Abstract
K R. POPPER 1 has recently brought the Menexenus into prominence by seeing in it an important clue to Plato's political philosophy. He agrees with most modern writers who accept it as genuine in regarding it as satirical throughout 2, and ignores the evidence of ancient authors who without exception took the speech at least perfectly seriously. This unanimity on the part of the ancients has been a considerable stumbling-block to those moderns who have taken notice of it. We are invited to regard Dionysius of Halicarnassus and Hermogenes as fools 3, to take the heroic course of rejecting a perfectly good sentence of Cicero as an idiotic interpolation 4, and, finally, to admit that Plato's satire was so subtle that it was interwoven with many passages that are not satirical at all.5 This is quite a lot to ask, and I therefore wish to develop a view which avoids these difficulties 6 and can be supported by some evidence, though not so much as I would wish. This paper may be divided into two parts: in the first I discuss the authenticity of the work and the views about it
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