Lycurgus' Extreme Wisdom: Competing Views of the Lawgiver in Plato and Xenophon

Abstract:As part of the ongoing reassessment of Xenophon's philosophical works, scholars have taken a renewed interest in the relationship between Xenophon and Plato, who occasionally criticize one another's works. Although ancient commentators assumed that the two men must have been rivals, a closer look at each one's comments on the other's work reveals that their criticisms were more philosophical than personal. After discussing two examples in which Plato and Xenophon criticize one another's works, in this paper I suggest that an unusual comment made by Xenophon about Lycurgus, the legendary Spartan lawgiver, is an oblique but critical reference to a statement in Plato's Symposium about Lycurgus' wisdom.