Phaedrus

Socrates and Phaedrus an interlocutor in multiple dialogues engage in a conversation in Platos work The Phaedrus. Like Platos Republic and Symposium The Phaedrus was probably written around 370 BCE. Although the dialogue is apparently about the subject of love it actually focuses on the art of rhetoric and how it should be used as well as topics as varied as metempsychosis (the Greek belief in reincarnation) and sensual love. The classic Chariot Allegory which depicts the human soul as consisting of a charioteer a good horse heading upward to the divine and a bad horse tending downhill to a material incarnation is one of the dialogues key passages. Unusually the dialogue doesnt establish itself as a recounting of the days events. The dialogue is presented in the straight unmediated words of Socrates and Phaedrus; there are no intermediaries to set up the discussion or provide background information; it is delivered firsthand as though we are present for the actual occurrences. This contrasts with dialogues like the Symposium in which Plato openly provides us with a partial fifth-hand account of the days events by creating a number of layers between them and what we hear about them.