Phaedrus

Plato · a new plain-English translation from the Greek

SOCRATES: My dear Phaedrus, where are you off to, and where have you come from? PHAEDRUS: From Lysias, Socrates — Cephalus's son. I'm going for a walk outside the wall. I spent a long time there sitting since early morning. On the advice of your friend and mine, Acumenus, I take my walks on the roads — he says they're less tiring than the ones in the running tracks. SOCRATES: Good advice, my friend. So Lysias was in the city, it seems? PHAEDRUS: Yes, at Epicrates' house, the one near the temple of Olympian Zeus — Morychus's old house. SOCRATES: So what were you doing there? Or is it obvious — Lysias was treating you to a feast of speeches? PHAEDRUS: You'll hear, if you have the leisure to walk along and listen. SOCRATES: What? Don't you think I'd consider hearing your conversation with Lysias, to quote Pindar, "a business more pressing than business itself"? PHAEDRUS: Lead on, then. SOCRATES: Speak away. PHAEDRUS: Well, Socrates, it's really a fitting thing for you to hear. The speech we were occupied with was, in some strange way, about love. Lysias has written up an attempt at seduction aimed at some good-looking young man — but not from the position of a lover. That's actually the clever twist: he argues that one should grant favors to a man who isn't in love rather than to one who is. SOCRATES: What a noble fellow! I wish he'd write that one should favor the poor man over the rich, the older man over the younger, and all the other things that apply to me and most of us — then his speeches would really be charming and useful to the public. As it is, I'm so eager to hear it that even if you made your walk all the way to Megara and, following Herodicus's method, touched the wall there and came straight back, I wouldn't fall behind you.

PHAEDRUS: What are you saying, my excellent Socrates? Do you think that I, a mere amateur, could reproduce from memory, in a way worthy of the man, what Lysias — the cleverest writer alive today — composed over a long stretch of leisure? Far from it — though I'd rather have been able to than come into a great deal of money. SOCRATES: Phaedrus, if I don't know Phaedrus, I've forgotten myself as well. But neither of those is the case. I know perfectly well that when he was listening to a speech of Lysias, he didn't just hear it once — he kept asking him to repeat it, again and again, and Lysias obliged eagerly. But even that wasn't enough for him — in the end he got hold of the book itself and pored over the parts he wanted most. Doing just this, sitting from early morning, he wore himself out and went off for a walk — already, I'd wager by the dog, having the speech memorized by heart, unless it was extraordinarily long. And he was heading outside the wall to practice it. Then he ran into a man sick with a passion for hearing speeches — and seeing him, yes, seeing him, he was delighted, because now he'd have someone to share his frenzy with, and he urged him to lead on. But when the lover of speeches begged him to recite it, he played coy, as if he had no desire to speak — though in the end he was going to tell it by force even if no one wanted to listen willingly. So, Phaedrus, ask him to do now what he'll shortly do anyway. PHAEDRUS: It really is by far my best course to speak it as best I can, since you seem quite unwilling to let me go until I say something, one way or another. SOCRATES: You have exactly the right impression of me. PHAEDRUS: Then here's what I'll do. Truly, Socrates, I did not learn the actual wording by heart — but I can go through the gist of nearly all the points by which he claimed the position of the non-lover differs from that of the lover, one by one in order, starting from the first. SOCRATES: Only after you show me, dear friend, what you're holding under your cloak in your left hand — I suspect you have the speech itself. If that's so, think of me this way: I'm very fond of you, but with Lysias himself present too, I'm not at all inclined to let you use me for practice. Come now, show it. PHAEDRUS: Stop — you've knocked out from under me the hope I had of using you as my training partner, Socrates. Well, where do you want us to sit down and read?

SOCRATES: Let's turn off here and go along the Ilissus, and then sit down wherever seems good, in some quiet spot. PHAEDRUS: It's lucky, it seems, that I happen to be barefoot today — you always are, of course. It'll be easiest for us to walk in the little stream, wetting our feet, and not unpleasant either, especially at this time of year and this time of day. SOCRATES: Lead on, then, and look at the same time for where we might sit. PHAEDRUS: Do you see that very tall plane tree? SOCRATES: Of course. PHAEDRUS: There's shade there, and a moderate breeze, and grass to sit on, or lie down on if we'd rather. SOCRATES: Lead the way, then. PHAEDRUS: Tell me, Socrates — isn't it from somewhere around here, along the Ilissus, that Boreas is said to have carried off Oreithyia? SOCRATES: So it's said. PHAEDRUS: Was it from right here, then? The water looks lovely and clear and transparent, and just right for girls to be playing beside it. SOCRATES: No, it's about two or three stadia downstream, where we cross over toward the sanctuary of Agra — there's an altar of Boreas somewhere there, I believe. PHAEDRUS: I hadn't quite noticed that. But tell me, Socrates, in god's name — do you actually believe this myth is true? SOCRATES: Well, if I disbelieved it, as the clever folk do, I wouldn't be so out of step — and then I could go on being clever and say that a gust of Boreas pushed her off the nearby rocks while she was playing with Pharmacea, and that's how she came to die and got the story of being snatched by Boreas — or else that she was carried off from the Areopagus, since that version is told too, that she was seized from there rather than from here. For my part, Phaedrus, I find such things charming enough in their way, but they're the business of a man who's altogether too clever and hardworking and none too fortunate — for no other reason than that after this he'll have to go on to straighten out the shape of the Hippocentaurs, and then the Chimaera, and there'll come pouring in after that a whole crowd of things like Gorgons and Pegasuses and other impossible swarms and oddities of monstrous natures. If someone doesn't believe in these and wants to reduce each of them to something plausible, using a kind of rustic cleverness, he'll need a great deal of spare time.

SOCRATES: I myself have no spare time at all for such things. And the reason, my friend, is this: I'm not yet able, as the Delphic inscription demands, to know myself — so it seems ridiculous to me, while I'm still ignorant of that, to go investigating things that don't concern me. That's why I let all that go, and simply accept the common view about such stories, as I just said, and I examine not those things but myself — whether I happen to be some beast more twisted and more puffed up with passion than Typhon, or a gentler and simpler creature, sharing by nature in some divine and unassuming lot. But wait, my friend, in the middle of all this — wasn't this the tree you were leading us to? PHAEDRUS: This is the very one. SOCRATES: By Hera, what a lovely resting place. This plane tree is wonderfully spreading and tall, and the height and shade of the chaste-tree are quite beautiful, and it's at the very peak of its bloom, so it fills the whole place with fragrance. And then there's this spring, flowing most charmingly under the plane tree, with very cold water — my foot can testify to that. And judging by the figurines and statues, it looks like a shrine sacred to some nymphs and to Achelous. And if you like, notice how welcome and how very pleasant the breeziness of the place is — it has a summery, clear ring to it, answering the chorus of cicadas. And the most exquisite thing of all is the grass, growing thick enough on this gentle slope that one can lay one's head down most comfortably. You've guided us here beautifully, dear Phaedrus. PHAEDRUS: And you, amazing man, seem the strangest of creatures. Honestly, the way you talk, you seem exactly like some stranger being shown around by a guide, not a local at all — so much so that you never seem to leave the city for the country beyond, or even go outside the wall, as far as I can tell. SOCRATES: Forgive me, my excellent friend — I'm a lover of learning, and the countryside and the trees are unwilling to teach me anything, whereas the people in the city are. But you seem to have found the charm that will draw me out. Just as people lead a hungry animal along by dangling a branch or some fruit in front of it, so you, by holding speeches out to me in books, seem set to lead me around the whole of Attica, and wherever else you please. So now, since we've arrived here, I intend to lie down, and you should choose whatever position you think will let you read most comfortably, and read away. PHAEDRUS: Listen, then.

PHAEDRUS: You know my situation, and you've heard how I think it would benefit us both if this came about. I don't think it's right that I should fail to get what I'm asking simply because I don't happen to be in love with you. Lovers, after all, come to regret the good they've done once their desire has subsided — but for the others there's no point at which it becomes fitting for them to change their minds. For it isn't under compulsion but by choice, having reasoned out as well as possible about their own interests, that they act well within their means. Moreover, lovers look at what they've mismanaged in their own affairs on account of their love, and what they've done well, and adding in the trouble they've had, they think they've long since paid back the gratitude they owe their beloveds in full. But those who aren't in love can't offer neglect of their own affairs as an excuse on this account, nor can they count in past troubles, nor blame quarrels with their relations — so that, with so many bad things stripped away, nothing is left for them except to act eagerly on whatever they think will please. Further, if lovers deserve to be prized highly because they say they love their beloveds most of all, and are ready, both in word and deed, to please them at the cost of making everyone else hate them — it's easy to see that, if they're telling the truth, then whoever they fall in love with later, they'll value more than the present one, and clearly, if that new one wishes it, they'll mistreat the present one too. And yet how reasonable is it to hand over something so precious to a man suffering from a condition like that, one which no experienced person would even attempt to cure? Indeed they themselves admit that they're sick rather than in their right minds, and that they know they're thinking badly, but can't control themselves — so how, once they came to their senses, could they think well of decisions made while in such a state? And besides, if you were to choose the best from among your lovers, your choice would be from a small pool; but if you chose the one most suited to you from everyone else, it would be from a great many — so there's a far better chance, among the many, of finding one worthy of your friendship.

PHAEDRUS: Now, if you're afraid of the established custom, worried that people finding out will bring you disgrace, consider this: it's the lovers, thinking that others will envy them just as they envy themselves, who are likely to be puffed up by talking about it, and out of vanity to show off to everyone that their trouble hasn't been for nothing — whereas those who aren't in love, being masters of themselves, choose what's genuinely best over reputation among men. Furthermore, lovers are bound to be noticed and seen by many people trailing after their beloveds, making a business of it — so that whenever they're seen talking to each other, people assume their passion has been, or is about to be, satisfied; but no one even thinks to blame those who aren't in love for spending time together, since they know that talking with someone is bound to happen either through friendship or through some other pleasure. And further, if you're gripped by the fear that friendship is hard to maintain, and that while in other kinds of falling-out the misfortune would fall on you both alike, once you've given up what you value most, the harm would fall on you especially — then it would make sense to fear lovers more rather than less: for they are troubled by many things, and they think everything that happens is directed at their own harm. That's exactly why they discourage their beloveds from spending time with anyone else — fearing that men of wealth will outdo them with money, and men of education will surpass them in intelligence; and they're on guard against the power of anyone else who has some other good quality. So by persuading you to become estranged from these people, they leave you friendless and isolated; whereas if you look to your own advantage and show more sense than they do, you'll come into conflict with them. But those who were never in love, but achieved what they wanted through their own merit, wouldn't be jealous of the people you spend time with — rather, they would hate those unwilling to associate with you, thinking themselves looked down upon by them, but benefited by those who do keep company with you — so that there's a far better chance that friendship rather than enmity will come of the whole affair with them.

PHAEDRUS — And what's more, many lovers desired the body before they knew the character or became familiar with the rest of what belongs to the beloved, so that it's unclear to them whether they'll still want to be friends once their desire has stopped. But with those who aren't in love, who were already friends with each other before they did this, it's not likely that the good they receive from it will make their friendship smaller — rather those acts are left behind as reminders of what's still to come. And besides, it's fitting for you to become better by listening to me than by listening to a lover. Lovers praise what you say and do even when it goes against what's best — partly out of fear of becoming hateful to you, partly because their own judgment is worse for it, on account of their desire. That's the kind of thing love shows: when lovers are unlucky, it makes them think painful things that don't trouble anyone else; when they're lucky, it forces them to heap praise even on things not worth any pleasure at all — so that the beloved really ought to pity them far more than envy them. But if you're persuaded by me, first of all I won't be spending time with you in service of the pleasure of the moment, but of the benefit that's going to come, since I'm not overpowered by desire but master of myself, and I won't take up a strong hatred over small things, but will build only a little anger, slowly, over great ones; I'll forgive what's involuntary, and try to turn you away from what's done on purpose. These are the proofs of a friendship that's going to last a long time. But if it has occurred to you that a strong friendship can't come about unless someone happens to be in love, you should bear in mind that then we wouldn't value our sons very highly, nor our fathers and mothers, and we wouldn't have trustworthy friends either — since none of those relationships arise from that kind of desire, but from other pursuits entirely. Further, if we ought to do favors above all for those who need them most, then in other matters too it's fitting to help not the best people but the neediest — since freed from the greatest troubles, they'll feel the greatest gratitude toward us. And indeed, even at our own private feasts, it's not our friends we should be inviting, but beggars and those who need a good meal — for they're the ones who'll be fond of us, and follow us around, and come to our doors, and take the greatest pleasure in it, and feel no small gratitude, and pray many good things down on us.

