Xenophon was an Athenian citizen, soldier, gentleman-farmer, historian, and author of many varied and often graceful prose works. When young he knew Socrates, whom he consulted before joining, in 401, the famous expedition to Persia narrated in his masterpiece, the Anabasis. Xenophon played a part in leading the defeated remnant back to Greece. Meanwhile, in 399, Socrates had been executed on trumped-up charges. In the subsequent pamphleteering, Xenophon wrote in Socrates' defense. His so-called Apology of Socrates is an unconvincing footnote to Plato's; but later he compiled his extensive and valuable Memorabilia (Recollections of Socrates) the work that has given Xenophon, not himself a philosopher, considerable importance to all post-Socratic philosophers. In it Xenophon supplemented his defense of Socrates against specific charges (made in a pamphlet by Polycrates) with a more general description of his character as a man, a...