ABSTRACT
Plato’s considerations on the relative value of oral and written logoi lead up to a message which Socrates gives to Phaedrus for him to deliver to Lysias-but apart from Lysias the message is directed to Homer and Solon as well. None of the three names stands for individuals but representatively for whole areas of literature: Homer for the whole of poetry (278c2-3), Lysias for non-philosophical prose, Solon for philosophy, especially for ethical and legislatory philosophy. At the same time, the three names stand for three epochs of Greek intellectual history and without doubt are meant to represent the entirety of the Greeks’ literary tradition symbolically. Thus Socrates says to Phaedrus to go and tell this entire tradition that, if an author composed his works
knowing the facts about truth, and capable of supporting [them] if he engages in an analytical discussion about what he has written, and capable of proving what he has written to be trivial by means of his oral opinion [‘by speaking himself, ], such an author must not be described by a term taken from these [sc. his works], but from what he directs his serious attention to.
