There are some soft of animals, such as flatterers, who are dangerous and, mischievous enough, and yet nature has mingled a temporary pleasure and grace in their composition. You may say that a courtesan is hurtful, and disapprove of such creatures and their practices, and yet for the time they are very pleasant. But the lover is not only hurtful to his love; he is also an extremely disagreeable companion. The old proverb says that ”birds of a feather flock together”; I suppose that equality of years inclines them to the same pleasures, and similarity begets friendship; yet you may have more than enough even of this; and verily constraint is always said to be grievous. Now the lover is not only unlike his beloved, but he forces himself upon him. For he is old and his love is young, and neither day nor night will he leave him if he can help; necessity and the sting of desire drive him on, and allure him with the pleasure which he receives from seeing, hearing, touching, perceiving him in every way. And therefore he is delighted to fasten upon him and to minister to him. But what pleasure or consolation can the beloved be receiving all this time？ Must he not feel the extremity of disgust when he looks at an old shrivelled face and the remainder to match, which even in a deion is disagreeable, andquite detestable when he is forced into daily contact with his lover; moreover he is jealously watched and guarded against everything and everybody, and has to hear misplaced and exaggerated praises of himself, and censures equally inappropriate, which are intolerable when the man is sober, and, besides being intolerable, are published all over the world in all their indelicacy and wearisomeness when he is drunk.
And not only while his love continues is he mischievous and unpleasant, but when his love ceases he becomes a perfidious enemy of him on whom he showered his oaths and prayers and promises, and yet could hardly prevail upon him to tolerate the tedium of his company even from motives of interest. The hour of payment arrives, and now he is the servant of another master; instead of love and infatuation, wisdom and temperance are his bosom"s lords; but the beloved has not discovered the change which has taken place in him, when he asks for a return and recalls to his recollection former sayings and doings; he believes himself to be speaking to the same person, and the other, not having the courage to confess the truth, and not knowing how to fulfil the oaths and promises which he made when under the dominion of folly, and having now grown wise and temperate, does not want to do as he did or to be as he was before. And so he runs away and is constrained to be a defaulter; the oyster-shell has fallen with the other side uppermost-he changes pursuit into flight, while the other is compelledto follow him with passion and imprecation not knowing that he ought never from the first to have accepted a demented lover instead of a sensible non-lover; and that in making such a choice he was giving himself up to a faithless, morose, envious, disagreeable being, hurtful to his estate, hurtful to his bodily health, and still more hurtful to the cultivation of his mind, than which there neither is nor ever will be anything more honoured in the eyes both of gods and men. Consider this, fair youth, and know that in the friendship of the lover there is no real kindness; he has an appetite and wants to feed upon you:
As wolves love lambs so lovers love their loves.
But I told you so, I am speaking in verse, and therefore I had better make an end; enough.
Phaedr. I thought that you were only halfway and were going to make a similar speech about all the advantages of accepting the non-lover. Why do you not proceed？
Soc. Does not your simplicity observe that I have got out of dithyrambics into heroics, when only uttering a censure on the lover？ And if I am to add the praises of the non-lover, what will become of me？ Do you not perceive that I am already overtaken by theNymphs to whom you have mischievously exposed me？ And therefore willonly add that the non-lover has all the advantages in which the lover is accused of being deficient. And now I will say no more; there has been enough of both of them. Leaving the tale to its fate, I will cross the river and make the best of my way home, lest a worse thing be inflicted upon me by you.
Phaedr. Not yet, Socrates; not until the heat of the day has passed; do you not see that the hour is almost noon？ there is the midday sun standing still, as people say, in the meridian. Let us rather stay and talk over what has been said, and then return in the cool.
Soc. Your love of discourse, Phaedrus, is superhuman, simply marvellous, and I do not believe that there is any one of your contemporaries who has either made or in one way or another has compelled others to make an equal number of speeches. I would except Simmias the Theban, but all the rest are far behind you. And now, I do verily believe that you have been the cause of another.
Phaedr. That is good news. But what do you mean？
Soc. I mean to say that as I was about to cross the stream the usual sign was given to me,-that sign which always forbids, but never bids, me to do anything which I am going to do; and I thought that I heard a voice saying in my car that I had been guilty of impiety, and. that I must not go away until I had made an atonement. Now I am a diviner, though not a very good one, but I have enough religion for myown use, as you might say of a bad writer-his writing is good enoughfor him; and I am beginning to see that I was in error. O my friend,how prophetic is the human soul! At the time I had a sort of misgiving, and, like Ibycus, ”I was troubled; I feared that I might be buying honour from men at the price of sinning against the gods.”
Now I recognize my error.
Phaedr. What error？
Soc. That was a dreadful speech which you brought with you, and you made me utter one as bad.
Phaedr. How so？
Soc. It was foolish, I say,-to a certain extent, impious; can anything be more dreadful？
Phaedr. Nothing, if the speech was really such as you describe.
Soc. Well, and is not Eros the son of Aphrodite, and a god？
Phaedr. So men say.