Near the beginning of his commentary to Plato’s Parmenides, Proclus tries to account for the very purpose of the dialogue. He mentions that some consider it to be primarily an agonistic response to Zeno of Elea, and he notes the variety of ways in which Plato engages in such agonistic responses. Sometimes, Plato simply tries – so Proclus – to outdo his opponent, for instance in the way in which, in the Menexenus, he tries to write a funeral oration even better than that of Thucydides.