CHAPTER XXXIII.

MENEXENUS.

Persons and situation of the dialogue 401

Funeral harangue at Athens--Choice of a public orator--Sokrates declares the task of the public orator to be easy--Comic exaggeration of the effects of the harangue 401

Sokrates professes to have learnt a funeral harangue from Aspasia, and to be competent to recite it himself. Menexenus entreats him to do so 402

Harangue recited by Sokrates 403

Compliments of Menexenus after Sokrates has finished, both to the harangue itself and to Aspasia _ib._

Supposed period--shortly after the peace of Antalkidas _ib._

Custom of Athens about funeral harangues. Many such harangues existed at Athens, composed by distinguished orators or logographers--Established type of the harangue 404

Plato in this harangue conforms to the established type--Topics on which he insists 405

Consolation and exhortation to surviving relatives 407

Admiration felt for this harangue, both at the time and afterwards 407

Probable motives of Plato in composing it, shortly after he established himself at Athens as a teacher--His competition with Lysias--Desire for celebrity both as rhetor and as dialectician _ib._

Menexenus compared with the view of rhetoric presented in the Gorgias--Necessity for an orator to conform to established sentiments 409

Colloquial portion of the Menexenus is probably intended as ridicule and sneer at Rhetoric--The harangue itself is serious, and intended as an evidence of Plato's ability 410

Anachronism of the Menexenus--Plato careless on this point 411