Plato · a new plain-English translation from the Greek
SOCRATES: Coming from the marketplace, Menexenus, or where? MENEXENUS: From the marketplace, Socrates, and from the council-house. SOCRATES: And what would bring you to the council-house of all places? Or is it obvious — you think you've reached the summit of education and philosophy, and that you're well enough equipped now to turn to bigger things, and you intend, wonder that you are, to start ruling over us older men, young as you are, so that your household never fails to produce someone to look after the rest of us? MENEXENUS: If you let me, Socrates, and advise me to take office, I'll be eager to. But if not, I won't. As it is, though, I went to the council-house because I heard the council is about to choose who will speak over the dead — you know they're going to hold the funeral. SOCRATES: Certainly. But who did they choose? MENEXENUS: No one — they put it off until tomorrow. I expect Archinus or Dion will be chosen.
SOCRATES: Well, Menexenus, in many ways it does seem to be a fine thing to die in war. Even a poor man gets a beautiful, splendid funeral for it, and even a worthless one gets praised — praised by men who are wise, and who don't praise carelessly but have their speeches prepared long in advance, speeches so beautifully crafted that, whether or not the qualities they mention actually belong to each man, they dress everything up in the loveliest words and cast a spell over our souls. They praise the city in every conceivable way, praising those who died in the war, praising all our ancestors before them, and praising us who are still living — so that, for my part, Menexenus, I feel positively noble when I'm being praised by them, and every time I stand there entranced, listening, spellbound, believing that on the spot I've become taller, nobler, and better-looking. And as usual there are generally some foreigners with me who listen along, and in front of them I become even more dignified on the spot — because they seem to me to feel the very same thing, both about me and about the city as a whole, thinking it more marvelous than they did before, persuaded by the speaker. And this sense of my own dignity stays with me for more than three days — the words and the very sound of the speaker's voice sink so deep into my ears that it's only on the fourth or fifth day that I come back to myself and realize where on earth I am; until then I practically believe I'm living on the Isles of the Blessed. That's how skillful our public speakers are. MENEXENUS: You're always making fun of the public speakers, Socrates. But this time I think whoever gets chosen won't have an easy time of it — the choice has come up so suddenly that the speaker will probably be forced to improvise on the spot, so to speak. SOCRATES: Why do you say that, my friend? Each of these men has speeches already prepared, and besides, it isn't even hard to improvise something like this. If someone had to speak well of Athenians before Spartans, or Spartans before Athenians, that would call for a good speaker, one able to persuade and win approval. But when someone competes before the very people he's praising, there's nothing impressive about speaking well. MENEXENUS: You don't think so, Socrates? SOCRATES: No, by Zeus, I don't. MENEXENUS: Do you think you'd be able to speak yourself, if it were needed and the council chose you? SOCRATES: It wouldn't be at all surprising if I were able to speak, Menexenus, since I happen to have a teacher who's no mediocre hand at rhetoric — indeed she's produced many other fine public speakers, and one who stands out above all the Greeks: Pericles, son of Xanthippus. MENEXENUS: Who is she? Or clearly you mean Aspasia?
