This translation of Xenophon’s Memorabilia of Socrates was first published in 1712, and is here printed from the revised edition of 1722. Its author was Edward Bysshe, who had produced in 1702 The Art of English Poetry, a well-known work that was near its fifth edition when its author published his translation of the Memorabilia. This was a translation that remained in good repute. There was another edition of it in 1758. Bysshe translated the title of the book into The Memorable Things of Socrates. I have changed Things into Thoughts, for whether they be sayings or doings, the words and deeds of a wise man are alike expressions of his thought.

Xenophon is said to have been, when young, a pupil of Socrates. Two authorities have recorded that in the flight from the battle of Delium in the year B.C. 424, when Xenophon fell from his horse, Socrates picked him up and carried him on his back for a considerable distance. The time of Xenophon’s death is not known, but he was alive sixty-seven years after the battle of Delium.

When Cyrus the Younger was preparing war against his brother Artaxerxes Mnemon, King of Persia, Xenophon went with him. After the death of Cyrus on the plains of Cunaxa, the barbarian auxiliaries fled, and the Greeks were left to return as they could from the far region between the Tigris and Euphrates. Xenophon had to take part in the conduct of the retreat, and tells the story of it in his Anabasis, a history of the expedition of the younger Cyrus and of the retreat of the Greeks. His return into Greece was in the year of the death of Socrates, B.C. 399, but his association was now with the Spartans, with whom he fought, B.C. 394, at Coroneia. Afterwards he settled, and lived for about twenty years, at Scillus in Eleia with his wife and children. At Scillus he wrote probably his Anabasis and some other of his books. At last he was driven out by the Eleans. In the battle of Mantineia the Spartans and Athenians fought as allies, and Xenophon’s two sons were in the battle; he had sent them to Athens as fellow-combatants from Sparta. His banishment from Athens was repealed by change of times, but it does not appear that he returned to Athens. He is said to have lived, and perhaps died, at Corinth, after he had been driven from his home at Scillus.