Menexenus

From the agora, Menexenus, or where from?

From the agora, Socrates, and the Council Chamber.

And what was it took you specially to the Council Chamber? But of course it was because you deem yourself to be at the end of your education and philosophic studies, and being sufficiently versed, as you think, in these, you are minded to turn to graver matters; and you at your age, my marvellous youth, are attempting to govern us older men, lest your house should ever fail in providing us with a succession of managers.

Certainly if you, Socrates, allow and counsel me to govern, I shall do so gladly; but otherwise not. This time, however, I went to the Council Chamber because I had learnt that the Council was going to select someone to make an oration over the dead; for you know that they propose to arrange for funeral rites.

Yes, I do. And whom did they select?

Nobody: they postponed it till tomorrow. I fancy, however, that Archinus will be selected, or Dion.

In truth, Menexenus, to fall in battle seems to be a splendid thing in many ways. For a man obtains a splendid and magnificent funeral even though at his death he be but a poor man; and though he be but a worthless fellow, he wins praise, and that by the mouth of accomplished men who do not praise at random, but in speeches prepared long beforehand. And they praise in such splendid fashion, that, what with their ascribing to each one both what he has and what he has not, and the variety and splendor of their diction, they bewitch our souls; and they eulogize the State in every possible fashion, and they praise those who died in the war and all our ancestors of former times and ourselves who are living still; so that I myself, Menexenus, when thus praised by them feel mightily ennobled, and every time I listen fascinated I am exalted and imagine myself to have become all at once taller and nobler and more handsome. And as I am generally accompanied by some strangers, who listen along with me, I become in their eyes also all at once more majestic; for they also manifestly share in my feelings with regard both to me and to the rest of our City, believing it to be more marvellous than before, owing to the persuasive eloquence of the speaker. And this majestic feeling remains with me for over three days: so persistently does the speech and voice of the orator ring in my ears that it is scarcely on the fourth or fifth day that I recover myself and remember that I really am here on earth, whereas till then I almost imagined myself to be living in the Islands of the Blessed,—so expert are our orators.