nning of this tale, I divided each soul into
three--two horses and a charioteer; and one of the horses was good and
the other bad: the division may remain, but I have not yet explained in
what the goodness or badness of either consists, and to that I will
now proceed. The right-hand horse is upright and cleanly made; he has a
lofty neck and an aquiline nose; his colour is white, and his eyes dark;
he is a lover of honour and modesty and temperance, and the follower
of true glory; he needs no touch of the whip, but is guided by word and
admonition only. The other is a crooked lumbering animal, put together
anyhow; he has a short thick neck; he is flat-faced and of a dark
colour, with grey eyes and blood-red complexion (Or with grey and
blood-shot eyes.); the mate of insolence and pride, shag-eared and deaf,
hardly yielding to whip and spur. Now when the charioteer beholds the
vision of love, and has his whole soul warmed through sense, and is full
of the prickings and ticklings of desire, the obedient steed, then
as always under the government of shame, refrains from leaping on the
beloved; but the other, heedless of the pricks and of the blows of
the whip, plunges and runs away, giving all manner of trouble to his
companion and the charioteer, whom he forces to approach the beloved and
to remember the joys of love. They at first indignantly oppose him and
will not be urged on to do terrible and unlawful deeds; but at last,
when he persists in plaguing them, they yield and agree to do as he bids
them. And now they are at the spot and behold the flashing beauty of the
beloved; which when the charioteer sees, his memory is carried to the
true beauty, whom he beholds in company with Modesty like an image
placed upon a holy pedestal. He sees her, but he is afraid and falls
backwards in adoration, and by his fall is compelled to pull back the
reins with such violence as to bring both the steeds on their haunches,
the one willing and unresisting, the unruly one very unwilling; and when
they have gone back a little, the one is overcome with shame and wonder,
and his whole soul is bathed in perspiration; the other, when the
pain is over which the bridle and the fall had given him, having with
difficulty taken breath, is full of wrath and reproaches, which he
heaps upon the charioteer and his fellow-steed, for want of courage
and manhood, declaring that they have been false to their agreement and
guilty of desertion. Again they ref