Mashrabaمشربة

About this text: The Winged Soul

Φαῖδρος

Plato (c. 428–348 BCE) · Phaedrus, 246a–257b

Phaedrus 246a–257b: the soul as a winged charioteer, the vision of the place beyond the heavens, beauty that shines through sight, and the wings that grow again in love.

57 sections · ~65 min · published translation · 3,671 words

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Versions

15 layers, each with its licence

The original

Burnet's Oxford text (Platonis Opera II)John Burnet · 1901Public domain
By
John Burnet (editor) · 1901
Source:
J. Burnet, Platonis Opera II (Oxford: Clarendon Press, Oxford Classical Texts, 1901)
In the reader:
In full, 246a–257b
Licence:
Text public domain
Notes
Words Burnet deletes are shown in square brackets, greyed, not analysed: 246d [ψυχή], 251c [τὸν] [ἵμερον], 254d [οὗ]. Yunis (Cambridge 2011) and Rowe (Aris & Phillips 1986) are in copyright and were not used.
Perseus Digital Library digitisation of BurnetPerseus Digital Library · UNVERIFIEDOpen licence
By
Perseus Digital Library (digitiser (canonical-greekLit)) · UNVERIFIED
Source:
Perseus Digital Library, canonical-greekLit tlg0059.tlg012.perseus-grc2 (EpiDoc; Stephanus milestones) · link ↗
In the reader:
The Greek as shown, with its paragraphing and speakers
Licence:
CC BY-SA 4.0 (the digitisation; Burnet's text is public domain). Share-alike: this page and the derived data files carry the same licence
UNVERIFIED:
The date (release or commit) of the Perseus canonical-greekLit file used is not recorded in the repo.

Our edition

Our Greek: GLAUx tokens with Perseus's speakersscripts/plato/build_greek.py · 2026-10-02Open licence
By
scripts/plato/build_greek.py (build) · 2026-10-02
Source:
scripts/plato/build_greek.py phaedrus-wings; method in docs/texts/phaedrus-wings.md §§3, 5
In the reader:
57 passages, one per Stephanus section (#s-246a … #s-257b); word ids <section>.<n>
Licence:
CC BY-SA 4.0 (share-alike, as derived from Perseus and GLAUx)
Notes
Perseus's 11 paragraph breaks recovered and the speakers labelled (ΣΩ. at the start, ΦΑΙ. at the reply in 257b). The section opens inside a sentence that begins in 245e.
Corrections to the automatic analysisClaude (AI) · 2026-10-02Our work
By
Claude (AI) (found by matching every lemma against LSJ and reading the misses) · 2026-10-02
Source:
app/src/data/phaedrus-wings.json (`fixes`), listed on the About page with links to each word
In the reader:
7 corrections, each with its reason, on the About page; the corrected lemma in the word panel
Licence:
Ours; marked AI
Made by:
Claude (Opus; exact version not recorded), 2026-10-02 (first commit of app/src/data/phaedrus-wings.json)
Notes
Made by AI in this edition and open to review; the Greek text itself is unchanged. GLAUx's reported accuracy is about 97% for morphology and 99% for lemmas, so more errors should be expected. 250e, 251a, 252a σέβεται/σέβεσθαι (σέβομαι), 253c διείλομεν (διαιρέω), τινὲ (indefinite τις), 255c ἀναπτερῶσαν (ἀναπτερόω), 256a εὔνουν (εὔνοος).

