Complete Works (206 page)
S
OCRATES
: So—what should a leader say when he’s at sea and his ship is hit by a storm—do you mean a rhapsode will know better than a navigator?
I
ON
: No, no. A navigator will know
that
.
S
OCRATES
: And when he is in charge of a sick man, what should a leader [c] say—will a rhapsode know better than a doctor?
I
ON
: Not that, either.
S
OCRATES
: But he
will
know what a slave should say. Is that what you mean?
I
ON
: Yes.
S
OCRATES
: For example, what should a slave who’s a cowherd say to calm down his cattle when they’re going wild—will a rhapsode know what a cowherd does not?
I
ON
: Certainly not.
S
OCRATES
: And what a woman who spins yarn should say about working [d] with wool?
I
ON
: No.
S
OCRATES
: And what a man should say, if he’s a general, to encourage his troops?
I
ON
: Yes! That’s the sort of thing a rhapsode will know.
S
OCRATES
: What? Is a rhapsode’s profession the same as a general’s?
I
ON
: Well,
I
certainly would know what a general should say.
S
OCRATES
: Perhaps that’s because you’re also a general by profession, Ion. I mean, if you were somehow both a horseman and a cithara-player [e] at the same time, you would know good riders from bad. But suppose I asked you: “Which profession teaches you good horsemanship—the one that makes you a horseman, or the one that makes you a cithara-player?”
I
ON
: The horseman, I’d say.
S
OCRATES
: Then if you also knew good cithara-players from bad, the profession that taught you
that
would be the one which made you a cithara-player, not the one that made you a horseman. Wouldn’t you agree?
I
ON
: Yes.
S
OCRATES
: Now, since you know the business of a general, do you know this by being a general or by being a good rhapsode?
I
ON
: I don’t think there’s any difference.
[541]
S
OCRATES
: What? Are you saying there’s no difference? On your view is there one profession for rhapsodes and generals, or two?
I
ON
: One, I think.
S
OCRATES
: So anyone who is a good rhapsode turns out to be a good general too.
I
ON
: Certainly, Socrates.
S
OCRATES
: It also follows that anyone who turns out to be a good general is a good rhapsode too.
I
ON
: No. This time I don’t agree.
[b] S
OCRATES
: But you do agree to this: anyone who is a good rhapsode is a good general too.
I
ON
: I quite agree.
S
OCRATES
: And aren’t you the best rhapsode in Greece?
I
ON
: By far, Socrates.
S
OCRATES
: Are you also a general, Ion? Are you the best in Greece?
I
ON
: Certainly, Socrates. That, too, I learned from Homer’s poetry.
S
OCRATES
: Then why in heaven’s name, Ion, when you’re both the best general
and
the best rhapsode in Greece, do you go around the country giving rhapsodies but not commanding troops? Do you think Greece really [c] needs a rhapsode who is crowned with a golden crown? And does not need a general?
I
ON
: Socrates,
my
city is governed and commanded by you [by Athens]; we don’t need a general. Besides, neither your city nor Sparta would choose me for a general. You think you’re good enough for that yourselves.
S
OCRATES
: Ion, you’re superb. Don’t you know Apollodorus of Cyzicus?
I
ON
: What does
he
do?
S
OCRATES
: He’s a foreigner who has often been chosen by Athens to be [d] their general. And Phanosthenes of Andros and Heraclides of Clazomenae—they’re also foreigners; they’ve demonstrated that they are worth noticing, and Athens appoints them to be generals or other sorts of officials. And do you think that
this
city, that makes such appointments, would not select Ion of Ephesus and honor him, if they thought he was worth noticing? Why? Aren’t you people from Ephesus Athenians of long standing? And [e] isn’t Ephesus a city that is second to none?