PHAEDRUS — But perhaps it's not fitting to do favors for those who need them most desperately, but for those most able to return the favor — not merely to beggars, but to those worthy of the thing itself; not to those who will merely enjoy your youthful bloom, but to those who, once you've grown older, will share their own good things with you; not to those who, once they've had their way, will go boasting to others, but to those who out of modesty will keep silent before everyone; not to those whose devotion lasts only a short while, but to those who will remain friends alike through the whole of life; not to those who, once their desire stops, will go looking for a pretext to quarrel, but to those who, once the bloom of youth has stopped, will then display their own worth. So you should remember what's been said, and also keep this in mind: that friends admonish lovers, as though what they're doing were something bad, while none of a person's own family has ever blamed those who aren't in love, as though on that account they were making bad decisions about themselves. Perhaps then you'd ask me whether I'm advising you to grant your favors to all who aren't in love. Well, I think not even the lover himself would tell you to hold this attitude toward all lovers — since that wouldn't earn the recipient equal gratitude, nor would it let you keep the matter as hidden from everyone else as you'd wish; and there should be no harm coming from it, but benefit to both. So I for my part think what's been said is enough; but if there's something more you're longing for, thinking it's been left out, ask. What do you think of the speech, Socrates? Isn't it extraordinary, both in general and especially in its wording? SOCRATES — Divinely so, my friend, so much that it stunned me. And I felt this way because of you, Phaedrus, watching your face — because you seemed to me to be glowing with delight over the speech as you read it. So, thinking you understood these matters better than I do, I followed your lead, and following, I fell into a Bacchic frenzy along with you over that inspired head of yours. PHAEDRUS — Well now! Is that how you want to joke about it? SOCRATES — Do you think I'm joking and not being serious? PHAEDRUS — Not at all, Socrates — but truly, in the name of Zeus, god of friendship, tell me: do you think any other Greek could say things greater and more numerous than these on the very same subject?

SOCRATES — What, then? Must the speech be praised by both you and me on this ground too — that the poet said what needed to be said — and not only on that other ground, that the phrases are clear and rounded, and each word turned precisely on the lathe? For if that's required, I'll grant it for your sake, since it escaped me, given my own worthlessness — I was paying attention only to its rhetorical side, and I wouldn't have thought even Lysias himself would consider that part adequate. And it seemed to me, Phaedrus — unless you say otherwise — that he said the same things two or three times over, as if he weren't very resourceful at saying many things on the same subject, or perhaps he simply didn't care about that sort of thing. He struck me as showing off, like a young man flaunting his ability to say the same things in different ways and to say both versions excellently. PHAEDRUS — Nonsense, Socrates — that's exactly what the speech has going for it above all. Of everything worth saying that belongs to the subject, he's left nothing out, so that beyond what he's said, no one could ever manage to say anything else, more in quantity or more valuable. SOCRATES — That much I won't be able to grant you any longer. Ancient wise men and women who have spoken and written about these things will refute me if I concede that to please you. PHAEDRUS — Who are these people? Where have you heard anything better than this? SOCRATES — I can't say just now, off the top of my head — but clearly I've heard it from someone, perhaps from lovely Sappho, or from wise Anacreon, or even from some prose writers. What makes me infer this? My chest feels somehow full, my good man, and I sense that I could say other things, no worse than these, in addition. Now, I know well enough that none of it has occurred to me on my own — I'm well aware of my own ignorance — so what's left, I think, is that I've been filled up, like a jar, from some outside springs, by way of hearing, though out of dullness I've forgotten this very thing too — how, and from whom, I heard it. PHAEDRUS — Well, my noblest friend, that's the finest thing you could have said. As for whom and how you heard it, don't tell me even if I ask you to — just do exactly what you say: promise to say things better than what's in that book, and no fewer, keeping clear of what's written there, and I, like the nine archons, will promise to set up a golden statue, life-sized, at Delphi — not just of myself, but of you too.

SOCRATES — You're a dear, and truly golden, Phaedrus, if you think I mean that Lysias has failed entirely, and that it's possible to say altogether different things in place of everything he said. I don't think even the most mediocre writer could avoid that fate. Take the very subject of the speech: whom do you imagine, arguing that one should grant favors to the man who isn't in love rather than to the one who is, could leave out praising the good sense of the one and blaming the folly of the other — since these points are simply unavoidable — and then have something else, something different, to say? No, I think such points must be allowed and forgiven the speaker; and in cases like this it's not the invention but the arrangement that deserves praise, while for points that aren't unavoidable and are hard to invent, the invention deserves praise along with the arrangement. PHAEDRUS — I grant what you say — that seems to me a fair statement. So I'll do the same: I'll grant you as a premise that the lover is more afflicted than the one who isn't in love, but on all the rest, if you say other things, more numerous and more valuable, than these of Lysias, then stand forged in bronze beside the offering of the Cypselids at Olympia. SOCRATES — Are you taking it seriously, Phaedrus, just because I teased you a little by grabbing hold of your darling? Do you really think I'm going to try to say something more elaborate than his cleverness? PHAEDRUS — On that point, my friend, you've fallen into the very same trap yourself. You must speak as best you're able, in whatever way you can, so we won't be forced into that vulgar business of the comic poets, trading one thing for another — so be careful, and don't make me say that line, 'if I, Socrates, don't know Socrates,' and 'I've forgotten myself' — and that you wanted to speak but were being coy. Just make up your mind that we're not leaving this spot until you say what you claimed to have in your chest. We're alone here in a deserted place, and I'm stronger and younger — so from all this, understand what I'm telling you, and don't make me force it out of you rather than have you speak willingly. SOCRATES — But, my blessed Phaedrus, I'll look ridiculous, an amateur improvising on the spot next to a fine poet, on the very same subject. PHAEDRUS — You know how it is? Stop putting on airs with me. I have something, I think, that will force you to speak. SOCRATES — Then whatever it is, don't say it. PHAEDRUS — No, I'm going to say it right now — and my words will be an oath. I swear to you — by whom, though? Which god? Or would you like it to be this plane tree here? — I swear that if you don't deliver your speech facing this very tree, I will never again show you or report to you any speech by anyone, ever. SOCRATES — Ugh, you scoundrel — how well you've found the way to force a lover of speeches to do whatever you tell him! PHAEDRUS — Then why are you twisting and turning? SOCRATES — No reason anymore, now that you've sworn to that. How could I possibly hold back from such a feast?

PHAEDRUS — Speak, then. SOCRATES — Do you know what I'm going to do? PHAEDRUS — About what? SOCRATES — I'll speak with my head covered, so that I can race through the speech as fast as possible and not lose my way from shame by looking at you. PHAEDRUS — Just speak — do whatever else you like. SOCRATES — Come then, Muses, whether it's from the quality of your song that you're called clear-voiced, or from the musical race of the Ligyans that you got this name — join me in this tale, which this excellent fellow here is forcing me to tell, so that his companion, who already seemed wise to him before, may now seem even more so. There was once, then, a boy — or rather a young man just past boyhood — very beautiful, and he had a great many lovers. One of them was crafty, and though he was in love no less than the others, he had persuaded the boy that he wasn't in love. And once, in asking for his favor, he tried to convince him of this very point — that one ought to grant favors to the man who isn't in love rather than to the one who is — and he spoke like this: 'About everything, boy, there is one starting point for those who mean to deliberate well: they must know what the deliberation is about, or they're bound to miss the mark entirely. Most people fail to notice that they don't know the true nature of each thing. So, assuming they do know, they don't come to an agreement about it at the outset of their inquiry, and as they go on they pay the natural price — they don't agree, either with themselves or with each other. So let's not fall into the very fault we criticize in others, you and I. Since the question before you and me is which one we should turn to for friendship, the lover or the one who isn't in love, let's set down, by agreement, a definition of what love is and what power it has, and keeping our eyes on that, referring our inquiry back to it, let's examine whether it brings benefit or harm. Now, that love is a kind of desire is plain to everyone; and we also know that even those who aren't in love desire what is beautiful. How then shall we distinguish the lover from the one who isn't? We must further recognize that within each of us there are two ruling and guiding forces which we follow wherever they lead — one being an innate desire for pleasures, the other an acquired judgment that reaches for what is best. These two forces within us are sometimes in agreement, and sometimes at war with each other; and at one time the one prevails, at another time the other.'

SOCRATES: Now when judgment leads us toward the best by reason, and that reasoned rule prevails, we call the prevailing power moderation. But when desire drags us without reason toward pleasures, and gets the upper hand within us, that misrule is called excess. Excess goes by many names -- it has many limbs and many parts -- and whichever of its forms happens to stand out gives the person who has it a name drawn from that very form, and it is not a fine or worthy name to carry. If, in the matter of eating, it overpowers the best judgment along with the other desires, the desire is called gluttony, and the one who has it is called by that same name. If it seizes tyrannical rule over drinking and drags its possessor that way, it's obvious what title that will earn. And all the other names, kin to these and to their kindred desires, plainly belong to whichever desire happens to be ruling at the time. Now the reason all this has been said is probably clear enough already, but a thing said outright is always clearer than a thing left implied. When desire, without reason, straining toward what's right, overpowers judgment and is drawn toward the pleasure of beauty, and is driven on with full force by its kindred desires toward bodily beauty, and wins the contest by that driving -- from that very force, taking its name, it is called eros, passionate love. But tell me, dear Phaedrus, do you think, as I do of myself, that I've been struck by something divine? PHAEDRUS: Very much so, Socrates. Some unaccustomed fluency has taken hold of you. SOCRATES: Then listen to me in silence. This place really does seem to be sacred, so if I fall into a kind of nymph-possession as the speech goes on, don't be surprised -- right now I'm not far from breaking into dithyramb. PHAEDRUS: That is absolutely true. SOCRATES: And you are the cause of it. But hear the rest -- perhaps whatever's coming can still be turned aside. That will be the god's concern; our business is to go back to the boy with our argument. Well then, my fine friend -- what it is we must deliberate about has been stated and defined. Keeping our eyes on it, let's go on to say what benefit or harm will naturally come to the one who grants his favors, from a lover as against one who does not love. For a person ruled by desire and enslaved to pleasure will necessarily want to make his beloved as pleasant to himself as possible. Now to a sick mind, everything that doesn't resist is pleasant, while anything stronger or equal is hateful.

SOCRATES: So a lover will never willingly put up with a boy who is stronger than him or his equal -- he always works to make him weaker and lesser. And the ignorant is weaker than the wise, the coward than the brave man, the poor speaker than the skilled one, the slow-witted than the sharp. Given how many evils of mind like these -- and even more -- necessarily arise in the beloved, or are already present by nature, the lover must either take pleasure in them or arrange to bring them about, or else be deprived of his immediate pleasure. And he must be jealous, keeping the boy away from many other kinds of company that would benefit him and make him truly a man, from which comes great harm -- greatest of all from whatever would make him wisest. And that, of course, is philosophy, the divine pursuit -- from that, above all, a lover must keep his beloved at a distance, terrified of being despised for it. He'll scheme in every other way too, to keep the boy ignorant of everything and looking to the lover for everything, so that he'll be as pleasing as possible to the lover and as harmful as possible to himself. So as far as the mind goes, a man possessed by love is in no way a useful guardian or companion. Now we must look at the condition and care of the body that such a man -- forced to chase pleasure ahead of good -- will provide once he has control of it. You'll see him chasing something soft and not sturdy, not raised in the open sun but in mixed shade, unpracticed in manly toils and honest sweat but well practiced in a soft, unmanly way of living, decked out in borrowed colors and ornaments for lack of his own, and pursuing all the other habits that go with these -- obvious enough, not worth spelling out further; let's just fix the main point and move on. Such a body, in war and in other great crises, gives confidence to enemies and fear to friends -- even to the lovers themselves. This much we can leave as obvious; what comes next must be said -- what benefit or what harm the lover's company and guardianship will bring us where property is concerned.

SOCRATES: This much is clear to everyone, but especially to the lover himself: he would wish, above all, that the boy he loves be stripped of everything dearest, most loyal, and most sacred to him. He would gladly see him deprived of father, mother, relatives, and friends, thinking of them as obstacles and critics standing in the way of the sweetest possible time together. And if the boy has a fortune in gold or any other property, the lover will not think him so easy to catch, nor, once caught, so easy to manage. So it's inevitable that a lover resents his beloved for having property, and is glad when it's lost. What's more, a lover would wish his beloved to stay as long as possible unmarried, childless, and without a household of his own, wanting to enjoy what's sweet to him for as long as he can. Now there are other evils too, but some divine power has mixed a bit of immediate pleasure into most of them -- a flatterer, for instance, is a terrible creature and a great harm, yet nature has mixed in some pleasure that isn't without its charm; and someone might fault a courtesan as harmful, and many other creatures and practices of that sort, yet for the time being they manage to be quite pleasant day to day. But a lover, on top of being harmful to his boy, is also the most disagreeable company to spend one's days with. As the old saying goes, like delights like -- for I suppose equality in age leads to equal pleasures, and through likeness produces friendship -- yet even the company of equals in age can grow tiresome. And besides, whatever is compulsory is said to be burdensome to everyone in every case -- and that, on top of the unlikeness between them, is exactly the lover's relation to his beloved. For an older man attached to a younger one will not willingly leave his side, day or night, but is driven by compulsion and by a kind of goad, which is always giving him pleasures -- seeing, hearing, touching, and perceiving his beloved by every sense -- so that he serves him gladly and eagerly. But what comfort or what pleasures can the lover give the boy in return, to keep him, over that same span of time, from reaching the very limit of distaste -- seeing an older face no longer in its prime, and all that goes with it, which is unpleasant even to hear described in words, let alone to have to deal with in fact under constant compulsion; being watched over with suspicious jealousy at all times and before everyone; hearing praises that are ill-timed and excessive, and just as much blame that is unbearable when the lover is sober and, when he's drunk, on top of being unbearable, downright shameful, delivered with an unrestrained and unguarded frankness?