SOCRATES: Yes, her — and Connus, son of Metrobius, too. Those are my two teachers, one in music, the other in rhetoric. It's no wonder a man raised that way would be formidable at speaking. But even someone trained worse than I was — taught music by Lamprus and rhetoric by Antiphon of Rhamnus — could still manage to win praise speaking of Athenians before an Athenian audience. MENEXENUS: And what would you have to say, if you had to speak? SOCRATES: On my own, from myself, probably nothing. But just yesterday I was listening to Aspasia working through a funeral oration on this very subject. She'd heard exactly what you're telling me now, that the Athenians were about to choose their speaker; and she went through part of it for me on the spot, the sort of thing one ought to say, and part of it she'd worked out earlier — I think it was when she was composing the funeral speech that Pericles delivered, stitching together various leftover scraps from that one. MENEXENUS: Could you actually remember what Aspasia said? SOCRATES: I should be able to, unless I do her wrong — I learned it from her directly, in fact, and nearly got a beating when I kept forgetting it. MENEXENUS: Then why not go through it? SOCRATES: Because I'm afraid my teacher will be angry with me if I make her speech public. MENEXENUS: Don't worry about that, Socrates — just tell it, and you'll do me a great favor, whether you want to call it Aspasia's speech or anyone else's. Just tell it. SOCRATES: But you'll probably laugh at me, if I strike you as an old man still playing games. MENEXENUS: Not at all, Socrates — tell it, by any means. SOCRATES: Well, I suppose I do have to indulge you — so much so that if you asked me to strip and dance, I'd probably indulge you in that too, seeing as we're alone. All right, listen. As I recall, she began speaking from the dead themselves, something like this: 'In deed, these men here have received what is fitting for them, and having received it they travel the journey appointed by fate, sent forth in procession jointly by the city and privately by their own families. But in speech, the law commands that the remaining honor be paid to these men, and it is right that it should be. For when deeds have been nobly done, a fine speech creates for those who did them memory and honor in the minds of those who hear it. There is need, then, of a speech that will adequately praise the dead and kindly counsel the living — urging their children and brothers to imitate the virtue of these men here, and comforting their fathers and mothers, and any ancestors still further back who remain.'
SOCRATES: What kind of speech, then, would seem right to us for this? Or where should we rightly begin in praising good men, who by their virtue delighted their own people while they lived, and who traded their death for the safety of the living? It seems to me we should praise them in accordance with nature, in the same way they came to be good. They became good because they were born of good stock. Let us praise, first, their good birth; second, their nurture and education; and after that, let us display the accomplishment of their deeds, showing how fine and worthy of these origins it was. Now the first foundation of their good birth was the origin of their ancestors, which was not that of immigrants, nor did it show these descendants to be settlers in the land who had come from elsewhere, but rather natives of the soil, truly dwelling and living in their own fatherland, nurtured not by a stepmother, as others are, but by the very mother-country in which they lived — and now, in death, they lie in the family plots of the land that bore them, raised them, and took them back. It is most just, then, to honor first that mother herself; for in doing so we honor at the same time the good birth of these men. And this land deserves to be praised by all humankind, not only by us, for many reasons, but first and greatest because it happens to be beloved by the gods. Our claim is borne out by the very contest and judgment of the gods who once disputed over her; and if the gods themselves praised her, how could all humanity not rightly join in praising her too? A second praise she rightly deserves is this: in that age when the whole earth was bringing forth and producing living creatures of every kind, beasts wild and tame, our land in that very time showed herself barren of savage beasts and pure, and out of all creatures she chose and brought forth man, who surpasses the rest in understanding and alone among them recognizes justice and the gods. And a great proof of this claim is that this earth bore the ancestors of these men and of us. For everything that gives birth has, ready at hand, nourishment fitting for what it bears — by which a woman too is shown, whether she has truly given birth or not, if she has no springs of milk for the child.
SOCRATES: And this is exactly the proof our land and mother offers, that she truly gave birth to human beings: she alone, first and at that time only she, brought forth food fit for humans, the fruit of wheat and barley, by which the human race is nourished most beautifully and best, as genuine proof that she herself had truly given birth to this creature. And it is more fitting to accept such proofs on behalf of earth than on behalf of a woman — for it is not the earth that has imitated woman in conceiving and bearing, but woman that has imitated the earth. Nor did she keep this fruit jealously to herself, but shared it with the rest of humankind as well. After this she brought forth the olive, help for their labors, and gave it to her children; and having nursed and raised them to maturity, she brought in gods to rule and teach them — whose names it's proper to leave unspoken here, since we know them — gods who set our life in order both for our daily living, having first taught us crafts, and for the defense of our land, teaching us the acquisition and use of arms. Having been born and raised in this way, the ancestors of these men settled here and established a constitution, which it's right to mention briefly. For a constitution is the nourishment of human beings — a good one nourishing good men, its opposite nourishing bad ones. So it's necessary to show that our forebears were raised under a good constitution, one through which both those men of old and the men of today are good — among whom these fallen men here belong. For the very same constitution existed then as now, an aristocracy, under which we live now and have lived, as a rule, ever since that time. One person calls it a democracy, another something else, whatever pleases him, but in truth it is an aristocracy exercised with the approval of the majority. For we always have kings — sometimes by birth, sometimes elected — but control of the city rests for the most part with the people, who grant offices and power always to those judged best, and no one is excluded for weakness, poverty, or obscurity of birth, nor honored for the opposites of these, as happens in other cities; there is one single standard: whoever is judged wise or good rules and holds power. And the cause of this constitution of ours is our equal birth.
