Polycrates’ Κατηγορία Σωϰράτοιυς

both the xenophontean Defence and Memorabilia 1.2.9-61, (or 64), are to a large extent rejoinders to that type of anti-Socratic literature which, beginning about the middle of the nineties of the fourth century b.c., probably found its most eloquent and notorious expression in the ϰατηγορία Σωϰράτους of Polycrates. The Defence makes sense only if we assume that when writing the latter, Xenophon (a) was acquainted with the ϰατηγορία, and (b) had already rebutted in Memorabilia 1.2.9-61 the specific charges against Socrates contained in the Polycratean pamphlet. The ϰατηγορία, it will be shown, probably was written in 393/2, while Memorabilia 1.1.1-1.2.64, we assume, were composed between 392 and 390, although F. Diimmler (Akademika 29) maintains that the ϰατηγορία was published in the year 382. ³⁷² Aside from Lysias, ³⁷³ Theodectes (D.L. 2.38) and Demetrius of Phaleron, Isocrates also wrote a rebuttal of the ϰατηγορία in his Busiris (chaps. 4-5), ³⁷⁴ where he insists that the ϰατηγορία is nothing other than a paradoxical work in which Polycrates attacks a man whom every one else holds in the highest esteem. Careful analysis should also divulge that Plato’s Meno, Symposium, and Gorgias already presuppose the ϰατηγορία Σωϰράτους. Hirzel goes so far as to claim that the Meno is primarily Plato’s reply to this pamphlet. ³⁷⁵ But it would be more correct to say that the Gorgias constitutes Plato’s reaction against the Late Sophists ³⁷⁶ and the anti-Socratic movement started by them. Consideration of this reaction, it may be added, is very important for an evaluation of the Platonic Gorgias. ³⁷⁷