Socrates never accomplished his promised rival talk. Having denounced Eros as madness that made the lover untrustworthy, peevish, jealous, disagreeable, harmful to the boy’s property, his body, and his mind, Socrates said: “You will hear nothing more from me; let this be the end of my talk.”
Phaedrus protested: “But I thought you would go on
and argue that the boy ought to grant his favours [surrender his virginity] to
a non-lover. Why do you stop?” Socrates replied: “Haven’t you noticed that I’m
already speaking in epic verses, despite my fault-finding? If I begin praising
the other man, I’ll become possessed by the Nymphs to whom you exposed me. I
will take myself off across the river, before you force me into something
worse.”
Phaedrus begs him to stop, and Socrates stops: “When
I was about to cross the river, there came to me my familiar divine sign, which
always stops me when I am about to do something or other. And I seemed to hear
a voice, forbidding me to leave the spot until I made atonement for my offence.
Don’t you hold Eros to be a god, the child of Aphrodite? If Eros is a divine
being, he cannot be evil.”
“I must purify myself, and there is an ancient
purification which was known to Stesichoros, though not to Homer. When
Stesichoros got blind because of his defamation of Helen, he wrote a Palinode:
‘This story is not true. You never sailed in the well-decked ships. You never
went to the citadel of Troy.’ And he straightway recovered his sight.”
“I shall be wiser; I shall make Palinode to Eros before
I get blind.”
“And indeed, good Phaedrus, had we been heard by a
man of noble character, who loved another such as himself – us saying that for some trifling cause lovers conceive bitter hatred towards their loved ones – he would think that
we were brought up among sailors, and never saw a free Eros (eleutheron
Erȏta). Then out of shame for what this man would think, and out of fear of
Eros, I shall wash the bitter taste out of my mouth with a wholesome speech.”
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