SOCRATES: Other cities are made up of people of every sort, unequal to one another, so that their constitutions too are unequal — tyrannies and oligarchies — and some people there regard each other as slaves, others as masters. But we and our own, all born brothers of a single mother, do not think it right to be slaves or masters of one another; rather, our natural equality of birth compels us to seek equality under the law, and to yield to one another on no other ground than a reputation for virtue and wisdom. For this reason, the fathers of these men, and our own, and these men themselves, raised in complete freedom and nobly born, have displayed many fine deeds before all humankind, both privately and publicly, believing it their duty to fight for freedom — for the Greeks against the Greeks, and against the barbarians on behalf of all Greece together. Now, how they defended themselves against Eumolpus and the Amazons when they invaded our land, and against still earlier attackers, and how they came to the aid of the Argives against the Cadmeans and of the Heraclids against the Argives — this would take too long to tell properly for the time we have, and poets have already sung their virtue beautifully in verse and made it known to all; so if we were to try to dress up the same deeds in plain prose, we would probably come off second best. For this reason, then, I think it best to leave these matters aside, since they already have their due honor. But of the deeds for which no poet has yet won fitting fame for worthy men, and which still lie forgotten, of these I think we should make mention, praising them and inviting others to set them fittingly to song and other poetry, as befits those who did them. The first of these I mean is this: the Persians, who ruled Asia and were enslaving Europe, were checked by the descendants of this land, our own forebears — and it is right and necessary, in speaking of them first, to praise their virtue. One must picture it, if one is to praise it properly, as it stood in that age, when all of Asia was already enslaved to a third king in succession: the first of whom, Cyrus, freed the Persians, his own people, by his own force of spirit, and in the same act enslaved their former masters the Medes, and ruled the rest of Asia as far as Egypt;
SOCRATES: The son of Darius took over Egypt and Libya as far as he could reach, and Darius, third in line, fixed the empire's land border at the Scythians, and with his fleets ruled the sea and the islands, so that no one was thought his match. All men's minds were enslaved to him -- so many great and warlike peoples had the Persian empire brought under the yoke. Darius then, charging us and the Eretrians with plotting against Sardis as his pretext, sent fifty thousand men in transports and warships, three hundred ships in all, with Datis in command, and told him to come back bringing the Eretrians and the Athenians, if he wanted to keep his head. Datis sailed to Eretria against men who were, at that time, among the most respected of the Greeks for their skill in war, and no small number either, and he subdued them in three days. Then he combed the whole territory so that no one could escape, in this fashion: his soldiers went to the borders of Eretrian land, spread out from sea to sea, joined hands, and swept through the entire country, so that they could report to the king that not one person had gotten away. With the same plan in mind they sailed down from Eretria to Marathon, confident that they could yoke the Athenians to the same fate and lead them off along with the Eretrians. Some of this they had already done, some they were still attempting, when no Greek came to help either the Eretrians or the Athenians except the Spartans -- and they arrived a day after the battle. Everyone else, panic-stricken, content just to survive for the moment, sat still. It is in a moment like that one would come to know the true worth of the men who met the barbarian's power at Marathon, who checked the arrogance of the whole of Asia, and who were the first to set up trophies over barbarians, becoming leaders and teachers to the rest of Greece that Persian power was not invincible after all, but that every mass of men and every store of wealth yields to courage. I say those men are fathers not only of our bodies but of our freedom and the freedom of everyone on this continent. It was with that deed before their eyes that the Greeks later dared to risk the battles that followed for their own survival, as pupils of the men of Marathon.
