Talk:Oeconomicus

Wiki Education Foundation-supported course assignment
This article was the subject of a Wiki Education Foundation-supported course assignment, between 2 September 2020 and 11 December 2020. Further details are available on the course page. Student editor(s): DDugan2021. Peer reviewers: Savanna Fillmore, ElizabethNguyen1.

Above undated message substituted from Template:Dashboard.wikiedu.org assignment by PrimeBOT (talk) 05:35, 17 January 2022 (UTC)

Author in title necessary?
Are there many works named Oeconomicus? As you can see, the simple article redirects here. II | (t - c) 09:30, 3 September 2008 (UTC)

historical reliability of Socratic attitudes
the article ends by saying "As for being informative historical sources about Socrates, Xenophon's Oeconomicus and his Symposium are regarded by most scholars today as practically worthless"

-- just wondering -- are all the other dialogues we find in ancient Greek texts regarded as informative historical sources? Plato had perfect memory, and recorded all of Socrates' words exactly? What is this statement being measured against?

Would a person read Oeconomicus for historical details, or for attitudes? Is it worthless as a source of attitudes? As a source of Socratic attitudes? Is "Socratic irony" an attitude or a historical detail? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 69.235.157.211 (talk) 00:31, 9 April 2009 (UTC)


 * Socrates by Plato is basically Plato, not Socrates. Socrates by Xenophon is basically Xenophon. Thus statements made with a straight face such as "practically" worthless are intellectual snobbery, and uncited as to source or qualified as opinion, are little better than classical POV as far as an encyclopedia is concerned. Xenophon was not precise history by today's measurement, and he was blatantly partial in praising what he liked and ignoring what he didn't, but he had the enormous advantage of having actually been there to witness the events, and a gift of being extremely readable.--Reedmalloy (talk) 05:02, 18 May 2011 (UTC)


 * Most importantly, the sentence is written currently so that it just says there is this controversy, and WP is not taking a side. I do think the wording could be improved though. That there are people who still find Xenophon worthless needs to be mentioned, but there is no need to use the most extreme wording we can find is there?--Andrew Lancaster (talk) 12:09, 18 May 2011 (UTC)