A passage in
Xenophon (his
Memorabilia of Socrates) says however that she did have qualities that made Socrates approve of her. Also, the philosopher honed his legendary
patience by dealing with her. He compared her to a wild horse: if he could put up with her, he could put up with anyone.
Her name itself has become proverbial for a shrew or scold. In English it's often in the un-Greek form Xantippe, and Shakespeare has an even more altered form Zentippe in The Taming of the Shrew, where Petruchio, in announcing he comes to Padua to seek a rich wife, says he is indifferent to all else,
Be she as foule as was Florentius Loue,
As old as Sibell, and as curst and shrow'd
As Socrates Zentippe, or a worse:
The contemporary British philosopher
Roger Scruton wrote a book
Xanthippic Dialogues in 1998, an imaginative exercise somewhere between dialogue and novel, including Xanthippe's Republic and Xanthippe's Laws, and other "newly discovered"
philosophical works by women, putting a modern gloss on the arguments. She comes out much better in this.
There is a computer font for classical Greek called Xanthippe.