… with swagg’ring gait and roving eye.59
He was observing everything quite calmly, looking out for friendly troops and keeping an eye on the enemy. Even from a great distance it was obvious that this was a very brave man, who would put up a terrific fight if anyone approached him. This is what saved both of them. For, as a rule, you try to put as much distance as you can between yourself and such men in battle; you go after the others, those who run away helter-skelter. [c]
You could say many other marvelous things in praise of Socrates. Perhaps he shares some of his specific accomplishments with others. But, as a whole, he is unique; he is like no one else in the past and no one in the present—this is by far the most amazing thing about him. For we might be able to form an idea of what Achilles was like by comparing him to Brasidas or some other great warrior, or we might compare Pericles with Nestor or Antenor or one of the other great orators.60 There is a parallel [d] for everyone—everyone else, that is. But this man here is so bizarre, his ways and his ideas are so unusual, that, search as you might, you’ll never find anyone else, alive or dead, who’s even remotely like him. The best you can do is not to compare him to anything human, but to liken him, as I do, to Silenus and the satyrs, and the same goes for his ideas and arguments.
Come to think of it, I should have mentioned this much earlier: even his ideas and arguments are just like those hollow statues of Silenus. If [e] you were to listen to his arguments, at first they’d strike you as totally ridiculous; they’re clothed in words as coarse as the hides worn by the most vulgar satyrs. He’s always going on about pack asses, or blacksmiths, or cobblers, or tanners; he’s always making the same tired old points in the same tired old words. If you are foolish, or simply unfamiliar with him, you’d find it impossible not to laugh at his arguments. But if you [222] see them when they open up like the statues, if you go behind their surface, you’ll realize that no other arguments make any sense. They’re truly worthy of a god, bursting with figures of virtue inside. They’re of great—no, of the greatest—importance for anyone who wants to become a truly good man.
Well, this is my praise of Socrates, though I haven’t spared him my [b] reproach, either; I told you how horribly he treated me—and not only me but also Charmides, Euthydemus, and many others. He has deceived us all: he presents himself as your lover, and, before you know it, you’re in love with him yourself! I warn you, Agathon, don’t let him fool you! Remember our torments; be on your guard: don’t wait, like the fool in the [c] proverb, to learn your lesson from your own misfortune.61
Alcibiades’ frankness provoked a lot of laughter, especially since it was obvious that he was still in love with Socrates, who immediately said to him:
“You’re perfectly sober after all, Alcibiades. Otherwise you could never have concealed your motive so gracefully: how casually you let it drop, almost like an afterthought, at the very end of your speech! As if the real [d] point of all this has not been simply to make trouble between Agathon and me! You think that I should be in love with you and no one else, while you, and no one else, should be in love with Agathon—well, we were not deceived; we’ve seen through your little satyr play. Agathon, my friend, don’t let him get away with it: let no one come between us!”
Agathon said to Socrates:
[e] “I’m beginning to think you’re right; isn’t it proof of that that he literally came between us here on the couch? Why would he do this if he weren’t set on separating us? But he won’t get away with it; I’m coming right over to lie down next to you.”
“Wonderful,” Socrates said. “Come here, on my other side.”
“My god!” cried Alcibiades. “How I suffer in his hands! He kicks me when I’m down; he never lets me go. Come, don’t be selfish, Socrates; at least, let’s compromise: let Agathon lie down between us.”
“Why, that’s impossible,” Socrates said. “You have already delivered your praise of me, and now it’s my turn to praise whoever’s on my right. But if Agathon were next to you, he’d have to praise me all over again [223] instead of having me speak in his honor, as I very much want to do in any case. Don’t be jealous; let me praise the boy.”
“Oh, marvelous,” Agathon cried. “Alcibiades, nothing can make me stay next to you now. I’m moving no matter what. I simply must hear what Socrates has to say about me.”
“There we go again,” said Alcibiades. “It’s the same old story: when Socrates is around, nobody else can get close to a good-looking man. Look [b] how smoothly and plausibly he found a reason for Agathon to lie down next to him!”
