phaedrus   

is the servant of another master; instead of love and infatuation,

wisdom and temperance are his bosom's lords; but the beloved has not

discovered the change which has taken place in him, when he asks for a

return and recalls to his recollection former sayings and doings; he

believes himself to be speaking to the same person, and the other, not

having the courage to confess the truth, and not knowing how to fulfil

the oaths and promises which he made when under the dominion of folly,

and having now grown wise and temperate, does not want to do as he did

or to be as he was before. And so he runs away and is constrained to

be a defaulter; the oyster-shell has fallen with the other side

uppermost-he changes pursuit into flight, while the other is compelled

to follow him with passion and imprecation not knowing that he ought

never from the first to have accepted a demented lover instead of a

sensible non-lover; and that in making such a choice he was giving

himself up to a faithless, morose, envious, disagreeable being,

hurtful to his estate, hurtful to his bodily health, and still more

hurtful to the cultivation of his mind, than which there neither is

nor ever will be anything more honoured in the eyes both of gods and

men. Consider this, fair youth, and know that in the friendship of the

lover there is no real kindness; he has an appetite and wants to

feed upon you:



As wolves love lambs so lovers love their loves.



But I told you so, I am speaking in verse, and therefore I had

better make an end; enough.

Phaedr. I thought that you were only halfway and were going to

make a similar speech about all the advantages of accepting the

non-lover. Why do you not proceed?

Soc. Does not your simplicity observe that I have got out of

dithyrambics into heroics, when only uttering a censure on the

lover? And if I am to add the praises of the non-lover, what will