Published translations

Jowett (1892): PhaedrusBenjamin Jowett · 1892Public domain
By
Benjamin Jowett (translator) · 1892
Source:
The Dialogues of Plato, translated into English with analyses and introductions by B. Jowett, 3rd ed. (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1892), vol. 1 · link ↗
In the reader:
In full, by section, beside the Greek or in columns (Translations and Compare in the reader)
Licence:
Public domain: published 1892; Jowett died 1893. Project Gutenberg text: not copyrighted in the US.
Notes
Date: 3rd edition, 1892. Text: Project Gutenberg #1636 (Jowett's translation), compared word by word with the archive.org OCR of the 1892 volume 1; 14 Gutenberg readings restored to the 1892 wording. Sections: Automatic and approximate (a clause either way): Jowett's margins give Stephanus pages but not the letters, so each clause is placed in a section by a monotonic best path over its word overlap with Fowler's Loeb English (1914) of that section. Where his wording seems to straddle two sections, read the neighbour too. The first sentence begins in 245e; the last section ends with the first sentence of Phaedrus' reply (257b–c). Note: Divided into sections automatically; approximate. Project Gutenberg #1636 turned out not to be the 1892 text: it follows an earlier edition in about a dozen places, each restored to 1892 (READINGS in scripts/plato/tr_greek_texts.py); 248d has no clause of its own.
Fowler (Loeb 1914): PhaedrusHarold North Fowler · 1914Public domain
By
Harold North Fowler (translator) · 1914
Source:
Plato in Twelve Volumes, vol. 1: Euthyphro, Apology, Crito, Phaedo, Phaedrus, translated by Harold North Fowler (Loeb Classical Library; London: Heinemann / New York: Macmillan, 1914) · link ↗
In the reader:
In full, by section, beside the Greek or in columns (Translations and Compare in the reader)
Licence:
Public domain (published 1914; Fowler died 1955, so public domain in life+70 countries since 2026 as well). Perseus digitisation CC BY-SA 4.0.
Notes
Date: published 1914. Text: Perseus Digital Library, canonical-greekLit tlg0059.tlg012.perseus-eng2 (TEI, sectioned by Stephanus number). Sections: By the Stephanus sections Perseus marks in the translation (placed at the nearest sentence, so a sentence either way). Note: Loeb footnotes omitted.

AI layers

Word glossesClaude (AI) · 2026-10-02Our work
By
Claude (AI) (glosses) · 2026-10-02
In the reader:
One gloss per lemma (951 lemmas)
Licence:
Ours; marked AI
Made by:
Claude (Opus; exact version not recorded), 2026-10-02 (first commit of app/src/content/ai/phaedrus-wings.json (new glosses in scripts/plato/ai/greek4-glosses-*.tsv))
Notes
Reused from the Symposium and Ennead VI.9 (28 Sept 2026) where the lemma is shared, written on 2 October 2026 for the rest. No AI translation of this text yet.
Word familiesClaude (AI) · 2026-09-28Our work
By
Claude (AI) (word-families) · 2026-09-28
In the reader:
In the word panel: stems grouped from the etymologies
Licence:
Ours; marked AI
Made by:
Claude (Opus; exact version not recorded), 2026-09-28 (the families were made for the Symposium (first commit of app/src/content/ai/symposium-diotima.json); this text shows those of its lemmas)
Notes
AI groupings of lemmas by stem (e.g. ἐρ-: ἔρως, ἐράω, ἐραστής …), made from the etymologies for the Symposium; each text shows the 24 Symposium stems filtered to its own lemmas.
Resonances (themes and connections)Claude (AI) · 2026-10-02Our work
By
Claude (AI) (resonances) · 2026-10-02
In the reader:
Per passage in the reader and on the About page
Licence:
Ours; marked AI
Made by:
Claude (Opus; exact version not recorded), 2026-10-02 (generatedOn in app/src/content/resonances/phaedrus-wings.json; made headless, without web access, by docs/RESONANCES-METHOD.md)
Notes
AI (Claude) map of themes and connections, made by the method in docs/RESONANCES-METHOD.md. Every connection states its kind; parallels are resonances, not claims of influence. External references were proposed by the model without web access and are shown only after an agent verified them with a web search (see _refs.json). 9 themes, 14 connections.

