Xenophon and Plato’s Meno

Not only was it a reference to Ismenias the Theban that allowed nineteenth-century scholars to establish a date of composition for Plato’s Meno on the basis of Xenophon’s Hellenica but beginning with “Meno the Thessalian” himself, immortalized as a scoundrel in Xenophon’s Anabasis, each of the four characters in Plato’s dialogue is shown to have a Xenophontic resonance, thus revealing Meno to be Plato’s tombeau de Xénophon.