his, or something like this, was the speech of Phaedrus; and
some other speeches followed which Aristodemus did not remember. The next which he repeated was that of Pausanias. Phaedrus, he
said, I don't think the argument has not been set before us in quite
the right form. We should not be praising Love
in such an indiscriminate manner. If there were only one Love, then
what you said would be true enough. But since there are more Loves
than one, you should have begun by determining which of them was
to be the theme of our praises. I will amend this defect; and first
of all I will tell you which Love is deserving of praise, and then
try to hymn the praiseworthy one in a manner worthy of him. For we
all know that Love is inseparable from Aphrodite, and if there were
only one Aphrodite there would be only one Love; but as there are
two goddesses there must be two Loves. And am I not right in
asserting that there are two goddesses? The elder one, having no
mother, who is called the heavenly Aphrodite—she is the
daughter of Uranus; the younger, who is the daughter of Zeus and Dione —her we call common; and the Love who is her
fellow-worker is rightly named common, as the other love is called
heavenly. All the gods ought to have praise given to them, but not
without distinction of their natures; and therefore I must try to
distinguish the characters of the two Loves. Now actions vary
according to the manner of their performance. Take, for example,
that which we are now doing, drinking, singing and
talking—these actions are not in themselves either good or
evil, but they turn out in this or that way according to the mode
of performing them; and when well done they are good, and when
wrongly done they are evil; and in like manner not every love, but
only that which has a noble purpose, is noble and worthy of praise.
The Love who is the offspring of the common Aphrodite is
essentially common, and has no discrimination, being such as the
meaner sort of men feel, and is apt to be of women as well as of
youths, and is of the body rather than of the soul—the most
foolish beings are the objects of this love which desires only to
gain an end, but never thinks of accomplishing the end nobly, and
therefore does good and evil quite indiscriminately. The goddess
who is his mother is far younger than the other, and she was born
of the union of the male and female, and partakes of both. But the
offspring of the heavenly Aphrodite is derived from a mother in
whose birth the female has no part,—she is from the male
only; this is that love which is of youths, and the goddess being
older, there is nothing of wantonness in her. Those who are
inspired by this love turn to the male, and delight in him who is
the more valiant and intelligent nature; any one may recognise the
pure enthusiasts in the very character of their attachments. For
they love not boys, but intelligent beings whose reason is
beginning to be developed, much about the time at which their
beards begin to grow. And in choosing young men to be their
companions, they mean to be faithful to them, and pass their whole
life in company with them, not to take them in their inexperience,
and deceive them, and play the fool with them, or run away from one
to another of them. But the love of young boys should be forbidden
by law, because their future is uncertain; they may turn out good
or bad, either in body or soul, and much noble enthusiasm may be
thrown away upon them; in this matter the good are a law to
themselves, and the coarser sort of lovers ought to be restrained
by force; as we restrain or attempt to restrain them from fixing
their affections on women of free birth. These are the persons who
bring a reproach on love; and some have been led to deny the
lawfulness of such attachments because they see the impropriety and
evil of them; for surely nothing that is decorously and lawfully
done can justly be censured. Now here and in Lacedaemon the rules
about love are perplexing, but in most cities they are simple and
easily intelligible; in Elis and Boeotia, and in countries having
no gifts of eloquence, they are very straightforward; the law is
simply in favour of these connexions, and no one, whether young or
old, has anything to say to their discredit; the reason being, as I
suppose, that they are men of few words in those parts, and
therefore the lovers do not like the trouble of pleading their
suit. In Ionia and other places, and generally in countries which
are subject to the barbarians, the custom is held to be
dishonourable; loves of youths share the evil repute in which
philosophy and gymnastics are held, because they are inimical to
tyranny; for the interests of rulers require that their subjects
should be poor in spirit (compare Arist. Politics), and that there
should be no strong bond of friendship or society among them, which
love, above all other motives, is likely to inspire, as our
Athenian tyrants learned by experience; for the love of
Aristogeiton and the constancy of Harmodius had a strength which
undid their power. And, therefore, the ill-repute into which these
att achments have fallen is to be ascribed to the evil condition of
those who make them to be ill-reputed; that is to say, to the self-
seeking of the governors and the cowardice of the governed; on the
other hand, the indiscriminate honour which is given to them in
some countries is attributable to the laziness of those who hold
this opinion of them. In our own country a far better principle
prevails, but, as I was saying, the explanation of it is rather
perplexing. For, observe that open loves are held to be more
honourable than secret ones, and that the love of the noblest and
highest, even if their persons are less beautiful than others, is
especially honourable. Consider, too, how great is the
encouragement which all the world gives to the lover; neither is he