Automatic analysis

Lemmas and morphology (GLAUx)Alek Keersmaekers (KU Leuven) · UNVERIFIEDOpen licence
By
Alek Keersmaekers (KU Leuven) (GLAUx corpus: automatic annotation) · UNVERIFIED
Source:
GLAUx corpus, document 0059-012 (A. Keersmaekers, KU Leuven): automatic lemma, morphology and syntax · link ↗
In the reader:
Per word, marked as automatic; corrections listed on the About page
Licence:
CC BY-SA 4.0
Notes
Built on the same Perseus text. Reported accuracy: morphology 97.2%, lemmas 98.8%. (The same GLAUx document gives the Symposium's 'Phaedrus usage'.)
UNVERIFIED:
The GLAUx release or commit used is not recorded in the repo.
Liddell–Scott–Jones (dictionary)Liddell–Scott–Jones, Perseus Digital Library, H. Dik (Logeion) · 1940Open licence
By
Liddell–Scott–Jones (dictionary, 9th ed. (1940)); Perseus Digital Library (digitisation); H. Dik (Logeion) (edited digitisation) · 1940
Source:
Liddell–Scott–Jones, A Greek–English Lexicon, 9th ed. (1940), Perseus digitisation as edited for Logeion (H. Dik) · link ↗
In the reader:
The entry (first 1,500 characters), its opening senses, and where LSJ cites this passage; 944 of 951 lemmas matched; LSJ cites these sections for 366 lemmas
Licence:
CC BY-SA 4.0 (the Perseus/Logeion digitisation)
Notes
Matched by headword, as for the Symposium.
LSJ's own derivationsscripts/plato/lsj_etym.py · 1940Open licence
By
scripts/plato/lsj_etym.py (automatic extraction from the LSJ entry) · 1940
Source:
Liddell–Scott–Jones, 9th ed. (1940): the derivation given after the headword and occasional cognate notes, extracted automatically (scripts/plato/lsj_etym.py) · link ↗
In the reader:
Where LSJ gives one (267 lemmas)
Licence:
CC BY-SA 4.0
Notes
LSJ's <etym> tags were checked and are too inconsistent to use, so the derivation is taken from the text of the entry.
Boisacq, Dictionnaire étymologique (the primary etymology)Émile Boisacq, Tesseract (tessdata_best grc+fra), scripts/plato/boisacq_index.py · 1916Public domain
By
Émile Boisacq (author); Tesseract (tessdata_best grc+fra) (OCR); scripts/plato/boisacq_index.py (automatic matching) · 1916
Source:
É. Boisacq, Dictionnaire étymologique de la langue grecque (Heidelberg/Paris 1916), archive.org dictionnairety00bois: OCR of the page scan (Tesseract, Ancient Greek + French models, 300 dpi), matched to the lemmas automatically · link ↗
In the reader:
The entry as machine-read, marked unchecked, with the page image one tap away (the image is authoritative); 463 lemmas found
Licence:
Public domain
Notes
Method in docs/texts/symposium-diotima.md §8: entries found by the dictionary's alphabetical order, then matched accents aside (the lemma's own entry, a line or paragraph it opens, the entry that treats it, or, when LSJ derives the lemma from a base word, Boisacq's entry for that base, labelled as such). Printed page = PDF page − 34. Known weaknesses: OCR noise in small Greek; occasionally the matched paragraph belongs to a neighbouring entry.
Wiktionary etymologies (via kaikki.org)Wiktionary contributors, kaikki.org (Wiktextract), scripts/plato/fetch_wiktionary.py · UNVERIFIEDOpen licence
By
Wiktionary contributors (etymologies); kaikki.org (Wiktextract) (extraction); scripts/plato/fetch_wiktionary.py (lookup) · UNVERIFIED
Source:
Wiktionary, Ancient Greek entries, via kaikki.org (Wiktextract) JSONL · link ↗
In the reader:
Secondary, labelled: the etymology and Proto-Indo-European forms, credited and linked (collapsed when Boisacq has the word); 756 lemmas have an entry
Licence:
CC BY-SA 4.0 and GFDL (kaikki states no licence of its own; Wiktionary's is inferred)
UNVERIFIED:
The date on which the kaikki.org extracts were fetched is not recorded in the repo.
Beekes, Chantraine and Frisk (cited only)R. Beekes, P. Chantraine, H. Frisk · UNVERIFIEDCopyrighted: cited only
By
R. Beekes (Etymological Dictionary of Greek (2010)); P. Chantraine (Dictionnaire étymologique de la langue grecque (DELG)); H. Frisk (Griechisches etymologisches Wörterbuch (GEW)) · UNVERIFIED
Source:
Beekes, Etymological Dictionary of Greek (2010); Chantraine, DELG; Frisk, GEW
In the reader:
A citation s.v. in the word panel
Licence:
In copyright: cited only ("see Beekes s.v. …"), never quoted
UNVERIFIED:
Publication years of Chantraine's DELG and Frisk's GEW are not given in the repo (Beekes: 2010).

✦ marks AI that no person has reviewed yet; ✧ marks AI reviewed by a named person. Copyrighted works are cited, never shown. All sources · How texts are established

Share-alike: the Perseus, GLAUx, LSJ and Wiktionary layers are CC BY-SA, so this page, and anything made from those layers, is shared under the same terms, with credit. Nothing in copyright is shown. Audio is off for this text; background music is available. All sources · How texts are established

Stephanus sections

Each links to its place in the reader, and ↗ to the same section of Burnet's Greek in the Scaife reader (Perseus).