SOCRATES: And while he's in love he's harmful and unpleasant, but once his passion has passed, he becomes untrustworthy for all the time after -- the very time in which, with many promises backed by oaths and pleas, he barely managed to hold the boy to bear with a relationship that was already burdensome, for the sake of hopes of future good. And now, when the debt falls due, he has changed -- a different ruler and master has taken over inside him, sense and moderation in place of love and madness -- and he has become another person without the boy noticing it. The boy asks him for the gratitude owed for what came before, reminding him of what was done and said, as if speaking to the same man; but the lover, out of shame, doesn't dare say he has become someone else, nor can he find a way to make good the oaths and promises made under his former, foolish rule, now that he has come to his senses and regained self-control -- for fear that by doing the same things as before he'll become like his former self all over again. So he turns and runs from all this, and the former lover, now forced into default, changes into a fugitive as the coin flips; while the boy is left to chase him in outrage, calling on the gods, never having understood from the start that he should never have granted his favors to a lover -- someone necessarily without reason -- but far rather to a man who does not love and has full possession of his senses. Otherwise he's bound to hand himself over to someone faithless, difficult, jealous, disagreeable, harmful to his property, harmful to the condition of his body, and by far most harmful to the training of his soul -- than which nothing is or ever will be held in higher honor, truly, by gods or men. These are the things you must consider, my boy, and know that a lover's friendship comes with no goodwill at all, but the way one takes food -- for the sake of being filled up, as wolves love a lamb, so lovers love a boy. That's the whole of it, Phaedrus. You won't hear another word from me -- let the speech end right here. PHAEDRUS: And yet I thought it was only halfway through, and that you'd say just as much about the man who doesn't love, listing all the good things on his side. Why stop now, Socrates? SOCRATES: Didn't you notice, my dear fellow, that I'm already speaking in verse and no longer in dithyrambs -- and this while finding fault? If I start praising the other kind of man, what do you imagine will happen to me? Don't you know that the Nymphs, to whom you deliberately exposed me, will plainly carry me away? So let me just say in one sentence: whatever faults we've heaped on the one type, the opposite goods belong to the other. And what need is there for a long speech? Enough has been said about both.

SOCRATES: And so the myth will get exactly what's coming to it, and it will suffer just that. As for me, I'm crossing this river and going on my way before you force something bigger out of me. PHAEDRUS: Not yet, Socrates -- not before the heat passes. Don't you see it's nearly noon now, the hour they call the still hour? Let's wait, and talk over what's been said meanwhile, and go on once it cools off. SOCRATES: When it comes to speeches, Phaedrus, you are simply divine, altogether astonishing. Of all the speeches produced in your lifetime, I don't think anyone has caused more of them to come into being than you -- whether by speaking yourself or by compelling others to speak in one way or another (I exempt Simmias of Thebes from this; the rest you far outdo) -- and now again you seem to have been the cause of a speech being drawn out of me. PHAEDRUS: That's no declaration of war. But how so, and what speech do you mean? SOCRATES: Just as I was about to cross the river, my good man, that divine sign, the one I'm used to, came to me -- it always holds me back from whatever I'm about to do -- and I thought I heard a voice right there, which won't let me leave before I purify myself, as though I had committed some offense against the divine. Now I am a kind of seer, though not a very accomplished one -- like people who are poor at reading and writing, just barely good enough for my own use. So I already understand clearly what my offense was. The soul, my friend, does have a kind of prophetic power -- something troubled me even a while back as I was giving that speech, and I felt a certain uneasiness, as Ibycus puts it, in case I might be buying honor among men at the price of some fault against the gods. But now I've perceived my offense. PHAEDRUS: What do you mean? SOCRATES: A terrible speech, Phaedrus, terrible -- one you yourself brought here, and one you forced me to deliver. PHAEDRUS: How so? SOCRATES: A foolish speech, and somewhat impious besides. What could be more terrible than that? PHAEDRUS: Nothing, if what you say is true. SOCRATES: Well then -- don't you think Eros is a god, the child of Aphrodite? PHAEDRUS: So it is said, certainly. SOCRATES: Not by Lysias, though, nor by that speech of yours, which was spoken through my mouth after you had bewitched it.

SOCRATES: But if Love is a god, or something divine — and he is — then he can't be anything bad. Yet the two speeches just given treated him as if he were. That's where they went wrong about Love. And there's something else, a kind of silly cleverness in them too: to preen and posture as if they were saying something sound and true, when really they were saying nothing of the kind — hoping only to hoodwink a few simple young men and win a reputation among them. So I, my friend, must purify myself. There's an old rite of purification for those who go wrong in telling stories about the gods — one that Homer never learned, but Stesichorus did. When he lost his sight for slandering Helen, he didn't stay ignorant of the reason the way Homer did. Being a man of the Muses, he understood the cause, and he wrote at once: 'That story is not true — you never sailed in the well-benched ships, you never reached the towers of Troy.' And having composed the whole of what's called his Palinode, his sight came back to him immediately. Now, in this one respect I intend to be wiser than they were: before I suffer anything for slandering Love, I'll try to pay him back with a recantation — bareheaded this time, not veiled in shame as I was before. PHAEDRUS: Nothing you could say, Socrates, would please me more. SOCRATES: And you see, my good Phaedrus, how shameless both speeches were — this one and the one read from the book. Suppose one of us happened to be a person of noble and gentle character, in love with someone of the same sort, or once in love that way — and he heard people saying that lovers turn savage hatreds out of small grievances, and treat their beloveds with jealousy and harm. Don't you think he'd feel he was listening to men raised among sailors, who had never once seen a free and noble love — and that he'd be nowhere near agreeing with what we said against Love? PHAEDRUS: Very likely, Socrates, by Zeus. SOCRATES: Well, out of shame before that man, and out of fear of Love himself, I want to wash the bitter taste of that speech from my ears with something wholesome. And I advise Lysias, too, to write as soon as possible that one should favor a lover over a non-lover, other things being equal. PHAEDRUS: You can be sure it will happen that way. Once you've spoken your praise of the lover, Lysias is bound to be forced by me to write another speech on the same subject. SOCRATES: That I believe — so long as you remain who you are. PHAEDRUS: Speak, then, and don't hold back. SOCRATES: Where's that boy I was speaking to before? He should hear this too, so he doesn't rush ahead and grant his favors to the non-lover before he's heard it. PHAEDRUS: He's right here beside you, always close by, whenever you want him.

SOCRATES: Consider it this way, then, fair boy: the earlier speech was spoken by Phaedrus son of Pythocles, of Myrrhinus, but the one I'm about to give belongs to Stesichorus son of Euphemus, of Himera. It must go like this: that story is not true which says that when a lover is present, one should favor the non-lover instead, on the grounds that the lover is mad and the other sound of mind. If madness were simply and purely an evil, that would be well said — but as it is, the greatest of our blessings come to us through madness, when it's given as a gift from the gods. The prophetess at Delphi and the priestesses at Dodona, when out of their minds, have done Greece a world of good, both for individuals and for the whole city — but sober, they've done little or nothing. And if we spoke of the Sibyl and all the others who, seized by prophetic inspiration, have foretold the future rightly to many people many times, we'd only be stretching out something obvious to everyone. But here's something worth citing as evidence: those who gave things their names long ago didn't consider madness something shameful or disgraceful — otherwise they wouldn't have woven this very word into the name of the noblest of arts, the art that judges the future, calling it the 'maniké,' the mad art. No, they gave it that name believing madness to be a fine thing, when it comes by divine dispensation — it's only the people of today who, tastelessly inserting a 't,' have called it 'mantiké.' Even the inquiry the clear-headed make into the future, using birds and other signs, since it draws on human reasoning to supply understanding and information, they called 'oionoïstiké,' the art of thought — which people nowadays, dressing it up with a long 'o', call 'oionistiké.' So, in the same measure that prophecy, in name and in achievement, is more complete and more honored than augury, in that same measure the ancients testify that god-sent madness is nobler than the self-possession that comes from men. And what's more, when the worst diseases and hardships have beset certain families because of some ancient blood-guilt, madness has appeared among them and spoken in prophecy, finding the relief they needed by taking refuge in prayers and rites to the gods — and through purifications and sacred ceremonies it has rendered the afflicted person free from harm, for the present and for time to come, discovering a release for the one truly mad and possessed from the evils that beset him.

SOCRATES: A third kind is possession and madness from the Muses. Taking hold of a tender, untouched soul, it rouses it and drives it into Bacchic frenzy in songs and the rest of poetry, and by adorning countless deeds of the past, it educates those who come after. But whoever comes to the doors of poetry without this madness from the Muses, persuaded that skill alone will make him a competent poet, will find himself incomplete, and his poetry — the poetry of the sane man — will be eclipsed by the poetry of the mad. So many are the fine achievements of god-given madness I can tell you of, and more besides. So let's not be frightened by this point alone, and let's not let anyone unsettle us by warning that we ought to choose the level-headed friend over the one stirred by passion. Let him show this much more too before he can claim the prize: that love is not sent by the gods for the benefit of lover and beloved. We, for our part, must show the opposite — that this kind of madness is given by the gods for our greatest good fortune. Our proof will be one the clever won't believe, but the wise will. So first we must grasp the truth about the nature of the soul, divine and human both, by looking at what it undergoes and what it does. Here is the starting point of the proof. Every soul is immortal. For whatever is always in motion is immortal, while whatever moves something else and is moved by something else, since it has an end to its motion, has an end to its life as well. Only that which moves itself, since it never abandons itself, never stops moving — and it's the very source and spring of motion for everything else that moves. Now a source has no beginning. For everything that comes to be must come to be from a source, but the source itself must come from nothing — for if a source came to be from something, it would no longer be a source. And since it has no beginning, it must also be indestructible. For if a source were destroyed, it could never come to be again from anything, nor could anything else come to be from it, given that all things must come to be from a source. So the source of motion is that which moves itself, and this can neither be destroyed nor come to be, or else the whole heaven and everything that comes to be would collapse and come to a stop, and would never again have anything to set them in motion and bring them back into being. Now that what moves itself has been shown to be immortal, no one need be ashamed to say that this very thing is the essence and the defining principle of the soul.

SOCRATES: Every body that is moved from outside itself is soulless, but a body moved from within, from itself, is ensouled, since this is the nature of soul. And if that's the case — if nothing else is what moves itself except soul — then soul must, of necessity, be something that never came to be and can never be destroyed. So much, then, for the soul's immortality. As for its form, this must be said: to describe what it actually is would take a long, altogether godlike account, but to say what it resembles is a shorter, human task — so let's put it that way. Let it resemble the combined power of a winged team of horses and their charioteer. Now, the gods have horses and charioteers that are all good, and of good stock, while everyone else's are mixed. In our case, first the driver controls a pair, and of his two horses one is fine and good and of fine stock, while the other is the opposite, bred from the opposite — so that our driving is necessarily a difficult and troublesome business. Now we must try to say how a living being came to be called mortal and how another came to be called immortal. Soul, in its entirety, has charge of all that is soulless, and it patrols the whole heaven, appearing now in one form, now in another. When it is complete and fully winged, it travels the heights and governs the whole world in its course, but a soul that has shed its wings is carried along until it fastens onto something solid, where it settles and takes on an earthly body, which, seeming to move itself by the soul's power, is called, as a whole, a living being — soul and body fastened together — and takes the name 'mortal.' The name 'immortal,' though, isn't backed by any reasoned account — we simply picture a god, without ever having seen one or understood one well enough, as some immortal living thing having both soul and body, joined together for all time. But let these matters stand and be said however is pleasing to god; what we must grasp is the reason souls shed their wings and lose them. It's something like this. It's the nature of a wing's power to lift what is heavy and carry it aloft to where the race of gods dwells, and of all the things connected with the body, the wing has the greatest share in what is divine. And the divine is beautiful, wise, good, and everything of that kind — it's on these that the soul's plumage is nourished and grows, most of all, while by what is ugly and bad and their opposites it wastes away and is destroyed.

