and exaggerated praises of himself, and censures
equally inappropriate, which are intolerable when the man is sober, and,
besides being intolerable, are published all over the world in all their
indelicacy and wearisomeness when he is drunk.

And not only while his love continues is he mischievous and unpleasant,
but when his love ceases he becomes a perfidious enemy of him on whom
he showered his oaths and prayers and promises, and yet could hardly
prevail upon him to tolerate the tedium of his company even from motives
of interest. The hour of payment arrives, and now he is the servant of
another master; instead of love and infatuation, wisdom and temperance
are his bosom's lords; but the beloved has not discovered the change
which has taken place in him, when he asks for a return and recalls to
his recollection former sayings and doings; he believes himself to be
speaking to the same person, and the other, not having the courage to
confess the truth, and not knowing how to fulfil the oaths and promises
which he made when under the dominion of folly, and having now grown
wise and temperate, does not want to do as he did or to be as he was
before. And so he runs away and is constrained to be a defaulter; the
oyster-shell (In allusion to a game in which two parties fled or pursued
according as an oyster-shell which was thrown into the air fell with
the dark or light side uppermost.) has fallen with the other side
uppermost--he changes pursuit into flight, while the other is compelled
to follow him with passion and imprecation, not knowing that he ought
never from the first to have accepted a demented lover instead of a
sensible non-lover; and that in making such a choice he was giving
himself up to a faithless, morose, envious, disagreeable being, hurtful
to his estate, hurtful to his bodily health, and still more hurtful to
the cultivation of his mind, than which there neither is nor ever will
be anything more honoured in the eyes both of gods and men. Consider
this, fair youth, and know that in the friendship of the lover there is
no real kindness; he has an appetite and wants to feed upon you:

'As wolves love lambs so lovers love their loves.'

But I told you so, I am speaking in verse, and therefore I had better
make an end; enough.

PHAEDRUS: I thought that you were only half-way and were going to make a
similar speech about all the advantages of accepting the non-lover. Why
do you not proceed?

SOCRATES: Doe