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[257d]

Socrates
That is an absurd idea, young man, and you are greatly mistaken in your friend if you think he is so much afraid of noise. Perhaps, too, you think the man who abused him believed what he was saying.

Phaedrus
He seemed to believe, Socrates; and you know yourself that the most influential and important men in our cities are ashamed to write speeches and leave writings behind them, through fear of being called sophists by posterity.

Socrates
You seem to be unacquainted with the ““sweet elbow,””1 Phaedrus,


1 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.

Plato. Plato in Twelve Volumes, Vol. 9 translated by Harold N. Fowler. Cambridge, MA, Harvard University Press; London, William Heinemann Ltd. 1925.

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