Playing Coy
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Socrates — δεομένου δὲ λέγειν τοῦ τῶν λόγων ἐραστοῦ, ἐθρύπτετο ὡς δὴ οὐκ ἐπιθυμῶν λέγειν· τελευτῶν δὲ ἔμελλε καὶ εἰ μή τις ἑκὼν ἀκούοι βίᾳ ἐρεῖν
And when the lover of speeches begged him to recite, he made a little show of refusing — as though he weren't dying to speak — though in the end, if no one would listen of their own free will, he meant to deliver the speech by force.
Socrates finishes the reconstruction: Phaedrus, begged to recite by the very 'lover of speeches' he was thrilled to meet, made a show of refusing — while fully intending to speak even by force.
<em>Ethrýpteto</em> — 'he played coy' — is boudoir vocabulary. The verb literally means to be softened, made delicate; of persons it names the coquette's art of refusing what one is dying to grant. Add that his suitor is called <em>tôn lógōn erastḗs</em>, 'the lover of speeches,' and the scene declares itself: Socrates and Phaedrus are acting out a courtship, with a scroll where the beloved should be. Desire, feigned reluctance, surrender — the whole choreography of eros, performed over a book, before Lysias's speech about lovers has been read aloud.<br><br>The punchline inverts the dialogue's deepest pair. Greek thought opposes persuasion (<em>peithṓ</em>) to force (<em>bía</em>): rhetoric exists precisely so that free men need not be compelled. Yet here the speech-lover threatens to inflict a speech <em>bíāi</em> — by force — on unwilling ears. It is a joke with a long shadow: the <em>Gorgias</em> asks in earnest whether rhetoric is ever anything but disguised force, and this dialogue will answer by rebuilding rhetoric from the soul up. Phaedrus 'forcing' his recitation is the comic seed of that whole inquiry.
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