R. Austin Kippes

In order to fully understand Plato's "Menexenus" one must contend with Socrates' attribution of the funeral oration he recites to Aspasia (236b). One possibility is the reductionist approach, which asserts that Socrates just is the internal author. A second possibility is that internal responsibility for the speech should be directly assigned to Aspasia. In this case, Aspasia would be imagining a possible world—one completely different from the actual world—where she could speak at a funeral oration as the official speaker. One last possibility is that Aspasia was speaking in the voice of an imagined, indefinite, Athenian orator. I call this position, "An Athenian Orator". However, if Aspasia is donning the disguise of this character, then we can ask: what kind of mask is it? Is Aspasia's disguise like the ones found in Old Greek comedy? Or is her disguise like the serious metamorphoses of the Olympian gods in tragedy and epic? Perhaps, there could even be a mixture of the two, the tragicomic. Looking into when the dramatic action of the "Menexenus" takes place can also help us with these questions. For Plato, 'Aspasia' in the "Menexenus" is meant to refer not only to the historical personage of Aspasia the woman who was the wife and confidant of Pericles and mother to his child, but to a whole nexus of associations that Aspasia represents. Lastly, Plato criticizes what I called "the Cloak of Patriotism". This is the idea that death in battle can somehow cover up an individual's personal ethical wrongdoings.