like to have a little more conversation before they go.
Socrates, who has risen, recognizes the oracular sign which forbids him
to depart until he has done penance. His conscious has been awakened,
and like Stesichorus when he had reviled the lovely Helen he will sing
a palinode for having blasphemed the majesty of love. His palinode takes
the form of a myth.

Socrates begins his tale with a glorification of madness, which he
divides into four kinds: first, there is the art of divination or
prophecy--this, in a vein similar to that pervading the Cratylus and
Io, he connects with madness by an etymological explanation (mantike,
manike--compare oionoistike, oionistike, ''tis all one reckoning, save
the phrase is a little variations'); secondly, there is the art of
purification by mysteries; thirdly, poetry or the inspiration of the
Muses (compare Ion), without which no man can enter their temple. All
this shows that madness is one of heaven's blessings, and may sometimes
be a great deal better than sense. There is also a fourth kind of
madness--that of love--which cannot be explained without enquiring into
the nature of the soul.

All soul is immortal, for she is the source of all motion both in
herself and in others. Her form may be described in a figure as a
composite nature made up of a charioteer and a pair of winged steeds.
The steeds of the gods are immortal, but ours are one mortal and the
other immortal. The immortal soul soars upwards into the heavens, but
the mortal drops her plumes and settles upon the earth.

Now the use of the wing is to rise and carry the downward element into
the upper world--there to behold beauty, wisdom, goodness, and the other
things of God by which the soul is nourished. On a certain day Zeus the
lord of heaven goes forth in a winged chariot; and an array of gods
and demi-gods and of human souls in their train, follows him. There are
glorious and blessed sights in the interior of heaven, and he who will
may freely behold them. The great vision of all is seen at the feast of
the gods, when they ascend the heights of the empyrean--all but Hestia,
who is left at home to keep house. The chariots of the gods glide
readily upwards and stand upon the outside; the revolution of the
spheres carries them round, and they have a vision of the world beyond.
But the others labour in vain; for the mortal steed, if he has not been
properly trained, keeps them down and sinks them towards the earth.