Menas

“ Thus their tombs are still built in the form of houses, and each family continues to assemble once a year in the mausoleum for a funeral banquet. One of the names frequently given at baptism is Menas, which recalls that of Mena or Menes, true or pretended founder of the first Eg}*ptian dynasty. Those of the Copts who have received some education usually display a remark- able talent for keeping accounts and managing money matters. ”

“ But Oviedo, who seems to have had an ambition to be the proto-martyr, refused absolutely to obey these commands. He declared that the orders of God were those he obeyed, not the sinful ordinances of man; and, letting slip his cloak from his shoulders, he offered his bare neck to the king to strike. This answer and gesture so incensed Menas, that, drawing his sword, he would have very soon put the patriarch in possession of the martyrdom he coveted, had it not been for the interposition of the queen and officers that stood round him. ”

“ I rule as vicar of the Lord of the Gods, but—I myself am no God, though they attribute to me the honors of a divinity; and in all humility of heart I willingly leave it to them to be the mediators between the Immortals and me or my people. Human affairs certainly I choose to manage in my own way. And now no more of them. I cannot bear to doubt my friends, and trustfulness is so dear, so essential to me, that I must indulge in it even if my confidence results in my being deceived.”
The king glanced at Mena, who handed him a golden cup—which he emptied. ”

“ But first our thanks to the gods.”
A slave had poured a little wine into a flat cup and stood now offering it to his master. Menon took it and held it high, looking up into the blue heavens.
“O gracious Hermes!” he cried aloud, “fulfill thy omen! And to Zeus, the father, and to all the immortals be thanks.”
As he prayed he turned the cup and spilled the wine upon the ground. That was the god’s portion. A slave spread down a rug for his master to lie upon and put cushions under his elbow. Glaucon did the same for Charmides, and the meal began. ”

“ Now that Meno has been made to understand the nature of a general definition, he answers in the spirit of a Greek gentleman, and in the words of a poet, 'that virtue is to delight in things honourable, and to have the power of getting them.' This is a nearer approximation than he has yet made to a complete definition, and, regarded as a piece of proverbial or popular morality, is not far from the truth. ”

“ I believe you are jealous of the broad-shouldered ruffian that some spiteful Wight laid in the nest of the noble Mohar, his father.”
“No, that I am not,” replied Mena, “nor does any doubt of Nefert disturb my soul; but it torments me, it nettles me, it disgusts me, that Paaker of all men, whom I loathe as a venomous spider, should look at her and make her presents under my very roof.”
“He who looks for faith must give faith,” said the king. “And must not I myself submit to accept songs of praise from the most contemptible wretches? ”

“ Socrates: You want to be a free man, then, and a citizen.
Boy: (looking down) Yes.
Socrates: Don't look down, then, for that is an admirable desire for one to have, and speaks highly of him who has it. I will speak to Meno, while you hold your tongue.
Boy: Yes, Socrates. (bows to kiss his hand, Socrates turns)
Socrates: Friend Meno, how hard do you think it will be for this boy to prove the irrationality of the square root of two?
Meno: You know that I think it is impossible, Socrates.
Socrates: Well, how long did it take the Pythagoreans? ”

“ Meno, carefully on his guard, is to watch whether the boy is taught by Socrates in any of his answers; whether he answers anything at any point otherwise than by way of reminiscence and really out of his own mind, as the reasonable questions of Socrates fall like water on the seed-ground, or like sunlight on the photographer's negative. ”

“ Phradates remained silent and thoughtful.
"It is not for me, a slave, to tell thee what thou shouldst do," Mena went on, "but it has seemed to me that there has lately been a spell upon thy mind. Thou art not now what thou wast a month ago. What the cause is and what must be the cure, thou knowest; but thou art bound by thy oath."
Again he paused, but as Phradates showed no sign of resentment, he continued.
"Master, thou canst not win thy wager," he said. "Tyre is lost. It may be next week, and it may not be until next year; but the Macedonian is too deeply engaged here to withdraw. ”

