Briefly Noted: Plato’s “Menexenus”
History • November 2009 • Views: 347
fta - “The Menexenus ends with Socrates promising to tell more grand political orations to a young up-and-coming politician if the latter will not reveal to the source that he is giving the speeches away. The secret pact for the future between a philosopher and a youth is forged because of what is explicitly political; the source of Socrates’ funerary oration in the Menexenus itself is Aspasia, the mistress of Pericles of whom Socrates not unsubtly hints is responsible for the funeral oration of Pericles himself.”