Book
Menexenus
Plato · translated by Benjamin Jowett
Socrates recites to Menexenus a funeral speech for the Athenian war dead, which he says he learned from Aspasia.
The Menexenus consists mostly of a funeral oration in praise of Athens and its dead, framed by a short conversation between Socrates and Menexenus about such speeches.
This edition is the English translation by Benjamin Jowett.
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Read a passage
SOCRATES: Whence come you, Menexenus? Are you from the Agora?
MENEXENUS: Yes, Socrates; I have been at the Council.
SOCRATES: And what might you be doing at the Council? And yet I need hardly ask, for I see that you, believing yourself to have arrived at the end of education and of philosophy, and to have had enough of them, are mounting upwards to things higher still, and, though rather young for the post, are intending to govern us elder men, like the rest of your family, which has always provided some one who kindly took care of us.
MENEXENUS: Yes, Socrates, I shall be ready to hold office, if you allow and 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.
Contents
- 01Appendix I.
- 02Menexenus
- 03Introduction.
- 04Persons of the Dialogue: Socrates and Menexenus.
About this edition
- Author
- Plato
- Translator
- Benjamin Jowett
- Era
- Ancient (to c. 500)
- Reading level
- Intermediate: some philosophy helps
- Formats
- EPUB, PDF
- Length
- 32 pages
- This edition
- Modern Philosophers