[8] Plat. Menex. pp. 236 C, 249 C.
Compliments of Menexenus after Sokrates has finished, both to the harangue itself and to Aspasia.
Sokr. — If you do not believe me, come along with me, and you will hear it from her own lips. Menex. — I have often been in company with Aspasia, and I know what sort of person she is. Sokr. — Well then, don’t you admire her? and are you not grateful to her for the harangue? Menex. — I am truly grateful for the harangue, to her, or to him, whoever it was that prompted you: and most of all, I am grateful to you for having recited it. Sokr. — Very good. Take care then that you do not betray me. I may perhaps be able, on future occasions, to recite to you many other fine political harangues from her. Menex. — Be assured that I will not betray you. Only let me hear them. Sokr. — I certainly will.
Supposed period — shortly after the peace of Antalkidas.
The interval between these two fragments of dialogue is filled up by the recitation of Sokrates: a long funeral harangue in honour of deceased warriors, whom the city directs to be thus commemorated. The period is supposed to be not long after the peace concluded by Antalkidas in 387 B.C. That peace was imposed upon Sparta, Athens, and the other Grecian cities, by the imperative rescript of the Persian king: the condition of it being an enforcement of universal autonomy, or free separate government to each city, small as well as great.[9]
[9] See respecting the character of the peace of Antalkidas, and the manner in which its conditions were executed, my History of Greece, chap. 76.
Custom of Athens about funeral harangues. Many such harangues existed at Athens, composed by distinguished orators or logographers — Established type of the harangue.
It had been long the received practice among the Athenians to honour their fallen warriors from time to time by this sort of public funeral, celebrated with every demonstration of mournful respect: and to appoint one of the ablest and most dignified citizens as public orator on the occasion.[10] The discourse delivered by Perikles, as appointed orator, at the end of the first Peloponnesian war, has been immortalised by Thucydides, and stands as one of the most impressive remnants of Hellenic antiquity. Since the occasion recurred pretty often, and since the orator chosen was always a man already conspicuous,[11] we may be sure that there existed in the time of Plato many funeral harangues which are now lost: indeed he himself says in this dialogue, that distinguished politicians prepared such harangues beforehand, in case the choice of the citizens should fall upon them. And we may farther be sure, amidst the active cultivation of rhetoric at Athens — that the rhetorical teachers as well as their pupils, and the logographers or paid composers of speeches, were practised in this variety of oratorical compositions not less than in others. We have one of them among the remaining discourses of the logographer Lysias: who could not actually have delivered it himself (since he was not even a citizen) — nor could ever probably have been called upon to prepare one for delivery (since the citizens chosen were always eminent speakers and politicians themselves, not requiring the aid of a logographer) — but who composed it as a rhetorical exercise to extend his own celebrity. In like manner we find one among the discourses of Demosthenes, though of very doubtful authenticity. The funeral discourse had thus come to acquire an established type. Rhetorical teachers had collected and generalised, out of the published harangues before them, certain loci communes, religious, patriotic, social, historical or pseudo-historical, &c., suitable to be employed by any new orator.[12] All such loci were of course framed upon the actual sentiments prevalent among the majority of Athenians; furnishing eloquent expression for sympathies and antipathies deeply lodged in every one’s bosom.
[10] Thucyd. ii. 34.
[11] Thucyd. ii. 34. ὃς ἂν γνώμῃ τε δοκῇ μὴ ἀξύνετος εἶναι, καὶ ἀξιώματι προήκῃ.