🎵 Menexenus by Plato Dramatize Audiobook with Text, Illustrations, Sound Effect, Music

Audiobooks Dimension presents Menexenus by Plato Dramatize Audiobook with Text, Illustrations, Sound Effect, Music

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Author : Plato (Πλάτων)
Written : 380 BCE
Place of Origin : Ancient Greece
Original Media type : Papyrus fragments, Manuscript
Original Language : Ancient Greek
Genre(s) : Ancient Greece, Dialogue
Translator : Benjamin Jowett (1817 - 1893)
Reader : David Rintoul
Musician : Nature's Eye
Editor : Audiobooks Dimension
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Menexenus (Μενέξενος) by Plato, is a Socratic dialogue of Plato, traditionally included in the seventh tetralogy along with the Greater and Lesser Hippias and the Ion.

Socrates meets a friend who informs him that the Athenians are about to appoint an orator to pronounce the funeral eulogium of those who have been slain in war. Socrates responds in a tone of playful exaggeration, extolling the powers of the public speakers ; and then, in answer to Menexenus, allows that he does not think it a difficult matter to speak on such a subject. He himself could speak if he were chosen. Nay more, he has learned a speech from Aspasia which would be suitable on this very occasion. The speech itself follows, and is indeed the main part of the work. Its supposed date is after the ‘ Peace of Antalcidas’, long after the real Socrates was dead.

The Menexenus consists mainly of a lengthy funeral oration, referencing the one given by Pericles in Thucydides' account of the Peloponnesian War. Socrates here delivers to Menexenus a speech that he claims to have learned from Aspasia, a consort of Pericles and prominent female Athenian intellectual.

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; 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.

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, 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. 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.

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; in the Phaedrus he has heard somebody say something—is inspired by the genius loci; 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, 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.

Film adaptation : Socrates (1971)
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Persons of the dialogue :

• Menexenus (Μενέξενος) was a son of Demophon. Same person as Menexenus in ‘Lysis’.
• Socrates (Σωκράτης) [c. 470–399 BCE] was a Greek philosopher from Athens who is credited as the founder of Western philosophy and among the first moral philosophers of the ethical tradition of thought. An enigmatic figure.

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Persons mentioned in the dialogue :

• Antiphon (Ἀντιφῶν) [480 – 411 BCE] was the earliest of the ten Attic orators, and an important figure in fifth-century Athenian political and intellectual life.
• Archinus (Ἀρχῖνος) was an Athenian democratic politician who wielded substantial influence between the restoration of democracy in 403 BCE and the beginning of the Corinthian War in 395 BCE.
• Aspasia (Ἀσπασία) [c. 470 – after 428 BCE] was a metic woman in Classical Athens. Born in Miletus, she moved to Athens and began a relationship with the statesman Pericles, with whom she had a son, Pericles the Younger.
• Cadmus (Κάδμος) : was the legendary Greek hero and founder of Boeotian Thebes. He was, alongside Perseus and Bellerophon, the greatest hero and slayer of monsters before the days of Heracles. Commonly stated to be a prince of Phoenicia, the son of king Agenor and queen Telephassa of Tyre, the brother of Phoenix, Cilix and Europa, Cadmus traced his origins back to Poseidon and Libya.
• Connus was a son of Metrobius, he was a music teacher of Socrates.
• Cyrus : is the given name of a number of Persian kings. Most notably it refers to Cyrus the Great (c. 600–530 BCE).
• Danaus (Δαναός) : was the king of Libya. His myth is a foundation legend of Argos, one of the foremost Mycenaean cities of the Peloponnesus. In Homer's Iliad, "Danaans" ("tribe of Danaus") and "Argives" commonly designate the Greek forces opposed to the Trojans.
• Darius (or Darius I, Darius the Great) was a Persian ruler who served as the third King of Kings of the Achaemenid Empire, reigning from 522 BCE until his death in 486 BCE. He ruled the empire at its territorial peak, when it included much of Western Asia, parts of the Balkans (Thrace–Macedonia and Paeonia) and the Caucasus, most of the Black Sea's coastal regions, Central Asia, the Indus Valley in the far east, and portions of North Africa and Northeast Africa including Egypt (Mudrâya), eastern Libya, and coastal Sudan.
• Datis : was a Median noble and admiral who served the Persian Empire during the reign of Darius the Great. He was familiar with Greek affairs and maintained connections with Greek leaders.[1] He is noted for his joint leadership with the younger Artaphernes of the Persian forces in the first campaign of the Persian Wars against the Greeks.
• Dion (Δίων) [408 – 354 BCE] was a disciple of Plato.
• Egyptus (Αἴγυπτος) [or Aegyptus, Ægyptus] : was a legendary king of ancient Egypt. He was a descendant of the princess Io through his father Belus, and of the river-god Nilus as both the father of Achiroe, his mother and as a great, great-grandfather on his father's side.
• Eumolpus (Εὔμολπος) was a legendary king of Thrace.
• Lamprus (Λάμπρος) was an ancient Greek musician with excellent skill at the playing of the lyre.
• Metrobius : father of Connus.
• Pelop (Πέλοψ) : was king of Pisa in the Peloponnesus region. He was the son of Tantalus and the father of Atreus. He was venerated at Olympia, where his cult developed into the founding myth of the Olympic Games, the most important expression of unity, not only for the people of Peloponnesus, but for all Hellenes.
• Pericles (Περικλῆς) [c. 495 – 429 BCE] was a Greek politician and general during the Golden Age of Athens. He was prominent and influential in Ancient Athenian politics, particularly between the Greco-Persian Wars and the Peloponnesian War, and was acclaimed by Thucydides, a contemporary historian, as "the first citizen of Athens".
• Xanthippus (Ξάνθιππος) [c. 525 – 475 BCE] was a wealthy Athenian politician and general during the early part of the 5th century BCE. His name means "Yellow Horse". He was the son of Ariphron and father of Pericles.