SOCRATES: So the first prize in this speech must go to those men, and the second to the ones who fought and won at sea off Salamis and Artemisium. About these men too one could say a great deal -- what attacks they withstood, on land and on sea, and how they beat them back. But what strikes me as their finest achievement, I will mention: they completed the work the men of Marathon had begun. The men of Marathon had shown the Greeks only this much, that it was possible on land for the few to beat back the many barbarians; but at sea it was still an open question, and the Persians had a reputation for being unbeatable there, given their numbers, their wealth, their skill, and their strength. So this deserves praise in the men who fought that sea battle: that they dissolved the fear that came next for the Greeks, and stopped them fearing the sheer mass of ships and men. So it happened, through both groups -- the fighters at Marathon and the sailors at Salamis -- that the rest of Greece was schooled: by the one on land, by the other at sea, taught and trained not to fear the barbarians. Third I count the action at Plataea, in numbers and in courage a bulwark of Greek survival -- and this time it was a joint achievement of Spartans and Athenians. So all these men beat back the greatest and hardest danger, and for that courage they are praised now by us and will be by those who come after. But after this, many Greek cities still sided with the barbarian, and the king himself was reported to be planning to attack the Greeks again. So it is only right that we remember these men too, who put the finishing touch on the survival begun by their predecessors, sweeping and driving every trace of the barbarian from the sea. These were the men who fought at sea off the Eurymedon, who campaigned to Cyprus, who sailed to Egypt and to many other places -- men we must remember and thank, because they made the king turn his attention to his own survival instead of scheming to destroy the Greeks.
SOCRATES: This war, then, was drained to the dregs by the whole city, on behalf of itself and the rest of the Greek-speaking world, against the barbarians. But once peace came and the city was honored, there fell upon her what tends to befall men who are doing well -- first envy, and from envy, resentment; and this is what drew even this city, against her will, into war with other Greeks. After this a war broke out, and our men fought the Spartans at Tanagra for the freedom of the Boeotians; the battle's outcome was in doubt, but the later engagement settled it: the Spartans went off home, abandoning the Boeotians they had come to help, while our men, three days later, won at Oenophyta and rightly restored the men who had been unjustly driven out. These were the first, after the Persian war, to help fellow Greeks against Greeks in the cause of freedom, proving themselves good men and freeing those they helped, and for that they were honored by the city and laid first in this tomb. After this a great war broke out, with all the Greeks marching against us, ravaging our land, and repaying the city with gratitude she did not deserve; our men beat them in a sea battle, took their Spartan commanders prisoner at Sphagia, and though they could have put them to death, spared them, gave them back, and made peace -- holding that against people of one's own kind the war should go only as far as victory, and that a city's private anger should not be allowed to destroy the common good of the Greeks, while against barbarians it should go all the way to destruction. These men deserve praise, who fought this war and lie here, because they showed -- if anyone still doubted that in the earlier war against the barbarians there were better men than the Athenians -- that such a doubt was groundless. For here, amid the factional strife of Greece, they proved themselves victors in war, subduing the very leaders of the other Greeks, the same men with whom they had once jointly defeated the barbarians -- now beating them on their own.
