en in your friend if you imagine that he
is frightened at a little noise; and, possibly, you think that his
assailant was in earnest?

PHAEDRUS: I thought, Socrates, that he was. And you are aware that the
greatest and most influential statesmen are ashamed of writing speeches
and leaving them in a written form, lest they should be called Sophists
by posterity.

SOCRATES: You seem to be unconscious, Phaedrus, that the 'sweet elbow'
(A proverb, like 'the grapes are sour,' applied to pleasures which
cannot be had, meaning sweet things which, like the elbow, are out of
the reach of the mouth. The promised pleasure turns out to be a long and
tedious affair.) of the proverb is really the long arm of the Nile. And
you appear to be equally unaware of the fact that this sweet elbow
of theirs is also a long arm. For there is nothing of which our great
politicians are so fond as of writing speeches and bequeathing them to
posterity. And they add their admirers' names at the top of the writing,
out of gratitude to them.

PHAEDRUS: What do you mean? I do not understand.

SOCRATES: Why, do you not 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 senate,
the people, or both, on the motion of a certain person,' who is our
author; and so putting on a serious face, he proceeds to display his own
wisdom to his admirers in what is often a long and tedious composition.
Now what is that sort of thing but a regular piece of authorship?

PHAEDRUS: True.

SOCRATES: And if the law is finally approved, then the author leaves the
theatre in high delight; but if the law is rejected and he is done out
of his speech-making, and not thought good enough 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 the king or orator has the power, as Lycurgus or
Solon or Darius had, of attaining an immortality or authorship in a
state, is he not thought by posterity, when they see his compositions,
and does he not think himself, while he is yet alive, to be a god?

PHAEDRUS: Very true.

SOCRATES: Then do you think that any one of this class, however
ill-disposed, would reproach Lysias with being an author?

PHAEDRUS: Not upon your view; for according to you he would be ca