[Sidenote: _Menexenus._]
[Sidenote: INTRODUCTION.]
The Menexenus has more the character of a rhetorical exercise than any
other of the Platonic works. The writer seems to have wished to emulate
Thucydides, and the far slighter work of Lysias. In his rivalry with the
latter, to whom in the Phaedrus Plato shows a strong antipathy, he is
entirely successful, but he is not equal to Thucydides. The Menexenus,
though not without real Hellenic interest, falls very far short of the
rugged grandeur and political insight of the great historian. The fiction
of the speech having been invented by Aspasia is well sustained, and is
in the manner of Plato, notwithstanding the anachronism which puts into
her mouth an allusion to the peace of Antalcidas, an event occurring
forty years after the date of the supposed oration. But Plato, like
Shakespeare, is careless of such anachronisms, which are not supposed to
strike the mind of the reader. The effect produced by these grandiloquent
orations on Socrates, who does not recover after having heard one of them
for three days and more, is truly Platonic.
Such discourses, if we may form a judgment from the three which are
extant (for the so-called Funeral Oration of Demosthenes is a bad and
spurious imitation of Thucydides and Lysias), conformed to a regular
type. They began with Gods and ancestors, and the legendary history of
Athens, to which succeeded an almost equally fictitious account of later
times. The Persian war usually formed the centre of the narrative; in the
age of Isocrates and Demosthenes the Athenians were still living on the
glories of Marathon and Salamis. The Menexenus veils in panegyric the
weak places of Athenian history. The war of Athens and Boeotia is a war
of liberation; the Athenians gave back the Spartans taken at Sphacteria
out of kindness—indeed, the only fault of the city was too great kindness
to their enemies, who were more honoured than the friends of others
(cp. Thucyd. ii. 41, which seems to contain the germ of the idea); we
democrats are the aristocracy of virtue, and the like. These are the
platitudes and falsehoods in which history is disguised. The taking of
Athens is hardly mentioned.
[Sidenote: _The authenticity of the Dialogue._]
The author of the Menexenus, whether Plato or not, is evidently intending
to ridicule the practice, and at the same time to show that he can beat
the rhetoricians in their own line, as in the Phaedrus he may be supposed
to offer an example of what Lysias might have said, and of how much
better he might have written in his own style. The orators had recourse
to their favourite _loci communes_, one of which, as we find in Lysias,
was the shortness of the time allowed them for preparation. But Socrates
points out that they had them always ready for delivery, and that there
was no difficulty in improvising any number of such orations. To praise
the Athenians among the Athenians was easy,—to praise them among the
Lacedaemonians would have been a much more difficult task. Socrates
himself has turned rhetorician, having learned of a woman, Aspasia, the
mistress of Pericles; and any one whose teachers had been far inferior to
his own—say, one who had learned from Antiphon the Rhamnusian—would be
quite equal to the task of praising men to themselves. When we remember
that Antiphon is described by Thucydides as the best pleader of his day,
the satire on him and on the whole tribe of rhetoricians is transparent.
The ironical assumption of Socrates, that he must be a good orator
because he had learnt of Aspasia, is not coarse, as Schleiermacher
supposes, but is rather to be regarded as fanciful. Nor can we say that
the offer of Socrates to dance naked out of love for Menexenus, is any
more un-Platonic than the threat of physical force which Phaedrus uses
towards Socrates (286 C). Nor is there any real vulgarity in the fear
which Socrates expresses that he will get a beating from his mistress,
Aspasia: this is the natural exaggeration of what might be expected from
an imperious woman. Socrates is not to be taken seriously in all that
he says, and Plato, both in the Symposium and elsewhere, is not slow to
admit a sort of Aristophanic humour. How a great original genius like
Plato might or might not have written, what was his conception of humour,
or what limits he would have prescribed to himself, if any, in drawing
the picture of the Silenus Socrates, are problems which no critical
instinct can determine.
[Sidenote: _The authenticity of the Dialogue._]
On the other hand, the dialogue has several Platonic traits, whether
original or imitated may be uncertain. Socrates, when he departs from
his character of a ‘know nothing’ and delivers a speech, generally
pretends that what he is speaking is not his own composition. Thus in
the Cratylus he is run away with (410 E); in the Phaedrus he has heard
somebody say something (235 C)—is inspired by the _genius loci_ (238 D);
in the Symposium he derives his wisdom from Diotima of Mantinea, and the
like. But he does not impose on Menexenus by his dissimulation. Without
violating the character of Socrates, Plato, who knows so well how to give
a hint, or some one writing in his name, intimates clearly enough that
the speech in the Menexenus like that in the Phaedrus is to be attributed
to Socrates. The address of the dead to the living at the end of the
oration may also be compared to the numerous addresses of the same kind
which occur in Plato, in whom the dramatic element is always tending to
prevail over the rhetorical. The remark has been often made, that in the
Funeral Oration of Thucydides there is no allusion to the existence of
the dead. But in the Menexenus a future state is clearly, although not
strongly, asserted.
Whether the Menexenus is a genuine writing of Plato, or an imitation
only, remains uncertain. In either case, the thoughts are partly borrowed
from the Funeral Oration of Thucydides; and the fact that they are so, is
not in favour of the genuineness of the work. Internal evidence seems to
leave the question of authorship in doubt. There are merits and there are
defects which might lead to either conclusion. The form of the greater
part of the work makes the enquiry difficult; the introduction and the
finale certainly wear the look either of Plato or of an extremely skilful
imitator. The excellence of the forgery may be fairly adduced as an
argument that it is not a forgery at all. In this uncertainty the express
testimony of Aristotle, who quotes, in the Rhetoric,[62] the well-known
words, ‘It is easy to praise the Athenians among the Athenians,’ from the
Funeral Oration, may perhaps turn the balance in its favour. It must be
remembered also that the work was famous in antiquity, and is included in
the Alexandrian catalogues of Platonic writings.