SOCRATES: Now Zeus, the great leader in heaven, drives a winged chariot and goes first, setting all things in order and taking care of them. He is followed by an army of gods and lesser spirits, arranged in eleven divisions — for Hestia alone remains behind in the house of the gods, while all the rest, ranked among the number of the twelve, lead their divisions in the order each was assigned. Within the heavens there are many blessed sights and courses to be seen, which the happy race of gods traverses, each of them doing his own work, followed by whoever wishes and is able, for envy has no place in the divine chorus. But whenever they go to feast and banquet, they travel steeply upward to the high vault beneath the heavens, where the chariots of the gods, evenly balanced and easy to guide, move along without effort, but the rest struggle — for the horse that shares in wickedness weighs its chariot down, dragging and pulling toward the earth whichever driver has not trained it well. And there the soul faces its hardest and most extreme struggle. For the souls called immortal, once they reach the summit, go outside and take their stand on the outer rim of heaven, and as they stand there the revolution carries them around, while they gaze upon what lies outside the heavens. Of that region beyond the heavens no poet here below has ever sung, nor will any sing worthily. But it is like this — for one must dare to speak the truth, especially when speaking about truth itself. It is a place occupied by being that truly is, without color, without shape, and untouchable, visible only to the intellect, the soul's pilot, the region about which the class of true knowledge is concerned. Since the mind of god is nourished by intelligence and pure knowledge, as is the mind of every soul that is concerned to receive what is proper to it, such a soul rejoices at last in seeing what truly is, and gazing upon truth it is nourished and thrives, until the revolution carries it around again to the same point. In the course of that circuit it beholds justice itself, it beholds self-control, it beholds knowledge — not the kind that is bound up with coming-into-being, nor the kind that varies from one existing thing we now call real to another, but the knowledge that resides in that which truly is, in the fullest sense. And having in the same way beheld all the other things that truly are, and feasted upon them, it sinks back down again inside the heavens and returns home. And when it has returned, the charioteer brings the horses to a stop at the manger and sets ambrosia before them, and gives them nectar to drink besides.

SOCRATES: That, then, is the life of the gods. As for the other souls, one follows a god most closely and comes to resemble it, and so lifts the head of its charioteer up into the outer place, and is carried around with the revolution, though buffeted by its horses and barely able to see the things that truly are. Another rises at one moment and sinks at another, and because its horses fight it, it sees some things and misses others. And all the rest, straining to keep up with what is above but unable to manage it, are swept along beneath the rim, trampling and colliding with one another as each tries to get ahead of the next. So there is turmoil and rivalry and the sweat of utmost effort, in which many souls are lamed through the incompetence of their drivers, and many have feathers broken in the crush; and all of them, after great toil, go away without having achieved the sight of what truly is, and once they go away they feed on the food of mere opinion. The reason for this great eagerness to see where the plain of truth lies is that the pasture suited to the best part of the soul comes from that meadow, and it is on this that the wing's nature, which lifts the soul, is nourished. And this is a decree of Necessity: whatever soul becomes a follower of a god and catches sight of any of the truths, it remains free from harm until the next circuit, and if it can always do this, it always remains unhurt. But when a soul fails to keep up and does not see, and through some misfortune becomes filled with forgetfulness and wrongdoing and grows heavy, and being weighted down it sheds its feathers and falls to earth, then it is the law that this soul shall not, in its first birth, be planted into any animal nature, but the one that saw the most shall go into the seed of a man who will become a lover of wisdom, or a lover of beauty, or someone devoted to the Muses and to love; the second, into a lawful king or a warlike and commanding man; the third, into a statesman or a household manager or a man of business; the fourth, into someone devoted to hard exertion, a trainer of the body or a healer of it; the fifth will have the life of a prophet or someone connected with mystery rites; to the sixth a poet or some other imitative artist will be fitting; the seventh, a craftsman or a farmer; the eighth, a sophist or a flatterer of crowds; the ninth, a tyrant.

SOCRATES: In all of these, whoever lives justly gets a better lot afterward, and whoever lives unjustly, a worse one. For no soul returns to the place from which it came in less than ten thousand years — since it does not regrow its wings before that much time has passed — except the soul of one who has pursued wisdom without deceit, or has loved a boy together with the pursuit of wisdom; these souls, if they choose this life three times running, at the third thousand-year cycle grow their wings and depart in the three-thousandth year. But the rest, when they finish their first life, come to judgment, and once judged, some go to places of punishment beneath the earth and pay the penalty there, while others are lifted by Justice to some place in the heavens and live in a manner worthy of the life they led in human form. At the thousandth year both groups arrive to draw lots and choose their second life, and each chooses whichever it wishes; there a human soul may even pass into the life of a beast, and one who was once a man may return from a beast into a man again. For a soul that has never seen the truth cannot take on this human shape; a human being must grasp what is spoken of according to its form, moving from many perceptions and gathering them by reasoning into one — and this process is a recollection of those things our soul once saw when it journeyed with a god, looking down on the things we now say exist and rising up into what truly is. For this reason the mind of the philosopher alone rightly grows wings, since so far as it can it always keeps its memory fixed on those things, on which fixing his attention makes a god divine. A man who makes right use of such reminders, forever being initiated into perfect mysteries, alone becomes truly perfect; but because he stands apart from human concerns and turns toward the divine, the many admonish him as though he were out of his mind, not realizing that he is possessed by a god. This, then, is the whole point of everything said here about the fourth kind of madness — that which comes upon someone who, seeing beauty here on earth, is reminded of true beauty, and grows wings and struggles to fly upward but cannot, and like a bird gazes upward while neglecting the things below, and so is thought to be afflicted with madness. The point is that of all forms of divine possession this one is the best and comes from the best sources, both for the one who has it and for the one who shares in it, and that a person touched by this madness is called a lover of beauty.

SOCRATES: For as has been said, every human soul has by its nature beheld the things that are, or it would never have come into this living creature; but it is not easy for every soul to recall those things from what it perceives here — not for those that had only a brief glimpse then, nor for those that, once fallen here, had the misfortune of being turned toward wrongdoing through certain associations, so that they hold onto forgetfulness of the sacred things they saw then. Few are left in whom memory is present in sufficient strength; and these, whenever they see some likeness of the things above, are struck with amazement and no longer master of themselves, though they do not understand what is happening to them, because they cannot perceive it clearly enough. Now in the likenesses found here there is no brightness at all of justice or self-control or the other things honored by souls; instead, through dim instruments and with difficulty, only a few, approaching the images, make out the true nature of what is imaged. But beauty was radiant to see back then, when we, following in the blessed company — we with Zeus, others with some other god — beheld the blessed vision and sight and were initiated into that rite which is right to call the most blessed of all, which we celebrated while whole ourselves and untouched by the evils awaiting us in time to come, gazing in pure light upon whole, simple, unshakable, and blissful visions, being ourselves pure and unmarked by this thing we now carry around and call a body, shackled to it the way an oyster is shackled to its shell. Let this much be granted to memory, for whose sake, out of longing for those things, I have now spoken at some length. But concerning beauty — as we said, it shone among those things there, and coming here we have grasped it shining most clearly through the clearest of our senses. For sight is the sharpest of the perceptions that come to us through the body, though wisdom is not seen by it — for it would arouse terrible longings if it presented so clear an image of itself to sight — nor is any other of the lovable things seen by it; but beauty alone has been granted this fate, to be the most visible and the most lovely.

SOCRATES: Now the man who is not newly initiated, or who has become corrupted, does not move quickly from here to there, toward beauty itself, when he looks at what bears its name here; so he feels no reverence as he gazes at it, but gives himself over to pleasure and tries, animal-like, to mount and beget offspring, and consorting with wanton excess he feels no fear or shame in pursuing pleasure against nature. But the one freshly initiated, who saw much back then, when he sees a godlike face that reflects beauty well, or some form of body, first shudders, and something of the old fear comes over him; then, gazing at it, he reveres it as a god, and if he were not afraid of seeming utterly mad, he would sacrifice to his beloved as to a sacred image and a god. And once he has seen him, as if from the shuddering there comes a change, and sweat and an unfamiliar heat take hold of him; for having received through his eyes the emanation of beauty, he grew warm, and by this the wing's nature is watered. And once warmed, the parts around the growth of the wing, which for a long time had been closed up by hardness and prevented from sprouting, begin to melt, and as nourishment flows in, the stalk of the wing swells and rushes to grow from the root beneath the whole form of the soul — for the whole soul was once winged. In this state, then, the whole soul seethes and throbs, and just as children cutting teeth feel an itching and irritation around the gums when the teeth are just coming in, so the soul of one beginning to grow wings suffers the same thing — it seethes and is irritated and tickled as it grows its feathers. So when it gazes at the beauty of the boy and receives particles flowing to it from there — for this reason they are called longing — it is watered and warmed by this longing, and its pain eases and it rejoices. But when it is apart from him and grows parched, the mouths of the passages through which the wing pushes close up as they dry, shutting in the sprouting of the wing, and this, locked inside together with the longing, throbbing like a pulse, presses against its own outlet, so that the whole soul, stung all around, is maddened with pain, yet, holding the memory of beauty, it rejoices. And from the mixture of these two it is thrown into distress by the strangeness of its condition, and being at a loss it rages, and in its madness it can neither sleep at night nor stay still by day, but runs wherever it thinks it may see the one who holds its beauty; and once it sees him and lets the stream of longing pour in, it releases what had been blocked up, and getting relief from the stinging and the pangs, it reaps, for the moment, this sweetest of pleasures.

SOCRATES: For this reason it is not willingly left behind, and it values no one more than the beautiful one, but forgets mothers and brothers and all its companions, and thinks nothing of losing its property through neglect, and despising all the customs and proprieties in which it once took pride, it is ready to be a slave and to sleep wherever it is allowed, as near as possible to the object of its longing; for besides revering the one who possesses the beauty, it has found in him the only healer of its greatest sufferings. This condition, fair boy, to whom my speech is addressed, men call love, but if you hear what the gods call it, you will likely laugh because of your youth. Some of the descendants of Homer, I believe, quote two lines about love from the hidden verses, one of which is quite outrageous and not very well metered; they sing them like this: 'Him mortals call the winged one, Love, but the immortals call him Feather-grower, because of the necessity to grow feathers.' One may believe this or not; but the cause and the experience of lovers is, at any rate, just what has been described. Now of those who follow Zeus, the one who is caught bears the burden of the name of wings more steadily; but those who served Ares and moved about in his train, when they are captured by Love and think themselves wronged in some way by their beloved, become murderous and ready to sacrifice both themselves and the boy. And so it goes for each, according to the god whose chorus he belonged to: he lives, so far as he can, honoring and imitating that god, as long as he remains uncorrupted and is living out his first life here, and in this manner he behaves and deals with both his beloveds and everyone else. So each person chooses his love among the beautiful according to his own character, and, treating that one as though he were the god himself, fashions and adorns him for himself like a sacred image, meaning to honor and celebrate him. Those who belong to Zeus, then, seek a soul that is like Zeus in the one they love; so they look to see whether he is naturally philosophical and fit to lead, and when they find such a one and fall in love with him, they do everything they can to make him become so.

SOCRATES: So if such people haven't already been set on this course before, they take it up now, learning wherever they can and pursuing it on their own, and by tracking the nature of their own god within themselves they succeed, because they've been forced to keep their gaze fixed intently on the god; and by holding fast to him in memory, possessed as they are, they take on his habits and practices, so far as it's possible for a human being to share in a god. They credit their beloved for this, and love him all the more, and if they draw, as the Bacchic women do, from Zeus, then it is on the soul of their beloved that they pour it, making him as much like their own god as they can. Those who followed in Hera's train look for someone kingly, and once they find him do all the same things for him. And so with the followers of Apollo, and of each god in turn: going along the path of their own god, they look for a boy who is by nature suited to be his own, and once they've gotten hold of him, they imitate the god themselves, and they persuade and train their beloved, drawing him as far as each of them can toward that god's practice and character - not out of jealousy or mean-spirited ill will toward the boy, but trying with everything they have to bring him into the fullest possible likeness to themselves and to the god they honor. Such is the eagerness, and such the rite, of those who truly love, if they manage to bring off what they're eager for in the way I've described - it becomes something beautiful and blessed, coming from the friend who has gone mad through love to the boy he loves, if that boy is won over. And a boy is won over in something like the following way. Just as at the start of this story we divided each soul into three - two forms shaped like horses, and a third the form of a charioteer - let that stand for us still. Now of the horses, we say, one is good and the other is not; but we didn't spell out what the goodness of the good one is, or the badness of the bad one, and that must be said now. The one standing on the finer side is upright and clean-limbed, high-necked, somewhat hook-nosed, white to look at, black-eyed, a lover of honor joined with restraint and a sense of shame, a companion of true opinion, needing no whip, guided by command and reason alone. The other is crooked, a great hulking thing put together any old way, thick-necked, short-necked, snub-faced, black-skinned, gray-eyed, bloodshot, a companion of wanton violence and boastfulness, shaggy around the ears, deaf, barely yielding even to whip and spur.