supposed to be doing anything dishonourable; but if he succeeds he
is praised, and if he fail he is blamed. And in the pursuit of his
love the custom of mankind allows him to do many strange things,
which philosophy would bitterly censure if they were done from any
motive of interest, or wish for office or power. He may pray, and
entreat, and supplicate, and swear, and lie on a mat at the door,
and endure a slavery worse than that of any slave—in any
other case friends and enemies would be equally ready to prevent
him, but now there is no friend who will be ashamed of him and
admonish him, and no enemy will charge him with meanness or
flattery; the actions of a lover have a grace which ennobles them;
and custom has decided that they are highly commendable and that
there no loss of character in them; and, what is strangest of all,
he only may swear and forswear himself (so men say), and the gods
will forgive his transgression, for there is no such thing as a
lover’s oath. Such is the entire liberty which gods and men
have allowed the lover, according to the custom which prevails in
our part of the world. From this point of view a man fairly argues
that in Athens to love and to be loved is held to be a very honourable thing. But when parents forbid their sons to talk with
their lovers, and place them under a tutor’s care, who is
appointed to see to these things, and their companions and equals
cast in their teeth anything of the sort which they may observe,
and their elders refuse to silence the reprovers and do not rebuke
them—any one who reflects on all this will, on the contrary,
think that we hold these practices to be most disgraceful. But, as
I was saying at first, the truth as I imagine is, that whether such
practices are honourable or whether they are dishonourable is not a
simple question; they are honourable to him who follows them
honourably, dishonourable to him who follows them dishonourably.
There is dishonour in yielding to the evil, or in an evil manner;
but there is honour in yielding to the good, or in an honourable
manner. Evil is the vulgar lover who loves the body rather than the
soul, inasmuch as he is not even stable, because he loves a thing
which is in itself unstable, and therefore when the bloom of youth
which he was desiring is over, he takes wing and flies away, in
spite of all his words and promises; whereas the love of the noble
disposition is life-long, for it becomes one with the everlasting.
The custom of our country would have both of them proven well and
truly, and would have us yield to the one sort of lover and avoid
th e other, and therefore encourages some to pursue, and others to
fly; testing both the lover and beloved in contests and trials,
until they show to which of the two classes they respectively
belong. And this is the reason why, in the first place, a hasty
attachment is held to be dishonourable, because time is the true
test of this as of most other things; and secondly there is a
dishonour in being overcome by the love of money, or of wealth, or
of political power, whether a man is frightened into surrender by
the loss of them, or, having experienced the benefits of money and
political corruption, is unable to rise above the seductions of
them. For none of these things are of a permanent or lasting
nature; not to mention that no generous friendship ever sprang from
them. There remains, then, only one way of honourable attachment
which custom allows in the beloved, and this is the way of virtue;
for as we admitted that any service which the lover does to him is
not to be accounted flattery or a dishonour to himself, so the
beloved has one way only of voluntary service which is not
dishonourable, and this is virtuous service.
For we have a custom, and according to our custom any one who
does service to another under the idea that he will be improved by
him either in wisdom, or in some other particular of
virtue—such a voluntary service, I say, is not to be regarded
as a dishonour, and is not open to the charge of flattery. And
these two customs, one the love of youth, and the other the
practice of philosophy and virtue in general, ought to meet in one,
and then the beloved may honourably indulge the lover. For when the
lover and beloved come together, having each of them a law, and the
lover thinks that he is right in doing any service which he can to
his gracious loving one; and the other that he is right in showing
any kindness which he can to him who is making him wise and good;
the one capable of communicating wisdom and virtue, the other
seeking to acquire them with a view to education and wisdom, when
the two laws of love are fulfilled and meet in one—then, and
then only, may the beloved yield with honour to the lover. Nor when
love is of this disinterested sort is there any disgrace in being
deceived, but in every other case there is equal disgrace in being
or not being deceived. For he who is gracious to his lover under
the impression that he is rich, and is disappointed of his gains
because he turns out to be poor, is disgraced all the same: for he
has done his best to show that he would give himself up to any
one’s ‘uses base’ for the sake of money; but this
is not honourable. And on the same principle he who gives himself
to a lover because he is a good man, and in the hope that he will
be improved by his company, shows himself to be virtuous, even
though the object of his affection turn out to be a villain, and to
have no virtue; and if he is deceived he has committed a noble
error. For he has proved that for his part he will do anything for
anybody with a view to virtue and improvement, than which there can
be nothing nobler. Thus noble in every case is the acceptance of
another for the sake of virtue. 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.
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