S. begins his account of the fourth book of Xenophon's Memorabilia with an attack on John Rawls. Rawls's liberalism, S. argues, can neither provide a place for revealed religion within the constitutional order nor produce a rational proof that revealed religion is baseless. This is an odd beginning for a book on Xenophon, but readers familiar with Leo Strauss will recognise the perennial conflict between Athens and Jerusalem. Rawls largely vanishes from S.'s text after the first couple of pages, but S.'s account of Memorabilia 4 often returns to the question of whether philosophy or theology provides a better foundation for political life. This is certainly a reasonable theme, as the Memorabilia is, after all, a defence of a philosopher executed for impiety, but S. will often find intimations of divinity where others would not, largely by reading Mem. 4.2 by means of Mem. 4.3 (on divine providence) and 4.4 (on human and divine law).

The bulk of Memorabilia 4 consists of conversations between Socrates and Euthydemus, a handsome young man who wrongly believes that he has taught himself philosophy via book learning. Conventional scholars routinely describe Euthydemus as one of the good natures sought out by Socrates, a model student who provides Xenophon with an occasion for a straightforward account of Socratic education. This will not do for a Straussian, however, for whom Xenophon is the most esoteric of philosophers (p. 11). Euthydemus is a decidedly unpromising character whose education is a joke meant to be caught by the good natures listening in. It is indicative of S.'s approach that he directly argues for Euthydemus’ bad nature, a fundamental premise for his project, only in footnotes (p. 190 n. 15), though it is also true that his entire book is an effort to demonstrate Euthydemus’ shortcomings.

S. does not believe that Memorabilia 4 is only a joke. This is in part because all of us share some of Euthydemus’ conventional beliefs and may even share his interest in politics, if only in the form of the hope that there is a rational basis for political life. To get beyond Euthydemus’ limited potential, however, we must solve the puzzles the text sets for good natures. For while Xenophon says that Socrates clearly reveals his views, he does so only ‘with an eye toward’ his interlocutors (S.'s undefended translation of the seemingly innocuous πρός at 4.7.1). But Socrates also reveals his views, if less clearly, to good natures. Socrates’ weak arguments purport to show that justice consists in obedience to the laws, whose beneficial nature is assured by the gods. This is a safe argument for an apologetic text, but, more importantly, it is also an effective tease for good natures, who are provoked into contradicting the text.

S. thus argues that the natural theology of 4.3 and the natural law of 4.4 are exoteric doctrines. So, when Socrates says that the gods provide us with earth and water most unenviously (4.3.6), what he really means is that they are envious: humans must equip themselves with the arts needed to survive. Socrates’ devotion to the law in 4.4 is exoteric because he had other motivations for acting lawfully, and Socrates does not actually argue that the legal and the just are the same thing, but rather that it is better for communities (but not necessarily for individuals) to be law-abiding. The unwritten laws do not, as Socrates argues, enforce themselves, and the failure of this philosophical defence of the unwritten laws reveals the need for religion: ‘if or since nature does not make it beneficial to obey the laws, respect for the rule of law (as something other than brute force) is irrational without either divine or divinely sanctioned legislators’ (p. 138).

S. argues that we must distinguish true, precise, Socratic continence (enkrateia) from the loose Euthydemean version. ‘The continent in the loose, Euthydemean sense of the term are incontinent in the precise, Socratic sense of the term’ (p. 146). They are incontinent because they cannot do dialectic, as Euthydemus shows by his failures in this very chapter (4.5). Those with Socratic continence, on the other hand, are freed not so much from bodily pleasures as from the psychic pleasures mediocrities like Euthydemus find in noble action and hope for an eternal reward. Socrates chooses the good, above all the ability to make the fine philosophical distinctions that allow for advantageous action, over the noble.

Readers acute enough to contradict Socrates at the right moments can transform the seemingly soporific series of definitions of Memorabilia 4.6 into examples of the genuine Socratic method, outlined at the end of the chapter. Sometimes even poor Euthydemus gives us a clue, as when he agrees with Socrates’ interrogatory suggestion that no one knows everything by saying that no one even knows the smallest fraction of things (4.6.7): this is our clue that Socrates’ apparent identification of wisdom with knowledge means that wisdom is the knowledge that one knows nothing.

Socrates’ care to make his companions more self-sufficient by encouraging them to learn only enough geometry and astronomy to run their estates (4.7) contrasts with Socrates’ own disinterested pursuit of such knowledge. When Socrates says that anyone seeking to unravel the contrivances of the gods would be no less insane than Anaxagoras, this does not commit Socrates to the belief that Anaxagoras was indeed insane. The sun really is just a fiery rock, not a god (p. 176). Socrates, however, moved on from his Presocratic phase because he understood that neither Presocratic natural philosophy nor the putatively Socratic argument from design were successful. He thus relies on merely human wisdom, which he sometimes piously refers to as his daimonion. This wisdom did not save him in the end, and S. does not buy Xenophon's argument that the aged Socrates foresaw his imminent decline, as it relies on the generalised medical knowledge that Socrates had just questioned. But S. does not explain why, or whether, Socrates’ execution at 70 was tragic or comic.

No short summary can do justice to the dense texture of S.'s difficult, frustrating, but also tremendously intelligent and learned book. Here, as with the two new books on Xenophon by T. Pangle, we are experiencing a welcome new phase in the Straussian project, in which close reading is enriched not only by direct engagement with conventional scholarship but also by a willingness to disagree with other Straussians, including the master himself. S. goes too far, however, when he says that now that Strauss has single-handedly convinced Classicists that Xenophon is a subtle writer, it is ‘scarcely meaningful’ to speak of Straussians as a distinct group (p. 187 n. 57). This both overstates Strauss's influence (ancient historians have long found Xenophon's historical works subtle with no help from Strauss) and understates the remaining divide between conventional and Straussian scholarship. There is a distinction between subtlety and esotericism, and between reading Xenophon as a writer of his own day in dialogue, often subtly tacit dialogue, with his contemporaries, and treating him as a sage enigmatically limning the timeless Straussian antinomies of the noble and the good, politics and philosophy, revelation and reason. There are also vital methodological differences between Classicists, who treat the text as a more or less fixed object subject to rival interpretations, and Straussians, who see the prime distinction as that between naïve readings of the surface and more thoughtful readings that penetrate to the text's inner meaning. A failure to recognise that Classicists and Straussians are engaged in different if overlapping projects can result in scholars on either side treating the others with contempt. This may explain why S.'s otherwise admirable engagement with Classicists is too often contemptuous; it is to be hoped that in the future both Classicists and Straussians can further this engagement while cutting back on the contempt.