Menexenus By Plato Audiobook

Menexenus By Plato audiobook with text and illustration, and dramatized 🎵 with sound effects and music, by Audiobooks Dimension.

Title : Menexenus (Μενέξενος)
Author : Plato (Πλάτων)
Written : 396 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)
Narrators : David Rintoul, and Full Cast
Musician : Nature's Eye
Editor : Audiobooks Dimension

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Dramatized 🎵

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It seems impossible to separate by any exact line the genuine writings of Plato from the spurious. The only external evidence to them which is of much value is that of Aristotle; for the Alexandrian catalogues of a century later include manifest forgeries. Even the value of the Aristotelian authority is a good deal impaired by the uncertainty concerning the date and authorship of the writings which are ascribed to him. And several of the citations of Aristotle omit the name of Plato, and some of them omit the name of the dialogue from which they are taken. Prior, however, to the enquiry about the writings of a particular author, general considerations which equally affect all evidence to the genuineness of ancient writings are the following: Shorter works are more likely to have been forged, or to have received an erroneous designation, than longer ones; and some kinds of composition, such as epistles or panegyrical orations, are more liable to suspicion than others; those, again, which have a taste of sophistry in them, or the ring of a later age, or the slighter character of a rhetorical exercise, or in which a motive or some affinity to spurious writings can be detected, or which seem to have originated in a name or statement really occurring in some classical author, are also of doubtful credit; while there is no instance of any ancient writing proved to be a forgery, which combines excellence with length. A really great and original writer would have no object in fathering his works on Plato; and to the forger or imitator, the 'literary hack' of Alexandria and Athens, the Gods did not grant originality or genius. Further, in attempting to balance the evidence for and against a Platonic dialogue, we must not forget that the form of the Platonic writing was common to several of his contemporaries. Aeschines, Euclid, Phaedo, Antisthenes, and in the next generation Aristotle, are all said to have composed dialogues; and mistakes of names are very likely to have occurred. Greek literature in the third century BCE was almost as voluminous as our own, and without the safeguards of regular publication, or printing, or binding, or even of distinct titles. An unknown writing was naturally attributed to a known writer whose works bore the same character; and the name once appended easily obtained authority. A tendency may also be observed to blend the works and opinions of the master with those of his scholars. To a later Platonist, the difference between Plato and his imitators was not so perceptible as to ourselves. The Memorabilia of Xenophon and the Dialogues of Plato are but a part of a considerable Socratic literature which has passed away. And we must consider how we should regard the question of the genuineness of a particular writing, if this lost literature had been preserved to us.

These considerations lead us to adopt the following criteria of genuineness:
(1) That is most certainly Plato's which Aristotle attributes to him by name, which
(2) is of considerable length, of
(3) great excellence, and also
(4) in harmony with the general spirit of the Platonic writings.
But the testimony of Aristotle cannot always be distinguished from that of a later age (see above); and has various degrees of importance. Those writings which he cites without mentioning Plato, under their own names, e.g. the Hippias, the Funeral Oration, the Phaedo, etc., have an inferior degree of evidence in their favour. They may have been supposed by him to be the writings of another, although in the case of really great works, e.g. the Phaedo, this is not credible; those again which are quoted but not named, are still more defective in their external credentials. There may be also a possibility that Aristotle was mistaken, or may have confused the master and his scholars in the case of a short writing; but this is inconceivable about a more important work, e.g. the Laws, especially when we remember that he was living at Athens, and a frequenter of the groves of the Academy, during the last twenty years of Plato's life. Nor must we forget that in all his numerous citations from the Platonic writings he never attributes any passage found in the extant dialogues to any one but Plato. And lastly, we may remark that one or two great writings, such as the Parmenides and the Politicus, which are wholly devoid of Aristotelian
(1) credentials may be fairly attributed to Plato, on the ground of
(2) length,
(3) excellence, and
(4) accordance with the general spirit of his writings.
Indeed the greater part of the evidence for the genuineness of ancient Greek authors may be summed up under two heads only:
(1) excellence; and
(2) uniformity of tradition
—a kind of evidence, which though in many cases sufficient, is of inferior value.