“ Will Meno tell him his own notion, which is probably not very different from that of Gorgias? 72 'O yes—nothing easier: there is the virtue of a man, a woman, of an old man, and of a child; there is a virtue of every age and state of life, all of which may be easily described.'
73 Socrates reminds Meno that this is only an enumeration of the virtues and not a definition of the notion which is common to them all. In a second attempt Meno defines virtue to be 'the power of command.' But to this, again, exceptions are taken. ”

“ Socrates: I can ask more of no man, Meno, and I am certain that you will do well, and I hope I will give you no call to halt me in my saying if I should say too much, in which you would feel I was actually teaching the boy the answer to this riddle.
Meno: No, Socrates, I don't think I will have to call you on anything you might say today, for the most wondrously learned men of the group of Pythagoras have spent many hours, weeks, and even months and years toiling in their manner to arrive at the mystic solutions to the puzzles formed by the simple squares with which we worked the other day. ”

“ I was given as a plaything to the young Mena, and he harnessed me to his little chariot, and dressed me out with ribbons and feathers, and flogged me when I did not go fast enough. How the girl—for whom I would have given my life—the porter's daughter, laughed when I, dressed up in motley, hopped panting in front of the chariot and the young lord's whip whistled in my ears wringing the sweat from my brow, and the blood from my broken heart. Then Mena's father died, the boy, went to school, and I waited on the wife of his steward, whom Katuti banished to Hermonthis. ”

“ De Menou, by turns a nobleman and a sans-culotte, a Christian and a Mussulman, is wicked and profligate, not from the impulse of the moment or of any sudden gust of passion, but coldly and deliberately. ”

“ He looks at the brightness of the sun, and the manifold forms of the creation around him, but the beams of the day-star blind its eyes, and the new forms, which he has sought to guess at in his mind, and which throng round him in their rude reality, shock him and pain him. To-day, for the first time, she had asked herself wherefore her mother, and not she herself, was called upon to control the house of which she nevertheless was called the mistress, and the answer had rung in her ears: "Because Mena thinks you incapable of thought and action." ”

“ Well, the easiest thing which comes to mind is to wager all those dinners you won from me the other day.
Socrates: Very well, so be it.
Meno: Now Socrates, since you are my friend, I must give you this friendly warning: you know that the Pythagoreans jealously guard their secrets with secret meetings, protected by secret handshakes, secret signs, passwords, and all that, do you not?
Socrates: I have heard as much, friend Meno.
Meno: Then be sure that they will seek revenge upon you for demystifying the ideas and concepts which they worked so long and hard and secretly to create and protect ”

“ He placed his arm in fatherly caress on Menon's shoulder, and spoke once more:
"My warriors have called their chief a god." He paused to smile behind his beard, and for an instant sat in reverie. "Now godhood hath its virtues so long as it leadeth unto victory and beds of ease; yet this have I learned, and to my woe, that a pot of boiling grease poured down from a city's wall will scald a god as it scaldeth a naked slave. Defeat is mortal; gods bring victory alone, and my faithful followers begin to mutter among themselves." ”

“ So she went on more sympathetically:
“You boasted in joke that people are good to you, and it is true; you win hearts by your mere being—by only being what you are. And Mena too loved you tenderly; but ‘absence,’ says the proverb, ‘is the one real enemy,’ and Mena—”
“What has Mena done?” Once more Nefert interrupted her mother, and her nostrils quivered.
“Mena,” said Katuti, decidedly, “has violated the truth and esteem which he owes you—he has trodden them under foot, and—”
“Mena?” exclaimed the young wife with flashing eyes; she flung the cat on the floor, and sprang from her couch. ”

“ I wish I could start a sturdy sect like old Menno Simonis did. They should dress as these have done, and be as stubborn and rigid in their discipline. They should farm as these have done, but on reaching the point where the Mennonite buys the automobile, that money and energy should go into the making of cross-roads palaces for the people, golden as the harvest field, and disciplined well-parked villages, good as a psalm, and cities fair as a Mennonite lady in her prayer-covering, delicate and noble as Athens the unforgotten, the divine. ”

