os the son of Aphrodite, and a god?

PHAEDRUS: So men say.

SOCRATES: But that was not acknowledged by Lysias in his speech, nor by
you in that other speech which you by a charm drew from my lips. For if
love be, as he surely is, a divinity, he cannot be evil. Yet this was
the error of both the speeches. There was also a simplicity about them
which was refreshing; having no truth or honesty in them, nevertheless
they pretended to be something, hoping to succeed in deceiving the
manikins of earth and gain celebrity among them. Wherefore I must have
a purgation. And I bethink me of an ancient purgation of mythological
error which was devised, not by Homer, for he never had the wit to
discover why he was blind, but by Stesichorus, who was a philosopher and
knew the reason why; and therefore, when he lost his eyes, for that was
the penalty which was inflicted upon him for reviling the lovely Helen,
he at once purged himself. And the purgation was a recantation, which
began thus,--

'False is that word of mine--the truth is that thou didst not embark in
ships, nor ever go to the walls of Troy;'

and when he had completed his poem, which is called 'the recantation,'
immediately his sight returned to him. Now I will be wiser than either
Stesichorus or Homer, in that I am going to make my recantation for
reviling love before I suffer; and this I will attempt, not as before,
veiled and ashamed, but with forehead bold and bare.

PHAEDRUS: Nothing could be more agreeable to me than to hear you say so.

SOCRATES: Only think, my good Phaedrus, what an utter want of delicacy
was shown in the two discourses; I mean, in my own and in that which you
recited out of the book. Would not any one who was himself of a noble
and gentle nature, and who loved or ever had loved a nature like his
own, when we tell of the petty causes of lovers' jealousies, and of
their exceeding animosities, and of the injuries which they do to their
beloved, have imagined that our ideas of love were taken from some haunt
of sailors to which good manners were unknown--he would certainly never
have admitted the justice of our censure?

PHAEDRUS: I dare say not, Socrates.

SOCRATES: Therefore, because I blush at the thought of this person, and
also because I am afraid of Love himself, I desire to wash the brine out
of my ears with water from the spring; and I would counsel Lysias not to
delay, but to write another discourse, which shall prove that 'ceteris