Mad and Out of My Wits
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Apollodorus — ὦ φίλτατε, καὶ δῆλόν γε δὴ ὅτι οὕτω διανοούμενος καὶ περὶ ἐμαυτοῦ καὶ περὶ ὑμῶν μαίνομαι καὶ παραπαίω;
Companion — οὐκ ἄξιον περὶ τούτων, Ἀπολλόδωρε, νῦν ἐρίζειν· ἀλλʼ ὅπερ ἐδεόμεθά σου, μὴ ἄλλως ποιήσῃς, ἀλλὰ διήγησαι τίνες ἦσαν οἱ λόγοι.
Apollodorus — ἦσαν τοίνυν ἐκεῖνοι τοιοίδε τινές— μᾶλλον δʼ
My dear friend, it's clear indeed that, thinking this way, about myself and about you, I am mad and raving? It's not worth arguing about this now, Apollodorus — but what we asked of you, don't do otherwise — tell us what the speeches were. Well then, they were something like this — or rather,
Apollodorus finishes the self-mockery he began at 173d, where he called himself and his rich, business-minded companions wretched. Now he asks whether talking this way about himself and his friends proves he has lost his mind. His companion refuses to argue the point and asks again for the story; Apollodorus agrees and starts — breaking off mid-sentence to correct himself, a correction 174a completes ('or rather, from the beginning...').
The undercurrent is the word itself. In the companion dialogue, the Phaedrus, this same verb is rehabilitated: Socrates insists the greatest human goods arrive through a mania that is a god's gift, not a disease (244a). Here Plato lets the verb sit at the ordinary end of its range. Apollodorus isn't claiming inspiration — he's worried he sounds unhinged, and pairs maínomai with the humbler parapaíō, to miss one's aim, as if his mind had simply struck wide of the target. A man about to narrate the most exalted speeches on love ever written opens by wondering whether caring this much makes him crazy, and no one in the scene quite tells him he's wrong.
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