Socrates to defend himself. The Socrates that Xenophon portrayed was different from Plato's in multiple respects. Xenophon asserts that Socrates dealt with his prosecution in an exceedingly arrogant manner, or at least was perceived to have spoken arrogantly. Conversely, while not omitting it completely, Plato worked to temper that arrogance in his own Apology. Xenophon framed Socrates' defense, which both men admit was not prepared at all, not as a failure to effectively argue his side, but as striving for death even in the light of unconvincing charges. As Danzig interprets it, convincing the jury to condemn him even on unconvincing charges would be a rhetorical challenge worthy of the great persuader. Xenophon uses this interpretation as justification for Socrates' arrogant stance and conventional failure. By contrast, Plato does not go so far as to claim that Socrates actually desired death but seems to argue that Socrates was attempting to demonstrate a higher moral standard and teach a lesson. This places Socrates in a higher moral position than his prosecutors, a typical Platonic example of absolving "Socrates from blame in every conceivable way." Historical reality Although Xenophon claims to have been present at the Symposium, this is impossible as he was only a young boy at the date which he proposes it occurred. And again, Xenophon was not present at the trial of Socrates, having been on campaign in Anatolia and Mesopotamia. Thus he puts into the latter's mouth what he would have thought him to say. It seems that Xenophon wrote his Apology and Memorabilia as defences of his former teacher, and to further the philosophic project, not to present a literal transcript of Socrates' response to the historical charges incurred. Modern reception Xenophon's standing as a political philosopher has been defended in recent times by Leo Strauss, who devoted a considerable part of his philosophic analysis to the works of Xenophon, returning to the high judgment of Xenophon as a thinker expressed by Anthony Ashley-Cooper, 3rd Earl of Shaftesbury, Michel de Montaigne, Montesquieu, Jean-Jacques Rousseau, Johann Joachim Winckelmann, Niccolò Machiavelli, Francis Bacon, John Milton, Jonathan Swift, Benjamin Franklin, and John Adams. Xenophon's lessons on leadership have been reconsidered for their modern-day value. Jennifer O'Flannery holds that "discussions of leadership and civic virtue should include the work of Xenophon ... on public education for public service." The Cyropaedia, in outlining Cyrus as an ideal leader having mastered the qualities