ry with us the recollection of the past, in which
are necessarily contained many seeds of revival and renaissance in the
future. So far is the world from becoming exhausted, so groundless is
the fear that literature will ever die out.

PHAEDRUS

PERSONS OF THE DIALOGUE: Socrates, Phaedrus.

SCENE: Under a plane-tree, by the banks of the Ilissus.

SOCRATES: My dear Phaedrus, whence come you, and whither are you going?

PHAEDRUS: I come from Lysias the son of Cephalus, and I am going to
take a walk outside the wall, for I have been sitting with him the whole
morning; and our common friend Acumenus tells me that it is much more
refreshing to walk in the open air than to be shut up in a cloister.

SOCRATES: There he is right. Lysias then, I suppose, was in the town?

PHAEDRUS: Yes, he was staying with Epicrates, here at the house of
Morychus; that house which is near the temple of Olympian Zeus.

SOCRATES: And how did he entertain you? Can I be wrong in supposing that
Lysias gave you a feast of discourse?

PHAEDRUS: You shall hear, if you can spare time to accompany me.

SOCRATES: And should I not deem the conversation of you and Lysias 'a
thing of higher import,' as I may say in the words of Pindar, 'than any
business'?

PHAEDRUS: Will you go on?

SOCRATES: And will you go on with the narration?

PHAEDRUS: My tale, Socrates, is one of your sort, for love was the theme
which occupied us--love after a fashion: Lysias has been writing about
a fair youth who was being tempted, but not by a lover; and this was
the point: he ingeniously proved that the non-lover should be accepted
rather than the lover.

SOCRATES: O that is noble of him! I wish that he would say the poor man
rather than the rich, and the old man rather than the young one;--then
he would meet the case of me and of many a man; his words would be quite
refreshing, and he would be a public benefactor. For my part, I do so
long to hear his speech, that if you walk all the way to Megara, and
when you have reached the wall come back, as Herodicus recommends,
without going in, I will keep you company.

PHAEDRUS: What do you mean, my good Socrates? How can you imagine that
my unpractised memory can do justice to an elaborate work, which the
greatest rhetorician of the age spent a long time in composing. Indeed,
I cannot; I would give a great deal if I could.

SOCRATES: I believe that I know Phaedrus about as well as I know myself,
and I am ve