Proceeding upon these principles we appear to arrive at the conclusion that nineteen-twentieths of all the writings which have ever been ascribed to Plato, are undoubtedly genuine. There is another portion of them, including the Epistles, the Epinomis, the dialogues rejected by the ancients themselves, namely, the Axiochus, De justo, De virtute, Demodocus, Sisyphus, Eryxias, which on grounds, both of internal and external evidence, we are able with equal certainty to reject. But there still remains a small portion of which we are unable to affirm either that they are genuine or spurious. They may have been written in youth, or possibly like the works of some painters, may be partly or wholly the compositions of pupils; or they may have been the writings of some contemporary transferred by accident to the more celebrated name of Plato, or of some Platonist in the next generation who aspired to imitate his master. Not that on grounds either of language or philosophy we should lightly reject them. Some difference of style, or inferiority of execution, or inconsistency of thought, can hardly be considered decisive of their spurious character. For who always does justice to himself, or who writes with equal care at all times? Certainly not Plato, who exhibits the greatest differences in dramatic power, in the formation of sentences, and in the use of words, if his earlier writings are compared with his later ones, say the Protagoras or Phaedrus with the Laws. Or who can be expected to think in the same manner during a period of authorship extending over above fifty years, in an age of great intellectual activity, as well as of political and literary transition? Certainly not Plato, whose earlier writings are separated from his later ones by as wide an interval of philosophical speculation as that which separates his later writings from Aristotle.

The dialogues which have been translated in the first Appendix, and which appear to have the next claim to genuineness among the Platonic writings, are the Lesser Hippias, the Menexenus or Funeral Oration, the First Alcibiades. Of these, the Lesser Hippias and the Funeral Oration are cited by Aristotle; the first in the Metaphysics, the latter in the Rhetoric. Neither of them are expressly attributed to Plato, but in his citation of both of them he seems to be referring to passages in the extant dialogues. From the mention of 'Hippias' in the singular by Aristotle, we may perhaps infer that he was unacquainted with a second dialogue bearing the same name. Moreover, the mere existence of a Greater and Lesser Hippias, and of a First and Second Alcibiades, does to a certain extent throw a doubt upon both of them. Though a very clever and ingenious work, the Lesser Hippias does not appear to contain anything beyond the power of an imitator, who was also a careful student of the earlier Platonic writings, to invent. The motive or leading thought of the dialogue may be detected in Xenophon Memorabilia, and there is no similar instance of a 'motive' which is taken from Xenophon in an undoubted dialogue of Plato. On the other hand, the upholders of the genuineness of the dialogue will find in the Hippias a true Socratic spirit; they will compare the Ion as being akin both in subject and treatment; they will urge the authority of Aristotle; and they will detect in the treatment of the Sophist, in the satirical reasoning upon Homer, in the reductio ad absurdum of the doctrine that vice is ignorance, traces of a Platonic authorship. In reference to the last point we are doubtful, as in some of the other dialogues, whether the author is asserting or overthrowing the paradox of Socrates, or merely following the argument 'whither the wind blows.' That no conclusion is arrived at is also in accordance with the character of the earlier dialogues. The resemblances or imitations of the Gorgias, Protagoras, and Euthydemus, which have been observed in the Hippias, cannot with certainty be adduced on either side of the argument. On the whole, more may be said in favour of the genuineness of the Hippias than against it.

The Menexenus or Funeral Oration is cited by Aristotle, and is interesting as supplying an example of the manner in which the orators praised 'the Athenians among the Athenians,' falsifying persons and dates, and casting a veil over the gloomier events of Athenian history. It exhibits an acquaintance with the funeral oration of Thucydides, and was, perhaps, intended to rival that great work. If genuine, the proper place of the Menexenus would be at the end of the Phaedrus. The satirical opening and the concluding words bear a great resemblance to the earlier dialogues; the oration itself is professedly a mimetic work, like the speeches in the Phaedrus, and cannot therefore be tested by a comparison of the other writings of Plato. The funeral oration of Pericles is expressly mentioned in the Phaedrus, and this may have suggested the subject, in the same manner that the Cleitophon appears to be suggested by the slight mention of Cleitophon and his attachment to Thrasymachus in the Republic; and the Theages by the mention of Theages in the Apology and Republic; or as the Second Alcibiades seems to be founded upon the text of Xenophon, Memorabilia. A similar taste for parody appears not only in the Phaedrus, but in the Protagoras, in the Symposium, and to a certain extent in the Parmenides.

