Phaedrus by Plato. - HTML preview

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Phaedrus

PHAEDRUS: There are shade and gentle breezes, PHAEDRUS: I have never noticed it; but I beseech and grass on which we may either sit or lie down.

you to tell me, Socrates, do you believe this tale?

SOCRATES: Move forward.

SOCRATES: The wise are doubtful, and I should not be singular if, like them, I too doubted. I PHAEDRUS: I should like to know, Socrates, might have a rational explanation that Orithyia whether the place is not somewhere here at was playing with Pharmacia, when a northern which Boreas is said to have carried off Orithyia gust carried her over the neighbouring rocks; and from the banks of the Ilissus?

this being the manner of her death, she was said to have been carried away by Boreas. There is a SOCRATES: Such is the tradition.

discrepancy, however, about the locality; according to another version of the story she was taken PHAEDRUS: And is this the exact spot? The little from Areopagus, and not from this place. Now I stream is delightfully clear and bright; I can quite acknowledge that these allegories are very fancy that there might be maidens playing near.

nice, but he is not to be envied who has to invent them; much labour and ingenuity will be SOCRATES: I believe that the spot is not exactly required of him; and when he has once begun, here, but about a quarter of a mile lower down, he must go on and rehabilitate Hippocentaurs where you cross to the temple of Artemis, and and chimeras dire. Gorgons and winged steeds there is, I think, some sort of an altar of Boreas flow in apace, and numberless other inconceiv-at the place.

able and portentous natures. And if he is scepti-51

Plato

cal about them, and would fain reduce them one summer sounds and scents. Here is this lofty and after another to the rules of probability, this sort spreading plane-tree, and the agnus castus high of crude philosophy will take up a great deal of and clustering, in the fullest blossom and the time. Now I have no leisure for such enquiries; greatest fragrance; and the stream which flows shall I tell you why? I must first know myself, as beneath the plane-tree is deliciously cold to the the Delphian inscription says; to be curious about feet. Judging from the ornaments and images, that which is not my concern, while I am still in this must be a spot sacred to Achelous and the ignorance of my own self, would be ridiculous.

Nymphs. How delightful is the breeze:—so very And therefore I bid farewell to all this; the com-sweet; and there is a sound in the air shrill and mon opinion is enough for me. For, as I was say-summerlike which makes answer to the chorus ing, I want to know not about this, but about of the cicadae. But the greatest charm of all is myself: am I a monster more complicated and the grass, like a pillow gently sloping to the head.

swollen with passion than the serpent Typho, or My dear Phaedrus, you have been an admirable a creature of a gentler and simpler sort, to whom guide.

Nature has given a diviner and lowlier destiny?

But let me ask you, friend: have we not reached PHAEDRUS: What an incomprehensible being the plane-tree to which you were conducting us?

you are, Socrates: when you are in the country, as you say, you really are like some stranger who PHAEDRUS: Yes, this is the tree.

is led about by a guide. Do you ever cross the border? I rather think that you never venture SOCRATES: By Here, a fair resting-place, full of even outside the gates.