And then, all of a sudden, while Agathon was changing places, a large drunken group, finding the gates open because someone was just leaving, walked into the room and joined the party. There was noise everywhere, and everyone was made to start drinking again in no particular order.
At that point, Aristodemus said, Eryximachus, Phaedrus, and some [c] others among the original guests made their excuses and left. He himself fell asleep and slept for a long time (it was winter, and the nights were quite long). He woke up just as dawn was about to break; the roosters were crowing already. He saw that the others had either left or were asleep on their couches and that only Agathon, Aristophanes, and Socrates were still awake, drinking out of a large cup which they were passing around [d] from left to right. Socrates was talking to them. Aristodemus couldn’t remember exactly what they were saying—he’d missed the first part of their discussion, and he was half-asleep anyway—but the main point was that Socrates was trying to prove to them that authors should be able to write both comedy and tragedy: the skillful tragic dramatist should also be a comic poet. He was about to clinch his argument, though, to tell the truth, sleepy as they were, they were hardly able to follow his reasoning. In fact, Aristophanes fell asleep in the middle of the discussion, and very soon thereafter, as day was breaking, Agathon also drifted off.
But after getting them off to sleep, Socrates got up and left, and Aristodemus followed him, as always. He said that Socrates went directly to the Lyceum, washed up, spent the rest of the day just as he always did, and only then, as evening was falling, went home to rest.
1. Agathon’s name could be translated “Goodman.” The proverb is, “Good men go uninvited to an inferior man’s feast” (Eupolis fr. 289 Kock).
2. Menelaus calls on Agamemnon at Iliad ii.408. Menelaus is called a limp spearman at xvii.587–88.
3. An allusion to Iliad x.224, “When two go together, one has an idea before the other.”
4. Dionysus was the god of wine and drunkenness.
5. Theogony 116–120, 118 omitted.
6. Acusilaus was an early-fifth-century writer of genealogies.
7. Parmenides, B 13 Diels-Kranz.
8. Accepting the deletion of ē in e5.
9. Cf. Iliad x.482, xv.262; Odyssey ix.381.
10. Alcestis was the self-sacrificing wife of Admetus, whom Apollo gave a chance to live if anyone would go to Hades in his place.
11. Orpheus was a musician of legendary powers, who charmed his way into the underworld in search of his dead wife, Eurydice.
12. In his play, The Myrmidons. In Homer there is no hint of sexual attachment between Achilles and Patroclus.
13. Harmodius and Aristogiton attempted to overthrow the tyrant Hippias in 514 B.C. Although their attempt failed, the tyranny fell three years later, and the lovers were celebrated as tyrannicides.
14. Iliad ii.71.
15. Heraclitus of Ephesus, a philosopher of the early fifth century, was known for his enigmatic sayings. This one is quoted elsewhere in a slightly different form, frg. B 51 Diels-Kranz.
16. Iliad v.385, Odyssey xi.305 ff.
17. Cf. Odyssey viii.266 ff.
18. Arcadia included the city of Mantinea, which opposed Sparta, and was rewarded by having its population divided and dispersed in 385 B.C. Aristophanes seems to be referring anachronistically to those events; such anachronisms are not uncommon in Plato.
19. Contr
ast 178b.
20. Iliad xix.92–93. “Mischief” translates Atē.
21. “Moral character”: aretē, i.e., virtue.
22. A proverbial expression attributed by Aristotle (Rhetoric 1406a17–23) to the fourth-century liberal thinker and rhetorician Alcidamas.
23. Sōphrosunē. The word can be translated also as “temperance” and, most literally, “sound-mindedness.” (Plato and Aristotle generally contrast sōphrosunē as a virtue with self-control: the person with sōphrosunē is naturally well-tempered in every way and so does not need to control himself, or hold himself back.)
24. From Sophocles, fragment 234b Dindorf: “Even Ares cannot withstand Necessity.” Ares is the god of war.
25. See Odyssey viii.266–366. Aphrodite’s husband Hephaestus made a snare that caught Ares in bed with Aphrodite.
26. “Wisdom” translates sophia, which Agathon treats as roughly equivalent to technē (professional skill); he refers mainly to the ability to produce things. Accordingly “wisdom” translates sophia in the first instance; afterwards in this passage it is “skill” or “art.”
