Interestingly, this last book, the Oeconomicus, is a Socratic work; in it Xenophon presents Socrates speaking with a country gentleman, Kritobulus, about running a family and a large farm. Financial arrangements, relations with the city, the benefits and difficulties of rural plantation life, finding good overseers, and the role of the wife and children in maintaining one's household are all discussed here. On a surface level, then, the book seems to be less about economics and more about economizing or family budgeting. Because Socrates is presented in Plato's works as not much of a family man or as a lover of the country living (Socrates hardly ever goes outside the city of Athens except under compulsion), his interest in Kritobulus' life is unexpected and peculiar to say the least.
I came to this book because the family seems a great rival to the city as a way of living for people, but Plato's Socrates hardly investigates it. The family is dissolved in Plato's Republic, and no dialogue of Plato's deals directly with the family or the country household. To him, it seems, city life is where the action is. By contrast, the Hebrew Bible seems almost entirely concerned with the fortunes of families, or rather the premier family, the children of Israel and their heavenly Father Jehovah. I had gotten a taste of the Bible's rejection/ignorance of philosophy and cities, so I wanted to know what the quintessential representative of philosopy--Socrates--thought about the family. Plato helped me little, so I turned to Xenophon's Oeconomicus. I won't tell you what I found out, but it was amazing how much insight I gained into the Bible from reading Xenophon's little book on household management.