ΜΕΝΕΞΕΝΟΣ
Thomas Taylor (1804)
Plato · Thomas Taylor (1804)
Socrates: From the Forum, Menexenus? Or whence come you?
Menexenus: From the Forum, Socrates, and from the Senate-house.
Socrates: What particular business called you to the Senate-house? Is it that you think yourself, O wonderful young man, arrived at the summit of learning and philosophy, and as being every way sufficiently qualified, you are purposing to turn yourself to affairs of greater importance; and that we may never want a supply of magistrates out of your family, you yourself are thinking, young as you are, of governing us old fellows.
Menexenus: Indeed, Socrates, I should most readily entertain such an ambition, encouraged by your permission and advice; but otherwise, I would by no means think of it. The occasion of my going to the Senate-house to-day was the having heard that they intended to make choice of the orator who is to speak the funeral oration in praise of the dead. For you know they are now preparing to celebrate their obsequies.
Socrates: Entirely so. But whom have they chosen?
Menexenus: No one as yet. They have deferred that consideration till to-morrow: but I think that either Dion or Archinus will be appointed.
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The Athenian who turned Socratic conversation into a written philosophy and founded the Academy.
Plato was born around 428 BCE into a wealthy and politically prominent Athenian family; through his mother Perictione the family traced kinship to the lawgiver Solon, and his relatives Critias and Charmides were among the oligarchs of the Thirty. A late tradition says his given name was Aristocles and that 'Plato' — from the word for 'broad' — was a nickname. He grew up during the long agony of the Peloponnesian War and came of age amid the violence and disillusion that followed Athens' defeat.
Plato · Thomas Taylor (1804). Each edition has its page, the reader and a plain-text file:
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