The tongue and the mind

Use in the book

Socrates adapts a tragic line to withdraw from the encomiastic method he has just criticized. He does not thereby refuse every speech: he immediately offers to tell the truth in his own fashion. The quotation therefore renegotiates the scope of his agreement. Eryximachus had likewise borrowed Euripides’ “the tale is not mine” to acknowledge Phaedrus as his source. Tragic language is repeatedly remade for the present conversational situation.

Places to read

1. 177aA borrowed opening credits Phaedrus.
2. 198e–199bThe tongue-and-mind joke qualifies the earlier agreement and opens a new mode of speech.

Translation in this edition

The note identifies the later source as Hippolytus and explains the adaptation. Burnet letterspaces only words actually taken over; the lexicon does not present the whole new sentence as a verbatim Euripidean quotation.

γλῶσσα (glōssa)

glōssa — The tongue, made the agent of a promise that Socrates jokingly refuses to assign to his mind.

• 199a — ἡ γλῶσσα. The verbal promise is contrasted with inward commitment.

Read: The tongue and the mind.

Εὐριπίδης (Euripidēs)

Euripidēs — Euripides, named at the opening borrowed line and identified by the edition as the source of the later tongue-and-mind adaptation.

• 177a — τὴν Εὐριπίδου Μελανίππην. Eryximachus explicitly identifies his earlier borrowed opening.

Read: The tongue and the mind.

φρήν (phrēn)

phrēn — Mind or understanding, the faculty denied the promise in Socrates’ adapted quotation.

• 199a — ἡ δὲ φρὴν. The mind is the contrasted subject.

Read: The tongue and the mind.