There are some soft of animals, such as flatterers, who are dangerous and, mischievous enough, and yet nature has mingled a temporary pleasure and grace in their composition.
You may say that a courtesan is hurtful, and disapprove of such creatures and their practices, and yet for the time they are very pleasant.
But the lover is not only hurtful to his love; he is also an extremely disagreeable companion.
The old proverb says that "birds of a feather flock together"; I suppose that equality of years inclines them to the same pleasures, and similarity begets friendship; yet you may have more than enough even of this; and verily constraint is always said to be grievous.
Now the lover is not only unlike his beloved, but he forces himself upon him.
For he is old and his love is young, and neither day nor night will he leave him if he can help; necessity and the sting of desire drive him on, and allure him with the pleasure which he receives from seeing, hearing, touching, perceiving him in every way.
And therefore he is delighted to fasten upon him and to minister to him.
But what pleasure or consolation can the beloved be receiving all this time?
Must he not feel the extremity of disgust when he looks at an old shrivelled face and the remainder to match, which even in a description is disagreeable, and quite detestable when he is forced into daily contact with his lover; moreover he is jealously watched and guarded against everything and everybody, and has to hear misplaced and exaggerated praises of himself, and censures equally inappropriate, which are intolerable when the man is sober, and, besides being intolerable, are published all over the world in all their indelicacy and wearisomeness when he is drunk.
And not only while his love continues is he mischievous and unpleasant, but when his love ceases he becomes a perfidious enemy of him on whom he showered his oaths and prayers and promises, and yet could hardly prevail upon him to tolerate the tedium of his company even from motives of interest.
The hour of payment arrives, and now he 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.
Themes
◆Body As Obstacleanthropology
The material body viewed as a prison, tomb, or source of error that hinders spiritual knowledge and return.
The beloved is described as suffering from the physical discomfort of an old face and the tedium of forced contact.
Augustinian and Plotinian doctrine that evil has no positive being of its own but is a lack, distortion, or absence of the good — denying ontological dualism while preserving moral seriousness.
The text characterizes the lover's actions as a lack of true kindness and wisdom rather than positive possession.
Diotima's staged ascent from love of beautiful bodies → beautiful souls → beautiful pursuits → beautiful knowledge → Beauty itself; the canonical scala amoris that grounds Plotinus's On the Beautiful and Bruno's Eroici Furori — distinct from generic spiritual_ascent in that eros is the specific motive force.
The passage describes the lover's progression from youthful infatuation to old age and wisdom, mirroring the ascent stages of Diotima's schema.