27. At 186b.
28. Euripides, Stheneboea (frg. 666 Nauck).
29. After these two lines of poetry, Agathon continues with an extremely poetical prose peroration.
30. Accepting the emendation aganos at d5.
31. “Gorgian head” is a pun on “Gorgon’s head.” In his peroration Agathon had spoken in the style of Gorgias, and this style was considered to be irresistibly powerful. The sight of a Gorgon’s head would turn a man to stone.
32. The allusion is to Euripides, Hippolytus 612.
33. Cf. 197b.
34. 197b3–5.
35. The Greek is ambiguous between “Love loves beautiful things” and “Love is one of the beautiful things.” Agathon had asserted the former (197b5, 201a5), and this will be a premise in Diotima’s argument, but he asserted the latter as well (195a7), and this is what Diotima proceeds to refute.
36. Poros means “way,” “resource.” His mother’s name, Mētis, means “cunning.” Penia means “poverty.”
37. I.e., a philosopher.
38. Eudaimonia: no English word catches the full range of this term, which is used for the whole of well-being and the good, flourishing life.
39. “Poetry” translates poiēsis, lit. ‘making’, which can be used for any kind of production or creation. However, the word poiētēs, lit. ‘maker’, was used mainly for poets—writers of metrical verses that were actually set to music.
40. Accepting the emendation toutou in b1.
41. The preposition is ambiguous between “within” and “in the presence of.” Diotima may mean that the lover causes the newborn (which may be an idea) to come to be within a beautiful person; or she may mean that he is stimulated to give birth to it in the presence of a beautiful person.
42. Moira is known mainly as a Fate, but she was also a birth goddess (Iliad xxiv.209), and was identified with the birth-goddess Eilithuia (Pindar, Olympian Odes vi.42, Nemean Odes vii.1).
43. Codrus was the legendary last king of Athens. He gave his life to satisfy a prophecy that promised victory to Athens and salvation from the invading Dorians if their king was killed by the enemy.
44. Lycurgus was supposed to have been the founder of the oligarchic laws and stern customs of Sparta.
45. The leader: Love.
46. I.e., philosophy.
47. Reading teleutēsēi at c7.
48. Cf. 205d–e.
49. Iliad xi.514.
50. This is the conventional translation of the word, but the aulos was in fact a reed instrument and not a flute. It was held by the ancients to be the instrument that most strongly arouses the emotions.
51. Satyrs had the sexual appetites and manners of wild beasts and were usually portrayed with large erections. Sometimes they had horses’ tails or ears, sometimes the traits of goats. Marsyas, in myth, dared to compete in music with Apollo and was skinned alive for his impudence.
52. Olympus was a legendary musician who was said to be loved by Marsyas (Minos 318b5) and to have made music that moved its listeners out of their senses.
53. Legendary worshippers of Cybele, who brought about their own derangement through music and dance.
54. Iliad vi.232–36 tells the famous story of the exchange by Glaucus of golden armor for bronze.
55. Ajax, a hero of the Greek army at Troy, carried an enormous shield and so was virtually invulnerable to enemy weapons.
56. Potidaea, a city in Thrace allied to Athens, was induced by Corinth to revolt in 432 B.C. The city was besieged by the Athenians and eventually defeated in a bloody local war, 432–430 B.C.
57. Odyssey iv.242, 271.
58. At Delium, a town on the Boeotian coastline just north of Attica, a major Athenian expeditionary force was routed by a Boeotian army in 424 B.C. For another description of Socrates’ action during the retreat, see Laches 181b.
59. Cf. Aristophanes, Clouds 362.
60. Brasidas, among the most effective Spartan generals during the Peloponnesian War, was mortally wounded while defeating the Athenians at Amphipolis in 422 B.C. Antenor (for the Trojans) and Nestor (for the Greeks) were legendary wise counsellors during the Trojan War.
61. Cf. Iliad xvii.32.
PHAEDRUS
Translated by A. Nehamas and P. Woodruff.
