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Nor can we say that the offer of Socrates to dance naked out of love for Menexenus, is any more un-Platonic than the threat of physical force which Phaedrus uses towards Socrates. Nor is there any real vulgarity in the fear which Socrates expresses that he will get a beating from his mistress, Aspasia: this is the natural exaggeration of what might be expected from an imperious woman.
Phaedrus reads a paradoxical speech supposed to be written by Lysias, the famous orator, on Love; Socrates replies in a speech quite as unreal, praising as Lysias did him who does not love. But soon he recants his real creed being the opposite. Frenzy is his subject the ecstasy of prophecy, mysticism, poetry and the soul.
Many things were said by Phaedrus about Love in which I agree with him; but I cannot agree that he is older than Iapetus and Kronos: not so; I maintain him to be the youngest of the gods, and youthful ever.
This is that love which is the love of the heavenly godess, and is heavenly, and of great price to individuals and cities, making the lover and the beloved alike eager in the work of their own improvement. But all other loves are the offspring of the other, who is the common goddess. To you, Phaedrus, I offer this my contribution in praise of love, which is as good as I could make extempore.
"It was but yesterday," said Mrs Root, "that I was telling the lady of Mr Alderman Jenkins we have the five Jenkinses, ma'am that Master Rattlin was the sweetest, genteelist, and beautifullest boy in the whole school." Not yet ten months with me, madam. Already in Phaedrus the rule of three and his French master gives the best account of him.
But the elder of them she took with, her and set sail with the chest for Egypt; and it being now about morning, the river Phaedrus sending forth a rough and sharp air, she in her anger dried up its current.
This curious passage is, therefore, to be regarded as Plato's satire on the tedious and hypercritical arts of interpretation which prevailed in his own day, and may be compared with his condemnation of the same arts when applied to mythology in the Phaedrus, and with his other parodies, e.g. with the two first speeches in the Phaedrus and with the Menexenus.
There is the same proof that these ideas must have existed before we were born, as that our souls existed before we were born; and if not the ideas, then not the souls." In the Phaedrus this conception of a former existence is embodied in one of the Myths in which Plato's imaginative powers are seen at their highest.
And not only this, but he also denominates those nature gods that are always united to the gods, and which, in conjunction with them, give completion to one series. He also frequently calls daemons gods, though, according to essence, they are secondary to and subsist about the gods. For in the Phaedrus, Timaeus, and other dialogues, he extends the appellation of gods as far as the daemons.
which I am about to speak, but that of Phaedrus. For often he says to me in an indignant tone: 'What a strange thing it is, Eryximachus, that, whereas other gods have poems and hymns made in their honour, the great and glorious god, Love, has no encomiast among all the poets who are so many.
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