SOCRATES: Now when the charioteer looks at the face that kindles desire, and warms his whole soul through with the sensation, and is filled with the tingling and the goading of longing, the horse that is obedient to the charioteer - constrained then as always by a sense of shame - holds himself back from lunging at the boy. But the other one no longer minds the charioteer's goad or whip at all; he bolts and plunges forward, and by giving every kind of trouble to his yoke-mate and to the charioteer, he forces them to go toward the boy and to bring up the delights of sex. At first the other two resist and balk, indignant at being forced into something so terrible and lawless; but in the end, when there's no limit to the trouble, they go along, led on, giving in and agreeing to do what they're told. And so they come close to him and see the beloved's face flashing before them. When the charioteer sees it, his memory is carried back to the true nature of beauty, and he sees it again standing together with restraint on its holy pedestal; and at the sight he is struck with fear and falls back in reverence, and at the same moment he's forced to haul back so hard on the reins that he throws both horses onto their haunches, the one willingly, since he wasn't resisting, but the violent one very much against his will. And once they've drawn back a little further, the one horse drenches his whole soul in sweat from shame and astonishment, while the other, once the pain has eased that he got from the bit and the fall, catches his breath with difficulty and then bursts out in anger, cursing the charioteer and his yoke-mate at length as cowards and weaklings who deserted their post and broke their word; and forcing them again, though they're unwilling to come near, he only grudgingly gives way when they beg him to put it off to another time. When the agreed time comes, and they pretend to have forgotten, he reminds them, forcing them, neighing, dragging them, and makes them come near the boy again with the same proposal; and once they're close, he lowers his head, stretches out his tail, takes the bit between his teeth, and hauls shamelessly. But the charioteer, gripped by the very same feeling now even more strongly, as though thrown back from a starting-gate, hauls back the bit even more violently from between the teeth of the violent horse, bloodying his slandering tongue and his jaws, and forcing his legs and haunches down to the ground, delivers him over to pain.

SOCRATES: And when the wicked horse suffers the same thing again and again until he gives up his violence, he's humbled at last and follows the charioteer's guidance, and when he sees the beautiful boy he's undone with fear - so that from then on it happens that the lover's soul follows the boy in reverence and awe. So then, since the boy is being courted with every kind of attention, as though he were the equal of a god, by someone who isn't just putting on a show of love but truly feels it, and since the boy himself is by nature disposed to be a friend to the one courting him - even if before this he had been talked against by companions or others who told him it was shameful to keep close company with a lover, and because of that he had been pushing the lover away - as time goes on, his age and what has to happen bring him around to accepting the man's company. For it is never fated that bad should be friend to bad, nor that good should fail to be friend to good. And once he has accepted him, and taken in his conversation and company, the lover's goodwill, now felt at close range, strikes the beloved with wonder, as he comes to realize that all his other friends and relations together don't offer him any share of friendship to match this god-inspired friend. And when the lover keeps doing this over time, and draws close to him, touching him in the wrestling grounds and in other kinds of company, then at last the spring of that stream which Zeus, when he loved Ganymede, named longing, flows in abundance toward the lover; and part of it sinks into him, and part, when he is filled to overflowing, flows back out; and just as a breath of air or an echo bounces back off something smooth and solid to the place it started from, so the stream of beauty travels back into the beautiful boy through his eyes, by the path nature has made for it to reach the soul; and arriving there and setting the boy's wings astir, it waters the passages of the feathers and starts them growing, and fills the beloved's soul in turn with love. So he is in love, but with what, he's at a loss; he doesn't know what has happened to him, and can't explain it - it's as if he had caught an eye infection from someone else, but he can't say what caused it; he doesn't realize that he's looking at himself, as in a mirror, in the person of his lover. And when the lover is present, his pain eases in exactly the same way as the lover's does; and when he's absent, in just the same way he longs and is longed for, holding an image of love, love in return, though he calls it, and thinks it, not love but friendship. His desire is much like the lover's, though weaker - to see him, to touch him, to kiss him, to lie down beside him; and, as one would expect, he soon does these things.

SOCRATES: So then in their lying together, the lover's unruly horse has plenty to say to the charioteer, and thinks he deserves some small enjoyment in return for all his trouble; but the beloved's horse has nothing to say - swollen with feeling and at a loss, he throws his arms around the lover and kisses him, welcoming him as someone truly good to him, and when they lie down together he's the sort who wouldn't refuse to grant the lover his own share of the favor, if he asked for it; but his yoke-mate, together with the charioteer, resists this with shame and reasoned argument. So if the better parts of their minds win out and lead them into an ordered way of life given over to philosophy, they pass their days here in blessing and harmony, masters of themselves and well-ordered, having enslaved the part that bred vice in the soul and set free the part that bred virtue; and when they die, having grown wings and become light, they have won one of the three truly Olympic contests - and neither human self-control nor divine madness can provide a person with any greater good than this. But if they instead take up a coarser way of life, without philosophy, but caught up in love of honor, then perhaps sometime, in drink or through some other carelessness, their two unruly draft-horses may catch their souls off guard, bring them together, and choose and carry out that course which is counted blessed by the many; and once they've done it, they go on doing it from then on, though rarely, since it isn't something their whole mind has approved. These two, then, are also friends, though less so than the others, both while their love lasts and after it's over, believing they've given and received from each other the greatest of pledges, which it would be wrong ever to break by falling into enmity. And at the end, though still wingless when they leave the body, they have set out on the path to growing wings, so that they carry off no small prize from their erotic madness; for it's not lawful for those who have already begun the journey beneath the sky to go down into darkness and the road under the earth, but rather, living a bright life, they journey on together in happiness, and when the time comes, for love's sake, become winged together. These gifts, so many and so godlike, my boy, will be given you by friendship with a lover; whereas closeness with one who does not love you, mixed as it is with mortal moderation, managing things in a mortal and tight-fisted way, breeding in the soul it loves the stinginess that the crowd praises as virtue, will leave that soul tumbling around the earth and beneath it, mindless, for nine thousand years.

SOCRATES: This, dear Love, is the recantation I offer and pay back to you, as beautiful and as good as I could manage, forced in particular, among other things, to use somewhat poetic language for Phaedrus's sake. Forgive me for what I said before, and accept this with favor; be kind and gracious, and don't take away or maim the art of love you gave me out of anger, but grant that I be honored even more than now among the beautiful. And if anything Phaedrus and I said earlier offended you, blame Lysias, the father of that speech, and make him stop such talk, and turn him toward philosophy, as his brother Polemarchus has turned, so that this lover of his may no longer waver both ways as he does now, but set his life simply toward love conducted with philosophical discourse. PHAEDRUS: I join you in that prayer, Socrates, if it's better for us that these things come about. But I've been marveling at your speech all this while, at how much finer a piece of work you've made it than the first one - so much so that I worry Lysias may come off looking poor, if he's even willing to set another speech up against it. In fact, my astonishing friend, someone among the politicians was recently attacking him for this very thing, and all through his abuse kept calling him a speechwriter. So perhaps out of sheer pride he might just give up writing altogether. SOCRATES: That's a ridiculous notion you're voicing, young man, and you're quite wrong about your friend, if you really think he's that easily rattled. Perhaps you also think the man who was abusing him meant what he was saying. PHAEDRUS: That's how it looked, Socrates; and you yourself surely know that the most powerful and dignified men in our cities are ashamed to write speeches and leave writings of their own behind, for fear of the reputation it might earn them with posterity - being called sophists. SOCRATES: You've forgotten, Phaedrus, the sweet bend in the river - it got that name from the long bend in the Nile. And along with that bend, you've also forgotten that it's precisely the politicians who think the most of themselves who are most in love with writing speeches and leaving writings behind; so much so that whenever they write a speech, they're so fond of their admirers that they add at the head of it, in each case, the names of whoever happens to be praising them. PHAEDRUS: What do you mean by that? I don't follow.

SOCRATES: Don't you notice that at the start of any piece written by a political man, the one who's praised is listed first? PHAEDRUS: How do you mean? SOCRATES: Something like: "It seemed good to the council," or "to the assembly," or "to both, and so-and-so proposed it" — the writer naming himself, very solemnly, and giving himself a compliment — and only then, after that, does he go on to display his own wisdom to his admirers, sometimes turning out quite a long piece of writing. Does that strike you as anything other than a speech that's been written down? PHAEDRUS: No, it doesn't strike me that way at all. SOCRATES: So then, if the measure holds up, the poet goes off from the theater delighted; but if it gets struck out and he ends up with no share in authorship, no standing as a writer worth reading, he's in mourning, and so are his friends. PHAEDRUS: Very much so. SOCRATES: Clearly not because they look down on the craft, but because they're in awe of it. PHAEDRUS: Certainly. SOCRATES: And what about this: when a speaker or a king becomes capable enough that, gaining the power of a Lycurgus or a Solon or a Darius, he becomes an immortal author in his city — doesn't he consider himself equal to a god, even while still alive, and don't those who come after him think the very same thing about him, gazing at what he's written? PHAEDRUS: Very much so. SOCRATES: Do you suppose, then, that any such man, however ill-disposed toward Lysias, would reproach him for the mere fact that he writes speeches? PHAEDRUS: That wouldn't be reasonable, given what you're saying — he'd be reproaching his own ambition, it seems. SOCRATES: So this much, at least, is plain to everyone: writing speeches is not itself shameful. PHAEDRUS: Of course not. SOCRATES: What's shameful, I think, is something else already — not speaking and writing well, but doing it shamefully and badly. PHAEDRUS: Clearly. SOCRATES: Then what is the manner of writing well as opposed to badly? Do we need, Phaedrus, to put Lysias to the test on this, and anyone else who has ever written or will write anything, whether a political piece or a private one, in verse as a poet or without verse as an ordinary person? PHAEDRUS: You ask whether we need to? What, I ask you, would anyone live for, so to speak, if not for pleasures of just this sort? Certainly not for those pleasures that require pain beforehand, or no pleasure at all — which is the case with nearly all the pleasures of the body, and that's exactly why they're rightly called slavish.

SOCRATES: We have plenty of leisure, it seems — and at the same time, the cicadas up over our heads, singing away in this heat and talking to each other, seem to me to be watching us too. If they saw the two of us, like most people at midday, not conversing but dozing, lulled by them out of laziness of mind, they'd have every right to laugh at us, thinking some slaves had come to their resting-place and were sleeping around the spring at noon like sheep. But if they see us conversing, sailing right past them unenchanted like the Sirens, they might just be pleased enough to grant us the gift they have to give humans from the gods. PHAEDRUS: And what gift is that? I confess I've never heard of it. SOCRATES: It really doesn't suit a lover of the Muses to be unacquainted with a thing like that. The story goes that these creatures were once human beings, from the time before the Muses existed. When the Muses came to be and song appeared, some of the people of that time were so overwhelmed with pleasure that, singing, they neglected food and drink and died without even noticing it. From them the race of cicadas was born afterward, having received this gift from the Muses: that they need no nourishment once they come into being, but sing straight through, without food or drink, until they die, and after that go to the Muses and report which of us here honors which of them. To Terpsichore they report those who have honored her in the dances, and make them more beloved to her; to Erato, those honored in matters of love, and so on for each of the others, according to the kind of honor each receives. And to the eldest, Calliope, and to Urania next after her, they report those who spend their lives in philosophy and honor the music that belongs to those two — the Muses who, more than any of the others, concern themselves with the heavens and with discourse, both divine and human, and who send forth the most beautiful voice of all. So for many reasons we ought to be talking rather than sleeping at midday. PHAEDRUS: Yes, we certainly ought to be talking. SOCRATES: Then let's look into what we set out just now to examine — in what way speaking and writing a speech is done well, and in what way it isn't. PHAEDRUS: Clearly. SOCRATES: Isn't it necessary, then, for anything that's going to be spoken well and rightly, that the mind of the speaker first know the truth about whatever he's going to speak about?

PHAEDRUS: Here's what I've heard about that, my dear Socrates: that the man who's going to be a speaker doesn't need to learn what's truly just, only what will seem so to the crowd who'll be sitting in judgment; nor what's really good or fine, only what will seem so — since it's from these, not from truth, that persuasion comes. SOCRATES: Well, Phaedrus, a saying shouldn't just be tossed aside because wise men have said it — one should look to see whether there's something in it. And this one in particular shouldn't be let go without examination. PHAEDRUS: You're right. SOCRATES: Let's look at it this way, then. PHAEDRUS: How? SOCRATES: Suppose I tried to persuade you to acquire a horse to fend off enemies, and neither of us knew what a horse was, but I happened to know this much about you — that Phaedrus thinks a horse is whichever of the tame animals has the biggest ears — PHAEDRUS: That would be ridiculous, Socrates. SOCRATES: Not yet it wouldn't. But suppose I then tried in earnest to persuade you, composing a speech in praise of the donkey, calling it a horse, and saying that the beast is worth everything — worth keeping at home and taking on campaign, useful for fighting off the enemy, and able besides to carry your baggage and do plenty of other useful things. PHAEDRUS: Now that would be completely ridiculous. SOCRATES: Well, isn't it better to be a ridiculous friend than a clever and dangerous enemy? PHAEDRUS: It seems so. SOCRATES: So when the speechmaker, not knowing what's good and what's bad, takes hold of a city in the same condition and persuades it — not praising a donkey's shadow as if it were a horse, but praising something bad as if it were good — having studied the crowd's opinions and persuaded them to do bad things instead of good ones, what kind of harvest do you think rhetoric will reap afterward from the seeds it's sown? PHAEDRUS: Nothing very decent. SOCRATES: But then, my good man, haven't we been too rough on the art of speaking, more than it deserves? It might well answer us: what on earth are you two talking nonsense about? I don't force anyone who's ignorant of the truth to learn to speak — rather, if my advice is worth anything, one should acquire the truth first and only then take me up. What I claim, and claim boldly, is only this — that without me, the man who knows the facts will be no better able to persuade people through his craft. PHAEDRUS: Well, wouldn't she be right to say that? SOCRATES: I agree — if the arguments that come at her bear witness that she really is a craft. But I seem to hear certain arguments approaching, testifying against her, saying that she's lying and that this isn't a craft at all, but a knack with no craft in it. As the Spartan says, there neither is nor ever will be a genuine craft of speaking that isn't grounded in truth.