But
you
, Ion, you’re doing me wrong, if what you say is true that what enables you to praise Homer is knowledge or mastery of a profession. You assured me that you knew many lovely things about Homer, you promised to give a demonstration; but you’re cheating me, you’re a long way from giving a demonstration. You aren’t even willing to tell me what it is that you’re so wonderfully clever
about
, though I’ve been begging you for ages. Really, you’re just like Proteus,
9
you twist up and down and take many different shapes, till finally you’ve escaped me altogether by turning yourself
[542]
into a general, so as to avoid proving how wonderfully wise you are about Homer.
If you’re really a master of your subject, and if, as I said earlier, you’re cheating me of the demonstration you promised about Homer, then you’re doing me wrong. But if you’re not a master of your subject, if you’re possessed by a divine gift from Homer, so that you make many lovely speeches about the poet without knowing anything—as
I
said about you—then you’re not doing me wrong. So choose, how do you want us to think of you—as a
man
who does wrong, or as someone
divine
?
I
ON
: There’s a great difference, Socrates. It’s much lovelier to be [b] thought divine.
S
OCRATES
: Then
that
is how we think of you, Ion, the lovelier way: it’s as someone divine, and not as master of a profession, that you are a singer of Homer’s praises.
1
. The sons of Homer were a guild of rhapsodes who originally claimed to be descendants of Homer.
2
. Natural magnets apparently came from Magnesia and Heraclea in Caria in Asia Minor, and were called after those places.
3
. Bacchus worshippers apparently danced themselves into a frenzy in which they found streams flowing with honey and milk (Euripides,
Bacchae
708–11).
4
.
Iliad
xxiii.335–40.
5
.
Iliad
xi.639–40 with 630.
6
.
Iliad
xxiv.80–82.
7
.
Odyssey
xx.351–57; line 354 is omitted by Plato.
8
.
Iliad
xii.200–207.
9
. Proteus was a servant of Posidon. He had the power to take whatever shape he wanted in order to avoid answering questions (
Odyssey
iv.385 ff.).
Translated by Paul Ryan.
Menexenus
was also known in antiquity as
Funeral Oration
; Aristotle cites it once in his
Rhetoric
under that title. Here Socrates recites to Menexenus an oration for the annual ceremony when Athens praised itself and its citizens fallen in battle for the city. Several such speeches survive, including the celebrated oration of Pericles in Thucydides, Book II. Socrates himself alludes to this famous speech, claiming that its true author was none other than Aspasia, Pericles’ intellectually accomplished mistress. He also claims her as his own rhetoric teacher—not that rhetoric ever was her profession!—and in fact as the author of the speech he is about to recite. Knowing that the time was at hand for the selection of this year’s speaker, Aspasia, in the usual manner of rhetoric teachers in ancient Greece, had her pupil commit to memory her own composition, as a model of what a funeral orator ought to say. The rest of the dialogue is then occupied with Socrates’ recitation.
It is usual in Plato for Socrates to disclaim personal responsibility, as here with Aspasia, for his excursions outside philosophy. One could compare especially
Cratylus,
where he playfully attributes his brilliant etymologizing to instruction and inspiration from Euthyphro (whose expert knowledge about the gods reported in
Euthyphro
thus included expert knowledge of the meanings of their names), and
Phaedrus,
with its appeal to the magical effects of the locale and to Socrates’ retentive recall of others’ speeches to explain his unaccustomed oratorical prowess. The reader is plainly to understand that this is being represented as Socrates’ own speech.
Is Plato the dialogue’s author? Aristotle, who cites it twice—not indeed naming Plato as author, but in the same way that he often cites Plato’s works, as well known to the reader—gives powerful testimony that he is. Modern scholars’ doubts have rested in large part on their inability to conceive what purpose Plato could have had in writing it. One purpose could be satirical, to show by exaggeration how trivial an accomplishment these rhetorical tours-de-force were; better, since Socrates’ speech is in fact a highly skilled oration of the genre intended (with all the overblown praise of Athens and the selective attention to history that that entails), is to think it may show (as indeed the
Phaedrus
claims) how very much better a skilled philosopher is at the composition of speeches than the usual rhetorical ‘expert’. Another ground for doubt has been found in the fact that Socrates carries his story of the Athenians’ prowess down to the so-called Corinthian war of 395–387, whose dead he is officially memorializing—long after Socrates’ death in 399. But that may only remind us that Plato’s, and the ancients’, literary conventions are not our own.
