What Apollodorus Remembers
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Aristodemus — ἐκέλευον ἅπερ ὁ Σωκράτης.
Apollodorus — πάντων μὲν οὖν ἃ ἕκαστος εἶπεν, οὔτε πάνυ ὁ Ἀριστόδημος ἐμέμνητο οὔτʼ αὖ ἐγὼ ἃ ἐκεῖνος ἔλεγε πάντα· ἃ δὲ μάλιστα καὶ ὧν ἔδοξέ μοι ἀξιομνημόνευτον, τούτων ὑμῖν ἐρῶ ἑκάστου τὸν λόγον. πρῶτον μὲν γάρ, ὥσπερ λέγω, ἔφη Φαῖδρον ἀρξάμενον ἐνθένδε ποθὲν λέγειν, ὅτι
Phaedrus — μέγας θεὸς εἴη ὁ Ἔρως καὶ θαυμαστὸς ἐν ἀνθρώποις τε καὶ θεοῖς, πολλαχῇ μὲν καὶ ἄλλῃ, οὐχ ἥκιστα δὲ κατὰ τὴν γένεσιν. τὸ γὰρ ἐν τοῖς πρεσβύτατον
They urged just what Socrates had. Now, of all that each said, neither did Aristodemus fully remember, nor I, in turn, everything he told me; But what struck me most, and what seemed to me worth recording — of these I will tell you the account of each. First, then, as I say, he said Phaedrus began speaking from around here, that: Eros is a great and wonderful god, among men and gods alike, in many other ways, but not least in his origin. For to be among the eldest —
Continuing the sentence from 177e (‘…and urged the same as Socrates’): the party agrees to hold a round of speeches on Eros. Apollodorus then pauses his own narration to admit that neither Aristodemus nor he can recall everything that was said that night, and promises only the parts that struck him as worth keeping. He introduces Phaedrus's opening move: that Eros is a great and wonderful god, honored above all for how old he is among the gods.
Phaedrus's proof rests on a premise a modern reader has to be told, because it isn't obvious: for a Greek audience, priority in time already counted as a kind of honor. The very word he reaches for, presbytatos, 'eldest,' shares its root with presbeis, the word for ambassadors — literally 'the elders,' because a city naturally sent its senior men to speak in its name. Age carried standing before it carried anything else. So when Phaedrus argues that Eros deserves honor chiefly because of his genesis, his origin among the oldest gods, he isn't yet claiming Eros is beautiful or useful to lovers — only that he is owed the deference any elder is owed. It is an argument from seniority rather than virtue, and Plato gives it to the least experienced man at the table to open the evening.
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