Memorabilia, or Recollections of Socrates

Xenophon devotes the rest of the Memorabilia to demonstrating how Socrates benefited his friends and a wide range of other Athenians. It thus consists of episodes, mainly rather short and none more than a few pages in length, in which Socrates engages with a variety of persons. A few of the interlocutors appear several times. Typically Xenophon introduces the reason why he is writing about a particular conversation, and he will also occasionally interject a remark into the narrative, or at its conclusion. The lengthiest and most famous of Xenophon's Socratic writings, the Memorabilia is essentially an apologia (defense) of Socrates, differing from both Xenophon's Apology of Socrates to the Jury and Plato's Apology mainly in that the Apologies present Socrates as defending himself before the jury, whereas the former presents Xenophon's own defense of Socrates, offering edifying examples of Socrates' conversations and activities along with occasional commentary from Xenophon.