PHAEDRUS: We need those arguments, Socrates — bring them here and put them to the test, see what exactly they say and how. SOCRATES: Come forward then, noble creatures, and persuade Phaedrus here, the father of beautiful children, that unless he philosophizes properly, he'll never be capable of speaking properly about anything either. Let Phaedrus answer. PHAEDRUS: Ask away. SOCRATES: Well then — isn't rhetoric, taken as a whole, a kind of leading of souls by means of words, not only in law courts and other public gatherings, but in private settings too, the same art applying to small matters as to great, and no more honorable when it's rightly used on serious matters than on trivial ones? Or is that not how you've heard it described? PHAEDRUS: No, by Zeus, not at all like that — it's mostly said and written, as a craft, in connection with lawsuits, and it's also said to apply to public speaking in the assembly; I haven't heard it extends further than that. SOCRATES: But surely you've heard of the arts of speaking that Nestor and Odysseus composed, in their spare time at Troy — have you really never heard of Palamedes'? PHAEDRUS: No, and by Zeus, I haven't even heard of Nestor's — unless you're turning Gorgias into some kind of Nestor, or making Thrasymachus and Theodorus into an Odysseus. SOCRATES: Perhaps. But let's leave those men aside — tell me instead, what do opposing parties in the courts do? Don't they argue against each other? Or what shall we call it? PHAEDRUS: Exactly that. SOCRATES: About what's just and unjust? PHAEDRUS: Yes. SOCRATES: So won't the man who does this by craft make the same thing appear just to the same people at one time, and unjust whenever he wishes? PHAEDRUS: Certainly. SOCRATES: And in a speech to the assembly, make the city think the same things good at one time and, at another, just the opposite? PHAEDRUS: That's so. SOCRATES: And don't we know that the Eleatic Palamedes speaks by such craft, so that the same things appear to his listeners as both like and unlike, both one and many, both at rest and in motion? PHAEDRUS: Very much so. SOCRATES: So this art of contradiction isn't confined only to the courts and public assemblies — it applies, it seems, to everything that's said. It's one single craft, if it exists at all, by which someone will be able to make everything resemble everything else, among the things that admit of such resemblance and can be compared, and to bring into the light anyone else who makes such resemblances but conceals it. PHAEDRUS: What exactly do you mean by that? SOCRATES: I think it will become clear if we look at it this way. Is deception more likely to occur among things that differ a great deal, or things that differ only a little?

PHAEDRUS: Among things that differ only a little. SOCRATES: And moving step by step, in small shifts, you'll get to the opposite of where you started without being noticed, more easily than if you move in one big leap. PHAEDRUS: How could it be otherwise? SOCRATES: Then anyone who intends to deceive someone else, while not being deceived himself, needs to know precisely the resemblances and differences among the things that exist. PHAEDRUS: Yes, that's necessary. SOCRATES: But will he really be capable of that, not knowing the truth about each thing, distinguishing the small and large resemblance of what he doesn't know among other things he also doesn't know? PHAEDRUS: Impossible. SOCRATES: So it's clear that for those who hold opinions at odds with the facts and are deceived, this condition has crept in through certain resemblances. PHAEDRUS: That's certainly how it happens. SOCRATES: Is there any way, then, that someone will become skilled at shifting people's minds bit by bit through resemblances, leading them each time away from what's true toward its opposite — or himself escaping this — without having first come to know what each of the things that exist actually is? PHAEDRUS: Never. SOCRATES: So the man who doesn't know the truth, my friend, but has only hunted down opinions, will produce, it seems, some ridiculous and craftless version of the art of speaking. PHAEDRUS: That's likely. SOCRATES: Would you like us, then, to look in the speech of Lysias that you're carrying, and in the ones we ourselves spoke, for some example of what we're calling craftless and what's genuinely crafted? PHAEDRUS: Yes, more than anything — since as it is we're speaking rather bare, without enough examples in hand. SOCRATES: And in fact, by some good luck, it seems, the two speeches that were given do contain an example of just how someone who knows the truth might lead his listeners along, playfully, through his words. And I myself, Phaedrus, put this down to the local gods — perhaps even the prophets of the Muses, the singers over our heads, have breathed this gift into us; for I certainly have no share myself in any craft of speaking. PHAEDRUS: Let it be as you say — just show me what you mean. SOCRATES: Come now, read me the beginning of Lysias's speech. PHAEDRUS: "You know my situation, and you've heard how I think it will benefit us if this happens. I ask not to be denied what I'm requesting simply because I don't happen to be in love with you. Lovers change their minds once—" SOCRATES: Stop there. Now we should say where exactly this man goes wrong and makes his speech craftless — right?

PHAEDRUS: Yes. SOCRATES: Then isn't this much obvious to everyone: that on some matters of this kind we're of one mind, and on others we're at war with each other? PHAEDRUS: I think I follow what you mean, but say it more plainly. SOCRATES: When someone says the word "iron" or "silver," don't we all think of the same thing? PHAEDRUS: Certainly. SOCRATES: But what about when someone says "just" or "good"? Don't we scatter in different directions and disagree with each other, and even with ourselves? PHAEDRUS: Very much so. SOCRATES: So on some things we're in tune, and on others not. PHAEDRUS: That's right. SOCRATES: Then in which of the two are we more easily deceived, and in which does rhetoric have greater power? PHAEDRUS: Clearly in the matters where we wander. SOCRATES: So anyone who means to take up the art of rhetoric must first have marked out these two kinds systematically, and grasped some defining feature of each — the kind in which the multitude is bound to wander, and the kind in which it isn't. PHAEDRUS: That would certainly be a fine thing to have understood, Socrates, whoever grasps it. SOCRATES: And next, I think, when faced with a particular case, he mustn't miss it but must sharply perceive which of the two kinds whatever he's about to speak of belongs to. PHAEDRUS: Of course. SOCRATES: Well then — shall we say that love belongs among the disputed matters, or the undisputed ones? PHAEDRUS: Among the disputed, surely — or do you think you'd have been free to say what you just said about it, that it's harmful to the beloved and to the lover, and then turn around and say it's actually the greatest of goods? SOCRATES: Very well put. But tell me this too — because, what with my being possessed, I don't quite remember — did I define love at the start of my speech? PHAEDRUS: Yes, by Zeus, most emphatically. SOCRATES: My, how much more skilled at speaking you make the Nymphs of Achelous and Pan the son of Hermes out to be than Lysias son of Cephalus! Or am I wrong, and Lysias too, at the start of his speech on love, forced us to suppose love was some one definite thing — whatever he wanted it to be — and then, having settled on that, worked out the whole rest of his speech accordingly? Shall we read his opening again? PHAEDRUS: If you like — though what you're looking for isn't there. SOCRATES: Read it, so I can hear it from him directly.

PHAEDRUS: "You know how things stand with me, and you've heard how I think it would benefit us if this came about. I claim I shouldn't be denied what I'm asking for simply because I don't happen to be in love with you. For men who are in love regret the favors they've done once their desire has run its course — " SOCRATES: Well, he certainly seems far from doing what we're after — he doesn't even swim from the beginning, but from the end, on his back, working backward through the speech, starting from the point where a lover, already finished with the affair, would be addressing his boy. Or did I say nothing, Phaedrus, dear heart? PHAEDRUS: Well, Socrates, it is at least an ending, what he's making his speech about. SOCRATES: And the rest? Don't the parts of the speech seem tossed together at random? Does the second point seem to need to come second by some necessity, or any of the other things said? To me — though I know nothing about it — it seemed that the writer said whatever came to him next without much shame. But do you know of some rule of composition by which he set these points down one after another in this order? PHAEDRUS: You flatter me, thinking I'm capable of seeing through his work that precisely. SOCRATES: But this much, I think, you would grant: that every speech ought to be put together like a living creature, with a body of its own, so that it's neither headless nor footless, but has a middle and extremities, composed so as to fit each other and the whole. PHAEDRUS: How could it be otherwise? SOCRATES: Consider, then, whether your friend's speech is like that or not, and you'll find it no different from the epitaph some say is inscribed for Midas the Phrygian. PHAEDRUS: Which one is that, and what's peculiar about it? SOCRATES: It goes like this: "A bronze maiden am I, and I lie upon Midas's tomb. As long as water flows and tall trees grow green, remaining right here on this much-wept grave, I will announce to passersby that Midas lies buried here." You notice, I imagine, that it makes no difference which line is said first or last. PHAEDRUS: You're mocking our speech, Socrates. SOCRATES: Well then, so you won't be annoyed, let's leave that one aside — though I think it holds plenty of examples one could profitably look to, if one tried not to imitate them too closely — and let's turn to the other speeches. There was something in them, I think, worth noticing for anyone who wants to study speeches.

PHAEDRUS: What exactly do you mean? SOCRATES: The two were opposites, in a way: one argued that favor should be granted to the lover, the other that it should go to the one who isn't in love. PHAEDRUS: And very manfully too. SOCRATES: I thought you'd say the true word — madly. That's exactly what I was after. We said, didn't we, that love is a kind of madness? PHAEDRUS: Yes. SOCRATES: And there are two kinds of madness — one arising from human sickness, the other from a divine disruption of our ordinary habits. PHAEDRUS: Quite so. SOCRATES: And of the divine kind we distinguished four parts belonging to four gods — prophetic inspiration from Apollo, ritual madness from Dionysus, poetic madness from the Muses, and a fourth from Aphrodite and Love — and we said this erotic madness was the best of all. And somehow, likening the experience of love to something — perhaps touching on some truth, though perhaps carried off in another direction too — we mixed together a speech not altogether unpersuasive, and offered up a kind of mythic hymn, in measured and reverent terms, to our mutual master, Love, guardian of beautiful boys, Phaedrus. PHAEDRUS: And it was no unpleasant thing for me to hear, either. SOCRATES: Then let's take this point up right away: how the speech managed to pass from blame to praise. PHAEDRUS: What exactly do you mean by that? SOCRATES: To me it looks as if the rest was really said in play — but some of what was said by chance touches on two forms, and if one could grasp their power by art, that wouldn't be without charm. PHAEDRUS: Which forms do you mean? SOCRATES: The ability to take in at a single view, and bring under one form, things that are scattered in many places, so that by defining each thing one can make clear whatever one wishes to teach about at any given time — just as, a moment ago, in speaking of Love, whether well or badly said, our speech was at least able to say something clear and consistent with itself because of this. PHAEDRUS: And what is the other form you mean, Socrates?

SOCRATES: The ability, again, to cut things up by forms, along their natural joints, and not to try to break any part, in the manner of a bad butcher — but rather, just as our two speeches took, in common, one single form for the mindless side of the soul, and just as, out of one body, a pair of limbs naturally grow that share a name — some called left, some called right — so too our two speeches treated derangement as one form naturally present in us; one speech, cutting off the portion on the left, went on cutting it further until it found within it a kind of love rightly called "left-handed," and denounced it, quite justly; while the other led us into the region on the right side of madness, and, discovering a love that shares its name with the first but is in fact divine, held it out and praised it as the cause of the greatest goods for us. PHAEDRUS: Very true. SOCRATES: Now I myself, Phaedrus, am a lover of these divisions and collections, so that I may be able to speak and to think; and if I judge anyone else capable of seeing what is naturally one and many, that man I pursue, "following in his footsteps as if he were a god." And whether those who can do this are rightly called by this name or not, god knows — but up to now I've been calling them dialecticians. Now tell me what one ought to call what you've learned from Lysias and me — or is this that very thing, the art of speeches, which Thrasymachus and the rest use to become clever speakers themselves, and to make others so, provided they're willing to bring gifts as to kings? PHAEDRUS: Kingly men, certainly, but hardly knowledgeable about what you're asking. But this form you seem to me right to call dialectic; the rhetorical form, though, still seems to escape us. SOCRATES: What do you mean? Surely there could be something fine that, though set apart from these, is still grasped by art? At any rate neither of us should dismiss it without honor — we should say what indeed remains of rhetoric. PHAEDRUS: Oh, plenty remains, Socrates, at least in what's written in the handbooks on the art of speaking. SOCRATES: And you're right to remind me. First, I believe, there's the preamble — how it should be spoken at the beginning of a speech. That's what you mean, isn't it — these fine points of the art? PHAEDRUS: Yes. SOCRATES: Second, the narration, and testimony to back it up; third, proofs; fourth, probabilities; and then confirmation and further confirmation, I believe, is what the best word-craftsman of Byzantium calls them. PHAEDRUS: You mean the worthy Theodorus?

