Eldest, Most Honored, Most Powerful
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Phaedrus — τὸν ἔρωτα, μᾶλλον μέντοι θαυμάζουσιν καὶ ἄγανται καὶ εὖ ποιοῦσιν ὅταν ὁ ἐρώμενος τὸν ἐραστὴν ἀγαπᾷ, ἢ ὅταν ὁ ἐραστὴς τὰ παιδικά. θειότερον γὰρ ἐραστὴς παιδικῶν· ἔνθεος γάρ ἐστι. διὰ ταῦτα καὶ τὸν Ἀχιλλέα τῆς Ἀλκήστιδος μᾶλλον ἐτίμησαν, εἰς μακάρων νήσους ἀποπέμψαντες. οὕτω δὴ ἔγωγέ φημι ἔρωτα θεῶν καὶ πρεσβύτατον καὶ τιμιώτατον καὶ κυριώτατον εἶναι εἰς ἀρετῆς καὶ εὐδαιμονίας κτῆσιν ἀνθρώποις καὶ ζῶσι καὶ τελευτήσασιν.
Love — though they more marvel at and admire, and reward it well, whenever the beloved loves the lover, rather than when the lover loves his beloved. For the lover is more godlike than the beloved: for he is possessed by a god. Because of this they honored Achilles even more than Alcestis, sending him to the Isles of the Blessed. So indeed I for my part say that Love is the eldest of the gods, the most honored, and the most powerful, for winning virtue and happiness for humans, both living and dead.
Continuing straight from 180a's unfinished clause about ‘that virtue which has to do with—’ Love, Phaedrus completes the thought: the gods marvel at, admire, and reward it more when the beloved loves the lover back than when the lover loves his boy, because the lover, already possessed by a god, has less far to travel toward the divine. That is why, he says, Achilles was honored above Alcestis. Phaedrus then closes his whole speech with its final claim: Love is the eldest of the gods, the most honored, and the most powerful for winning human beings virtue and happiness, both in life and after death.
Notice what has happened to “eldest.” Back at 178b Phaedrus built that claim on evidence — Hesiod's Theogony, Acusilaus, a line of Parmenides, three separate witnesses lined up to prove Eros has no parents and so must predate the gods who do. Here, closing the same speech, he drops the witnesses. égōge phēmi, ‘I myself say it’ — the verdict now rests on Phaedrus's own authority alone, no citation attached. The speech that opened as a case built from poets ends as a personal decree. That shift, from argument to assertion, is exactly the kind of move Socrates will later single out for attack: you cannot simply declare Eros singular and supreme without asking what kind of love you mean.
The erastes-eromenos logic here is also stranger than it first looks. Phaedrus does not say beloveds should love lovers back because it is right or kind; he says the gods find it more remarkable, almost more improbable, coming from someone who is not already possessed by a god. Being entheos becomes a kind of head start on virtue, which quietly implies that the lover's devotion is the easy case and the beloved's is the hard-won one. Phaedrus never asks why a system that prizes what is unexpected and difficult would still rank the lover's condition as loftier than the beloved's — the hierarchy of erastes over eromenos survives the argument that should have complicated it.
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