# Menexenus — Dialogues character guide

> Menexenus in Dialogues by Plato.

**Role:** supporting

**Also known as:** the more talkative Menexenus, O Menexenus, Menexenus Truly, Socrates O Menexenus

**First appearance:** 0008-lysis

## Snapshot

A young Athenian friend of Socrates, eager and talkative, who becomes the pretext for a funeral oration that quietly mocks the genre it performs.

## Who they are

Menexenus is the kind of young man Socrates enjoys teasing: earnest, impressionable, and pleased to be included in serious conversation. When he asks Socrates to deliver a funeral speech, he gets more than he bargained for—a rhetoric-soaked oration that Socrates claims to have learned from Aspasia. He matters because his request lets Plato stage a dazzling parody of Athenian self-congratulation, and because his youth embodies the city's future, the very thing the speech claims to honor.

## In the story

### [Lysis](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/dialogues_se/chapters/lysis)

A friend of Lysis who participates in the dialogue.

### [Lysis](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/dialogues_se/chapters/lysis)

The more talkative of the two boys; actively responds to Socrates' questions.

### [Menexenus](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/dialogues_se/chapters/menexenus)

Socrates' interlocutor; he prompts Socrates to share Aspasia's funeral oration and expresses curiosity about the art of rhetoric.

### [Menexenus](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/dialogues_se/chapters/menexenus)

Returns from the Council, discusses the selection of a funeral speaker, and persuades Socrates to share Aspasia's oration.

## Links

- HTML: https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/dialogues_se/characters/menexenus
- Book: https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/dialogues_se
- All characters: https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/dialogues_se/characters