Menexenus | Page 9

that my mistress may be angry with
me if I publish her speech.
MENEXENUS: Nay, Socrates, let us have the speech, whether
Aspasia's or any one else's, no matter. I hope that you will oblige me.
SOCRATES: But I am afraid that you will laugh at me if I continue the
games of youth in old age.
MENEXENUS: Far otherwise, Socrates; let us by all means have the
speech.
SOCRATES: Truly I have such a disposition to oblige you, that if you
bid me dance naked I should not like to refuse, since we are alone.
Listen then: If I remember rightly, she began as follows, with the
mention of the dead:-- (Thucyd.)
There is a tribute of deeds and of words. The departed have already had
the first, when going forth on their destined journey they were attended
on their way by the state and by their friends; the tribute of words
remains to be given to them, as is meet and by law ordained. For noble
words are a memorial and a crown of noble actions, which are given to
the doers of them by the hearers. A word is needed which will duly
praise the dead and gently admonish the living, exhorting the brethren
and descendants of the departed to imitate their virtue, and consoling
their fathers and mothers and the survivors, if any, who may chance to
be alive of the previous generation. What sort of a word will this be,
and how shall we rightly begin the praises of these brave men? In their

life they rejoiced their own friends with their valour, and their death
they gave in exchange for the salvation of the living. And I think that
we should praise them in the order in which nature made them good,
for they were good because they were sprung from good fathers.
Wherefore let us first of all praise the goodness of their birth; secondly,
their nurture and education; and then let us set forth how noble their
actions were, and how worthy of the education which they had
received.
And first as to their birth. Their ancestors were not strangers, nor are
these their descendants sojourners only, whose fathers have come from
another country; but they are the children of the soil, dwelling and
living in their own land. And the country which brought them up is not
like other countries, a stepmother to her children, but their own true
mother; she bore them and nourished them and received them, and in
her bosom they now repose. It is meet and right, therefore, that we
should begin by praising the land which is their mother, and that will be
a way of praising their noble birth.
The country is worthy to be praised, not only by us, but by all mankind;
first, and above all, as being dear to the Gods. This is proved by the
strife and contention of the Gods respecting her. And ought not the
country which the Gods praise to be praised by all mankind? The
second praise which may be fairly claimed by her, is that at the time
when the whole earth was sending forth and creating diverse animals,
tame and wild, she our mother was free and pure from savage monsters,
and out of all animals selected and brought forth man, who is superior
to the rest in understanding, and alone has justice and religion. And a
great proof that she brought forth the common ancestors of us and of
the departed, is that she provided the means of support for her offspring.
For as a woman proves her motherhood by giving milk to her young
ones (and she who has no fountain of milk is not a mother), so did this
our land prove that she was the mother of men, for in those days she
alone and first of all brought forth wheat and barley for human food,
which is the best and noblest sustenance for man, whom she regarded
as her true offspring. And these are truer proofs of motherhood in a
country than in a woman, for the woman in her conception and

generation is but the imitation of the earth, and not the earth of the
woman. And of the fruit of the earth she gave a plenteous supply, not
only to her own, but to others also; and afterwards she made the olive
to spring up to be a boon to her children, and to help them in their toils.
And when she had herself nursed them and brought them up to
manhood, she gave them Gods to be their rulers and teachers, whose
names are well known, and need not now be repeated. They are the
Gods who first ordered our lives, and instructed us in the arts for the