Complete Works (117 page)

P
HAEDRUS
: Come, Socrates, do you think you should joke about this?

S
OCRATES
: Do you really think I am joking, that I am not serious?

[e] P
HAEDRUS
: You are not at all serious, Socrates. But now tell me the truth, in the name of Zeus, god of friendship: Do you think that any other Greek could say anything more impressive or more complete on this same subject?

S
OCRATES
: What? Must we praise the speech even on the ground that its author has said what the situation demanded, and not instead simply on the ground that he has spoken in a clear and concise manner, with a precise turn of phrase? If we must, I will have to go along for your sake,
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since—surely because I am so ignorant—that passed me by. I paid attention only to the speech’s style. As to the other part, I wouldn’t even think that Lysias himself could be satisfied with it. For it seemed to me, Phaedrus—unless, of course, you disagree—that he said the same things two or even three times, as if he really didn’t have much to say about the subject, almost as if he just weren’t very interested in it. In fact, he seemed to me to be showing off, trying to demonstrate that he could say the same thing in two different ways, and say it just as well both times.

[b] P
HAEDRUS
: You are absolutely wrong, Socrates. That is in fact the best thing about the speech: He has omitted nothing worth mentioning about the subject, so that no one will ever be able to add anything of value to complete what he has already said himself.

S
OCRATES
: You go too far: I can’t agree with you about that. If, as a favor to you, I accept your view, I will stand refuted by all the wise men and women of old who have spoken or written about this subject.

P
HAEDRUS
: Who are these people? And where have you heard anything [c] better than this?

S
OCRATES
: I can’t tell you offhand, but I’m sure I’ve heard better somewhere; perhaps it was the lovely Sappho or the wise Anacreon or even some writer of prose. So, what’s my evidence? The fact, my dear friend, that my breast is full and I feel I can make a different speech, even better than Lysias’. Now I am well aware that none of these ideas can have come from me—I know my own ignorance. The only other possibility, I think, [d] is that I was filled, like an empty jar, by the words of other people streaming in through my ears, though I’m so stupid that I’ve even forgotten where and from whom I heard them.

P
HAEDRUS
: But, my dear friend, you couldn’t have said a better thing! Don’t bother telling me when and from whom you’ve heard this, even if I ask you—instead, do exactly what you said: You’ve just promised to make another speech making more points, and better ones, without repeating a word from my book. And I promise you that, like the Nine Archons, I shall set up in [e] return a life-sized golden statue at Delphi, not only of myself but also of you.
¹⁰

S
OCRATES
: You’re a real friend, Phaedrus, good as gold, to think I’m claiming that Lysias failed in absolutely every respect and that I can make a speech that is different on every point from his. I am sure that that couldn’t happen even to the worst possible author. In our own case, for example, do you think that anyone could argue that one should favor the non-lover rather than the lover without praising the former for keeping
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his wits about him or condemning the latter for losing his—points that are essential to make—and still have something left to say? I believe we must allow these points, and concede them to the speaker. In their case, we cannot praise their novelty but only their skillful arrangement; but we can praise both the arrangement and the novelty of the nonessential points that are harder to think up.

P
HAEDRUS
: I agree with you; I think that’s reasonable. This, then, is what I shall do. I will allow you to presuppose that the lover is less sane than [b] the non-lover—and if you are able to add anything of value to complete what we already have in hand, you will stand in hammered gold beside the offering of the Cypselids in Olympia.
¹¹

S
OCRATES
: Oh, Phaedrus, I was only criticizing your beloved in order to tease you—did you take me seriously? Do you think I’d really try to match the product of his wisdom with a fancier speech?

P
HAEDRUS
: Well, as far as that goes, my friend, you’ve fallen into your own trap. You have no choice but to give your speech as best you can: [c] otherwise you will force us into trading vulgar jibes the way they do in comedy. Don’t make me say what you said: “Socrates, if I don’t know my Socrates, I must be forgetting who I am myself,” or “He wanted to speak, but he was being coy.” Get it into your head that we shall not leave here until you recite what you claimed to have “in your breast.” We are alone, [d] in a deserted place, and I am younger and stronger. From all this, “take my meaning”
¹²
and don’t make me force you to speak when you can do so willingly.