Published translations

Public-domain English, section by section, to read beside the Greek or compare in columns (Translations and Compare in the reader).

Jowett (1892) · English · Phaedrus

Benjamin Jowett, 3rd edition, 1892. The Dialogues of Plato, translated into English with analyses and introductions by B. Jowett, 3rd ed. (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1892), vol. 1

Text: Project Gutenberg #1636 (Jowett's translation), compared word by word with the archive.org OCR of the 1892 volume 1; 14 Gutenberg readings restored to the 1892 wording

Sections: Automatic and approximate (a clause either way): Jowett's margins give Stephanus pages but not the letters, so each clause is placed in a section by a monotonic best path over its word overlap with Fowler's Loeb English (1914) of that section. Where his wording seems to straddle two sections, read the neighbour too. The first sentence begins in 245e; the last section ends with the first sentence of Phaedrus' reply (257b–c).

Note: Divided into sections automatically; approximate.

Page scan / sourcePublic domain: published 1892; Jowett died 1893. Project Gutenberg text: not copyrighted in the US.

Fowler (Loeb 1914) · English · Phaedrus

Harold North Fowler, published 1914. Plato in Twelve Volumes, vol. 1: Euthyphro, Apology, Crito, Phaedo, Phaedrus, translated by Harold North Fowler (Loeb Classical Library; London: Heinemann / New York: Macmillan, 1914)

Text: Perseus Digital Library, canonical-greekLit tlg0059.tlg012.perseus-eng2 (TEI, sectioned by Stephanus number)

Sections: By the Stephanus sections Perseus marks in the translation (placed at the nearest sentence, so a sentence either way).

Note: Loeb footnotes omitted.

Page scan / sourcePublic domain (published 1914; Fowler died 1955, so public domain in life+70 countries since 2026 as well). Perseus digitisation CC BY-SA 4.0.

Corrections to the automatic analysis

  • 250e σέβεται · LSJ's headword for 'revere' is σέβομαι
  • 251a σέβεται · LSJ's headword for 'revere' is σέβομαι
  • 252a σέβεσθαι · LSJ's headword for 'revere' is σέβομαι
  • 253c διείλομεν · διείλομεν is the aorist of διαιρέω 'divide'
  • 253c τινὲ · τινὲ is the dual of the indefinite τις, 'two (kinds)'; GLAUx gave the interrogative
  • 255c ἀναπτερῶσαν · ἀναπτερῶσαν is from ἀναπτερόω 'raise the feathers, give wings'; GLAUx gave a non-existent verb
  • 256a εὔνουν · LSJ's headword for 'well-disposed' is εὔνοος (Attic εὔνους)

Made by AI in this edition and open to review; the Greek text itself is unchanged. GLAUx's reported accuracy is about 97% for morphology and 99% for lemmas, so more errors should be expected.

Themes & resonances

What the text is about, and what it connects to across the history of thought. Every connection says what kind of claim it is: a documented lineage, a shared source, a resonance with no influence claimed, or a contrast. Mapped by AI; references are shown only once checked. Across the library

