Erósz városa. Két temetési beszéd az athéni demokráciáról
The City of Eros. Two Funeral Speeches on Athenian Democracy

Summary/Abstract: Through the comparative study of the Periclean Funeral Oration and the Menexenus of Plato our study tries to evidenciate a metaphorical shift thus far overlooked by various reconstructions of ancient Athens’ democratic ideology. In its first part it explores the possible background and implications of a rhetorical device applied by Pericles that presents the citizen as lover of the polis. In the second it focuses on those specific stylistic and contentual changes of the polemical Platonic text, which differentiate it from its model. The result of this confrontation, i. e. the substitution of the erotic theoretical model for democratic relations with the patterns of family ties could serve as a starting-point for the interpretation of Plato’s critique of democracy.

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