S
OCRATES
: But, my dear Phaedrus, I’ll be ridiculous—a mere dilettante, improvising on the same topics as a seasoned professional!

P
HAEDRUS
: Do you understand the situation? Stop playing hard to get! I know what I can say to make you give your speech.

S
OCRATES
: Then please don’t say it!

P
HAEDRUS
: Oh, yes, I will. And what I say will be an oath. I swear to you—by which god, I wonder? How about this very plane tree?—I swear [e] in all truth that, if you don’t make your speech right next to this tree here, I shall never, never again recite another speech for you—I shall never utter another word about speeches to you!

S
OCRATES
: My oh my, what a horrible man you are! You’ve really found the way to force a lover of speeches to do just as you say!

P
HAEDRUS
: So why are you still twisting and turning like that?

S
OCRATES
: I’ll stop—now that you’ve taken this oath. How could I possibly give up such treats?

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P
HAEDRUS
: Speak, then.

S
OCRATES
: Do you know what I’ll do?

P
HAEDRUS
: What?

S
OCRATES
: I’ll cover my head while I’m speaking. In that way, as I’m going through the speech as fast as I can, I won’t get embarrassed by having to look at you and lose the thread of my argument.

P
HAEDRUS
: Just give your speech! You can do anything else you like.

S
OCRATES
: Come to me, O you clear-voiced Muses, whether you are called so because of the quality of your song or from the musical people of Liguria,
¹³
“come, take up my burden” in telling the tale that this fine fellow forces upon me so that his companion may now seem to him even [b] more clever than he did before:

There once was a boy, a youth rather, and he was very beautiful, and had very many lovers. One of them was wily and had persuaded him that he was not in love, though he loved the lad no less than the others. And once in pressing his suit to him, he tried to persuade him that he ought to give his favors to a man who did not love him rather than to one who did. And this is what he said:

“If you wish to reach a good decision on any topic, my boy, there is [c] only one way to begin: You must know what the decision is about, or else you are bound to miss your target altogether. Ordinary people cannot see that they do not know the true nature of a particular subject, so they proceed as if they did; and because they do not work out an agreement at the start of the inquiry, they wind up as you would expect—in conflict with themselves and each other. Now you and I had better not let this happen to us, since we criticize it in others. Because you and I are about to discuss whether a boy should make friends with a man who loves him [d] rather than with one who does not, we should agree on defining what love is and what effects it has. Then we can look back and refer to that as we try to find out whether to expect benefit or harm from love. Now, as everyone plainly knows, love is some kind of desire; but we also know that even men who are not in love have a desire for what is beautiful. So how shall we distinguish between a man who is in love and one who is not? We must realize that each of us is ruled by two principles which we follow wherever they lead: one is our inborn desire for pleasures, the other is our acquired judgment that pursues what is best. Sometimes these two [e] are in agreement; but there are times when they quarrel inside us, and then sometimes one of them gains control, sometimes the other. Now when judgment is in control and leads us by reasoning toward what is best, that sort of self-control is called ‘being in your right mind’; but when desire
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takes command in us and drags us without reasoning toward pleasure, then its command is known as ‘outrageousness’.
¹⁴
Now outrageousness has as many names as the forms it can take, and these are quite diverse.
¹⁵
Whichever form stands out in a particular case gives its name to the person who has it—and that is not a pretty name to be called, not worth earning at all. If it is desire for food that overpowers a person’s reasoning about what is best and suppresses his other desires, it is called gluttony and it [b] gives him the name of a glutton, while if it is desire for drink that plays the tyrant and leads the man in that direction, we all know what name we’ll call him then! And now it should be clear how to describe someone appropriately in the other cases: call the man by that name—sister to these others—that derives from the sister of these desires that controls him at the time. As for the desire that has led us to say all this, it should be obvious already, but I suppose things said are always better understood than things unsaid: The unreasoning desire that overpowers a person’s considered impulse to do right and is driven to take pleasure in beauty, [c] its force reinforced by its kindred desires for beauty in human bodies—this desire, all-conquering in its forceful drive, takes its name from the word for force (
rh
ō
m
ē
) and is called
er
ō
s
.”

