The Right to Tell It
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Apollodorus — καὶ Σωκράτους καὶ Ἀλκιβιάδου καὶ τῶν ἄλλων τῶν τότε ἐν τῷ συνδείπνῳ παραγενομένων, περὶ τῶν ἐρωτικῶν λόγων τίνες ἦσαν· ἄλλος γάρ τίς μοι διηγεῖτο ἀκηκοὼς Φοίνικος τοῦ Φιλίππου, ἔφη δὲ καὶ σὲ εἰδέναι. ἀλλὰ γὰρ οὐδὲν εἶχε σαφὲς λέγειν. σὺ οὖν μοι διήγησαι· δικαιότατος γὰρ εἶ τοὺς τοῦ ἑταίρου λόγους ἀπαγγέλλειν. πρότερον δέ μοι, ἦ δʼ ὅς, εἰπέ, σὺ αὐτὸς παρεγένου τῇ συνουσίᾳ ταύτῃ ἢ οὔ; κἀγὼ εἶπον ὅτι παντάπασιν ἔοικέ σοι οὐδὲν διηγεῖσθαι
and Socrates' and Alcibiades' and the others who were there at the dinner that time, about the speeches on love — what they were. For someone else was telling me, having heard it from Phoenix son of Philip, and he said that you too knew about it. But in fact he could say nothing clear. So you tell me — for you are the most entitled to report your comrade's words. But first, said he, tell me: were you yourself present at this gathering or not? And I said that he seems to have told you nothing at all —
Still on the road up from Phalerum, and still inside Apollodorus's narration: the acquaintance who hailed him finishes the request he began in 172a — the sentence runs straight on from 'the gathering at Agathon's' — and then asks whether Apollodorus was actually there. The section also breaks off mid-sentence: the adjective Apollodorus's answer is waiting for, σαφές ('clear'), and its subject, ὁ διηγούμενος ('the man who was telling you'), arrive in 172c.
The undercurrent is one word: dikaiotatos. 'You are the most just man to report your comrade's words,' the friend says — Greek puts it as a personal construction, dikaios eimi plus an infinitive, where English reaches for 'you have the best right to.' The root underneath is dikē, justice, so that passing on a man's words correctly is filed under the same heading as dealing rightly with him. And notice what grounds the right. It is not that Apollodorus was there: the very next question asks whether he was, and the answer, when it comes at 172c, is no. It is that Socrates is his hetairos, his comrade — the warm word, not the gnōrimos, 'acquaintance', that 172a used for the man now doing the asking. The Phaedrus worries at the same knot from the other side: a written speech is cut off from its father, gets dragged about in front of people who do not understand it, and cannot come to its own defence (275e). Apollodorus is the opposite arrangement — the words have a custodian who loves the man who said them — and the friend's term for what makes him fit to carry them is not 'accurate' but 'just'.
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