ΦΑΙΔΡΟΣ
H.N. Fowler (Loeb, 1914)
Plato · H.N. Fowler (Loeb, 1914)
Scene: outside the city walls of Athens, by the Ilissus river
Set in the countryside outside Athens, the Phaedrus moves from speeches on love to a profound myth of the soul as a winged charioteer drawn by two horses, which once beheld the Forms in the train of the gods and, fallen into body, may regain its wings through love of beauty. Beauty alone, Plato says, shines through to the senses and so awakens recollection of the divine.
The dialogue then turns to rhetoric and the art of dialectic — defined here as 'collection and division' — and ends with a famous critique of the written word, which, unlike living speech, cannot answer when questioned.
From the Plato Scroll Encyclopedia · open this entry in the reader
Socrates: Dear Phaedrus, whither away, and where do you come from?
Phaedrus: From Lysias, Socrates, the son of Cephalus; and I am going for a walk outside the wall. For I spent a long time there with Lysias, sitting since early morning; and on the advice of your friend and mine, Acumenus, I am taking my walk on the roads; for he says they are less fatiguing than the streets.
Socrates: He is right, my friend. Then Lysias, it seems,was in the city?
Phaedrus: Yes, at Epicrates’ house, the one that belonged to Morychus, near the Olympieum.
Socrates: What was your conversation? But it is obvious that Lysias entertained you with his speeches.
Phaedrus: You shall hear, if you have leisure to walk along and listen.
Socrates: What? Don’t you believe that I consider hearing your conversation with Lysias a greater thing even than business, as Pindar says?
Phaedrus: Lead on, then.
Socrates: Speak.
Phaedrus: Indeed, Socrates, you are just the man to hear it. For the discourse about which we conversed, was in a way, a love-speech. For Lysias has represented one of the beauties being tempted, but not by a lover; this is just the clever thing about it; for he says that favors should be granted rather to the one who is not in love than to the lover.
Socrates: O noble Lysias! I wish he would write that they should be granted to the poor rather than to the rich, to the old rather than to the young, and so of all the other qualities that I and most of us have; for truly his discourse would be witty and of general utility. I am so determined to hear you, that I will not leave you, even if you extend your walk to Megara, and, as Herodicus says, go to the wall and back again.
Phaedrus: What are you saying, my dear Socrates? Do you suppose that I, who am a mere ordinary man, can tell from memory, in a way that is worthy of Lysias, what he, the cleverest writer of our day, composed at his leisure and took a long time for? Far from it; and yet I would rather have that ability than a good sum of money.
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The Athenian who turned Socratic conversation into a written philosophy and founded the Academy.
Plato was born around 428 BCE into a wealthy and politically prominent Athenian family; through his mother Perictione the family traced kinship to the lawgiver Solon, and his relatives Critias and Charmides were among the oligarchs of the Thirty. A late tradition says his given name was Aristocles and that 'Plato' — from the word for 'broad' — was a nickname. He grew up during the long agony of the Peloponnesian War and came of age amid the violence and disillusion that followed Athens' defeat.
Plato · H.N. Fowler (Loeb, 1914). Each edition has its page, the reader and a plain-text file:
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