Themes

  • The soul that sheds its wings and falls to earthπτερορρυέωpterorrhueō
  • The wing that grows again and the heavenward journeyπτερόνpteron
  • The place beyond the heavens and the vision of true beingὑπερουράνιος τόποςhyperouranios topos
  • Recollection of what the soul once sawἀνάμνησιςanamnēsis
  • Beauty, the one form that shines through sightκάλλοςkallos
  • Love as the growing of wings, and love returnedἔρωςerōs
  • The charioteer and his two horsesἡνίοχοςhēniochos
  • The lover as the beloved's unseen mirrorκάτοπτρονkatoptron
  • Inspired madnessμανίαmania
What each theme is here
  • The soul that sheds its wings and falls to earth. A soul that cannot follow the gods loses its wings and settles into a body; its fall comes from forgetfulness and vice, and the wing is fed by the divine and wasted by the foul (246c-e, 248c-e).
  • The wing that grows again and the heavenward journey. The wing is the part of the soul most akin to the divine, and it regrows from the root when the lover receives beauty through the eyes, so that the philosophic pair leave the body 'light and winged' (246d, 251b, 256b).
  • The place beyond the heavens and the vision of true being. Riding on the outer rim of heaven, souls behold colourless, formless being, visible only to mind, a vision Socrates calls a most blessed mystery (247c-e, 250c).
  • Recollection of what the soul once saw. To understand universals is to recollect what the soul saw while following a god, and most souls have forgotten it, seeing the realities only dimly in their earthly images (249c, 250a-b).
  • Beauty, the one form that shines through sight. Of all the forms, only beauty has a visible image bright enough to wake the memory, and for this reason it alone can start the soul's return (250d, 251a).
  • Love as the growing of wings, and love returned. Love is a divine madness in which a stream of desire (himeros) flows into the lover and rebounds to the beloved as answering love (anterōs), and the gods call it the 'winged one' (251c-252c, 255c-e).
  • The charioteer and his two horses. The soul is pictured as a charioteer driving a noble horse and an unruly one, and its happiness depends on taming the second until it follows in reverence (246b, 253d-254e).
  • The lover as the beloved's unseen mirror. The beloved loves without knowing what he loves, because he sees himself in the lover as in a mirror and does not realise it (255d).
  • Inspired madness. The lover who flutters like a bird looking upward is called mad by the crowd, and Socrates names this the fourth and highest kind of divine madness (249d-e).

Connections

Lineage 2

Documented transmission: a chain of reading, teaching, translation or citation, grounded in a verified reference or in the later text itself.

  • Plotinus, Ennead I.6, On Beauty, and VI.9.9Neoplatonism · firm

    Plotinus builds his first treatise on Plato's account of beauty as what wakes the soul's memory and draws it upward, and he takes up the Phaedrus language of the lover's shock and the growth of the inner sight. In VI.9.9 he describes the soul's love for the One with images drawn from Plato's dialogues of love.

    Carried byκάλλοςkallos“beauty that wakes the soul”

    In the library:Ennead I.6, ch. 5Ennead I.6, ch. 8Ennead VI.9, ch. 9

  • Marsilio Ficino, commentary on the PhaedrusRenaissance Platonism · firm

    Ficino translated the Phaedrus into Latin and wrote a commentary that read the charioteer, the wings and divine madness as a Christian Platonist account of the soul's ascent.

    Carried byἡνίοχοςhēniochos“the charioteer”

Resonance, not influence 11

Resonance, not influence: a structural or thematic likeness. No influence is claimed.

  • Plato, Symposium, Diotima's speechPlatonism · probable

    Both dialogues give Plato's accounts of love as the way to beauty itself: Diotima's climbs a ladder from one body to the form and speaks of birth in beauty, while the Phaedrus works through recollection and the regrowth of wings. How the two accounts relate to each other is still discussed by scholars.

    Carried byἔρωςerōs“love leading to beauty itself”

    In the library:Symposium 206dSymposium 211cPath: Love: the soul's longing back

  • Plato (disputed), Alcibiades I: the eye that sees itself in another eyePlatonism · probable

    In both passages a person comes to know himself by looking into another's eyes. The Phaedrus beloved does this without knowing it, while Socrates in the Alcibiades makes it an explicit method of self-knowledge.

    Carried byκάτοπτρονkatoptron“mirror in the eye”

    In the library:Alcibiades I 133aPath: Seeing with the heart

  • Plato, Republic VII: the prisoner dazzled in the cavePlatonism · probable

    In both dialogues the soul is turned toward a reality it can bear only gradually, with pain, dazzlement and the mockery of the many. The Republic explains this through education and the turning of the soul, the Phaedrus through recollection and love.

    Carried by“dazzled sight of true being”

    In the library:Republic VI–VII 516aRepublic VI–VII 518c

  • Ibn Sīnā, the Ode on the Soul (al-ʿAyniyya)Falsafa (Arabic philosophy) · probable

    Ibn Sīnā's dove comes down unwillingly from the highest place, forgets its covenants and weeps for the dwellings above, which resembles Plato's soul that loses its wings and half forgets what it saw. A direct reading of the Phaedrus is not established here, so the likeness is offered as resonance only.

    Carried by“the bird-soul fallen and remembering”

    In the library:al-ʿAyniyya ¶1al-ʿAyniyya ¶5al-ʿAyniyya ¶10Path: The fall and the return of the soul

  • Ibn Sīnā, the Recital of the Bird (Risālat al-ṭayr)Falsafa (Arabic philosophy) · probable

    Ibn Sīnā's birds with wings caught in a snare free themselves and fly over mountains to see the King's beauty, so that, as in the Phaedrus, a winged soul held down below regains its flight toward a vision of beauty.

