I'm writing a paper on Aspasia--ancient Greek woman rhetorician--and in Plato's Menexenus he attributes a funeral oration to her. I found references in a couple of places to Cicero saying that the funeral oration was read yearly by Athenians after the Menexenus' publication, but the citations of Cicero are sloppy and I can't track it down.
Can you help me find the place where Cicero talks about it? I've found a bunch of dead ends.
Possibly Cicero, Orator, XLIV [151] which includes
... at non Thucydides, ne ille quidem haud paulo maior scriptor Plato nec solum in eis sermonibus qui dialogoi dicuntur, ubi etiam de industria id faciendum fuit sed in populari oratione, qua mos est Athenis laudari in contione eos qui sint in proeliis interfecti; quae sic probata est, ut eam quotannis, ut scis, illo die recitari necesse sit. ...
and a translation by E Jones gives
But Thucydides was not so exact; nor was Plato, (though a much better writer)—not only in his Dialogues, in which it was necessary to maintain an easy negligence, to resemble the style of conversation, but in the famous Panegyric, in which (according to the custom of the Athenians) he celebrated the praises of those who fell in battle, and which was so greatly esteemed, that it is publicly repeated every year.
