SOCRATES: Yes, I do; and besides her I had Connus, the son of Metrobius,
as a master, and he was my master in music, as she was in rhetoric. No
wonder that a man who has received such an education should be a finished
speaker; even the pupil of very inferior masters, say, for example, one who
had learned music of Lamprus, and rhetoric of Antiphon the Rhamnusian,
might make a figure if he were to praise the Athenians among the Athenians.

MENEXENUS: And what would you be able to say if you had to speak?

SOCRATES: Of my own wit, most likely nothing; but yesterday I heard
Aspasia composing a funeral oration about these very dead. For she had
been told, as you were saying, that the Athenians were going to choose a
speaker, and she repeated to me the sort of speech which he should deliver,
partly improvising and partly from previous thought, putting together
fragments of the funeral oration which Pericles spoke, but which, as I
believe, she composed.

MENEXENUS: And can you remember what Aspasia said?

SOCRATES: I ought to be able, for she taught me, and she was ready to
strike me because I was always forgetting.

MENEXENUS: Then why will you not rehearse what she said?

SOCRATES: Because I am afraid that my mistress may be angry with me if I
publish her speech.

MENEXENUS: Nay, Socrates, let us have the speech, whether Aspasia's or any
one else's, no matter. I hope that you will oblige me.