3 A letter to Barron Trump

2 continued

The Phaedrus opens with Socrates' 'My dear Phaedrus, where are you going, and from where do you come?' Phaedrus replies that he comes from Lysias and that he goes for a walk. With Lysias he spent the whole morning, for Lysias presented to his friends a talk in which he argued that favours should be presented to a man who is not in love rather than to one who is. Socrates wants to hear it, so Phaedrus finds a place under a plane-tree where he reads it to him. 

Having read Lysias' speech, Phaedrus maintained that Lysias left out nothing important that could be said on that subject, so that no one could make a better speech on it. Socrates disagrees and embarks on a rival speech, which he directs to a boy, imagining the boy in front of himself. He ends the denunciation of a lover by comparing him to a wolf: 'So these, boy, are the things you must bear in mind; the attentions of a lover do not come with good will; as wolf to lamb, so lover to the lad.'

With these words Socrates was about to end his speech: 'Not a word more shall you have from me, let that be the end of my discourse.' But Phaedrus objected, reminding Socrates that he was not only to denounce the lover, but as well point out good things about the non-lover. Unwilling to embark on a praise of the non-lover's intercourse with the boy, Socrates says: 'In one short sentence, to each evil for which I have abused the one party there is a corresponding good belonging to the other.'

Phaedrus pointed out that it was midday, the hottest part of the day, and begged him to stay under the shade of the plan-tree, and spend their time by discussing the two speeches. Socrates agreed; he praised Phaedrus' love of discussion, adding that just as he was to cross Ilissus/ the little river, he heard his inner voice that told him 'NO!': 

'A dreadful speech it was, Phaedrus, dreadful, both the one you brought with you, and the one you compelled me to make. Suppose we were being listened to by a man of generous and humane character who loved another such as himself; wouldn't he utterly refuse to accept our vilification of love?

And so Socrates embarks on a Palinode (recantation), which he ends with a prayer to Eros: 'This, dear god of love, is offered you as the finest and best palinode (recantation) of which I am capable: If, in our earlier  speech Phaedrus and I said anything harsh against you, blame Lysias as the instigator of the speech, and make him cease from speeches of that kind, turning him instead, as his brother Polemarchus has been turned, to philosophy.''

Polemarchus was put to death by the Thirty during their short reign of terror, with which ended the Peloponnesian war, that is in 404 BC. The death to which Polemarchus was subjected by the Thirty was a despicable death, described by Lysias in his speech Against Eratosthenes, which he delivered shortly after the victory of the democrats against the rule of the aristocrats. I cannot see how Plato could have written the Phaedrus with the advice to Lysias to follow the example of his older brother Polemarchus.

Reading the Phaedrus with DR Wilkes, in Prague, shortly before embarking on our journey to Oxford, Dr Wilkes fully agreed with me. Plato had to write the Phaedrus prior to the end of Polemarchus in the hands of the Thirty, that is some four years prior to Socrates' trial and death.