Note 37 — Chapter XXXIII · MENEXENUS.

Groen van Prinsterer (Prosopographia Platonica, p. 211 seq.) adverts to the carelessness of Plato about exact chronology.

Most of the Platonic critics recognise the Menexenus as a genuine Platonic dialogue. Ast, however, includes it among the numerous dialogues which he disallows as spurious; and Suckow, Steinhart, and Ueberweg, are also inclined to disallow it. See Ueberweg, Die Aechtheit der Platonischen Schriften, pp. 143-148. These critics make light of the allusion of Aristotle in the Rhetoric — Σωκράτης ἐν τῷ Ἐπιταφίῳ — which appears to me, I confess, of more weight than all the grounds of suspicion adduced by them to prove the dialogue spurious. The presumption in favour of the catalogue of Thrasyllus counts with them, here as elsewhere, for nothing.