To these two doubtful writings of Plato I have added the First Alcibiades, which, of all the disputed dialogues of Plato, has the greatest merit, and is somewhat longer than any of them, though not verified by the testimony of Aristotle, and in many respects at variance with the Symposium in the description of the relations of Socrates and Alcibiades. Like the Lesser Hippias and the Menexenus, it is to be compared to the earlier writings of Plato. The motive of the piece may, perhaps, be found in that passage of the Symposium in which Alcibiades describes himself as self-convicted by the words of Socrates. For the disparaging manner in which Schleiermacher has spoken of this dialogue there seems to be no sufficient foundation. At the same time, the lesson imparted is simple, and the irony more transparent than in the undoubted dialogues of Plato. We know, too, that Alcibiades was a favourite thesis, and that at least five or six dialogues bearing this name passed current in antiquity, and are attributed to contemporaries of Socrates and Plato.
(1) In the entire absence of real external evidence (for the catalogues of the Alexandrian librarians cannot be regarded as trustworthy); and
(2) in the absence of the highest marks either of poetical or philosophical excellence; and
(3) considering that we have express testimony to the existence of contemporary writings bearing the name of Alcibiades, we are compelled to suspend our judgment on the genuineness of the extant dialogue.

Neither at this point, nor at any other, do we propose to draw an absolute line of demarcation between genuine and spurious writings of Plato. They fade off imperceptibly from one class to another. There may have been degrees of genuineness in the dialogues themselves, as there are certainly degrees of evidence by which they are supported. The traditions of the oral discourses both of Socrates and Plato may have formed the basis of semi-Platonic writings; some of them may be of the same mixed character which is apparent in Aristotle and Hippocrates, although the form of them is different. But the writings of Plato, unlike the writings of Aristotle, seem never to have been confused with the writings of his disciples: this was probably due to their definite form, and to their inimitable excellence. The three dialogues which we have offered in the Appendix to the criticism of the reader may be partly spurious and partly genuine; they may be altogether spurious;—that is an alternative which must be frankly admitted. Nor can we maintain of some other dialogues, such as the Parmenides, and the Sophist, and Politicus, that no considerable objection can be urged against them, though greatly overbalanced by the weight (chiefly) of internal evidence in their favour. Nor, on the other hand, can we exclude a bare possibility that some dialogues which are usually rejected, such as the Greater Hippias and the Cleitophon, may be genuine. The nature and object of these semi-Platonic writings require more careful study and more comparison of them with one another, and with forged writings in general, than they have yet received, before we can finally decide on their character. We do not consider them all as genuine until they can be proved to be spurious, as is often maintained and still more often implied in this and similar discussions; but should say of some of them, that their genuineness is neither proven nor disproven until further evidence about them can be adduced. And we are as confident that the Epistles are spurious, as that the Republic, the Timaeus, and the Laws are genuine.

On the whole, not a twentieth part of the writings which pass under the name of Plato, if we exclude the works rejected by the ancients themselves and two or three other plausible inventions, can be fairly doubted by those who are willing to allow that a considerable change and growth may have taken place in his philosophy (see above). That twentieth debatable portion scarcely in any degree affects our judgment of Plato, either as a thinker or a writer, and though suggesting some interesting questions to the scholar and critic, is of little importance to the general reader.

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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.

In the series of Platonic dialogues, Menexenus has a unique position. And if, following the scholastic classification, we wanted to characterize him, we would not be able to call him a Socratic, nor a metaphysician, nor an aesthetician, nor a politician. Much less would we be able to call him moral, as noted by the ancient grammatical tradition. Because the Menexenus is simply a wonderful piece of satirical art by Plato — an ironic satire and satirical irony against the orators of that time and more generally against the rhetoric in which all the Athenians, educated and uneducated, politicians and people, were adopting. The written Attic dialect, rather a construct of those developed at the time than a spontaneous language of the people, but wisely enlivened with the idiosyncrasies and varieties of expression of the Athenian people, became a wonderful and perhaps unique instrument of philosophical and comprehensive and logical expression. The way of combining the words and the function of the phrases, especially the participles and infinitives, as well as the clever use of adverbial particles and abstract aggressive determinations, together gave some activity to the definition of each thought and each thing and at the same time a certain generality of characterizations . So that by a profound Thucydides or by a wise Plato or by an artist Xenophon the Attic expression was ordered with amazing, unattainable perfection, they did not completely harmonize the meaning with the sound.

