Selected Dialogues of Plato by Plato

Author:Plato [Pelliccia, Hayden]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 978-0-307-42361-0
Publisher: Random House Publishing Group
Published: 2012-05-01T00:00:00+00:00

PHAEDRUS: I join you in your prayer, Socrates, that these things, if they should be for our good, come to pass. But I have long been amazed at how much more beautiful you have made this second oration than the first. (c) And I begin to fear that Lysias will appear worthless in my eyes, if in the event he consents to field another speech against yours. For quite recently one of the politicians was abusing him on this very account—calling him a “speechwriter” again and again. So that a concern for his position may make him give up writing and leave us bereft.

SOCRATES: What an absurd idea, my boy. You are much mistaken in your friend if you imagine that he jumps at shadows so. (d) But perhaps you think also that his assailant meant his remark as a reproach?

PHAEDRUS: I thought, Socrates, that he did. And you are undoubtedly aware that the greatest and most influential statesmen disdain to write speeches and leave behind other written compositions of their own, fearing lest they should be called sophists by posterity.

SOCRATES: You seem to be unaware, Phaedrus, that the “pleasant bend” of the proverb is really the long bend of the Nile. (e)33 And you appear to be equally unaware that the most ambitious of our great politicians love nothing more than writing speeches and bequeathing books to posterity: whenever they write something, so much love do they feel for those who praise it that they write in the names of their local admirers at the very beginning.

PHAEDRUS: What do you mean? I don’t understand.

SOCRATES: (258) Why, don’t you know that when a politician writes, he begins with the names of his approvers?

PHAEDRUS: How so?

SOCRATES: Why, he begins in this manner: “Be it enacted by the Council, the people, or both, on the motion of a certain person,” which is our author’s solemn and laudatory way of describing himself.34 Only after this preamble does he proceed, displaying his own wisdom to his approvers in what is often a long and tedious composition. Now what is that sort of thing but a speech written out?

PHAEDRUS: No, you’re right. (b)

SOCRATES: And if the piece is finally approved, then the author leaves the theater in great delight; but if it is rejected and he is done out of his speechwriting, and declared unworthy to write, then he and his party are in mourning.

PHAEDRUS: Very true.

SOCRATES: So far are they from despising, or rather so highly do they value, the practice of writing.

PHAEDRUS: No doubt.

SOCRATES: And when a king or orator has the capacity to assume the power of Lycurgus or Solon or Darius35 and become an immortal speechwriter in his state, (c) isn’t he thought by posterity when they see his compositions, and doesn’t he think himself while he is still alive, to be the equal of the gods?

PHAEDRUS: Definitely.

SOCRATES: Then do you think that anyone of this class, whoever he is and however ill disposed, would reproach Lysias simply with being a

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