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Place mentioned in the dialogue :

• Agora (ἀγορά) was a central public space in ancient Greek city-states. It is the best representation of a city-state's response to accommodate the social and political order of the polis. The literal meaning of the word "agora" is "gathering place" or "assembly". The agora was the center of the athletic, artistic, business, social, spiritual, and political life in the city.
• Artemisium (Ἀρτεμίσιον) : is a cape in northern Euboea, Greece. The Battle of Artemisium, a series of naval engagements over three days during the second Persian invasion of Greece in 480 BC, simultaneously with the more famous land battle at Thermopylae, took place here. Part of the action of the film 300: Rise of an Empire was loosely based on this battle.
• Asia : is the largest continent in the world by both land area and population.
• Athens (Αθήνα) is one of the world's oldest cities, with its recorded history spanning over 3,400 years, and its earliest human presence beginning somewhere between the 11th and 7th millennia BC. According to Greek mythology the city was named after Athena, the ancient Greek goddess of wisdom, but modern scholars generally agree that goddess took her name after the city. Classical Athens was one of the most powerful city-states in ancient Greece. It was a centre for democracy, the arts, education and philosophy, and was highly influential throughout the European continent, particularly in Ancient Rome. For this reason, it is often regarded as the cradle of Western civilization and the birthplace of democracy in its own right independently from the rest of Greece.
• Corinth (Κόρινθος) : was a city-state (polis) on the Isthmus of Corinth, the narrow stretch of land that joins the Peloponnese to the mainland of Greece, roughly halfway between Athens and Sparta.
• Egypt : is a transcontinental country spanning the northeast corner of Africa and the Sinai Peninsula in the southwest corner of Asia. Egypt has one of the longest histories of any country, tracing its heritage along the Nile Delta back to the 6th–4th millennia BCE. Considered a cradle of civilisation, Ancient Egypt saw some of the earliest developments of writing, agriculture, urbanisation, organised religion and central government.
• Eleusis (Ἐλευσίς) : is a suburban city and municipality in Athens metropolitan area. It is the site of the Eleusinian Mysteries and the birthplace of Aeschylus.
• Eretria (Ἐρέτρια) : is a town in Euboea, Greece, facing the coast of Attica across the narrow South Euboean Gulf. It was an important Greek polis in the 6th and 5th century BCE.
• Europe : is a continent located entirely in the Northern Hemisphere and mostly in the Eastern Hemisphere. It is bordered by the Arctic Ocean to the north, the Atlantic Ocean to the west, the Mediterranean Sea to the south, and Asia to the east.
• Eurymedon (Εὐρυμέδων) : is a river that is situated in Antalya Province, Turkey, and empties into the Mediterranean.
• Heaven : is a common religious cosmological or transcendent supernatural place where beings such as deities, angels, souls, saints, or venerated ancestors are said to originate, be enthroned, or reside. According to the beliefs of some religions, heavenly beings can descend to Earth or incarnate and earthly beings can ascend to Heaven in the afterlife or, in exceptional cases, enter Heaven without dying.
• Hellespont (Ἑλλήσποντος) : is a narrow, natural strait and internationally significant waterway in northwestern Turkey that forms part of the continental boundary between Asia and Europe and separates Asian Turkey from European Turkey. Together with the Bosporus, the Dardanelles forms the Turkish Straits.