SOCRATES: A third war followed this peace, unforeseen and terrible, in which many brave men died and lie here -- many around Sicily, who set up countless trophies for the freedom of the Leontines, sailing to those parts to help them, bound by oath; but because of the length of the voyage the city fell into difficulty and could not keep supplying them, and for that reason, abandoned, they met disaster. Yet their very enemies, the men who fought against them, hold them in higher regard for restraint and courage than their own friends do for other men. Many others died in the sea battles around the Hellespont, who in a single day captured every enemy ship, and won many other battles besides. What I called terrible and unforeseen about this war is this: that the rest of the Greeks came to such a pitch of rivalry against our city that they dared to send envoys to their bitterest enemy, the king whom we had jointly driven out, and bring him back again on their own, a barbarian against Greeks, and to gather against the city both Greeks and barbarians together. It was then that the city's strength and courage became plain for all to see. For when everyone thought she was already beaten, with our ships trapped at Mytilene, our men went to the rescue with sixty ships, manning the vessels themselves, and, proving themselves by common consent the bravest of men, defeated the enemy and freed our own -- yet met with an undeserved fate, and lie here still, never recovered from the sea. We must always remember and praise them: by their courage we won not only that sea battle but the war as a whole, for because of them the city gained the reputation that she could never be beaten, even by the whole world combined -- and that reputation proved true. It was by our own internal division that we were defeated, not by anyone else; we remain, even now, undefeated by them; we ourselves defeated ourselves, and we ourselves were the ones beaten. After this, when calm and peace came with the rest of the world, our own private war was fought in such a way that, if it is truly fated for men to fall into civil strife, no one could pray for his own city to suffer it in any gentler form.
SOCRATES: For from the Piraeus and from the city itself, the citizens came together with one another so gladly and so much like kin, against all the expectations of the rest of the Greeks, and they settled the war against the men at Eleusis with such moderation. And the sole cause of all this was nothing other than the true kinship among them, providing a firm and unified friendship not in word only but in deed. We should also remember those who died at one another's hands in this war, and reconcile them, so far as we are able, with prayers and sacrifices, on occasions like this one, praying to those who hold power over them, since we ourselves have already been reconciled. For they did not turn on one another out of wickedness or hatred, but out of misfortune. We ourselves, the living, are witnesses of this: being of the same stock as they were, we grant one another forgiveness both for what we did and for what we suffered. After this, when peace came to us in full, the city kept quiet, forgiving the barbarians, since, having suffered badly at her hands, they had defended themselves adequately and not too little, but indignant with the Greeks, remembering how, after being treated well by her, they repaid her -- joining forces with the barbarians, stripping her of the ships that had once saved them, and tearing down the walls in return for our having kept theirs from falling. Resolving never again to defend Greeks enslaving one another, nor Greeks against barbarians, the city lived on in that spirit. While we were of this mind, the Spartans, thinking that the guardians of freedom had fallen and that it was now their own task to enslave the rest, set about doing just that. Why go on at length? What followed did not happen long ago, nor to men of a distant past -- we ourselves know how the leading states of Greece, Argos, Boeotia, and Corinth, came in terror to seek our city's help, and, most remarkable of all, how the king himself was reduced to such straits that his only hope of survival lay in this very city he had once been so eager to destroy. And indeed, if anyone wished to bring a just charge against our city, the only true charge he could bring would be this: that she is always too tender-hearted, too much a nurse to the weaker side.
SOCRATES: And so, at that moment too, she could not hold firm and keep to what she had resolved—to help no one against enslavement who had once wronged us. She bent, and she helped. By her own aid she freed the Greeks from slavery, so that they were free men until they enslaved one another again; but the King himself she did not dare to help openly, out of shame before the trophies of Marathon and Salamis and Plataea. Still, by merely allowing exiles and volunteers to go to his aid, she saved him—everyone admits it. Then, having rebuilt her walls and her fleet, she accepted the war when war was forced on her, and fought the Spartans in defense of the Parians. But the King grew afraid of our city when he saw the Spartans giving up the fight at sea; wanting to withdraw, he demanded the Greeks of the mainland—the very ones the Spartans had handed over to him before—as his price for fighting alongside us and the other allies, expecting we would refuse, so that he would have his excuse for pulling out. About the other allies he was mistaken: the Corinthians, the Argives, the Boeotians, and the rest were quite willing to hand them over, and made a compact and swore to it—if he would supply the money, they would surrender the Greeks of the mainland. We alone could not bring ourselves either to hand them over or to swear. So firm and sound, you see, is the nobility and freedom of our city, so instinctive its hatred of the barbarian, because we are purely Greek, with no barbarian admixture. No Pelopses live among us, no Cadmuses, no Aegyptuses or Danauses, none of the many who are barbarian by nature and Greek only by convention; we live here as Greeks ourselves, not half-barbarians, and that is why an undiluted hatred of foreign blood is bred into the city. Even so, we were left standing alone once more, because we refused to do a shameful and unholy thing—to hand Greeks over to barbarians. Having come round, then, to the same position from which we had been beaten down before, with God's help we brought that war to a better end than the last one: we came out of it with our ships, our walls, and our own colonies intact, so that the enemy were glad enough to be out of it too.
