Among Xenophon’s works, four stand out as sharing a common concern with recollection and memorialization.* The Symposium announces it in its opening line: “But in my opinion, not only are the serious deeds of kaloi kagathoi worth recalling, but so too their deeds done in times of play.” Apology of Socrates does so as well: “And regarding Socrates, it is in my opinion also worth recalling how, when he was summoned to court, he deliberated about his defense and the end of his life.” Again, we find it in the very title of the work we know as the Memorabilia; and, whatever else may be the aim of the Anabasis, clearly at its core it is a memoire of Xenophon’s exploits with the Ten Thousand. Explain the importance of the concern for memorialization and the conceit of recollection for our understanding of these four works. Imagine that you are writing for an audience of readers who know who Xenophon is, but don’t know that these four works share this feature. Your task it to explain what’s interesting about this fact, to demonstrate on the basis of specific evidence from the texts how Xenophon— variously—deploys this concern to memorialize and the claim of recollection, and to argue for why it’s important to recognize this shared motive in these works.
* The Oeconomicus also shares this feature. It begins “I once heard him [sc. Socrates] discourse on the management of the household as well, in about these words.” Since we are not studying this text, you may ignore it for the purposes of this paper.