But precisely the perfection of the Attic language and the wonderful manifestation of its perfection in the works of the great writers and in the speeches of the great politicians and sophists seduced many and the common people into linguistic perversion, that is, into a playful use of language through contrasts and expansions unusual, by unexpected combinations and functions, by charged interference of particles and by other various ways of phrasing. The perversity reached so far that, as one can easily conclude from the details of the history of the Athenians, the orators often persuaded and seduced not with profound meanings but with blunt phraseology. It also happened that literate chatter was perceived by the people instead of wisdom and the study of rhetoric as a higher education. And the worst became the lingomania due, among the main ones, to the frivolity and insincerity of the people, and at the same time to the frivolity and stupidity in the management of political affairs.

At that time there were orators (of this kind), professional debaters of governmental affairs, and other orators, chatterers of the courts, and still other teachers of orators, so that the rhetorical generation was thus multiplied, alongside that other generation of professional sophists, which gradually perverted the natural feeling and logic.

At the height of this era of discourse, Plato had returned to Athens in 389 BCE, having been exiled ten years before, since he left Athens indignant and saddened by the tragic death of Socrates. And now seeing the Athenians with his mature and varied wisdom and with his general and varied experience, he felt indignation and was quick to criticize. Then — and this is always a peculiar tendency of the great — the indignation developed into artistic and subtle irony. Later, his great and high creativity fully manifested itself in philosophy and in universal thought with this dialogical type, but more poetically and in a less debating way.

In the first period of Plato's authorship, before perhaps the dialogues that were intended to perpetuate the memory of Socrates and the Socratic teaching were written, the Menexenus was probably written - a dialogue that has nothing philosophical in it, and is only a subtle satire of political rhetoric and of the rhetoricians of the time, especially Lysias and Isocrates. Keeping in mind the political speeches of these and other orators of the time and mixing thoughts of the ordinary and phrases of stereotypes and imitations of the rhetoric of Pericles, using too much the many particles of the Attic dialect (di, toi, mento, gar, un, etc.) not where it was needed in the meaning, but where they complemented the sound and finally sophistically, as those reasoning in order to reconcile the irreconcilable and to justify the unjustifiable, wrote an epitaph, eulogizing for fallen in the war Athenians. And taking as a starting point the famous epitaph of Pericles, which Thucydides saved for us in his history and which had served, it seems, as a model for later clumsy imitations, he constructed perhaps the most paradoxical rhetoric of those ever written, a surprising mixture of criticism and acrimony, of truth and falsehood, of straightforwardness and sophistry — "Pastiche curieux de l'éloquence des rheteurs du temps", as a wise philologist characterizes him as beautiful.

It seems that everyone felt the irony and that they liked the artistic expression of it, because Menexenus became very famous from then on.

The name of the dialogue — as was usually the case with most Platonic dialogues — was given by Socrates' interlocutor Menexenus, who was one of Socrates' younger students, a handsome youth from a noble family, cousin of Ctesippus the Paioneus. Also the brilliant and beautiful Ctisippus seems to have first taught Menexenus the sophistic art, in which he distinguished himself.

Formerly some philologists questioned the authenticity of the dialogue, somewhat arbitrarily, because both the dexterity of expression and the delicacy of thought and the ironic manner and the grace of style in Menexenus are all Platonic and inimitable. Today, however, for these and other special reasons, criticism recognizes the Menexenus as an authentic work of Plato.

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 (compare Thucydides, 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.

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. 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 :

1. Menexenus (Μενέξενος) : a son of Demophon. Same person as Menexenus in ‘Lysis’.
2. Socrates (Σωκράτης) [c. 470 – 399 BCE] : 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 Menexenus dialogue :

