257
Socrates. You seem to be unacquainted with the sweet elbow,This is a proverbial expression, similar in meaning to our sour grapes. The explanation given in the Mss., that the sweet elbow gets its name from the long bend, or elbow, in the Nile may be an addition by some commentator; at any rate, it hardly fits our passage. Phaedrus, and besides the elbow, you seem not to know that the proudest of the statesmen are most fond of writing and of leaving writings behind them, since they care so much for praise that when they write a speech they add at the beginning the names of those who praise them in each instance.
257
Phaedrus. What do you mean? I don’t understand.
258
Socrates. You don’t understand that the name of the approver is written first in the writings of statesmen.
258
Phaedrus. How so?
258
Socrates. The writer says, It was voted by the senate (or the people, or both), and so-and-so moved, mentioning his own name with great dignity and praise, then after that he goes on, displaying his own wisdom to his approvers, and sometimes making a very long document. Does it seem to you that a thing of that sort is anything else than a written speech?
258
Phaedrus. No, certainly not.
258
Socrates. Then if this speech is approved, the writer leaves the theater in great delight; but if it is not recorded and he is not granted the privilege of speech-writing and is not considered worthy to be an author, he is grieved, and his friends with him.
258
Phaedrus. Decidedly.
258
Socrates. Evidently not because they despise the profession, but because they admire it.
258
Phaedrus. To be sure.
258
Socrates. Well then, when an orator or a king is able to rival the greatness of Lycurgus or Solon or Darius and attain immortality as a writer in the state, does he not while living think himself equal to the gods, and has not posterity the same opinion of him, when they see his writings?
258
Phaedrus. Very true.