    Carried byπτερόνpteron“wings bound and freed”

    In the library:Risālat al-Ṭayr ¶6Risālat al-Ṭayr ¶13

  • The Hymn of the Pearl, in the Acts of ThomasGnosticism · probable

    The prince forgets that he is a son of kings until a letter wakes his memory, and on his return he meets his robe as a mirror of himself. Plato's soul likewise forgets its heavenly vision and is woken by an image of beauty, so both tell of salvation as remembering.

    Carried byἀνάμνησιςanamnēsis“forgetting and waking memory”

    In the library:Hymn of the Pearl ¶33Hymn of the Pearl ¶56Hymn of the Pearl ¶76

  • Ibn ʿArabī, The Interpreter of Desires: the beloved who sees herself in the loverSufism · probable

    In Ibn ʿArabī's poem the beloved marvels at a lover's beauty and is told that she has seen herself in the mirror of a man. Plato's beloved likewise sees himself in the lover without knowing it.

    Carried bymirʾātκάτοπτρονkatoptron“the lover as mirror”

    In the library:Tarjumān al-ashwāq ¶64Path: The mirror

  • Ibn al-Fāriḍ, The Wine Ode: drunk before the vine was createdSufism · suggestive

    Ibn al-Fāriḍ's speaker carries an intoxication from before his own coming-to-be, and its mere mention moves even those who never knew it. In the Phaedrus, a vision seen before birth stirs souls that do not understand their own rapture.

    Carried by“a memory older than birth”

    In the library:al-Khamriyya ¶1al-Khamriyya ¶35

  • Suhrawardī, The Occidental ExileIshraqi philosophy · probable

    Suhrawardī's captives in the city of the West climb up by night to look toward home and are freed by the hoopoe's letter. This resembles the Phaedrus soul held down in a body that strains upward and is wakened from outside, though in Suhrawardī the waking comes from a message and in Plato from beauty.

    Carried byghurbaroot غرب“exile below and ascent”

    In the library:al-Ghurba al-gharbiyya ¶8al-Ghurba al-gharbiyya ¶42

  • Katha Upanishad: the self as rider in the chariot of the bodyVedanta and Hindu thought · probable

    The Upanishad pictures the self as lord of a chariot, with the intellect as driver, the mind as reins and the senses as horses, which corresponds to Plato's charioteer and horses. No contact between the two texts is claimed.

    Carried byἡνίοχοςhēniochos“chariot of the soul”

  • Sigmund Freud, The Ego and the Id: the rider and the horsePsychoanalysis and depth psychology · suggestive

    Freud compares the ego to a rider who must hold in check the superior strength of a horse, the id, which resembles the charioteer's struggle with the unruly horse. Freud does not cite the Phaedrus for this image, so it is offered as resonance.

    Carried by“rider and horse”

Contrast 1

An instructive opposite: the difference teaches something about both.

  • Ibn ʿArabī (attributed), The Prayer of the Highest Circuit: 'cast upon me a love from You'Sufism · probable

    In the Phaedrus, love runs upward from the soul, which recollects and longs, while the gods who lead the procession do not love the soul in return. The prayer asks God, named the Loving, to send love down upon the servant, drawing on the Quran's love that moves from God toward the human being.

    Carried byal-Wadūdἔρωςerōs“love from above, love from below”

    In the library:al-Dawr al-aʿlā ¶6Path: Love: the soul's longing back

Claude (opus) via Claude Code, headless, no web access, 2026-10-02. A reference with a check was found and checked with a web search.

The text record

Our working notes on this edition: sources, decisions and what AI supplied. Show the notes

Added to the Greek reader on 2 October 2026, by the pipeline of the Symposium pilot. Method: docs/EDITORIAL-METHOD.md.