SOCRATES: Yet in this war also we lost brave men—those who met rough ground at Corinth and treachery at Lechaeum. Brave too were the men who set the King free and drove the Spartans from the sea. I recall these men to you; and it is fitting that you join me in praising and honoring such men. So much, then, for the deeds of the men who lie here, and of all the others who have died for the city. Many fine things have been said, and many more and finer remain unsaid; whole days and nights would not be enough for the man who set out to tell it all. Remembering them, then, every man should charge their descendants, as one does in battle, not to desert the post their ancestors held, and not to fall back into retreat, yielding to cowardice. I myself, sons of brave men, give you that charge now, and in time to come, wherever I meet one of you, I will remind you and urge you on: be eager to be your best. But at this moment it is right that I tell you what your fathers, whenever they were about to face danger, enjoined us to report to those left behind, should anything happen to them. I will tell you what I heard from their own lips, and what they would gladly say to you now if they had the power—judging from what they said then. You must imagine you are hearing their own voices in what I report. This is what they said: 'Children, that you come of brave fathers, this present occasion itself declares. We could have lived without honor; we chose instead to die with honor, rather than bring you and those after you into disgrace, and rather than shame our own fathers and all our line before us; for we hold that life is unlivable for the man who shames his own, and that no man and no god is friend to such a one, whether on the earth or, once he is dead, beneath it. Remember our words, then, and whatever else you pursue, pursue it with virtue, knowing that without virtue everything acquired and everything undertaken is shameful and base. Wealth brings no beauty to the man who holds it in cowardice—such a man is rich for someone else, not for himself—and beauty of body and strength, when they dwell in a coward and a villain, look not fitting but unfit: they make their owner more conspicuous and show up his cowardice.'
SOCRATES: 'And all knowledge, cut off from justice and the rest of virtue, shows itself as cunning, not wisdom. For these reasons make it your effort, first and last and always, in every way and with all your zeal, above all to surpass both us and those before us in glory. If you do not, know this: if we defeat you in virtue, our victory brings us shame, while defeat, if we are defeated, brings us happiness. And we would most surely be defeated, and you victorious, if you make yourselves ready not to trade on the reputation of your ancestors and not to spend it away, knowing that for a man who thinks himself something, nothing is more shameful than to offer himself up for honor not on his own account but on the strength of his ancestors' fame. Honors won by parents are a fine and magnificent treasure for their children; but to use up a treasure of wealth and honors and hand nothing on to one's children, for want of possessions and good repute of one's own, is shameful and unmanly. If you practice these things, you will come to us as friends coming to friends, whenever your appointed portion carries you here; but if you neglect them and turn coward, no one will receive you kindly. To our children, then, let this be said. As for our fathers, those of us who still have them, and our mothers, they must be encouraged, always, to bear the calamity as lightly as they can, if it should indeed befall—not to join them in lamenting; they will need no one to stir their grief, for the misfortune itself will supply enough of that. Rather, healing and soothing them, remind them that the gods have heard their greatest prayers. For they did not pray for immortal sons, but for good and glorious ones; and these, the greatest of goods, they obtained. That everything in his own life should turn out to his liking is not easy for a mortal man. By bearing their misfortunes bravely they will be seen as truly the fathers of brave sons, and brave themselves; but if they give way, they will raise the suspicion either that they are not our fathers, or that those who praise us speak falsely. Neither must happen. They above all must be our praisers in deed, showing themselves plainly what they are—true men, fathers of men. The old saying, nothing too much, has long seemed well said; and in truth it is well said.'
