Dialogue

 1 Menex|      Aristotelian authority is a good deal impaired by the uncertainty
 2 Menex|      Socrates, that he must be a good orator because he had learnt
 3 Menex|        praised may not have been good for much. The speakers praise
 4 Menex|          Athenians, he must be a good rhetorician who could succeed
 5 Menex|         she who has made so many good speakers, and one who was
 6 Menex|        in which nature made them good, for they were good because
 7 Menex|         them good, for they were good because they were sprung
 8 Menex|    because they were sprung from good fathers. Wherefore let us
 9 Menex|       man, and the government of good men is good, and of bad
10 Menex|        government of good men is good, and of bad men bad. And
11 Menex|   ancestors were trained under a good government, and for this
12 Menex|        for this reason they were good, and our contemporaries
13 Menex|          contemporaries are also good, among whom our departed
14 Menex|       who appears to be wise and good is a governor and ruler.
15 Menex| remembered how they had received good from her and returned evil,
16 Menex|      this, which is the greatest good, they have attained. A mortal
17 Menex|       and you, parents, to be of good cheer about yourselves;
18 Menex|          told me.~SOCRATES: Very good. But you must take care