Phaedrus — Plato

1 p. 88celebrate the festival of Bendis/ which was a new thing. I was delighted with the procession of the inhabitants; this, however, was equalled or even exceeded in beauty by fil that of the Thracians.

When we had finished our prayers and the spectacle was over, we turned in the direction of the city ; and at that instant, Polemarchus the son of Cephalus, who had caught sight of us at a distance as we were departing homewards, told his servant to run and bid us wait for him. The servant took hold of me by the cloak behind, and said : Polemarchus desires you to wait. I turned round, and asked him where his master was.

He is coming, said the youth, if you will only wait. Certainly we will, said Glaucon ; and in a few minutes Polemarchus appeared, and with him Adeimantus, Glaucon *s brother, Niceratus the son of Nicias,^ and several others who had been at the procession. Polemarchus said to me: I perceive, Socrates, that you and your companion are already on your way to the city. That is a good guess, I said. But do you see, he said, how many we are ? I do.

And are you stronger than all these ? for if not, you will have to remain where you are. May there not be yet another possibility, I said, that we may persuade you to let us go ? But can you persuade us,. if we refuse to listen to you ? he said. No indeed, replied Glaucon. Then we are not going to listen j of that you may be assured.

Adeimantus added : Has no one told you that there is to be an equestrian torch-race in the evening in honor of the 3a8 goddess? Indeed, that is a novelty, I replied. Wi 11 the horsemen carry torches and pass them to one another during the race? * Bendis (b^n'dis) : a Thracian goddess, sometimes identified with the Greek Artemis, goddess of the moon and the chase.

The worship of Bendis was introduced into this part of Greece by Thracian aliens, residing at the Piraeus. The public festival, the Bendideia (bSn'df-di'a) , instituted in honor of Bendis, was celebrated for the first time upon the occasion to which Socrates here refers. • Niceratus (ni-s6r'a-tus). Nicias (nisT-as).

p. 189 Yes, he said ; and there will also be a festival at night which is well worth seeing. If we rise from supper in good time we shall see this, and we shall find youths enough there with whom we may discourse. Stay then, and do not be perverse. Glaucon said : I suppose that we must stay. Well, as you please, I replied.

Accordingly we went with Polemarchus to his house ; and there we found his brothers Lysias ^ and Euthydemus,'' and with them Thrasymachus the Chalcedonian, Charmantides the Paeanian,^ and Cleitophon the son of Aristonymus. There too was their father Cephalus, whom I had not seen for a long time, and I thought him very much aged.

He was seated on a cushioned chair, and had a garland on his head, for he had been holding a sacrifice ^ in the court ; and we sat down by . him on other chairs, which were arranged in a circle around him. He welcomed me eagerly, and then he said : — •^ You don't come to see me, Socrates, as often as you ought. For if I were able to go to you I would not ask you to come to me.

But at my age I can hardly get to the city, and therefore you ought to come oftener to 'the Piraeus. For, indeed, I find that at my time of life, as the pleasures and delights of the bpdy fade away, the love of discourse grows upon me. I only wish therefore that you would come oftener, and be with your young friends here, and make yourself altogether at home with us.

I replied : There is nothing which I like better, Cephalus, than conversing with aged men like yourself; for I regard them as travellers who have gone a journey which I too may have to go, and of whom I ought to inquire, whether the way is smooth and easy, or rugged and difficult.

And this is a question which I should like to ask of you who have arrived at that time which the poets call the '* threshold of old age," — Is life harder towards the end, or what report do you give of it ? I will tell you, Socrates, he said, what my own feeling is. Old men flock together ; they are birds of a feather, as the • See Phcedrus, note 3. ' Euthydemus, not the one for whom the dialogue Euthydemus is named.

"Charmantides (kar-man'tf-dez). Paeania (pe-S'nf-a) : a deme of Attica. " Probably an act of private worship. It was customary among the Greeks for one who took part in sacrifice to wear a wreath.

igO PLATO THE TEACHER proverb says ; and at our meetings the tale of my acquaintance commonly is — I cannot eat, I cannot drink; the pleasures of youth and love are fled away: there was a good ^ ^ time once, but that is gone, and now life is no longer life. Some of them lament over the slights which are put upon them by their relations, and then they tell you plaintively of how many evils old age is the cause.

But I do not believe, Socrates, that the blame is where they say ; for if old age were the cause, I too being old, and every other old man, would have felt the same. This, however, is not my own experience, nor that of others whom I have known. Hdw well I remember the aged poet Sophocles,*® when in answer to the question. How does love suit with age, Sophocles, — are you still the man you were ?

Peace, he replied ; most gladly have I escaped that, and I feel as if I had escaped from a mad and furious master. That saying of his has often come into my mind since, and seems to me still as good as at the time when I heard him. For certainly old age has a great sense of calm and freedom ; when the passions relax their hold, then, as Sophocles says, you have escaped from the control not of one master only, but of many.

And of these regrets, as well as of the complaint about relations, Socrates, the cause . is. to be sought, not in men's ages, but in their characters and. tempers ; for he who is of a calm and happy nature will hardly feel the pressure of age, but he who is of an opposite disposition will find youth and age equally a burden.

I was delighted at his words, and wanting to draw him out I went on to say : Yes, Cephalus ; but I suspect that people in general do not believe you when you say this ; they think that old age sits lightly upon you, not because of your happy disposition, but because you are rich, and wealth is well known to be a great comforter.

That is true, he replied ; they do not believe me : and there is something in what they say; not, however, so much as they imagine. I might answer them as Themistocles ^^ answered the Seriphian ^ who was abusing him and saying that he was famous, not for his own merits but because >" See Phaedrus, note 50. " Themistocles (the-mrs'tQ-klez, 514 ?— B.C.): a great Athenian statesman. " Seriphos (se-rl'fos) : a small island in the ^gean Sea, colonized by Greeks,