a wide application and reveals a deep insight into the
world:--that in speaking of holy things and persons there is a general
understanding that you should praise them, not that you should speak the
truth about them--this is the sort of praise which Socrates is unable to
give. Lastly, (9) we may remark that the banquet is a real banquet after
all, at which love is the theme of discourse, and huge quantities of
wine are drunk.

The discourse of Phaedrus is half-mythical, half-ethical; and he
himself, true to the character which is given him in the Dialogue
bearing his name, is half-sophist, half-enthusiast. He is the critic
of poetry also, who compares Homer and Aeschylus in the insipid
and irrational manner of the schools of the day, characteristically
reasoning about the probability of matters which do not admit of
reasoning. He starts from a noble text: 'That without the sense of
honour and dishonour neither states nor individuals ever do any good
or great work.' But he soon passes on to more common-place topics. The
antiquity of love, the blessing of having a lover, the incentive which
love offers to daring deeds, the examples of Alcestis and Achilles, are
the chief themes of his discourse. The love of women is regarded by him
as almost on an equality with that of men; and he makes the singular
remark that the gods favour the return of love which is made by the
beloved more than the original sentiment, because the lover is of a
nobler and diviner nature.

There is something of a sophistical ring in the speech of Phaedrus,
which recalls the first speech in imitation of Lysias, occurring in the
Dialogue called the Phaedrus. This is still more marked in the speech of
Pausanias which follows; and which is at once hyperlogical in form and
also extremely confused and pedantic. Plato is attacking the logical
feebleness of the sophists and rhetoricians, through their pupils, not
forgetting by the way to satirize the monotonous and unmeaning rhythms
which Prodicus and others were introducing into Attic prose (compare
Protag.). Of course, he is 'playing both sides of the game,' as in the
Gorgias and Phaedrus; but it is not necessary in order to understand him
that we should discuss the fairness of his mode of proceeding. The
love of Pausanias for Agathon has already been touched upon in the
Protagoras, and is alluded to by Aristophanes. Hence he is naturally the
upholder of male loves, which, like all the other affections or