SOCRATES: Of course. And refutation and counter-refutation, how they should be handled in accusation and defense. And shall we not bring in the excellent Evenus of Paros, who first discovered indirect suggestion and indirect praise — some say he also composes indirect blame in verse, as an aid to memory, for he's a clever man? Shall we let Tisias and Gorgias sleep, who saw that probabilities deserve more honor than truths, who make small things appear great and great things small by the force of language, who present new things in an old style and old things in a new one, and who invented both compression of speech and boundless length on any subject? Prodicus laughed once when he heard me say this, and claimed he alone had discovered what speeches require in the way of art: that they should be neither long nor short, but of moderate length. PHAEDRUS: Very wise indeed, Prodicus. SOCRATES: And shall we not mention Hippias? I think the stranger from Elis would agree with him. PHAEDRUS: Why wouldn't he? SOCRATES: And how shall we describe Polus's verbal museum — his doubling of words, his maxims, his figures of speech — and the vocabulary Licymnius gave him as a gift for crafting fine phrasing? PHAEDRUS: But weren't there also things of Protagoras's kind, Socrates, of that sort? SOCRATES: A certain correctness of diction, my boy, and many other fine things. As for speeches that drag old age and poverty along to stir pity, the strength of the Chalcedonian seems to me to have mastered that art with skill; the man has also proved terribly able to rouse many people to anger at once, and then, when they're angered, to charm them back with incantations, as he used to say; and he's most capable, too, at both leveling slanders and clearing them away. As for the conclusion of speeches, everyone seems to have agreed on it in common, though some call it recapitulation and others give it some other name. PHAEDRUS: You mean summing up each point at the end, to remind the hearers of what's been said? SOCRATES: That's what I mean — and anything else you can add about the art of speeches. PHAEDRUS: Only small things, not worth mentioning.

SOCRATES: Let's leave the small stuff aside, then, and look at this larger question in full daylight: what power does this art actually have, and when does it have it? PHAEDRUS: A very considerable power, Socrates, at least in gatherings of the crowd. SOCRATES: It does have that. But look here, my good man — see whether the fabric of their claims seems as full of holes to you as it does to me. PHAEDRUS: Just show me. SOCRATES: Tell me this. Suppose someone went up to your friend Eryximachus, or to his father Acumenus, and said: 'I know how to apply certain things to bodies that will heat them or cool them, as I please, and make them vomit if I decide to, or purge them from below, and any number of other things like that — and because I know these things I claim to be a doctor, and to be able to make anyone else a doctor too, by handing on this knowledge of mine.' What do you suppose they'd say on hearing that? PHAEDRUS: What else but ask whether he also knows who to do each of these things to, and when, and how far to go? SOCRATES: And if he said, 'Not at all — I expect that whoever learns these things from me will be able to do what you're asking on his own'? PHAEDRUS: I imagine they'd say the man is out of his mind — he's heard something from a book somewhere, or stumbled on some drug recipes, and thinks he's become a doctor, when he understands nothing of the art. SOCRATES: And what if someone went up to Sophocles and Euripides and said he knows how to compose enormously long speeches on a trifling subject and very short ones on a great subject, pitiful when he wants, and, on the other hand, terrifying and threatening, and so on — and thinks that in teaching this he's handing on the composition of tragedy? PHAEDRUS: They too, I think, Socrates, would laugh at anyone who imagined tragedy was anything other than the fitting arrangement of these elements with each other and with the whole. SOCRATES: But I don't think they'd scold him crudely — rather the way a musician, coming across a man who thinks he understands harmony because he happens to know how to produce the highest and lowest possible notes on a string, wouldn't say harshly, 'You wretch, you're out of your mind,' but, being a musician, would say more gently: 'My good fellow, it's true that anyone who's going to understand harmony must know these things too, but someone in your position need not understand the first thing about harmony itself. What you know are the necessary preliminaries to harmony, not harmony itself.' PHAEDRUS: Quite right.

SOCRATES: And in just the same way Sophocles would tell anyone showing off to them that what he knows are the preliminaries to tragedy, not tragedy itself; and Acumenus would say the preliminaries to medicine, not medicine itself. PHAEDRUS: Absolutely. SOCRATES: And what about honey-voiced Adrastus, or Pericles for that matter — if they heard the fine techniques we were just going through, the compressed styles and the vivid-imagery styles and all the rest we said needed examining in full daylight — do you think they'd react the way you and I would, and, out of sheer crudeness, blurt out some uneducated remark against the people who've written these things down and teach them as the art of rhetoric? Or, being wiser than we are, would they rebuke us instead, saying: 'Phaedrus and Socrates, you shouldn't be so harsh — you should make allowances, if some people, not knowing how to conduct a discussion, have proven unable to define what rhetoric actually is, and as a result of this deficiency, possessing only the necessary preliminaries to the art, they've imagined they've discovered rhetoric itself, and in teaching these preliminaries to others they believe they've taught them rhetoric completely, and that the real work — speaking persuasively about each particular case and assembling the whole into a unified composition — is nothing at all, something their students must supply for themselves in their speeches.' PHAEDRUS: Well, Socrates, it does seem likely that this is more or less what the art these men teach and write about as rhetoric amounts to, and I think what you say is true. But how, and from where, could one actually acquire the art of the true rhetorician, the truly persuasive speaker? SOCRATES: As for having the capacity to become a complete competitor in this, Phaedrus, it's likely — indeed probably necessary — that it works the same way as in everything else: if you have a natural aptitude for rhetoric, you'll become a distinguished speaker once you add knowledge and practice; whatever of these you lack, in that respect you'll fall short. But so far as there's an art to it, the method doesn't seem to me to lie in the direction Lysias and Thrasymachus are going. PHAEDRUS: Then which direction does it lie in? SOCRATES: It's likely, my good man, that Pericles became the most accomplished of all in rhetoric, and for good reason. PHAEDRUS: Why is that?

SOCRATES: All the great arts require, in addition, a good deal of talk and speculation about nature at large — this loftiness of mind and this thoroughgoing effectiveness seem to come from somewhere in that direction. This is exactly what Pericles acquired on top of his natural gifts. Falling in, I think, with Anaxagoras, who was a man of just that sort, and getting his fill of speculation about the heavens, and arriving at the nature of mind and intelligence — the very things Anaxagoras talked about at such length — he drew from that source whatever was relevant to the art of speaking. PHAEDRUS: What do you mean by that? SOCRATES: The same approach applies to medicine as to rhetoric. PHAEDRUS: How so? SOCRATES: In both, one must analyze a nature — the nature of the body in the one case, the nature of the soul in the other — if you're going to proceed not merely by knack and experience but by genuine art, supplying health and strength to the body by means of medicines and regimen, and supplying the soul, by means of arguments and lawful practices, with whatever conviction and virtue you want to instill. PHAEDRUS: That's likely, Socrates. SOCRATES: Then do you think it's possible to understand the nature of the soul adequately without understanding the nature of the whole? PHAEDRUS: If we're to trust Hippocrates, of the school of Asclepius, not even the body can be understood apart from that method. SOCRATES: He's right to say so, my friend. Still, one should examine what the argument itself says, and see whether it agrees with Hippocrates. PHAEDRUS: I agree. SOCRATES: Then consider what it is that Hippocrates — and true reasoning — actually say about nature. Isn't this how one must think about the nature of anything at all? First, is the thing about which we intend to become skilled ourselves, and capable of making others skilled, simple or complex? Then, if it's simple, we must examine its power — what it is naturally suited to act upon and how, or what it's suited to be acted upon by and by what. And if it has several forms, we must enumerate them, and then, as with the simple case, see for each one what it naturally does and to what, or what it naturally undergoes and from what. PHAEDRUS: That does seem likely, Socrates. SOCRATES: At any rate, any method that skips this would resemble the progress of a blind man. But surely one who pursues any subject by art should not be compared to someone blind or deaf — clearly, anyone who teaches speech-making as an art will show with precision the essential nature of that to which he means to apply his speeches; and this, presumably, will be the soul. PHAEDRUS: Of course.

SOCRATES: So all his effort is directed entirely at this — he's trying to produce conviction in the soul. Isn't that right? PHAEDRUS: Yes. SOCRATES: Clearly, then, Thrasymachus, or anyone else who seriously teaches an art of rhetoric, will first describe and depict the soul with total precision, showing whether it is by nature one and uniform, or, like the shape of the body, takes many forms — for this is what we mean by demonstrating its nature. PHAEDRUS: Absolutely. SOCRATES: And second, what it naturally does to something, or what it undergoes from something. PHAEDRUS: Of course. SOCRATES: Third, having classified the kinds of speeches and the kinds of soul, and their various conditions, he'll go through all the causes, fitting each type to each, and teaching which kind of soul is necessarily persuaded by which kind of speech, and for what reason — why this one is convinced and that one resists. PHAEDRUS: That would certainly be the ideal way to have it, it seems. SOCRATES: Indeed, my friend — nothing demonstrated or spoken in any other way, on this or any other subject, will ever be spoken or written with genuine art. But the writers you've been listening to, the current crop, are cunning, and they conceal the fact that they know the soul extremely well. So until they speak and write in this manner, let's not believe that they write with art. PHAEDRUS: What manner is that? SOCRATES: The exact words are not easy to produce, but I'm willing to say how one must write, if it's to be as scientific as possible. PHAEDRUS: Go on, then. SOCRATES: Since the power of speech is in fact a leading of the soul, anyone who intends to become a rhetorician must know how many kinds of soul there are. There are so many, of such and such kinds, which is why some people turn out one way and others another; and once these have been distinguished in this way, there are, correspondingly, so many kinds of speeches, each of a certain sort. People of one type are easily persuaded toward certain conclusions by speeches of a certain sort, for a certain reason, while people of another type are hard to persuade for other reasons. One must grasp all this adequately, and then observe these types actually at work in real situations and being put into practice, and be able to follow them with sharp perception — otherwise nothing more is gained than what he heard back when he was merely being lectured on the theory.

SOCRATES: And when he's able to say adequately what sort of person is persuaded by what sort of argument, and, recognizing someone present, can point out to himself, 'This is that very type, that very nature, we talked about then — now actually here before me — to whom I must apply these particular arguments in this particular way to produce that particular conviction' — once he has all this, and adds to it a sense of the right moments for speaking and for holding back, and knows when compression is called for and when appeals to pity, when exaggeration for effect, and the right and wrong occasions for each of the styles he's learned — then, and only then, has the art been brought to full and complete perfection, and not before. But if anyone falls short in any of this, whether in speaking, teaching, or writing, and yet claims to be speaking by art, the one who refuses to believe him has the better of it. 'Well then,' our writer might say, 'is that how it seems to you, Phaedrus and Socrates? Should the art of speaking not be accepted in some other way?' PHAEDRUS: There's no other way it could be, Socrates — though it appears to be no small undertaking. SOCRATES: True. And that's exactly why one must turn every argument over, upside down and every which way, and examine whether some easier and shorter road toward it appears anywhere, so as not to go the long, rough way for nothing when a short, smooth one is available. And if you have any help to offer, from something you've heard from Lysias or anyone else, try to recall it and tell me. PHAEDRUS: For the sake of trying, I could, but not as things stand right now. SOCRATES: Then would you like me to tell you an argument I've heard from some people concerned with these matters? PHAEDRUS: Of course. SOCRATES: There's a saying, Phaedrus, that it's only fair to speak up even for the wolf. PHAEDRUS: Then you do just that. SOCRATES: Well, they say there's no need to make such a solemn business of it, or take such a long way round from on high — since, as we said at the very start of this discussion, the man who intends to be an adequate rhetorician has no need whatsoever to share in the truth about what's just or good, or about people who are so by nature or upbringing. In the courts, they say, nobody cares in the least about the truth of any of this — only about what's persuasive. And that is the plausible, which is what the man who intends to speak by art must attend to. Indeed, sometimes one shouldn't even mention the actual facts, if they happen not to be plausible, but only the plausible version, whether prosecuting or defending; and whatever one says, one must pursue the plausible and let the truth go hang — since doing this consistently, throughout the whole speech, is what secures the entire art.

