What it is
The Memorabilia — Apomnēmoneumata, "things remembered" — is Xenophon's four-book portrait of Socrates, written some decades after Socrates' execution in 399 BCE. The first book is the most directly apologetic, taking up the charges for which Socrates was tried (impiety and corrupting the young) and arguing against them; the remaining books are a sequence of reported conversations grouped by topic.
It is the natural companion to the Apology, the Symposium and the Oeconomicus — the other three Socratic works of Xenophon — and together those four are our principal non-Platonic source for Socrates.
What it shows us
The Socrates of the Memorabilia is recognisably the same figure as the Socrates of Plato but reads differently: more practical, more concerned with the management of life and household, less drawn to the metaphysical questions that drive the Republic. He converses with generals on the duties of office, with householders on the use of property, with the young on self-control, on friendship, on the right handling of ambition.
The two portraits are not contradictory but they are distinct, and the difference is taken up in our entry on Plato and Xenophon.
Why it matters for Virtue & Power
The Memorabilia keeps the practical centre of Socratic philosophy in view, and it is the principal classical record of Socrates as a teacher of self-control and as a practical moralist. Reading the dialogues alongside Xenophon is the standard scholarly counterweight to reading Plato alone.
Citing the Memorabilia
The work is cited by book and chapter (e.g. Mem. 1.2). The standard Greek text is in Marchant's Oxford Classical Texts edition of Xenophon; see our Sources page.