ere and
hereafter, they would acknowledge that this was the very expression of
their want. For love is the desire of the whole, and the pursuit of the
whole is called love. There was a time when the two sexes were only one,
but now God has halved them,--much as the Lacedaemonians have cut up
the Arcadians,--and if they do not behave themselves he will divide
them again, and they will hop about with half a nose and face in basso
relievo. Wherefore let us exhort all men to piety, that we may obtain
the goods of which love is the author, and be reconciled to God, and
find our own true loves, which rarely happens in this world. And now I
must beg you not to suppose that I am alluding to Pausanias and Agathon
(compare Protag.), for my words refer to all mankind everywhere.

Some raillery ensues first between Aristophanes and Eryximachus, and
then between Agathon, who fears a few select friends more than any
number of spectators at the theatre, and Socrates, who is disposed to
begin an argument. This is speedily repressed by Phaedrus, who reminds
the disputants of their tribute to the god. Agathon's speech follows:--

He will speak of the god first and then of his gifts: He is the fairest
and blessedest and best of the gods, and also the youngest, having had
no existence in the old days of Iapetus and Cronos when the gods were
at war. The things that were done then were done of necessity and not
of love. For love is young and dwells in soft places,--not like Ate
in Homer, walking on the skulls of men, but in their hearts and
souls, which are soft enough. He is all flexibility and grace, and his
habitation is among the flowers, and he cannot do or suffer wrong; for
all men serve and obey him of their own free will, and where there is
love there is obedience, and where obedience, there is justice; for
none can be wronged of his own free will. And he is temperate as well as
just, for he is the ruler of the desires, and if he rules them he must
be temperate. Also he is courageous, for he is the conqueror of the lord
of war. And he is wise too; for he is a poet, and the author of poesy in
others. He created the animals; he is the inventor of the arts; all the
gods are his subjects; he is the fairest and best himself, and the cause
of what is fairest and best in others; he makes men to be of one mind
at a banquet, filling them with affection and emptying them of
disaffection; the pilot, helper, defender, saviour of men, in whose
f