218 Book Reviews

Nickolas Pappas and Mark Zelcer Politics and Philosophy in ’s : Education and , Myth and History (London; New York: Routledge, 2015), vii + 236 pp. $140.00. ISBN 9781844658206 (hbk).

What might philosophy say at the burial of citizens who died in war? No sooner is this timely question raised that we must acknowledge that it is far from obvious what the would say. Civic are moments in political life where the philosopher is confronted by contingency, by a blow to the body politic of which she is part, where she must either speak or keep silent. The confrontation is the subject of Pappas and Zelcer’s book, Politics and Philosophy in Plato’s ‘Menexenus’. The couplings in its subtitle reveal the main ingredients of philosophic speech: Education and Rhetoric, Myth and History. The Menexenus, the authors write, ‘show[s] philosophy bringing a pedagogical impulse to rhetoric that the Republic says philosophical rulers would bring to all aspects of governing a city’ (p. 99). Plato acknowledges the ‘magic of rhetoric’ (p. 136), and the relationship between philosophy and rhetoric is analogous to the relationship between philosophy and politics: in both cases philosophy is the superior partner and the driving force. For Plato, Pappas and Zelcer conclude, the dead are to be ‘buried in philosophy’ (p. 220). Since one cannot assume a ready familiarity with the Menexenus, here is a brief summary. Plato raises from the dead to converse with the young Menexenus, as the city is poised to commemorate those who died in ’ defeat at the end of the Corinthian War in 386 BC. Menexenus goads Socrates into giving a funeral speech (epitaphios logos), and the latter divulges that the speech was Aspasia’s patching together of the leftovers of the oration she had written for to deliver. The speech is an account of Athenian history, from the birth of the city to the present moment, crowned with a prosopopoeia of the dead. The concludes with Socrates’ promise to Menexenus to confide in secret more of Aspasia’s political speeches.1 Readers who want to learn about the literary and cultural context of the dialogue will find the four chapters in Part I, ‘The Menexenus, its persons, its problems’, to be most useful as a reference guide. The discussion in chapter 2 on the persons and dates of the dialogue, touching upon Connus, , Lamprus, Archinus, and Dion (pp. 37-42) improves upon Debra Nails’ guide.2

1 Here and elsewhere I borrow from my unpublished doctoral dissertation, Politeiai and Reputation in Plato’s Thought (Columbia University, 2015), pp. 148-83. 2 D. Nails, The People of Plato: A Prosopography of Plato and Other Socratics (Indianapolis/ Cambridge: Hackett, 2002).

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Despite what Pappas and Zelcer aver in the conclusion, to wit, that it is irre- solvable whether the Menexenus is a parody (p. 215), the authors do devote a good deal of time to debunk reading the dialogue as a parody. What Pappas and Zelcer say about this issue is persuasive. They marshal both ancient (p. 7) and Renaissance (pp. 86-87) testimony, and appeal to the modern read- er’s inclination to identify with Socrates: when readers of the dialogue say they see ‘mockery. . . they are sounding like the brash and cocky interlocutor rather than resembling the philosopher’ (p. 43). In response to Nicole Loraux’s read- ing of the dialogue, Pappas and Zelcer make the commonsensical point that critique is not equivalent to parody (p. 73).3 The authors could have added to their argument had they relaxed their view – which they share with Loraux – that ‘Plato is notorious today for his opposition to democracy’ (p. 49). While they discuss the work by Salkever and Monoson on the Menexenus, Pappas and Zelcer could have done more to engage with what such scholars see as the democratic possibilities in Plato.4 The authors are also successful in casting doubt on the unreflective treatment of Aspasia as a courtesan in the second- ary literature (pp. 31-37, esp. pp. 34-36). The authors’ rehabilitation of Aspasia warranted a revisiting of the question ‘what does her presence in the dialogue do for Plato?’ In this sense, the historical links between Socrates and Aspasia – principally that her son, Pericles the Younger, was among those generals who were tried en masse for leaving the dead behind after the battle of Arginusae despite Socrates’ protestations that such a procedure was unconstitutional (pp. 33, 191) – are only the starting point for further exploration. While the Plato-Socrates-Aspasia triangle is fecund, the authors appear to be more interested in Socrates. Aspasia is a subordinate to Socrates, as the expression ‘Socrates (or Aspasia)’ suggests (p. 216). Implicit in their treat- ment of Socrates is that he is very much the philosopher (p. 45) and therefore what makes the funeral oration of the Menexenus philosophic is that ‘certain ideas in Pericles find themselves replaced by Socratic ideas’ (p. 215). Insofar as such a claim does away with the Plato-Socrates-Aspasia triangle, it makes the Menexenus a less strange dialogue than it actually is. Pappas and Zelcer do well to point out that Socrates claims intellectual authority in the Menexenus,

3 N. Loraux, The Invention of Athens: The Funeral Oration in the Classical City, trans. Alan Sheridan (New York: Zone Books, 2006). 4 S.G. Salkever, ‘Socrates’ Aspasian Oration: The Play of Philosophy and Politics in Plato’s Menexenus’, American Political Science Review, 87:1 (1993), pp. 133-43; S.S. Monoson, ‘Citizen as “Erastes”: Erotic Imagery and the Idea of Reciprocity in the Periclean Funeral Oration’, Political Theory, 22:2 (1994), pp. 253-76; and S.S. Monoson, ‘Remembering Pericles: The Political and Theoretical Import of Plato’s Menexenus, Political Theory, 26:4 (1998), pp. 489-513.

, The Journal for Political Thought 33 (2016) 173-242