PHAEDRUS: Socrates, you've gone right through the very things that the professionals in speechwriting claim as their own — it reminded me that we touched on this briefly before, and yet the experts in the field think it's an enormous matter. SOCRATES: But surely you've walked through Tisias himself with great care. Then let Tisias tell us this too — does the probable mean anything other than what the majority happens to believe? PHAEDRUS: What else could it mean? SOCRATES: And it was this clever and technical discovery, it seems, that led him to write: if a weak but brave man beats up a strong but cowardly one, robs him of his cloak or something else, and is hauled into court, neither party should tell the truth — the coward shouldn't admit he was beaten up by the brave man alone, but should argue that there were two of them, while the brave man should counter that only the two of them were present and fall back on the line, 'How could a man like me have attacked a man like him?' The coward, of course, won't confess his own cowardice, but in trying to invent some other lie he'll probably hand his opponent an opening to catch him out. And all the other cases that go by the name of technique are, I imagine, of just this sort. Isn't that so, Phaedrus? PHAEDRUS: Certainly. SOCRATES: Well, Tisias — or whoever else it really is, and whatever name he likes to go by — seems to have hit upon a remarkably well-hidden art. Still, my friend, should we say something to him, or not — PHAEDRUS: Say what? SOCRATES: This: 'Tisias, long before you came along, we ourselves were saying that this so-called probability gets its hold on the crowd through its resemblance to truth — and we just went through the point that the person who knows the truth is in every case the one best equipped to find the resemblances. So if you have something else to say about the art of speaking, we'd be glad to hear it; but if not, we'll stick with what we just worked out — that unless someone can enumerate the types of people who will be listening, divide existing things according to their forms, and grasp each particular thing under a single unifying idea, he will never be skilled in speech to the degree a human being can be. And he will never acquire this without a great deal of hard work — work that the sensible man should undertake not for the sake of speaking and acting before other men, but so that he may be able to say what is pleasing to the gods, and act in every way, as far as he can, so as to please them.'

SOCRATES: For it isn't the case, Tisias, as those wiser than we are say, that a sensible man should practice his craft to please his fellow slaves — except incidentally — but rather to please masters who are good, and born of good stock. So don't be surprised if the road is long; it must be traveled for great ends, not for the ones you have in mind. Still, the argument tells us this destination will be reached, if one is willing, and that these greater results will follow from those very things. PHAEDRUS: What you say strikes me as altogether splendid, Socrates — assuming someone is capable of it. SOCRATES: But then again, even to attempt fine things is itself fine, whatever one happens to suffer in the attempt. PHAEDRUS: Quite so. SOCRATES: Well then, that should be enough on the subject of skill and lack of skill in speeches. PHAEDRUS: Certainly. SOCRATES: What remains is the question of propriety and impropriety in writing — under what conditions it turns out well, and under what conditions poorly. Isn't that right? PHAEDRUS: Yes. SOCRATES: Do you know, then, how you might best please a god in what you do or say about speeches? PHAEDRUS: Not at all — do you? SOCRATES: I can tell you what I've heard from the men of old, though only they themselves know the truth of it. But if we could discover the truth ourselves, would we still care at all about human opinions? PHAEDRUS: That's a silly question — just tell me what you say you've heard. SOCRATES: Well, I heard that at Naucratis in Egypt there lived one of the ancient gods of that region — the one whose sacred bird they call the Ibis — and the name of this god was Theuth. He was the first to discover number and calculation, geometry and astronomy, and besides these, draughts and dice, and, above all, writing. Now the king of all Egypt at that time was Thamus, who ruled from the great city in the upper region that the Greeks call Egyptian Thebes, and they call the god himself Ammon. Theuth came to him and displayed his arts, saying they ought to be passed on to the rest of the Egyptians. Thamus asked what use each one had, and as Theuth explained them, he judged some well spoken and others not, criticizing this and praising that. Thamus is said to have had a great deal to say to Theuth about each art, both for and against — too much to go through here — but when they came to writing, Theuth said: 'This branch of learning, O king, will make the Egyptians wiser and will improve their memory, for I have discovered a remedy for both memory and wisdom.'

SOCRATES: But Thamus replied: 'O most skilled Theuth, one man has the ability to father the arts, but another has the ability to judge what measure of harm or benefit they hold for those who will use them. And now you, as father of writing, have out of goodwill said the very opposite of what it can actually do. For this invention will produce forgetfulness in the souls of those who learn it, through neglect of memory, since, trusting in writing, they will call things to mind no longer from within themselves, but by means of external marks; what you have discovered is a remedy not for memory, but for reminding. And as for wisdom, you are giving your students the appearance of it, not the reality; for by taking in a great deal of information without proper teaching, they will appear to know a great deal when for the most part they know nothing, and they will be difficult to be around, since they have become men who seem wise instead of being wise.' PHAEDRUS: Socrates, you make up Egyptian tales, or tales from wherever you please, with the greatest of ease. SOCRATES: But they say, my friend, that at the shrine of Zeus at Dodona the first prophetic words came from an oak tree. The people of that time, not being wise like you young people today, were content in their simplicity to listen to an oak, or even a rock, so long as it spoke the truth. For you, apparently, it matters who is speaking and where he's from — you don't just consider whether what's said is so or not. PHAEDRUS: You're right to correct me, and it seems to me the matter of writing does stand just as the man from Thebes says. SOCRATES: So then, anyone who supposes he is leaving behind an art by writing it down, and anyone else who accepts it as though it will yield something clear and certain out of what has been written, must be full of a great deal of simple-mindedness, and truly ignorant of the prophecy of Ammon, if he imagines that written words amount to more than a reminder, for one who already knows, of the matters the writing is about. PHAEDRUS: Perfectly true. SOCRATES: For writing, Phaedrus, has this strange feature, which makes it truly like painting. The offspring of painting stand there as if alive, but if you question them, they maintain a most solemn silence. The same is true of written words. You might think they were speaking as if they had some understanding, but if you ask them anything about what they're saying, wanting to learn more, they just go on signifying that same single thing forever. And once a thing has been written, the composition is tossed about everywhere, reaching those who understand it as well as those for whom it's not at all suited, and it doesn't know how to address the right people and not others. And when it's mishandled or unfairly abused, it always needs its father to come to its defense; for it's incapable of guarding or helping itself. PHAEDRUS: That too is quite rightly said.

SOCRATES: Well then — do we see another kind of speech, a legitimate brother of this one, and notice by what process it comes about, and how much better and more capable it is by birth? PHAEDRUS: What kind of speech do you mean, and how does it come about? SOCRATES: The kind that is written together with knowledge in the soul of the learner — one capable of defending itself, and knowing to whom it should speak and before whom it should keep silent. PHAEDRUS: You mean the living, breathing speech of the man who knows, of which the written kind might fairly be called an image. SOCRATES: Exactly so. Now tell me this: would a sensible farmer, who cared about certain seeds and wanted them to bear fruit, plant them in earnest in some garden of Adonis in the heat of summer and take delight in watching them spring up beautiful in eight days? Or would he do that, if he did it at all, only as play and for the sake of a festival — while for the seeds he was serious about, he would use the proper art of farming, sow them in suitable ground, and be content to see, in the eighth month, what he had sown come to completion? PHAEDRUS: That's how he would do it, Socrates, I should think — seriously in one case, in some other way, as you say, in the other. SOCRATES: And shall we say that the man who has knowledge of what is just and fine and good has less sense than the farmer, when it comes to his own seeds? PHAEDRUS: Certainly not. SOCRATES: Then he won't, in all seriousness, write them in ink, sowing them through a pen together with words that are unable to defend themselves by argument and unable to teach the truth adequately. PHAEDRUS: No, that's not likely at all. SOCRATES: No indeed. Rather, it seems he will sow and write his gardens of letters, when he does write them, for the sake of play — storing up reminders for himself, against the old age of forgetfulness, should it come to that, and for anyone else following the same track — and he will take pleasure in watching them grow up tender. And when others turn to other kinds of play, watering themselves with drinking parties and all else akin to that, he, it seems, will instead pass his time in play of the sort I'm describing. PHAEDRUS: A splendid kind of play indeed you're describing, Socrates, next to a poor one — the play of a man able to amuse himself with words, spinning tales about justice and the other things you mention.

SOCRATES: That's exactly how it is, my dear Phaedrus. But I think a far finer seriousness attends these matters, when someone, using the art of dialectic, takes a soul suited to it and plants and sows within it words joined with knowledge — words able to defend both themselves and the one who planted them, not barren but bearing seed, from which others grow in turn in other characters, sufficient to keep this seed forever immortal, and to make the one who has it as happy as it is possible for a human being to be. PHAEDRUS: What you describe now is finer still. SOCRATES: And now, Phaedrus, since we've agreed on these things, we can finally judge the matter we set out to examine. PHAEDRUS: Which matter? SOCRATES: The one we came here wanting to look into in the first place — so that we might examine the reproach leveled at Lysias concerning the writing of speeches, and consider speeches themselves, both those composed with skill and those without it. Now, what belongs to art and what doesn't seems to me to have been shown well enough. PHAEDRUS: So it seemed to me too — but remind me again how. SOCRATES: Not until someone knows the truth about each thing he speaks or writes about, and is able to define the whole of it in itself, and having defined it, knows how to cut it up again according to its natural kinds down to what can no longer be divided, and in the same way, having seen through the nature of the soul, discovers the form of speech suited to each nature, and so arranges and orders his speech, giving complex speeches to a complex soul and simple ones to a simple soul — not until then will it be possible for the whole class of speeches to be handled skillfully, so far as its nature allows, whether for teaching or for persuading, as our whole discussion up to now has shown. PHAEDRUS: Yes, that's exactly how it appeared to us. SOCRATES: And what about the question whether it's a fine or a shameful thing to speak and write speeches, and under what conditions this practice would rightly be called a reproach, or not — hasn't what we said a little earlier made that clear— PHAEDRUS: Made what clear? SOCRATES: That whether Lysias, or anyone else, ever has written or ever will write, privately or in a public capacity, laying down laws in the form of a political treatise, and believing there is great reliability and clarity in it — that in itself is a reproach to the writer, whoever says so or not. For to be ignorant of what is just and unjust, good and bad, whether awake or dreaming, cannot in truth escape being blameworthy, even if the whole crowd applauds it. PHAEDRUS: No, indeed it can't.

SOCRATES: But the man who thinks that in a written speech on any subject there must be much that is playful, and that no speech, whether in verse or prose, has ever been worth serious attention -- who thinks, too, that the speeches recited in public, without cross-examination or teaching, are meant only to persuade, and were never really composed to convey knowledge to those who already know the best of what is said -- but who reserves his real seriousness for the case where, teaching and learning are truly the aim, and words are truly written in the soul concerning what is just and beautiful and good -- such words alone he considers to have clarity and completeness and to be worth taking seriously, since they are, so to speak, his own legitimate children: first the one born within himself, if it has been found there, and then any offspring and siblings of that one that have grown, as they deserve, in other souls besides -- and who bids the rest of his writings good day -- that man, Phaedrus, is likely to be the sort of person that you and I might pray to become. PHAEDRUS: That is exactly what I want and pray for. SOCRATES: Well then, we have had our fill of playing with speeches for now. Go and tell Lysias that you and I went down to the spring and shrine of the Nymphs and heard words there, words that instructed us to say to Lysias -- and to anyone else who composes speeches -- and to Homer, and to anyone else who has composed poetry, whether spoken or sung, and third to Solon and whoever else has written political compositions calling them laws: if such a person composed his work knowing where the truth lies, and is able to come to its defense when questioned about what he has written, and can himself show by argument that his writings are of little worth, then he should not be called by a name taken from these writings, but rather by the name of what he has taken seriously. PHAEDRUS: Then what names do you give him? SOCRATES: To call him wise, Phaedrus, seems to me too grand a thing, fitting for a god alone; but to call him a lover of wisdom, or something of that sort, would suit him better and be more fitting. PHAEDRUS: And that's not at all off the mark. SOCRATES: And on the other hand, the man who has nothing more valuable than what he has composed or written, turning it over this way and that over time, gluing bits together and taking others apart -- him you would rightly call a poet, or a speechwriter, or a lawmaker. PHAEDRUS: Of course. SOCRATES: Tell this, then, to your friend. PHAEDRUS: And what about you? What will you do? We mustn't leave out your own friend either. SOCRATES: Which friend do you mean? PHAEDRUS: The handsome Isocrates. What will you announce to him, Socrates? What shall we say he is?

SOCRATES: Isocrates is still young, Phaedrus; but I am willing to say what I foresee for him. PHAEDRUS: What is that? SOCRATES: It seems to me that he has a nature superior to that of Lysias's kind of speeches, and that it is mixed, besides, with a nobler character; so it would be no surprise, as he grows older, if in the very kind of speeches he now attempts he should surpass, by as much as a grown man surpasses children, all who have ever put their hand to speechmaking -- and if that does not satisfy him, that some more divine impulse should carry him on to greater things. For by nature, my friend, there is a certain love of wisdom present in that man's mind. This, then, is the message I send from these gods here, to Isocrates as my favorite, and you may send yours, in turn, to Lysias as your own. PHAEDRUS: It will be done. But let us go, since the heat has grown gentler now. SOCRATES: Shouldn't we pray before setting out? PHAEDRUS: Of course. SOCRATES: Dear Pan, and all you other gods here present, grant that I become beautiful within; and as for what is outside me, may it be friendly to what is within. May I consider the wise man rich, and may I have as much gold as no one but a man of sound mind could bear to carry or spend. Do we need anything else, Phaedrus? For my part, I have prayed enough. PHAEDRUS: Pray the same for me too; friends hold all things in common. SOCRATES: Let us go.

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