Twice and Three Times
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Socrates — δὶς καὶ τρὶς τὰ αὐτὰ εἰρηκέναι, ὡς οὐ πάνυ εὐπορῶν τοῦ πολλὰ λέγειν περὶ τοῦ αὐτοῦ·
Socrates finally reaches the content, and his verdict is deflating. Strip away the finish, and the speech just says the same things two and three times over. It reads, he suggests, like a writer who wasn't especially well-supplied with things to say about his topic — or who simply didn't care to be, being more interested in showing that he could ring one idea through a few different phrasings and make each version sound splendid. Repetition dressed up as richness: that is Socrates's real charge against the celebrated speech.
Socrates gets specific about the substance. Set the polish aside, he says, and the speech simply repeats itself — the same points made two and three times over, as though Lysias had run short of things to say about his subject. He suspects Lysias was mostly showing off, proving he could dress one idea in different clothes.
The key word is euporōn, from euporia — having a good 'way through,' plenty of resource. Its opposite, aporia, the state of having no way through, is where Socrates habitually strands his partners in argument, and it is the engine of Platonic philosophy: you have to know you are stuck before you can learn. Lysias, Socrates implies, only looked resourceful; the abundance was repetition, one thought reshuffled. There is a deeper joke in the Platonic background, too — in the Symposium's myth, Poros, 'Resource,' is the father of Erōs, so real fullness about love has a divine parentage a lathe-turned speech can only counterfeit. And Socrates names the motive plainly: Lysias was 'showing off,' epideiknumenos — the display-word again. The speech's trouble is not that it is badly made but that making a fine display was the whole of its ambition. What it never tried to do was find out what love is — which is exactly what Socrates, cornered into speaking next, is about to be forced to attempt.
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