Phaedrus Praises Love as Courage — Symposium

Phaedrus calls Love a mighty god because he is the eldest. No poet or prose writer has given him parents. Hesiod puts Earth and Love just after Chaos. Parmenides and Acusilaus agree. Love plants honour and the fear of dishonour better than family or wealth. A young man is blessed by a virtuous lover, and a lover by a beloved youth. Shame does the work. A lover caught in a disgrace suffers more if the beloved sees it than if a father or companions do. The beloved feels the same.

From that shame he builds a city and an army. Lovers and beloveds would govern best and fight bravest, because no one would leave his post with the beloved watching. He would die a thousand deaths first. The worst coward would become a hero. Love infuses that courage the way Homer says a god breathes courage into heroes.

His examples reward a death and punish a clever escape. Alcestis died for her husband when his parents would not, and the gods sent her back alive. Orpheus they sent away with an apparition only, because he tried to enter the world of the dead alive, and later women killed him for cowardice. Achilles ranks higher. Phaedrus says Aeschylus was wrong: Achilles was the beloved, still beardless, and Patroclus the lover. Achilles knew he could grow old if he did not kill Hector. He died to avenge Patroclus anyway. The gods sent him above Alcestis to the Islands of the Blest, because the beloved's return of love is rarer. Love, he concludes, is the eldest, noblest, and mightiest of the gods, author of virtue in life and of happiness after death.