Stupefying agents as Xenophon ultimately wrote off Socratic works (9)
I believe the answer is:
narcotics
'works' is the definition.
The answer and definition can be both man-made objects as well as being plural nouns.
Maybe you can see a link between them that I don't see?
'stupefying agents as xenophon ultimately wrote off socratic' is the wordplay.
I cannot quite understand how this works, but
an anagram of 'socratic' is 'arcotics' which is present in the answer.
A single letter 'n' remains which might be clued in a way I don't understand.
This explanation may well be incorrect...
Can you help me to learn more?
(Other definitions for narcotics that I've seen before include "Stupefying drugs" , "Drugs that cause sleep or drowsiness" , "Addictive drugs" .)