SOCRATES: 'For the man whose whole road to happiness, or nearly so, runs through himself—who does not hang suspended on other people, forced to drift as his fortunes drift with theirs, for better or worse—for him life is best provided. He is the temperate man, he is the brave and the sensible one; he it is who, as money and children come and are lost again, will most obey the proverb: he will be seen neither rejoicing nor grieving too much, because he trusts in himself. Such men we expect our own people to be; such we wish them and declare them; and such we now show ourselves, neither resentful nor overly afraid if we must die at this present hour. We ask, then, of our fathers and mothers that they live out the rest of their lives in this same spirit, and know that they will not please us most by wailing and mourning over us. If the dead have any awareness of the living, this is how they would most fail to please us—by hurting themselves and taking their misfortunes hard; lightly and with measure, that is how they would please us best. For our part, our lives will now have the ending that is finest for human beings, so that it is more fitting to honor it than to mourn it. But if they turn their care to our wives and children, providing for them and directing their minds there, they will best forget their bad fortune and live more nobly, more rightly, and more as we would love them to live. This message is enough from us to our families. To the city we would give this charge: to care for our fathers and our sons—educating the sons in good order, and keeping the fathers in an old age worthy of them. But as it is, we know that even without our charge, her care will be enough.' These things, children and parents of the dead, they enjoined us to report, and I report them as earnestly as I can; and on their behalf I make my own request—that the sons imitate their fathers, and that the parents take heart on their own account, since we will nourish your old age and care for you, both privately and publicly, wherever any of us meets any of yours.
SOCRATES: As for the city's care, you know it yourselves: she has made laws concerning the children and the parents of those who die in war, and cares for them; the highest office of all is charged, above all other citizens, to see that the fathers and mothers of these men suffer no wrong. Their children the city joins in raising herself, striving to make their orphanhood as little felt as may be, taking on the role of a father to them herself while they are still boys; and when they come to a man's estate she sends them off to their own affairs, arrayed in full armor, showing them and reminding them of their father's ways by giving them the instruments of their father's valor—and at the same time, for the omen's sake, that each may first set foot on his ancestral hearth to rule there in strength, adorned in arms. And the dead themselves she never fails to honor: year by year she herself performs for all in common the rites that are performed for each man privately, and beyond this she holds contests of athletics and horsemanship and music of every kind—standing, quite simply, in the place of heir and son to the fallen, of father to their sons, of guardian to their parents, keeping every kind of care over all of them through all time. Keeping this in mind, you should bear the calamity more gently; so would you be dearest both to the dead and to the living, and easiest both to comfort and to be comforted. And now that you and all the rest have together made lament for the dead as the law directs, go your ways. There, Menexenus, is the speech of Aspasia of Miletus. MENEXENUS: By Zeus, Socrates, Aspasia is a lucky woman by your account, if she can compose speeches like that—and a woman at that. SOCRATES: Well, if you don't believe it, come with me and hear her speaking yourself. MENEXENUS: I have met Aspasia many times, Socrates. I know what she is like. SOCRATES: Well then? Don't you admire her, and aren't you grateful to her now for the speech? MENEXENUS: I am very grateful indeed, Socrates, for this speech—to her, or to him, whoever it was that recited it to you. And for many other things besides, I am grateful to the one who recited it. SOCRATES: That's all very well—only don't give me away, and then I'll report many more fine political speeches of hers to you. MENEXENUS: Don't worry, I won't give you away. Just keep reporting. SOCRATES: It shall be done.