Aspasia « maestro di retorica »

In the Menexenus, Aspasia appears as « master of rhetoric » of both Socrates and Pericles in the context of a parody of the funeral eulogy. In this article, we try to demonstrate that, in the Platonic dialogue, Aspasia represents the « likely » figure of a word, whose authority is based on its power of emprise : the “seductive” word of the hetaira. The Platonic parody in not against this kind of speech, but against the rhetoricians, such as Pericles, who use the Aspasia’s word to enchant listeners with empty and magniloquent words.