A Feast of Speeches
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Socrates — τίς οὖν δὴ ἦν ἡ διατριβή; δῆλον ὅτι τῶν λόγων ὑμᾶς Λυσίας εἱστία;
Phaedrus — πεύσῃ, εἴ σοι σχολὴ προϊόντι ἀκούειν
Socrates' guess is a joke with a barb in it: Lysias didn't converse, he 'feasted' the company — served up a speech to be consumed. The metaphor of speeches as food will run through the dialogue, always with a doubt attached: is this nourishment, or just something pleasant to swallow?
Socrates guesses that Lysias must have entertained the company with speeches, and asks to hear about it; Phaedrus promises the story if Socrates has the leisure to walk and listen.
Two of the dialogue's great words surface here almost in passing. <em>λόγος</em> — speech, reason, account — is the thing the whole Phaedrus circles: which speeches deserve love, whether they can teach, whether they should be written at all. And <em>σχολή</em>, 'leisure,' names the condition Socrates needs to hear it — the unhurried freedom the Greeks thought thinking required (our word 'school' is buried inside it). Before any argument, Plato has quietly laid out his terms: this will be a dialogue about speech, undertaken in leisure, on a walk away from the city's business.
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