“ Meno complains that the conversation of Socrates has the effect of a torpedo's shock upon him. When he talks with other persons he has plenty to say about virtue; in the presence of Socrates, his thoughts desert him. Socrates replies that he is only the cause of perplexity in others, because he is himself perplexed. He proposes to continue the enquiry. But how, asks Meno, can he enquire either into what he knows or into what he does not know? This is a sophistical puzzle, which, as Socrates remarks, saves a great deal of trouble to him who accepts it. ”

“ I am persuaded that, in holding this language, the Abbé de la Mennais was sincere. When an exclusive idea or passion sways a man's mind, nothing is more unknown to him than his own future conduct; he knows even less what he will do than what he is doing. The Abbé de la Mennais no more suspected in 1831 what he would say and what he would do a few years later, than the most violent leaders of the French Revolution suspected in 1789 what they would be and what they would do in 1793. ”

“ The father of Menenius, too, stood beside him, and marked the reviving glow in his son's cheek with joy, although there was a deep and thoughtful shadow on his brow, which brightened into something of triumph and of hope, as his eye ran over the bold and swelling muscles of his frame, and thought that but a few days more would restore that frame to all its pristine vigour. The triumph and the hope were those of a true son of ancient Greece, for they were kindled and inspired by the proud thought that the energetic strength of mind and body which were no longer united in himself ”

“ Then Mena married Nefert, and, with her, his mother-in-law, Katuti, came into the house. She took me from the steward, I became indispensable to her; she treats me like a man, she values my intelligence and listens to my advice,—therefore I will make her great, and with her, and through her, I will wax mighty. If Ani mounts the throne, we wilt guide him—you, and I, and she! Rameses must fall, and with him Mena, the boy who degraded my body and poisoned my soul! ”

“ The god sacred to the Nile was called Hāpi. The name is the same as that of the bull Apis, the worship of which was 230 attributed to Mena. [64] Certainly Mena, Mini, or Menes, as he is variously called, was fully justified in founding the cult of the river-god, for he first among men appears to have had just ideas of irrigation, and I have heard the distinguished officers who have lately been responsible for the irrigation system of to-day speaking with admiration of the ideas and works of Mena. Whether the Tigris had a Mena in an equally early time is a point on which history is silent ”

“ To the warriors in Menon's charge, their chieftain had passed from boyhood to sterner age, for his laugh no more resounded through the camp as in days of old, and a frown of gloom sat always upon his brow. Where the followers of Ninus feasted by night and day, laying great rolls of fat upon their bones, Menon's men were held to the toil of war, to the practice of arms and a temperate use of wine and food, till slender and gaunt they grew, yet clear of sight and as hard as the rocky roads up which they climbed. ”

“ MENELAUS
'Tis my will, and his will who rules the host.
TEUCER
Let us know then what pretext you allege.
MENELAUS
We hoped that we had brought this man from home
To be a friend and champion for the Greeks:
But a worse than Phrygian foe on trial we found him.
Devising death for the whole host, by night
He sallied forth against us, armed for slaughter.
And had not some god baffled this exploit,
Ours would have been the lot which now is his:
While we lay slain by a most shameful doom,
He would have still been living. But his outrage,
Foiled by a god, has fallen on sheep and herds. ”

“ Trezza and Aci Castello put together are not to be compared to what they’ve seen. I’ve seen the world too, and how people in those parts don’t sit still salting anchovies, but go round amusing themselves all day long, and the women, with silk dresses and more rings and necklaces than the Madonna of Ognino, go about the streets vying with each other for the love of the handsome sailors.”
“The worst of all things,” said Mena, “is to leave one’s own home, where even the stones are one’s friends, and when one’s heart must break to leave them behind one on the road. ”