When Mad, They Blessed Greece
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Socrates — Δωδώνῃ ἱέρειαι μανεῖσαι μὲν πολλὰ δὴ καὶ καλὰ ἰδίᾳ τε καὶ δημοσίᾳ τὴν Ἑλλάδα ἠργάσαντο σωφρονοῦσαι δὲ βραχέα ἢ οὐδέν·
Socrates makes his case for divine madness with the plainest evidence a Greek could offer: the great oracles. The prophetic priestesses at Delphi and at Dodona — the oldest oracle in Greece, where the god's will was read in the rustling of a sacred oak — conferred untold benefits on the country, in private counsel and public policy alike, precisely when they were mad, seized by the god. Sane and self-possessed, they did little or nothing. The point is deliberately provocative against everything the first speech assumed. There, being out of one's mind was the disqualifying flaw. Here it is the very condition of the greatest goods: the priestess is useful to Greece exactly insofar as she has stopped being merely reasonable and let the god speak through her.
Socrates argues for the goodness of god-sent madness by example. The inspired priestesses at Delphi and Dodona, in their prophetic frenzy, did Greece countless benefits, in private life and public affairs alike — but sober and sane, little or nothing. The gift came through the madness, not around it.
This is the palinode's opening proof, and it works by setting two participles against each other: maneisai, 'when mad,' and sōphronousai, 'when sane' — the very pair the first speech relied on, now with their values swapped. There, sōphrosynē, self-possession, was the good and madness the disease. Here the priestesses do Greece good maneisai and nothing sōphronousai, and Socrates is daring us to feel how strange that is only because the first speech trained us wrongly. The verb mainesthai carries the whole reversal: it can name raving sickness, but it shares a root with mantis (the seer) and with 'mind' itself, and Socrates is recovering its higher sense — to be god-mad is to be lifted past your own reason by a power that sees further than reason can. The oracles are his exhibit A because no Greek could deny them: the most important guidance the nation ever received came through women who had, in the ordinary sense, lost their minds. If that is so for prophecy, the palinode will argue, it is so for love — which is a mania of the same divine kind. The whole speech is the unfolding of this one swapped pair: mad, and better for it.
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