I observed you while reading to be in an
ecstasy, and thinking that you are more experienced in these matters
than I am, I followed your example, and, like you, my divine darling, I
became inspired with a phrenzy.

PHAEDRUS: Indeed, you are pleased to be merry.

SOCRATES: Do you mean that I am not in earnest?

PHAEDRUS: Now don't talk in that way, Socrates, but let me have your
real opinion; I adjure you, by Zeus, the god of friendship, to tell me
whether you think that any Hellene could have said more or spoken better
on the same subject.

SOCRATES: Well, but are you and I expected to praise the sentiments
of the author, or only the clearness, and roundness, and finish, and
tournure of the language? As to the first I willingly submit to your
better judgment, for I am not worthy to form an opinion, having only
attended to the rhetorical manner; and I was doubting whether this could
have been defended even by Lysias himself; I thought, though I speak
under correction, that he repeated himself two or three times, either
from want of words or from want of pains; and also, he appeared to me
ostentatiously to exult in showing how well he could say the same thing
in two or three ways.

PHAEDRUS: Nonsense, Socrates; what you call repetition was the especial
merit of the speech; for he omitted no topic of which the subject
rightly allowed, and I do not think that any one could have spoken
better or more exhaustively.

SOCRATES: There I cannot go along with you. Ancient sages, men and
women, who have spoken and written of these things, would rise up in
judgment against me, if out of complaisance I assented to you.

PHAEDRUS: Who are they, and where did you hear anything better than
this?

SOCRATES: I am sure that I must have heard; but at this moment I do not
remember from whom; perhaps from Sappho the fair, or Anacreon the wise;
or, possibly, from a prose writer. Why do I say so? Why, because I
perceive that my bosom is full, and that I could make another speech as
good as that of Lysias, and different. Now I am certain that this is
not an invention of my own, who am well aware that I know nothing, and
therefore I can only infer that I have been filled through the ears,
like a pitcher, from the waters of another, though I have actually
forgotten in my stupidity who was my informant.

PHAEDRUS: That is grand:--but never mind where you heard the discourse
or from whom; let that be a mystery not to be divulged even at