ABSTRACT
It may seem strange that we know so little about the early years of the world's greatest men. Moses, Buddha, Jesus, they have introduced fresh epochs in the life and thought of peoples, but we know practically nothing of their boyhood and youth. These statements apply in a measure to Socrates, the fact being that biography in the sense in which we know it is a form of literature which unfortunately did not arise in Greece till the Christian era. Not only is comparatively little recorded, and that referring chiefly to the later part of Socrates' career, but in the case of one of our two chief authorities, Xenophon. Xenophon does not omit to mention that when Socrates later turned from natural science as his central interest it was not because he was ignorant of its higher developments.