• Islands of the Blest (μακάρων νῆσοι) [or The Fortunate Isles, Isles of the Blessed] were semi-legendary islands in the Atlantic Ocean, variously treated as a simple geographical location and as a winterless earthly paradise inhabited by the heroes of Greek mythology. In the time of Hesiod, the Fortunate Isles were associated with the concept of Elysium, a utopian location in the Greek underworld thought to be found in the Western ocean on the margin of the known world. The number of the islands would later be reduced to one by the poet Pindar.
• Lechaeum (Λεχαῖον) : was the port in ancient Corinthia on the Corinthian Gulf connected with the city of Corinth by means of the Long Walls, 12 stadia in length. The Long Walls ran nearly due north, so that the wall on the right hand was called the eastern, and the one on the left hand the western or Sicyonian. The space between them must have been considerable; since there was sufficient space for an army to be drawn up for battle. Indeed, the area was the scene of battles between Sparta and Athens in 391 BCE, leaving Spartans in command of Lechaeum, which they garrisoned with their troops.
• Libya : is a country in the Maghreb region of North Africa. Libya borders the Mediterranean Sea to the north, Egypt to the east, Sudan to the southeast, Chad to the south, Niger to the southwest, Algeria to the west, and Tunisia to the northwest. Libya has been inhabited by Berbers since the late Bronze Age as descendants from Iberomaurusian and Capsian cultures. In classical antiquity, the Phoenicians established city-states and trading posts in western Libya, while several Greek cities were established in the East. Parts of Libya were variously ruled by Carthaginians, Persians, and Greeks before the entire region becoming a part of the Roman Empire.
• Marathon (Μαραθών) : is a town in Greece and the site of the Battle of Marathon in 490 BCE, in which the heavily outnumbered Athenian army defeated the Persians. Legend has it that Pheidippides, a Greek herald at the battle, was sent running from Marathon to Athens to announce the victory, which is how the marathon running race was conceived in modern times.
• Mitylene (Μυτιλήνη) : is the capital of the Greek island of Lesbos, and its port. The Mytilenean revolt against Athens in 428 BCE was overcome by an Athenian expeditionary force. The Athenian public assembly voted to massacre all the men of the city and to sell the women and children into slavery but the next day in the Mytilenian Debate changed its mind. A fast trireme sailed the 186 nautical miles (344 km) in less than a day and brought the decision to cancel the general massacre, but a thousand citizens were executed for taking part in the rebellion.
• Oenophyta (Οἰνόφυτα) : was a town in ancient Boeotia.
• Plataea (Πλάταια) : was an ancient Greek city-state situated in Boeotia near the frontier with Attica at the foot of Mt. Cithaeron, between the mountain and the river Asopus, which divided its territory from that of Thebes. It was the location of the Battle of Plataea in 479 BCE, in which an alliance of Greek city-states defeated the Persians.
• Salamis (Σαλαμίς) : is the largest Greek island in the Saronic Gulf. Salamis island is known for the Battle of Salamis, the decisive naval victory of the allied Greek fleet, led by Themistocles, over the Persian Empire in 480 BCE.
• Sardis [or Sardes] (Σάρδεις) : was an ancient city best known as the capital of the Lydian Empire. After the fall of the Lydian Empire, it became the capital of the Persian satrapy of Lydia and later a major center of Hellenistic and Byzantine culture.
• Scythia (Σκυθια) : was a kingdom created by the Scythians during the 6th to 3rd centuries BCE in the Pontic–Caspian steppe.
• Sicily : is the largest and most populous island in the Mediterranean Sea and one of the 20 regions of Italy. By around 750 BC, Sicily had three Phoenician and a dozen Greek colonies. The region thus became one of the centers of Magna Graecia, with the foundation along its coasts of many Greek city-states (póleis).
• Sphagia (Σφαγία) : is a small island at the entrance to the bay of Pylos in the Peloponnese, Greece.
• Tanagra (Τανάγρα) : is a town and a municipality north of Athens in Boeotia, Greece.

