[34] By the language of Plato here, he seems plainly to bring his own harangue into competition not merely with that of Lysias but also with that of Perikles. But we must not suppose for that reason, that he necessarily has in view the Periklean harangue which we now read in Thucydides, ii. 35-43: which is the real speech, reported and drest up by Thucydides in his own language and manner. Probably the Periklean harangue was preserved separately and in other reports, so that Plato may have known it without knowing the history of Thucydides. When I see the extreme liberty which Plato takes throughout his harangue in regard to the history of the past, I can hardly believe that he ever read Thucydides; if he ever read the history, he certainly disregarded it altogether, and threw himself ἐπὶ τὸ προσαγωγότερον τῇ ἀκροάσει ἢ ἀληθέστερον: like the λογογράφοι of whom Thucydides speaks, i. 21, Lysias among them, though in a less degree than Plato. Æschines Sokraticus had composed among his dialogues one entitled Ἀσπασία. See Xenophon, Œconom. i. 14; Cicero de Inventione, i. 31: Plutarch, Perikles, c. 24-32: also Bergk, De Reliquiis Comœd. Attic. Antiq. p. 237.
[35] Aristoph. Acharn. 501.
[36] The remarks of Dionysius of Halikarnassus (in the Epistle to Cn. Pompey about Plato, pp. 754-758) are well deserving of attention: especially as he had before him many writers now lost, either contemporary with Plato or of the succeeding generation. He notices not only Plato’s asperity in ridiculing most of his distinguished contemporaries, but also his marked rivalry against Lysias.
ἦν γάρ, ἦν μὲν τῇ Πλάτωνος φύσει πολλὰς ἀρετὰς ἐχούσῃ τὸ φιλότιμον, &c. (p. 756).
See this subject well handled in an instructive Dissertation by M. Lebeau (Stuttgart, 1863, Lysias’ Epitaphios als ächt erwiesen, pp. 42-46 seq.).
Anachronism of the Menexenus — Plato careless on this point.
Such I conceive to be the scope of the dialogue, looked at from Plato’s point of view. In order to find a person suitable in point of age to be described as the teacher of Sokrates, he is forced to go back to the past generation — that of Perikles and Aspasia. But though he avoids anachronism on this point, he cannot avoid the anachronism of making Sokrates allude to events long posterior to his own death. This anachronism is real, though it has been magnified by some critics into a graver defect than it is in truth. Plato was resolved not to speak in his own person, but through that of Sokrates. But he is not always careful to keep within the limits which consistent adherence to such a plan imposes.[37]
[37] Groen van Prinsterer (Prosopographia Platonica, p. 211 seq.) adverts to the carelessness of Plato about exact chronology.
Most of the Platonic critics recognise the Menexenus as a genuine Platonic dialogue. Ast, however, includes it among the numerous dialogues which he disallows as spurious; and Suckow, Steinhart, and Ueberweg, are also inclined to disallow it. See Ueberweg, Die Aechtheit der Platonischen Schriften, pp. 143-148. These critics make light of the allusion of Aristotle in the Rhetoric — Σωκράτης ἐν τῷ Ἐπιταφίῳ — which appears to me, I confess, of more weight than all the grounds of suspicion adduced by them to prove the dialogue spurious. The presumption in favour of the catalogue of Thrasyllus counts with them, here as elsewhere, for nothing.