Even Salt Has Had Its Praises
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Phaedrus — γεγονότων ποιητῶν πεποιηκέναι μηδὲν ἐγκώμιον; εἰ δὲ βούλει αὖ σκέψασθαι τοὺς χρηστοὺς σοφιστάς, Ἡρακλέους μὲν καὶ ἄλλων ἐπαίνους καταλογάδην συγγράφειν, ὥσπερ ὁ βέλτιστος Πρόδικος— καὶ τοῦτο μὲν ἧττον καὶ θαυμαστόν, ἀλλʼ ἔγωγε ἤδη τινὶ ἐνέτυχον βιβλίῳ ἀνδρὸς σοφοῦ, ἐν ᾧ ἐνῆσαν ἅλες ἔπαινον θαυμάσιον ἔχοντες πρὸς ὠφελίαν, καὶ ἄλλα τοιαῦτα
poets who have ever lived, has made not a single encomium? And if you want, in turn, to consider the reputable sophists — they write out in prose encomia of Heracles and of others, just as the excellent Prodicus does — and that, in fact, is less remarkable, but I myself have actually come across a book by a wise man, in which there was salt, offering a marvelous account of its usefulness, and other such things.
Still inside Phaedrus's quoted complaint (begun in 177a, reported by Eryximachus, within Aristodemus's narration): Phaedrus presses that not one of all the poets who have ever lived has composed a single encomium to Eros, then widens the charge to the sophists — who write formal prose eulogies of Heracles and other worthies, Prodicus among them — and adds that he once came across a book containing a marvelous, over-elaborate encomium of salt's usefulness, and other such things.
The joke sits inside the word ἅλες itself. The plural of salt is also ordinary Greek for wit, the way English still calls a sharp joke salty, and the same idiom survives almost unchanged as Latin sales. A book that gives a marvelous, useful-sounding enkōmion to salt is therefore doubly funny — a display of wit whose stated subject is wit's own name. Prodicus's real encomium of Heracles honors an actual hero; the salt-book honors nothing but its own cleverness. Phaedrus's point sharpens as the examples pile up: an entire minor industry of prose praise exists for demigods and table seasoning, while Eros, oldest and greatest of the gods by his own account, has not received one composed line.
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