Work / author / datesPlato, Phaedrus (Φαῖδρος), c. 370 BCE; Plato c. 428–348 BCE
Part added246a–257b, the heart of Socrates' second speech (the palinode): the soul as a winged charioteer with two horses, the procession of the gods and the place beyond the heavens, the fall and the ten-thousand-year cycle, recollection, beauty that shines through sight, the regrowing of the wings in love, the charioteer and the dark horse, and the prayer to Eros. The section opens inside a sentence that begins in 245e (the proof of immortality) and closes with the start of Phaedrus' reply.
Reader route/read/phaedrus-wings · about /read/phaedrus-wings/about · sections #s-246a … #s-257b
Statusworking edition · reviewed by: —

1. Witnesses

SiglumWitnessKindLicenceLocation
BurnetJ. Burnet, Platonis Opera II (Oxford Classical Texts, 1901)standard editionpublic domainas digitised by Perseus
PPerseus Digital Library, canonical-greekLit tlg0059.tlg012.perseus-grc2digitalCC BY-SA 4.0github.com/PerseusDL/canonical-greekLit
GGLAUx corpus, document 0059-012 (A. Keersmaekers)digital, analysedCC BY-SA 4.0github.com/alekkeersmaekers/glaux

Consulted, not used: Yunis (Cambridge 2011) and Rowe (Aris & Phillips 1986) are in copyright.

2. Base and why

Burnet via Perseus, as for the Symposium (whose word panel already cites the Phaedrus through the same GLAUx document).

3. Collation

Script: scripts/plato/build_greek.py phaedrus-wings. 57 sections; P's paragraph breaks recovered (11) and the speakers labelled (ΣΩ. at the start, ΦΑΙ. at the reply in 257b). Every token was found in P apart from 40 halves of compounds and quotation marks.

4. Decisions

  • Words Burnet deletes are shown in square brackets, greyed, not analysed: 246d [ψυχή], 251c [τὸν] [ἵμερον], 254d [οὗ].
  • Corrections to the automatic analysis: 250e, 251a, 252a σέβεται/σέβεσθαι (σέβω → σέβομαι, LSJ's headword), 253c διείλομεν (διείλω → διαιρέω), τινὲ (interrogative → indefinite τις), 255c ἀναπτερῶσαν (a non-existent verb → ἀναπτερόω), 256a εὔνουν (→ εὔνοος).

5. Segmentation and word IDs

57 passages, one per Stephanus section; word IDs <section>.<n>.

6. Analysis layer

  • LSJ: 944 of 951 lemmas matched (not: Γανυμήδης, Λυσίας, Φαῖδρος, βάκχη, μελάγχρως, ταύτῃ, ἀφροδίσιος); LSJ cites these sections for 366 lemmas.
  • Etymology: Boisacq 463, LSJ's derivations 267, Wiktionary 756.
  • Glosses: AI, shared or written on 2 October 2026.

7. Translation

  • Jowett, 3rd ed. (1892), vol. 1. Project Gutenberg #1636 turned out not to be the 1892 text: compared word by word with the OCR of the 1892 volume (archive.org dialoguesofplat01plat), it follows an earlier edition in about a dozen places. The 1892 wording was restored in each (READINGS in scripts/plato/tr_greek_texts.py), e.g. 249a "these, if they choose this higher life three times in succession" (Gutenberg: "he is distinguished from the ordinary good man who gains wings in three thousand years"), 249c "in which abiding He is Divine" (Gutenberg: "in beholding which He is what He is"), 251c the teething simile, 251e "the waters of desire" (Gutenberg: "of beauty"), 253e "with grey and blood-shot eyes". Jowett's footnotes, which Gutenberg prints inline, are removed. After this, the remaining differences are OCR noise and the 1892 marginal summaries. Divided into sections automatically against Fowler's sectioned English (a clause either way; 248d has no clause of its own).
  • Fowler, Loeb vol. 1 (1914), via Perseus tlg012.perseus-eng2, sectioned by Perseus. Public domain.

8. Rights

Share-alike as for the other Perseus texts. Nothing in copyright is shown.

9. Open questions / to review

  1. The same check of Gutenberg #1636 against 1892 for the rest of the dialogue, if more of the Phaedrus is added.
  2. Readers through the ages: Hermias' commentary (in data/raw/plato/hermias/), Ficino's commentary on the Phaedrus, and the winged soul in the Arabic tradition (Ibn Sīnā's ʿAyniyya and Risālat al-ṭayr are already in the library; resonance, to be grounded).
  3. An AI translation.

10. Change log

  • 2026-10-02: added: Greek, lemmas (seven corrected), LSJ, Boisacq, Wiktionary, AI glosses, Jowett (1892 wording restored) and Fowler.