to speak at a
moment's notice, and he will be compelled almost to improvise.

SOCRATES: But why, my friend, should he not have plenty to say? Every
rhetorician has speeches ready made; nor is there any difficulty in
improvising that sort of stuff. Had the orator to praise Athenians among
Peloponnesians, or Peloponnesians among Athenians, he must be a
good rhetorician who could succeed and gain credit. But there is no
difficulty in a man's winning applause when he is contending for fame
among the persons whom he is praising.

MENEXENUS: Do you think not, Socrates?

SOCRATES: Certainly 'not.'

MENEXENUS: Do you think that you could speak yourself if there should be
a necessity, and if the Council were to choose you?

SOCRATES: That I should be able to speak is no great wonder,
Menexenus, considering that I have an excellent mistress in the art of
rhetoric,--she who has made so many good speakers, and one who was the
best among all the Hellenes--Pericles, the son of Xanthippus.

MENEXENUS: And who is she? I suppose that you mean Aspasia.

SOCRATES: Yes, I do; and besides her I had Connus, the son of Metrobius,
as a master, and he was my master in music, as she was in rhetoric.
No wonder that a man who has received such an education should be a
finished speaker; even the pupil of very inferior masters, say, for
example, one who had learned music of Lamprus, and rhetoric of Antiphon
the Rhamnusian, might make a figure if he were to praise the Athenians
among the Athenians.

MENEXENUS: And what would you be able to say if you had to speak?

SOCRATES: Of my own wit, most likely nothing; but yesterday I heard
Aspasia composing a funeral oration about these very dead. For she had
been told, as you were saying, that the Athenians were going to choose
a speaker, and she repeated to me the sort of speech which he should
deliver, partly improvising and partly from previous thought, putting
together fragments of the funeral oration which Pericles spoke, but
which, as I believe, she composed.

MENEXENUS: And can you remember what Aspasia said?

SOCRATES: I ought to be able, for she taught me, and she was ready to
strike me because I was always forgetting.

MENEXENUS: Then why will you not rehearse what she said?

SOCRATES: Because I am afraid that my mistress may be angry with me if I
publish her speech.

MENEXENUS: Nay, Socrates, let us have the speech, whether Aspasia's or
any one else's, no matter. I hope that you