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Term used in the dialogue :

• Amazons (Ἀμαζόνες) were a group of female warriors and hunters who were known for their physical agility, strength, archery, riding skills, and the arts of combat. Their society was closed to men and they only raised their daughters and returned their sons to their fathers, with whom they would only socialize briefly in order to reproduce.
• Argives (Ἀργεῖοι) is one of the names in Homer which is used to refer to the Greeks collectively.
• Athenians : pertaining to Athens (Ἀθῆναι), the capital and largest city of Greece.
• Boeotians : pertaining to Boeotia/Boiotia/Beotia (Βοιωτία), one of the regional units of Greece. It is part of the region of Central Greece. Its capital is Livadeia, and its largest city is Thebes.
• Cadmeians : pertaining to Cadmea, or Cadmeia (Καδμεία), the citadel of ancient Thebes, Greece, which was named after Cadmus, the legendary founder of Thebes.
• Corinthians : pertaining to Corinth (Κόρινθος), a city-state (polis) on the Isthmus of Corinth, the narrow stretch of land that joins the Peloponnese to the mainland of Greece, roughly halfway between Athens and Sparta. Ancient Corinth was one of the largest and most important cities of Greece, with a population of 90,000 in 400 BCE.
• Council : is a group of people who come together to consult, deliberate, or make decisions. A council may function as a legislature, especially at a town, city or county/shire level.
• Eretrians : pertaining to Eretria (Ἐρέτρια), a town in Euboea, Greece, facing the coast of Attica across the narrow South Euboean Gulf. It was an important Greek polis in the 6th and 5th century BCE.
• Gods : In monotheistic belief systems, God is usually viewed as the supreme being, creator, and principal object of faith. In polytheistic belief systems, a god is "a spirit or being believed to have created, or for controlling some part of the universe or life, for which such a deity is often worshipped".
• Hellas (Ἑλλάς) : A name for all lands inhabited by Hellenes, i.e. all of ancient Greece, including the Greek colonies.
• Hellenes (Έλληνες) [or The Greeks] : are an ethnic group and nation native to Greece, Cyprus, southern Albania, Anatolia, parts of Italy and Egypt, and to a lesser extent, other countries surrounding the Eastern Mediterranean and Black Sea.
• Heracleids [or Heraclides, Heracleides, Herakleides] (Ἡρακλείδης) was any individual of the legendary clan descended from Hercules.
• Lacedaemonians (or Spartans) : pertaining to Lacedaemon/Sparta (Λακεδαίμων), a prominent city-state in Laconia in ancient Greece.
• Leontines : pertaining to Lentini (Λεοντῖνοι), a town and comune in the Province of Syracuse, southeastern Sicily.
• Medes : were an ancient Iranian people who spoke the Median language and who inhabited an area known as Media between western and northern Iran.
• Milesian : pertaining to Miletus (Μῑ́λητος), an ancient Greek city on the western coast of Anatolia, near the mouth of the Maeander River in ancient Ionia.
• Parians : pertaining to Paros (Πάρος), a Greek island in the central Aegean Sea. Part of the Cyclades island group, it lies to the west of Naxos.
• Peloponnesians : pertaining to Peloponnese (Πελοπόννησος), a peninsula and geographic region in Southern Greece, and the southernmost region of the Balkans.
• Persia : was historically the common name used for Iran.
• Persians : are an Iranian ethnic group. They share a common cultural system and are native speakers of the Persian language.
• Rhamnusian : pertaining to Rhamnous (Ῥαμνοῦς), an ancient Greek city in Attica situated on the coast, overlooking the Euboean Strait.

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