Phaedrus is commonly paired on the one hand with Gorgias and on the other with Symposium—with the former in sharing its principal theme, the nature and limitations of rhetoric, with the latter in containing speeches devoted to the nature and value of erotic love. Here the two interests combine in manifold ways. Socrates, a city dweller little experienced in the pleasures of the country, walks out from Athens along the river Ilisus, alone with his friend Phaedrus, an impassioned admirer of oratory, for a private conversation: in Plato most of his conversations take place in a larger company, and no other in the private beauty of a rural retreat. There he is inspired to employ his knowledge of philosophy in crafting two speeches on the subject of erotic love, to show how paltry is the best effort on the same subject of the best orator in Athens, Lysias, who knows no philosophy. In the second half of the dialogue he explains to Phaedrus exactly how philosophical understanding of the truth about any matter discoursed upon, and about the varieties of human soul and their rhetorical susceptibilities, is an indispensable basis for a rhetorically accomplished speech— such as he himself delivered in the first part of the dialogue. By rights, Phaedrus’ passionate admiration for oratory ought therefore to be transformed into an even more passionate love of philosophical knowledge, fine oratory’s essential prerequisite. Socrates’ own speeches about erotic love and his dialectical presentation of rhetoric’s subservience to philosophy are both aimed at persuading Phaedrus to this transformation.
In his great second speech Socrates draws upon the psychological theory of the Republic and the metaphysics of resplendent Forms common to that dialogue and several others (notably Phaedo and Symposium) to inspire in Phaedrus a love for philosophy. By contrast, the philosophy drawn upon in the second, dialectical, half of the dialogue is linked closely to the much more austere, logically oriented investigations via the ‘method of divisions’ that we find in Sophist, Statesman, and Philebus—where the grasp of any important philosophical idea (any Form) proceeds by patient, detailed mapping of its relations to other concepts and to its own subvarieties, not through an awe-inspiring vision of a self-confined, single brilliant entity. One of Socrates’ central claims in the second part of the dialogue is that a rhetorical composition, of which his second speech is a paragon, must construct in words mere resemblances of the real truth, ones selected to appeal to the specific type of ‘soul’ that its hearers possess, so as to draw them on toward knowledge of the truth—or else to disguise it! A rhetorical composition does not actually convey the truth; the truth is known only through philosophical study—of the sort whose results are presented in the second half of the d
ialogue. So Socrates himself warns us that the ‘philosophical theories’ embodied in his speech are resemblances only, motivated in fact by his desire to win Phaedrus away from an indiscriminate love of rhetoric to a controlled but elevated love of philosophical study.
Phaedrus is one of Plato’s most admired literary masterpieces. Yet toward its end Socrates criticizes severely those who take their own writing seriously— any writing, not just orators’ speeches. Writings cannot contain or constitute knowledge of any important matter. Knowledge can only be lodged in a mind, and its essential feature there is an endless capacity to express, interpret, and reinterpret itself suitably, in response to every challenge—something a written text once let go by its author plainly lacks: it can only keep on repeating the same words to whoever picks it up. But does not a Platonic dialogue, in engaging its reader in a creative, multilayered intellectual encounter, have a similar capacity for ever-deeper reading, for the discovery of underlying meaning beyond the simple presentation of its surface ideas? Knowledge is only in souls, but, despite the Phaedrus’ own critique of writing, reading such a dialogue may be a good way of working to attain it.
J.M.C.
SOCRATES: Phaedrus, my friend! Where have you been? And where are [227] you going?
PHAEDRUS: I was with Lysias, the son of Cephalus,1 Socrates, and I am going for a walk outside the city walls because I was with him for a long time, sitting there the whole morning. You see, I’m keeping in mind the advice of our mutual friend Acumenus,2 who says it’s more refreshing to [b] walk along country roads than city streets.
SOCRATES: He is quite right, too, my friend. So Lysias, I take it, is in the city?
PHAEDRUS: Yes, at the house of Epicrates, which used to belong to Morychus,3 near the temple of the Olympian Zeus.
SOCRATES: What were you doing there? Oh, I know: Lysias must have been entertaining you with a feast of eloquence.
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