Phaedrus

Though it may seem at first glance that Phaedrus’s role in the dialogue is simply to provide an audience for Socrates, Plato develops him further. Phaedrus is clearly interested in good writing and speaking, and holds a high opinion of Lysias. That he has retained a copy of Lysias’s speech from the night before the dialogue takes place shows his intent to study it further. Socrates often praises Phaedrus, rightly or not, as a great speaker, a lover of knowledge, and the inspiration for Socrates’s own musings on the meaning of love, the types of divine inspiration, and the qualities of effective rhetoric. Like Socrates, Phaedrus makes appearances as a character in other dialogues by Plato. He is an historical character, but little is known about his life.

Lysias, the son of Cephalus, is the writer of the speech that Phaedrus has just heard when he meets Socrates at the opening of the dialogue, a speech that Lysias rereads in its entirety at Socrates’s request. Lysias was a resident of late 5th-century BC Athens, but it is unknown whether his speech in Phaedrus is historical or an invention of Plato’s. In any case, his speech as fuel for the discussion of Socrates and Phaedrus makes up the entire dialogue: the first half is concerned with the premise of his speech (that is, “Is a man not in love superior to a man in love?”) while the second half is concerned with the effectiveness of his rhetoric. Though Phaedrus describes Lysias as “the best writer living” (22) at the outset of the dialogue, Socrates does not seem to hold a very high opinion of Lysias’s skill as a writer or as a thinker. His speech serves mainly as a foil against which Socrates can propose his own ideas, which are much more colorful, poetic, and entertaining. There is nothing in the speech of Lysias comparable to Socrates’s myths and allegories, and Lysias (in his speech) does not claim to be divinely inspired, as Socrates suggests himself to be.