s not your simplicity observe that I have got out of
dithyrambics into heroics, when only uttering a censure on the lover?
And if I am to add the praises of the non-lover what will become of me?
Do you not perceive that I am already overtaken by the Nymphs to whom
you have mischievously exposed me? And therefore I will only add that
the non-lover has all the advantages in which the lover is accused of
being deficient. And now I will say no more; there has been enough of
both of them. Leaving the tale to its fate, I will cross the river and
make the best of my way home, lest a worse thing be inflicted upon me by
you.

PHAEDRUS: Not yet, Socrates; not until the heat of the day has passed;
do you not see that the hour is almost noon? there is the midday sun
standing still, as people say, in the meridian. Let us rather stay and
talk over what has been said, and then return in the cool.

SOCRATES: Your love of discourse, Phaedrus, is superhuman, simply
marvellous, and I do not believe that there is any one of your
contemporaries who has either made or in one way or another has
compelled others to make an equal number of speeches. I would except
Simmias the Theban, but all the rest are far behind you. And now I do
verily believe that you have been the cause of another.

PHAEDRUS: That is good news. But what do you mean?

SOCRATES: I mean to say that as I was about to cross the stream the
usual sign was given to me,--that sign which always forbids, but never
bids, me to do anything which I am going to do; and I thought that I
heard a voice saying in my ear that I had been guilty of impiety,
and that I must not go away until I had made an atonement. Now I am a
diviner, though not a very good one, but I have enough religion for my
own use, as you might say of a bad writer--his writing is good enough
for him; and I am beginning to see that I was in error. O my friend, how
prophetic is the human soul! At the time I had a sort of misgiving, and,
like Ibycus, 'I was troubled; I feared that I might be buying honour
from men at the price of sinning against the gods.' Now I recognize my
error.

PHAEDRUS: What error?

SOCRATES: That was a dreadful speech which you brought with you, and you
made me utter one as bad.

PHAEDRUS: How so?

SOCRATES: It was foolish, I say,--to a certain extent, impious; can
anything be more dreadful?

PHAEDRUS: Nothing, if the speech was really such as you describe.

SOCRATES: Well, and is not Er