Phaedrus — Plato
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l60 PLATO THE TEACHER but they do their utmost to create in him the greatest likeness of themselves and the god whom they honor. And the desire of the lover, if eft'ected, and the initiation of which I speak into the mysteries of true love, is thus fair and blissful to the beloved when he is chosen by the lover who is driven mad by love. . . .
And so the beloved who, like a god, has received ev- 6 ^^y ^^"^ ^"^ loyal service from his lover, not in pretense ' but in reality, being also himself of a nature friendly to his admirer, if in former days he has blushed to own his passion and turned away his lover, because his youthful companions or others slanderously told him that he would be disgraced, now as years advance, at the appointed age and time is led to receive him into communion.
For fate, which has ordained that there shall be no friendship among the evil, has also ordained that there shall ever be friendship among the good. And when he has received him into communion and intimacy, then the beloved is amazed at the good-will of the lover ; he recognizes that the inspired friend is worth all other friendship or kinships, which have nothing of friendship in them in comparison. . . .
After this their happiness depends upon their self-control ; if the better elements of the mind which lead to order and philosophy prevail, then they pass their life in this world in happiness and harmony — masters of themselves and orderly — enslaving the vicious and emancipating the virtuous elements ; and when the end comes, being light and ready to fly away, they conquer in one of the three heavenly or truly Olympian victories *^ ; nor can human discipline or divine inspiration confer any greater blessing on man than this. [If, however, they abandon philosophy and lead the lower life of ambition, they lose the fairest reward which might have been theirs ; and still their destiny is not an unhappy one.] For those who have once begun the heavenward pilgrimage may not go down again to darkness and the journey beneath the earth, but they live in light always ; happy companions in their pilgrimage, and when the time comes at which they receive their wings they have the same plumage because of their love. *' Compare 249.
PHi«:DRUS l6l Thus great are the heavenly blessings which the friendship of a lover will confer on you, my youth. Whereas the attachment of the non-lover which is just a vulgar compound of temperance and niggardly earthly ways and motives, will breed meanness — praised by the vulgar as virtue in your inmost soul ; will send you bowling round the earth ^^IZ during a period of nine thousand years, and leave you a fool in the world below.
'*2 And thus, dear Eros, I have made and paid my recantation, as well as I could and as fairly as I could ; the poetical figures I was compelled to use, because Phsedrus would have them. And now forgive the past and accept the present, and be gracious and merciful to me, and do not deprive me of sight or take from me the art of love, but grant that I may be yet more esteemed in the eyes of the fair.
And if Phaedrus or I myself said anything objectionable in our first speeches, blame Lysias, who is the father of the brat, and let us have no more of his progeny ; bid him study philosophy, like his brother Polemarchus ; and then his lover Phaedrus will no longer halt between two, but dedicate himself wholly to love and philosophical discourses. Phcedr, I say with you, Socrates, may this come true if this be for my good.
But why did you make this discourse of yours so much finer than the other ? I wonder at that. And I begin to be afraid that I shall lose conceit of Lysias, even if he be willing to make another as long as yours, which I doubt. For one of our politicians lately took to abusing him on this very account; he would insist on calling him a speech-writer. So that a feeling of pride may probably induce him to give up writing. Soc.
That is an amusing notion ; but I think that you are a little mistaken in your friend if you imagine that he is frightened at every noise ; and, possibly, you think that his assailant was in earnest? Phadr, I thought, Socrates, that he was.
And you are aware that the most powerful and considerable men among our statesmen are ashamed of writing speeches and leaving them in a written form because they are afraid of posterity, and do not like to be called Sophists. <s Compare 249. II l62 PLATO THE TEACHER [Socrates replies that it is only a case of sour grapes with the assailants of Lysias. As a matter of fact there is nothing of which the great politicians are so fond as of writing speeches. They seek to display their own wisdom and attain immortality by the authorship of laws. A king or an orator who does attain immortality through his laws is looked upon by posterity as a god, and such he considers himself.
Since the politicians are really great rhetoricians, in reproaching Lysias they would be casting a slur on their own favorite pursuit.] Soc, Any one may see that there is no disgrace in the fact of writing ? Phadr, Certainly not. Soc. There may however be a disgrace in writing, not well, but badly? Phcedr, That is true. Soc.
And what is well and what is badly, — need we ask Lysias, or any other poet or orator, who ever wrote or will write either a political or any other work, in metre or out of metre, poet or prose writer, to teach us this? Phcedr, Need we ? What motive has a man to live if not for the pleasures of discourse ?
Surely he would not live for the sake of bodily pleasures, which almost always have previous pain as a condition of them, and therefore are rightly called slavish. Soc. There is time yet. And I can fancy that the grasshoppers who are still chirruping in the sun over our heads are talking to one another and looking at us.
What would they say if they saw that we also, like the many, are not talking but slumbering at midday, lulled by their voices, too indolent to think ? They would have a right to laugh at us, and might imagine that we are slaves coming to our place of resort, who like sheep lie asleep at noon about the fountain.
But if they see us discoursing, and like Odysseus sailing by their siren voices,^ they may perhaps, out of respect, give us of the gifts which they receive of the gods and give to men. *> See Symposium, note 35. When the Greek hero Odysseus passed the island of the Sirens on his way home from the Trojan War, he had the ears of his companions stopped with wax and himself bound to the mast, so that they all sailed by in ssifety.
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