Oeconomicus

What makes someone wealthy—and what does it mean to manage well?

In Oeconomicus, Xenophon turns the everyday business of running a household into an inquiry into knowledge, work, responsibility, and leadership. Through conversations featuring Socrates and the prosperous landowner Ischomachus, he asks whether possessions are useful without the skill to use them, why order matters, and how a leader wins willing cooperation.

The discussion moves from wealth and self-command to marriage, the organization of a household, and the practical demands of farming. Along the way, apparently simple questions open onto larger ones: Can good management be taught? What distinguishes a capable leader from someone who merely gives orders? How does care transform resources into something valuable?

This new English translation presents all twenty-one chapters in natural, readable dialogue, accompanied by an introduction, explanatory notes, textual notes, a glossary, and an account of the Greek source. Section numbering makes the text easy to navigate and cite, while the notes explain historical details and significant editorial decisions.

Oeconomicus also offers a revealing encounter with the assumptions of classical Athens. Its picture of household prosperity rests on sharply divided roles for men and women and on the labor of enslaved people. Reading it means engaging both with Xenophon’s observations about human conduct and with the social world that shaped them.

For readers of Greek philosophy, ancient history, and the literature of practical life, Oeconomicus brings questions of wealth, work, and authority into the intimate setting of a household—and invites us to examine what competent stewardship requires.