Menexenus | Page 8

advise that I should, but not if you think otherwise. I went to

the council chamber because I heard that the Council was about to
choose some one who was to speak over the dead. For you know that
there is to be a public funeral?
SOCRATES: Yes, I know. And whom did they choose?
MENEXENUS: No one; they delayed the election until tomorrow, but I
believe that either Archinus or Dion will be chosen.
SOCRATES: O Menexenus! Death in battle is certainly in many
respects a noble thing. The dead man gets a fine and costly funeral,
although he may have been poor, and an elaborate speech is made over
him by a wise man who has long ago prepared what he has to say,
although he who is praised may not have been good for much. The
speakers praise him for what he has done and for what he has not
done--that is the beauty of them--and they steal away our souls with
their embellished words; in every conceivable form they praise the city;
and they praise those who died in war, and all our ancestors who went
before us; and they praise ourselves also who are still alive, until I feel
quite elevated by their laudations, and I stand listening to their words,
Menexenus, and become enchanted by them, and all in a moment I
imagine myself to have become a greater and nobler and finer man than
I was before. And if, as often happens, there are any foreigners who
accompany me to the speech, I become suddenly conscious of having a
sort of triumph over them, and they seem to experience a corresponding
feeling of admiration at me, and at the greatness of the city, which
appears to them, when they are under the influence of the speaker,
more wonderful than ever. This consciousness of dignity lasts me more
than three days, and not until the fourth or fifth day do I come to my
senses and know where I am; in the meantime I have been living in the
Islands of the Blest. Such is the art of our rhetoricians, and in such
manner does the sound of their words keep ringing in my ears.
MENEXENUS: You are always making fun of the rhetoricians,
Socrates; this time, however, I am inclined to think that the speaker
who is chosen will not have much to say, for he has been called upon to
speak at a moment's notice, and he will be compelled almost to
improvise.

SOCRATES: But why, my friend, should he not have plenty to say?
Every rhetorician has speeches ready made; nor is there any difficulty
in improvising that sort of stuff. Had the orator to praise Athenians
among Peloponnesians, or Peloponnesians among Athenians, he must
be a good rhetorician who could succeed and gain credit. But there is
no difficulty in a man's winning applause when he is contending for
fame among the persons whom he is praising.
MENEXENUS: Do you think not, Socrates?
SOCRATES: Certainly 'not.'
MENEXENUS: Do you think that you could speak yourself if there
should be a necessity, and if the Council were to choose you?
SOCRATES: That I should be able to speak is no great wonder,
Menexenus, considering that I have an excellent mistress in the art of
rhetoric,--she who has made so many good speakers, and one who was
the best among all the Hellenes--Pericles, the son of Xanthippus.
MENEXENUS: And who is she? I suppose that you mean Aspasia.
SOCRATES: Yes, I do; and besides her I had Connus, the son of
Metrobius, as a master, and he was my master in music, as she was in
rhetoric. No wonder that a man who has received such an education
should be a finished speaker; even the pupil of very inferior masters,
say, for example, one who had learned music of Lamprus, and rhetoric
of Antiphon the Rhamnusian, might make a figure if he were to praise
the Athenians among the Athenians.
MENEXENUS: And what would you be able to say if you had to
speak?
SOCRATES: Of my own wit, most likely nothing; but yesterday I
heard Aspasia composing a funeral oration about these very dead. For
she had been told, as you were saying, that the Athenians were going to
choose a speaker, and she repeated to me the sort of speech which he
should deliver, partly improvising and partly from previous thought,

putting together fragments of the funeral oration which Pericles spoke,
but which, as I believe, she composed.
MENEXENUS: And can you remember what Aspasia said?
SOCRATES: I ought to be able, for she taught me, and she was ready
to strike me because I was always forgetting.
MENEXENUS: Then why will you not rehearse what she said?
SOCRATES: Because I am afraid