Do You Believe the Myth?
Read the full text in our reader
Phaedrus — σὺ τοῦτο τὸ μυθολόγημα πείθῃ ἀληθὲς εἶναι;
Socrates — ἀλλ᾽ εἰ ἀπιστοίην, ὥσπερ οἱ σοφοί, οὐκ ἂν ἄτοπος εἴην
Phaedrus poses the standing question of the age: are the old myths <em>true</em>? Socrates answers with a shrug and a needle. He could, if he liked, play the clever rationalist — explain that a gust of the north wind blew the girl off the rocks, and that this is all the 'seizing by Boreas' ever meant. That game was fashionable, and he could win it.
By the Ilissus, Phaedrus recalls that this is near where the wind-god Boreas was said to have carried off the princess Oreithyia, and asks whether Socrates believes the old story is literally true.
Two of the dialogue's deep words square off here. <em>mýthos</em> — story, legend — stands against <em>lógos</em>, reasoned account; and <em>alēthḗs</em>, 'true,' literally means <em>un-concealed</em>, un-forgotten (a-lēthē, from Lethe, the river of forgetting), so that truth is a lifting of the veil rather than a checking of facts. Socrates declines to demythologize not because he is credulous but because he finds the whole clever exercise <em>átopos</em> — out of place — beside the one inquiry that matters: himself. He will not spend his wisdom explaining wind-gods away while still a stranger to his own soul. And note the quiet irony: the man who won't defend a myth will, a few pages on, tell the greatest myth in Plato.
Read the full commentary — and tap any word for its dictionary entry — in the interlinear reader.
Open Phaedrus 229c in the full reader
Always open passages in the reader
You are reading a page of the Phaedrus — the whole book is free in our interlinear reader.
The Great Library Project presses the classics in their original languages, glossed word by word — free to read, always. Browse the whole library.
Also on our shelves:
Phaedrus 229c — The Great Library Project interlinear edition · greatlibraryproject.com/book/phaedrus/229c/