1. Antiphon (Ἀντιφῶν) [480 – 411 BCE] : the earliest of the ten Attic orators, and an important figure in fifth-century Athenian political and intellectual life.
2. Archinus (Ἀρχῖνος) : 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.
3. Aspasia (Ἀσπασία) [c. 470 – after 428 BCE] : 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.
4. Cadmus (Κάδμος) : 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.
5. Connus : a son of Metrobius, he was a music teacher of Socrates.
6. Cyrus : the given name of a number of Persian kings. Most notably it refers to Cyrus the Great (c. 600–530 BCE).
7. Danaus (Δαναός) : 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.
8. Darius (or Darius I, Darius the Great) : 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.
9. Datis : 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.
10. Dion (Δίων) [408 – 354 BCE] : a disciple of Plato.
11. Egyptus (Αἴγυπτος) [or Aegyptus, Ægyptus] : 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.
12. Eumolpus (Εὔμολπος) : a legendary king of Thrace.
13. Lamprus (Λάμπρος) : an ancient Greek musician with excellent skill at the playing of the lyre.
14. Metrobius : father of Connus.
15. Pelop (Πέλοψ) : 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.
16. Pericles (Περικλῆς) [c. 495 – 429 BCE] : 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".
17. Xanthippus (Ξάνθιππος) [c. 525 – 475 BCE] : 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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Places mentioned in Menexenus dialogue :

1. Agora (ἀγορά) : 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.
2. Artemisium (Ἀρτεμίσιον) : 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.
3. Asia : the largest continent in the world by both land area and population.
4. Athens (Αθήνα) : 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.
5. 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.
6. Egypt : 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.
7. Eleusis (Ἐλευσίς) : a suburban city and municipality in Athens metropolitan area. It is the site of the Eleusinian Mysteries and the birthplace of Aeschylus.
8. 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.
9. Europe : 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.
10. Eurymedon (Εὐρυμέδων) : a river that is situated in Antalya Province, Turkey, and empties into the Mediterranean.
11. Heaven : 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.
12. Hellespont (Ἑλλήσποντος) : 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.
13. Islands of the Blest (μακάρων νῆσοι) [or The Fortunate Isles, Isles of the Blessed] : 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.
14. Lechaeum (Λεχαῖον) : 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.
15. Libya : 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.
16. Marathon (Μαραθών) : 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.
17. Mitylene (Μυτιλήνη) : 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.
18. Oenophyta (Οἰνόφυτα) : a town in ancient Boeotia.
19. Plataea (Πλάταια) : 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.
20. Salamis (Σαλαμίς) : 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.
21. Sardis [or Sardes] (Σάρδεις) : 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.
22. Scythia (Σκυθια) : a kingdom created by the Scythians during the 6th to 3rd centuries BCE in the Pontic–Caspian steppe.
23. Sicily : 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).
24. Sphagia (Σφαγία) : a small island at the entrance to the bay of Pylos in the Peloponnese, Greece.
25. Tanagra (Τανάγρα) : a town and a municipality north of Athens in Boeotia, Greece.

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Terms mentioned in Menexenus dialogue :

1. Amazons (Ἀμαζόνες) : 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.
2. Argives (Ἀργεῖοι) : one of the names in Homer which is used to refer to the Greeks collectively.
3. Athenians : pertaining to Athens (Ἀθῆναι), the capital and largest city of Greece.
4. 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.
5. Cadmeians : pertaining to Cadmea, or Cadmeia (Καδμεία), the citadel of ancient Thebes, Greece, which was named after Cadmus, the legendary founder of Thebes.
6. 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.
7. Council : 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.
8. 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.
9. 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".
10. Hellas (Ἑλλάς) : a name for all lands inhabited by Hellenes, i.e. all of ancient Greece, including the Greek colonies.
11. Hellenes (Έλληνες) [or The Greeks] : 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.
12. Heracleids [or Heraclides, Heracleides, Herakleides] (Ἡρακλείδης) : any individual of the legendary clan descended from Hercules.
13. Lacedaemonians (or Spartans) : pertaining to Lacedaemon/Sparta (Λακεδαίμων), a prominent city-state in Laconia in ancient Greece.
14. Leontines : pertaining to Lentini (Λεοντῖνοι), a town and comune in the Province of Syracuse, southeastern Sicily.
15. Medes : an ancient Iranian people who spoke the Median language and who inhabited an area known as Media between western and northern Iran.
16. 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.
17. 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.
18. Peloponnesians : pertaining to Peloponnese (Πελοπόννησος), a peninsula and geographic region in Southern Greece, and the southernmost region of the Balkans.
19. Persia : historically the common name used for Iran.
20. Persians : an Iranian ethnic group. They share a common cultural system and are native speakers of the Persian language.
21. Rhamnusian : pertaining to Rhamnous (Ῥαμνοῦς), an ancient Greek city in Attica situated on the coast, overlooking the Euboean Strait.

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