There, Phaedrus my friend, don’t you think, as I do, that I’m in the grip of something divine?

P
HAEDRUS
: This is certainly an unusual flow of words for you, Socrates.

S
OCRATES
: Then be quiet and listen. There’s something really divine about this place, so don’t be surprised if I’m quite taken by the Nymphs’ madness [d] as I go on with the speech. I’m on the edge of speaking in dithyrambs
¹⁶
as it is.

P
HAEDRUS
: Very true!

S
OCRATES
: Yes, and you’re the cause of it. But hear me out; the attack may yet be prevented. That, however, is up to the god; what we must do is face the boy again in the speech:

“All right then, my brave friend, now we have a definition for the subject of our decision; now we have said what it really is; so let us keep that in [e] view as we complete our discussion. What benefit or harm is likely to come from the lover or the non-lover to the boy who gives him favors? It is surely necessary that a man who is ruled by desire and is a slave to pleasure will turn his boy into whatever is most pleasing to himself. Now a sick man takes pleasure in anything that does not resist him, but sees
[239]
anyone who is equal or superior to him as an enemy. That is why a lover will not willingly put up with a boyfriend who is his equal or superior, but is always working to make the boy he loves weaker and inferior to himself. Now, the ignorant man is inferior to the wise one, the coward to the brave, the ineffective speaker to the trained orator, the slow-witted to the quick. By necessity, a lover will be delighted to find all these mental defects and more, whether acquired or innate in his boy; and if he does not, he will have to supply them or else lose the pleasure of the moment. [b] The necessary consequence is that he will be jealous and keep the boy away from the good company of anyone who would make a better man of him; and that will cause him a great deal of harm, especially if he keeps him away from what would most improve his mind—and that is, in fact, divine philosophy, from which it is necessary for a lover to keep his boy a great distance away, out of fear the boy will eventually come to look down on him. He will have to invent other ways, too, of keeping the boy in total ignorance and so in total dependence on himself. That way the [c] boy will give his lover the most pleasure, though the harm to himself will be severe. So it will not be of any use to your intellectual development to have as your mentor and companion a man who is in love.

“Now let’s turn to your physical development. If a man is bound by necessity to chase pleasure at the expense of the good, what sort of shape will he want you to be in? How will he train you, if he is in charge? You will see that what he wants is someone who is soft, not muscular, and not trained in full sunlight but in dappled shade—someone who has never worked out like a man, never touched hard, sweaty exercise. Instead, he [d] goes for a boy who has known only a soft unmanly style of life, who makes himself pretty with cosmetics because he has no natural color at all. There is no point in going on with this description: it is perfectly obvious what other sorts of behavior follow from this. We can take up our next topic after drawing all this to a head: the sort of body a lover wants in his boy is one that will give confidence to the enemy in a war or other great crisis while causing alarm to friends and even to his lovers. Enough of that; the point is obvious.

[e] “Our next topic is the benefit or harm to your possessions that will come from a lover’s care and company. Everyone knows the answer, especially a lover: His first wish will be for a boy who has lost his dearest, kindliest and godliest possessions—his mother and father and other close relatives. He would be happy to see the boy deprived of them, since he would
[240]
expect them either to block him from the sweet pleasure of the boy’s company or to criticize him severely for taking it. What is more, a lover would think any money or other wealth the boy owns would only make him harder to snare and, once snared, harder to handle. It follows by absolute necessity that wealth in a boyfriend will cause his lover to envy him, while his poverty will be a delight. Furthermore, he will wish for the boy to stay wifeless, childless, and homeless for as long as possible, since that’s how long he desires to go on plucking his sweet fruit.