That this oration was much admired, not merely during the lifetime of Plato, but also long after his death, we know from the testimony of Cicero; who informs us that it was publicly recited every year on the day when the annual funeral rites were celebrated, in honour of those citizens collectively who had been slain in the service of their country.[25] The rhetor Dionysius[26] recognises the fact of such warm admiration, and concurs generally therein, yet not without reserves. He points out what he considers defects of thought and expression — ostentatious contrasts and balancing of antithetical clauses, after the manner of Gorgias. Yet we may easily believe that the harangue found much favour, and greatly extended the reputation of its author. It would please many readers who took little interest in the Sokratic dialectics.
[25]Cicero, Orator. c. 44, 151. “At non Thucydides: ne ille quidem, haud paullo major scriptor, Plato: nec solum in his sermonibus, qui dialogi dicuntur, ubi etiam de industriâ id faciendum fuit, sed in populari oratione, quâ est Athenis laudari in concione eos, qui sint in præliis interfecti: quæ sic probata est, ut eam quotannis, ut scis, illo die recitari necesse sit.”
See Plato, Menex. p. 249 B, about these yearly funereal rites, and Lysias, Epitaph. s. 80.
[26] Dionys. Hal. De Adm. Vi Dic. in Demosth. p. 1027, compared with Ars Rhetoric. c. 6, pp. 260-267.
Probable motives of Plato in composing it, shortly after he established himself at Athens as a teacher — His competition with Lysias — Desire for celebrity both as rhetor and as dialectician.
When Plato first established himself at Athens as a lecturer (about 386 B.C., shortly after the peace made by Antalkidas), he was probably known only by Sokratic dialogues, properly so called: which Dionysius specifies both as his earliest works and as his proper department, wherein he stood unrivalled.[27] In these, his opposition to the Rhetors and Sophists was proclaimed: and if, as is probable, the Gorgias had been published before that time, he had already declared war, openly as well as bitterly, against the whole art of Rhetoric. But it would be a double triumph for his genius, if, after standing forward as the representative of Dialectic, and in that character heaping scornful derision on the rival art of Rhetoric, as being nothing better than a mere knack of juggling and flattery[28] — he were able to show that this did not proceed from want of rhetorical competence, but that he could rival or surpass the Rhetors in their own department. Herein lies the purpose of the Menexenus. I agree with Schleiermacher, Stallbaum, and some other critics,[29] in thinking that it was probably composed not long after the peace of Antalkidas, in competition with the harangue of Lysias now remaining on the same subject. Though the name of Lysias is not mentioned in the Menexenus, yet the rivalry between him and Plato is clearly proclaimed in the Platonic Phædrus: and the two funeral harangues go so completely over the same ground, that intentional competition on the part of the latest, is the most natural of all hypotheses.
[27] Dionys. Hal. ad Cn. Pomp. De Platon. p. 762. τραφεὶς μὲν ἐν τοῖς Σωκρατικοῖς διαλόγοις ἰσχνοτάτοις οὖσι καὶ ἀκριβεστάτοις, οὐ μείνας δ’ ἐν αὐτοῖς, ἀλλὰ τῆς Γοργίου καὶ Θουκυδίδου κατασκευῆς ἐρασθείς. Compare p. 761, the passage immediately preceding, and De Adm. Vi Dicendi in Demosthene, pp. 1025-1031.
To many critics Plato appeared successful in the figurative and metaphorical style — δεινὸς περὶ τὸ τροπικόν. But Dionysius thinks him very inferior to Demosthenes even on this point, though it was not the strongest point of Demosthenes, whose main purpose was ὁ ἀληθινὸς ἀγών (Dionys. ibid. p. 1057).
[28] Isokrates, in his last composition (Panathen. Or. xii.) written in very old age, shows how keenly he felt the aspersions of jealous rivals — Sophists less successful than himself — who publicly complained that he despised the lessons of the poets, and thought no teaching worth having except his own — ἀποδεξαμένων δὲ τῶν περιεστώτων τὴν διατριβὴν αὐτῶν, ἕνα τὸν τολμηρότερον ἐπιχειρῆσαι ἐμὲ διαβάλλειν, λέγονθ’ ὡς ἐγὼ πάντων καταφρονῶ ὦν τοιούτων, καὶ τάς τε φιλοσοφίας τὰς τῶν ἄλλων καὶ τὰς παιδείας ἁπάσας ἀναιρῶ, καὶ φημὶ πάντας ληρεῖν πλὴν τοὺς μετεσχηκότας τῆς ἐμῆς διατριβῆς (sect. 22). That which Isokrates complains of these teachers for saying in their talk with each other, the rhetorical teachers would vehemently complain of in Plato, when he expressed forcibly his contempt for rhetoric in the Gorgias and the Phædrus. One way of expressing their resentment would be to affirm that Plato could not compose a regular rhetorical discourse; which affirmation Plato would best contradict by composing one in the received manner.
[29] See the Einleitung of Schleiermacher to his translation of the Menexenus; also Stallbaum, Proleg. ad Menex. p. 10, and Westermann, Gesch. der Beredtsamkeit, sect. 66, p. 134.