SOCRATES: Shall I tell you what I will do?
had a great many lovers; and there was one special cunning one, who had persuaded the youth PHAEDRUS: What?
that he did not love him, but he really loved him all the same; and one day when he was paying SOCRATES: I will veil my face and gallop through his addresses to him, he used this very argu-the discourse as fast as I can, for if I see you I ment—that he ought to accept the non-lover shall feel ashamed and not know what to say.
rather than the lover; his words were as follows:—
‘All good counsel begins in the same way; a PHAEDRUS: Only go on and you may do any-man should know what he is advising about, or thing else which you please.
his counsel will all come to nought. But people imagine that they know about the nature of SOCRATES: Come, O ye Muses, melodious, as ye things, when they don’t know about them, and, are called, whether you have received this name not having come to an understanding at first from the character of your strains, or because because they think that they know, they end, as the Melians are a musical race, help, O help me might be expected, in contradicting one another in the tale which my good friend here desires and themselves. Now you and I must not be guilty me to rehearse, in order that his friend whom of this fundamental error which we condemn in he always deemed wise may seem to him to be others; but as our question is whether the lover wiser than ever.
or non-lover is to be preferred, let us first of all Once upon a time there was a fair boy, or, more agree in defining the nature and power of love, properly speaking, a youth; he was very fair and and then, keeping our eyes upon the definition 61
Plato
and to this appealing, let us further enquire the bearer of the name. The desire of eating, for whether love brings advantage or disadvantage.
example, which gets the better of the higher
‘Every one sees that love is a desire, and we reason and the other desires, is called gluttony, know also that non-lovers desire the beautiful and he who is possessed by it is called a glutton; and good. Now in what way is the lover to be the tyrannical desire of drink, which inclines the distinguished from the non-lover? Let us note possessor of the desire to drink, has a name that in every one of us there are two guiding which is only too obvious, and there can be as and ruling principles which lead us whither they little doubt by what name any other appetite of will; one is the natural desire of pleasure, the the same family would be called;—it will be the other is an acquired opinion which aspires after name of that which happens to be dominant. And the best; and these two are sometimes in har-now I think that you will perceive the drift of mony and then again at war, and sometimes the my discourse; but as every spoken word is in a one, sometimes the other conquers. When opin-manner plainer than the unspoken, I had better ion by the help of reason leads us to the best, say further that the irrational desire which over-the conquering principle is called temperance; comes the tendency of opinion towards right, and but when desire, which is devoid of reason, rules is led away to the enjoyment of beauty, and es-in us and drags us to pleasure, that power of pecially of personal beauty, by the desires which misrule is called excess. Now excess has many are her own kindred—that supreme desire, I say, names, and many members, and many forms, which by leading conquers and by the force of and any of these forms when very marked gives passion is reinforced, from this very force, re-a name, neither honourable nor creditable, to ceiving a name, is called love (erromenos eros).’