strong>Strauss</strong> concludes his
comparison as follows: "The Oeconomicus is then in a properly subdued
manner a comical reply to Aristophanes' comical attack on
Socrates. More preciesly, the Oeconomicus describes Socrates'
famous turning away from his earlier pursuit, which brought him
the reputation of being an idle talker and a man who measures the
air and which left him wholly unaware of what perfect gentlemanship
is, toward the study of only the human things and the things