); and therefore I must speak. Nor, again, should I be justified
in concealing the lofty actions of Socrates when I come to praise him.
Moreover I have felt the serpent's sting; and he who has suffered, as they
say, is willing to tell his fellow-sufferers only, as they alone will be
likely to understand him, and will not be extreme in judging of the sayings
or doings which have been wrung from his agony. For I have been bitten by
a more than viper's tooth; I have known in my soul, or in my heart, or in
some other part, that worst of pangs, more violent in ingenuous youth than
any serpent's tooth, the pang of philosophy, which will make a man say or
do anything. And you whom I see around me, Phaedrus and Agathon and
Eryximachus and Pausanias and Aristodemus and Aristophanes, all of you, and
I need not say Socrates himself, have had experience of the same madness
and passion in your longing after wisdom. Therefore listen and excuse my
doings then and my sayings now. But let the attendants and other profane
and unmannered persons close up the doors of their ears.
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