Phaedrus

By Plato

Categories: Politics & Social Sciences

Set outside the walls of Athens, this dialogue by Plato finds Socrates and young Phaedrus beside the river Ilissus. Phaedrus reads aloud a speech by the orator Lysias arguing that a boy should favor a nonlover over a lover. Socrates replies with two speeches of his own, the second picturing the soul as a charioteer driving two winged horses. The conversation then turns to good and bad rhetoric, and to whether writing helps or harms memory.

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