Critobule dans les écrits socratiques de Xénophon : le portrait d’un mauvais élève

Abstract

Critobulus is a recurring character in the Socratica: in the Memorabilia (book I and especially in book II), he plays an important part in two main conversations on philia; in the Symposium, he is one of Socrates’ companions, proud of his own beauty; finally, he is Socrates’ main interlocutor in the first six chapters of the Œconomicus. However, no particular study has been devoted to him, firstly because the importance given by Xenophon to this character has no equivalent in Plato’s dialogues, but also because, in Xenophon’s work, he remains a secondary character. This paper aims at showing the extreme consistency of the character of Critobulus, his role in the Memorabilia, the Symposium and the Œconomicus and his importance for understanding the conception of education as seen in Xenophon’s Socratica and his role in the various dialogues in which he features. We shall see that he belongs to an intermediate category, that of potential disciples who, in the dialogues, can still be trained if they choose good masters, but who, as the reader knows, will not choose them, in other words, bad students…

Keywords

• Xenophon
• Plato
• Critobulus
• Socratica
• Socrates
• paideia