Barefoot in the Stream
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Phaedrus — εἰς καιρόν, ὡς ἔοικεν, ἀνυπόδητος ὢν ἔτυχον· σὺ μὲν γὰρ δὴ ἀεί. ῥᾷστον οὖν ἡμῖν κατὰ τὸ ὑδάτιον βρέχουσι τοὺς πόδας ἰέναι, καὶ οὐκ ἀηδές, ἄλλως τε καὶ τήνδε τὴν ὥραν τοῦ ἔτους τε καὶ τῆς ἡμέρας
Lucky timing — I happen to be barefoot today. You, of course, always are. So the easiest thing is to walk right up the stream, wetting our feet — no hardship at all, in this season, at this hour of the day.
They turn off the road to follow the Ilissus toward a quiet place to sit. Phaedrus is delighted to find himself conveniently shoeless — and notes that Socrates, famously, always is.
The scene-setting hides two loaded words. Phaedrus is barefoot <em>eis kairón</em> — at the <em>kairós</em>, the right moment. Greek splits time in two: <em>chrónos</em>, the flowing quantity, and <em>kairós</em>, the loaded instant that must be seized — and this dialogue will end by making <em>kairós</em> the crown of the true rhetorician's art, knowing when to speak and when to be silent (272a). The other is <em>hṓra</em>: 'season, hour' — but also Greek's word for the bloom of youth, the beloved's brief perfection. Innocent here; charged everywhere else in the dialogue.<br><br>And one word of characterization: <em>anypódētos</em>, barefoot. Socrates's bare feet were an Athenian institution — Aristophanes jokes about them in the <em>Clouds</em>, and in the <em>Symposium</em> his putting on sandals for a party is remarkable enough to narrate. Phaedrus's teasing 'you always are' is the dialogue winking at a fact every reader knew. The philosopher wades into the maiden-haunted river unshod, at the perfect moment, in the season of ripeness: Plato builds his stage from puns.
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