phaedrus   

ordained that there shall ever be friendship among the good. And the

beloved when he has received him into communion and intimacy, is quite

amazed at the good-will of the lover; he recognises that the

inspired friend is worth all other friends or kinsmen; they have

nothing of friendship in them worthy to be compared with his. And when

his feeling continues and he is nearer to him and embraces him, in

gymnastic exercises and at other times of meeting, then the fountain

of that stream, which Zeus when he was in love with Ganymede named

Desire, overflows upon the lover, and some enters into his soul, and

some when he is filled flows out again; and as a breeze or an echo

rebounds from the smooth rocks and returns whence it came, so does the

stream of beauty, passing through the eyes which are the windows of

the soul, come back to the beautiful one; there arriving and

quickening the passages of the wings, watering. them and inclining

them to grow, and filling the soul of the beloved also with love.

And thus he loves, but he knows not what; he does not understand and

cannot explain his own state; he appears to have caught the

infection of blindness from another; the lover is his mirror in whom

he is beholding himself, but he is not aware of this. When he is

with the lover, both cease from their pain, but when he is away then

he longs as he is longed for, and has love's image, love for love

(Anteros) lodging in his breast, which he calls and believes to be not

love but friendship only, and his desire is as the desire of the

other, but weaker; he wants to see him, touch him, kiss him, embrace

him, and probably not long afterwards his desire is accomplished. When

they meet, the wanton steed of the lover has a word to say to the

charioteer; he would like to have a little pleasure in return for many

pains, but the wanton steed of the beloved says not a word, for he

is bursting with passion which he understands not;-he throws his

arms round the lover and embraces him as his dearest friend; and, when

they are side by side, he is not in it state in which he can refuse

the lover anything, if he ask him; although his fellow-steed and the