Truly Golden, Phaedrus
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Socrates — φίλτατος εἶ καὶ ὡς ἀληθῶς χρυσοῦς ὦ Φαῖδρε εἴ με οἴει λέγειν ὡς Λυσίας τοῦ παντὸς ἡμάρτηκεν· τοῦτο δὲ οἶμαι οὐδʼ ἂν τὸν φαυλότατον παθεῖν συγγραφέα.
Phaedrus has just promised, with a straight face, to dedicate a golden statue at Delphi if Socrates can outdo the speech — and Socrates plays right back: 'dearest, and truly golden, Phaedrus.' Then he corrects the misunderstanding. He never said Lysias missed the whole point; on the basic content, even the most incompetent writer would manage the obvious moves. What is wrong with the speech is not that it lacks the right ideas. The trouble lies elsewhere — in how the material is arranged and what the writer was really after — and that is the critique Socrates is warming up to make.
Phaedrus has just sworn a mock-oath — a golden statue at Delphi — if Socrates can better the speech. Socrates laughs it off: dear golden Phaedrus, don't imagine I think Lysias got everything wrong. Even the worst hack would cover the obvious points. The speech's fault lies elsewhere — and he is about to say where.
The banter is affectionate — Socrates catches Phaedrus's word chrysous, 'golden,' from the promised statue and lobs it straight back as a compliment — but a real distinction is forming underneath it. He concedes that on content Lysias is unbeatable, or rather unmissable: even the phaulotatos syngrapheus, 'the poorest writer,' could not fail to say the expected things about lovers and non-lovers. His word for missing the point is hēmartēken, from hamartanō, 'to miss the mark' — the same root as hamartia, the tragic error, and later the New Testament word for sin. Lysias has not committed that kind of error; his failure is subtler. The whole coming critique rests on this split: a speech can hit every obvious target and still be worthless, because rhetoric is not a matter of assembling the right points but of knowing the truth of its subject and building a living whole. Phaedrus admires the golden surface. Socrates is teaching him to ask what the thing is made to do.
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