TL;DRAbstract
Abstract This chapter shows that Plato's brilliant parody of a funeral speech, Menexenus wholly undercuts the Athenians' formulaic idealization of their glorious past and the rhetorical conventions they had invented in order to consolidate this ideological procedure. The Atlantis of the Timaeus and Critias is more than an allegorical polis cryptically ‘standing for’ Athenian expansionist naval power: it plays a more ironic role in Plato's use of the Persian Wars tradition; the Atlantis myth examines ‘what kind of victory Athens would have needed to win in order to deserve the encomium Menexenus denies it’. Crucially, the chapter offers a powerful corrective to the dominant traditions seen elsewhere in (primarily) Athenian sources that the Persian Wars were seen by all as a cause only for celebration.
Chat with Paper
AI Agents for this Paper
Abstract This chapter shows that Plato's brilliant parody of a funeral speech, Menexenus wholly undercuts the Athenians' formulaic idealization of their glorious past and the rhetorical conventions they had invented in order to consolidate this ideological procedure. The Atlantis of the Timaeus and Critias is more than an allegorical polis cryptically ‘standing for’ Athenian expansionist naval power: it plays a more ironic role in Plato's use of the Persian Wars tradition; the Atlantis myth examines ‘what kind of victory Athens would have needed to win in order to deserve the encomium Menexenus denies it’. Crucially, the chapter offers a powerful corrective to the dominant traditions seen elsewhere in (primarily) Athenian sources that the Persian Wars were seen by all as a cause only for celebration.
Keywords
Chat
Click to start Chat