Rather than apologize for taking up this battered subject once again, let me compare scholarly treatment of the passage to such ancient rites as singing the skolion, where every member of the symposium was supposed to give his variant of a given theme. First we must have the passage before us. Phaidra, after first appearing on stage in a delirium where her speech is by no means coherent, addresses the chorus of women of Troizen from line 373 on in rational terms, explaining her predicament and behaviour. Peoples' lives, she says, are not ruined by lack of intelligence, but by failure to live up to their recognition of right and wrong. Some fail to realize (381 ⋯κπονεῖν) their high ideals through laziness or inertia (381 ⋯ργ⋯ας ὓπο), others by putting some dubious pleasure before the good (382–3 οἱ δ' ⋯δον⋯ν προθέντες ⋯ντ⋯ το⋯ καλο⋯ / ἂλλην τιν').