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