Menexenus was a prominent member of the Socratic circle: he is reported as present for the conversation on Socrates’ last day (
Phaedo
), and he is one of the two young men Socrates questions about friendship in
Lysis
.
J.M.C.
S
OCRATES
: Where is Menexenus coming from? The market place?
[234]
M
ENEXENUS
: Yes, Socrates—the Council Chamber, to be exact.
S
OCRATES
: You at the Council Chamber? Why? I know—you fancy that you’re finished with your schooling and with philosophy, and intend to turn to higher pursuits. You think you’re ready for them now. At your age, my prodigy, you’re undertaking to govern us older men, so that your [b] family may carry on with its tradition of providing someone to look after us.
M
ENEXENUS
: Socrates, with your permission and approval I’ll gladly hold public office; otherwise I won’t. Today, however, I went to the Chamber because I heard that the Council was going to select someone to speak over our war-dead. They are about to see to the public funeral, you know.
S
OCRATES
: Certainly I do. Whom did they choose?
M
ENEXENUS
: Nobody. They put if off until tomorrow. But I think Archinus or Dion will be chosen.
S
OCRATES
: Indeed, dying in war looks like a splendid fate in many ways, Menexenus. Even if he dies a pauper, a man gets a really magnificent [c] funeral, and even if he was of little account, he gets a eulogy too from the lips of experts, who speak not extempore but in speeches worked up long beforehand. They do their praising so splendidly that they cast a spell over our souls, attributing to each individual man, with the most varied and beautiful verbal embellishments, both praise he merits and praise he
[235]
does not, extolling the city in every way, and praising the war-dead, all our ancestors before us, and us ourselves, the living. The result is, Menexenus, that I am put into an exalted frame of mind when I am praised by them. Each time, as I listen and fall under their spell, I become a different [b] man—I’m convinced that I have become taller and nobler and better looking all of a sudden. It often happens, too, that all of a sudden I inspire greater awe in the friends from other cities who tag along and listen with me every year. For they are affected in their view of me and the rest of the city just as I am: won over by the speaker, they think the city more wonderful than they thought it before. And this high-and-mighty feeling remains with me more than three days. The speaker’s words and the sound of his voice sink into my ears with so much resonance that it is only with [c] difficulty that on the third or fourth day I recover myself and realize where I am. Until then I could imagine that I dwell in the Islands of the Blessed. That’s how clever our orators are.
M
ENEXENUS
: You’re forever making fun of the orators, Socrates. This time, though, I don’t think that the one who’s chosen is going to have an easy time of it; the selection is being made at the last minute, so perhaps the speaker will be forced practically to make his speech up as he goes.
[d] S
OCRATES
: Nonsense, my good man. Every one of those fellows has speeches ready-made, and, besides, even making up this kind of speech as you go isn’t hard. Now if he were obliged to speak well of the Athenians among the Peloponnesians or the Peloponnesians among the Athenians, only a good orator could be persuasive and do himself credit; but when you’re performing before the very people you’re praising, being thought to speak well is no great feat.
M
ENEXENUS
: You think not, Socrates?
S
OCRATES
: No, by Zeus, it isn’t.
[e] M
ENEXENUS
: Do you think that
you
could deliver the speech, if that were called for, and the Council were to choose you?
S
OCRATES
: In fact, Menexenus, there would be nothing surprising in my being able to deliver it. I happen to have no mean teacher of oratory. She is the very woman who has produced—along with a multitude of other good ones—the one outstanding orator among the Greeks, Pericles, son of Xanthippus.