25. _Phæ._ You have told me excellent news, my noble friend. For though you cannot tell me from whom and how you heard it, even if I bid you, yet do the very thing that you say; promise that you will say other things better and not less in quality than those contained in the book, without making use of any thing in it. And I promise you, after the manner of the nine Archons, that I will dedicate at Delphi, a golden statue as large as life, not only of myself, but also of you. _Socr._ You are very kind, Phædrus, and really worth your weight in gold, if you suppose I mean that Lysias was entirely wrong, and that it is possible to say something altogether different from what he has said; for I do not think that this could happen even to the poorest writer. 26. For instance with respect to the subject in hand; do you think that any one who was maintaining that favours ought to be shewn to one who is not in love rather than to one who is, if he neglected to extol the prudence of the former and to blame the folly of the latter, these being obvious points, could have any thing else to say? But I think that such points are to be allowed and granted to a speaker, and that of such things not the invention but the method of handling is to be praised, but of things which are obvious, and which are not difficult to discover, the invention as well as the method of handling. _Phæ._ I grant what you say; for you appear to me to have spoken fairly. I will therefore do thus; I will allow you to suppose that one who is in love is more diseased than one who is not, but for the rest if you say other things more fully and of greater weight than Lysias, you shall stand in Olympia, of solid gold, near the offering of the Cypselidæ. 27. _Socr._ You are quite serious, Phædrus, because in teasing you I have attacked your favourite, and you think that I shall really attempt to say something more skilfully wrought than his wisdom has produced. _Phæ._ For that matter, my friend, you have given me as good a hold on you; for you must speak, at all events, as well as you are able. And take care that we are not compelled to have recourse to that troublesome method of comedians, of retorting upon one another, and do not compel me to say[118], “If I, Socrates! know not Socrates, I have also forgotten myself,” and, “he longed to speak, but affected shyness.” But make up your mind that we shall not leave this spot before you have given utterance to what you said you have in your breast. For we two are by ourselves, in a lonely place, and I am both stronger and younger; from all this understand what I mean, and on no account prefer speaking by compulsion rather than willingly. ----- Footnote 118: See before, § 3 and 4. ----- 28. _Socr._ But, my excellent Phædrus, it would be ridiculous in me, who am but a novice in comparison with an experienced author, to attempt to speak extempore on the same subject.