There is no longer any need for me to provide a lengthy bibliography on Xenophon’s Socratic works. I can simply refer the reader to D. R. Morrison, Bibliography of Editions, Translations and Commentary on Xenophon’s Socratic Writings, 1600–Present (Mathesis Publications, Inc., 1988). However, as the title suggests, Morrison lists chiefly works on Xenophon, whereas many relevant aspects of Socrates may be contained in works on, say, Plato. Morrison’s bibliography should, therefore, be supplemented by referring to the bibliographies in T. J. Saunders (ed.), Plato, Early Socratic Dialogues (Penguin, 1987), and in W. K. C. Guthrie, A History of Greek Philosophy, vol. 3: The Fifth-century Enlightenment (Cambridge University Press, 1969). This latter work was also issued by the same publishers in two paperback volumes in 1971, entitled The Sophists and Socrates.
I here append the briefest of bibliographies, a selection of which should get the reader started. All these works are fairly accessible to the non-specialist reader.
XENOPHON’S LIFE AND WORK
J. K. Anderson, Xenophon (Duckworth, 1974)
HISTORY OF THE TIMES
J. B. Bury and R. Meiggs, A History of Greece to the Death of Alexander the Great, 4th edn (Macmillan, 1975)
J. K. Davies, Democracy and Classical Greece (Fontana/Collins, 1978)
N. G. L. Hammond, A History of Greece to 322 B.C., 3rd edn (Oxford University Press, 1986)
ATHENIAN SOCIETY
A. Andrewes, Greek Society (Penguin, 1971)
C. M. Bowra, Periclean Athens (Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 1971; Penguin, 1974)
T. B. L. Webster, Athenian Culture and Society (Batsford, 1973)
GREEK RELIGION
W. Burkert, Greek Religion (Harvard University Press, 1985)
F. M. Cornford, Greek Religious Thought (J. M. Dent & Sons, 1950)
W. K. C. Guthrie, The Greeks and Their Gods (Methuen, 1950)
M. P. Nilsson, A History of Greek Religion, 2nd edn (Oxford University Press, 1949)
GENERAL CLIMATE OF BELIEFS
K. J. Dover, Greek Popular Morality in the Time of Plato and Aristotle (Basil Blackwell, 1974)
L. Pearson, Popular Ethics in Ancient Greece (Stanford University Press, 1962)
B. Snell, The Discovery of Mind in Greek Philosophy and Literature (Dover Publications, Inc., 1982)
SOCRATES’ PHILOSOPHICAL PREDECESSORS
J. Barnes, Early Greek Philosophy (Penguin, 1987)
W. K. C. Guthrie, A History of Greek Philosophy, vols. 1–3 (Cambridge University Press, 1962, 1965, 1969)
E. Hussey, The Presocratics (Duckworth, 1972)
G. B. Kerferd, The Sophistic Movement (Cambridge University Press, 1981)
SOCRATES
F. M. Cornford, Before and After Socrates (Cambridge University Press, 1932)
N. Gulley, The Philosophy of Socrates (Macmillan, 1968)
W. K. C. Guthrie, A History of Greek Philosophy, vol. 3: The Fifth-century Enlightenment (Cambridge University Press, 1969)
CONVERSATIONS OF SOCRATES
T. J. Saunders (ed.), Plato, Early Socratic Dialogues (Penguin, 1987)
A. E. Taylor, Socrates: The Man and His Thought (Doubleday Anchor Books, 1953)
H. Tredennick, Plato, The Last Days of Socrates (Penguin, 1954)
SOCRATICS OTHER THAN PLATO
G. C. Field, Plato and His Contemporaries, 2nd edn (Methuen, 1948)
H. D. Rankin, Sophists, Socratics and Cynics (Croom Helm/Barnes & Noble, 1983)