Ending his reading of Lysias’ discourse, Phaedrus asked Socrates: “What do you think about the speech? Apart from other things, isn’t its choice of words quite superior? Isn’t it spoken beautifully?” Socrates: “Heavenly, so that I was beside myself. And this happened to me because of you, Phaedrus, for you were beaming as you read. Because I thought you understood these things better than I, I followed you, and following you, I joined you in Bacchic revelry.”
Phaedrus: “Well, well; do you want to
be joking? But seriously, do you think that any Greek could say better and more
about the same matter?” Socrates: “I paid attention only to the rhetorical
aspect of it. And it seemed to me that he said the same thing again and again,
as if he didn’t have much to say about it, or because he didn’t care. And he
seemed to me to be showing off his ability to say the same things in different
ways, and each time to the best effect.”
Phaedrus: “Socrates, what you say is
nonsense. For the speech is the best. Lysias didn’t omit anything worth saying,
so that nobody can say anything else about the matter, which would be more
valuable.” Socrates: “I cannot agree with you. For if I did, to please you, wise
men and women would refute me, who spoke and wrote about it in the past.”
Phaedrus: “What men and women? Where
have you heard anything better?” Socrates: “I cannot tell you, but I must have
heard it from somebody, for my breast is full; I feel I can say other things, and
not worse, about this matter. I know that it cannot have come from myself, for
I know well my ignorance. And now, because of my ignorance, I can’t even say
from whom I have heard it.”
Phaedrus: “But this is excellent.
Socrates, do just what you say. Say more and better things about it than Lysias did.
In my turn, I promise to set up at Delphi a golden life-size statue, not only
of myself but of you also.”
PS
Phaedrus was a rich man at the time of
the dramatic setting of the Phaedrus. Only with this fact in mind the
reader can properly appreciate what Socrates does with Phaedrus in the course
of the dialogue. The dialogue ends with Socrates’ prayer to the local deities: “May
I count him rich who is wise; and as for gold, may I possess so much of it as
only a wise man might bare and carry with him.”
Phaedrus: “Make it a prayer for me
too, since friends have all things in common.”
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