_Socr._ But where is my boy, to whom I spoke? that he may hear this too, and may not, from not hearing it, hastily grant favours to one who is not in love. _Phæ._ Here he is always very near to you, whenever you want him. _Socr._ Understand then, my beautiful boy, that the former speech was that of Phædrus, son of Pythocles, a man of Myrrhinus; but that which I am now about to deliver is the speech of Stesichorus, son of Euphemus, of Himera. It must begin thus: “The assertion is not true which declares that when a lover is present favour ought rather to be shewn to one who is not in love, because the one is mad and the other in his sober senses. 47. For if it were universally true that madness is evil, the assertion would be correct. But now the greatest blessings we have spring from madness, when granted by divine bounty. For the prophetess at Delphi, and the priestesses at Dodona, have, when mad, done many and noble services for Greece, both privately and publicly, but in their sober senses, little or nothing. And if we were to speak of the Sybil and others, who, employing prophetic inspiration, have correctly predicted many things to many persons respecting the future, we should be too prolix in relating what is known to every one. 48. This, however, deserves to be adduced by way of testimony, that such of the ancients as gave names to things did not consider madness as disgraceful or a cause of reproach: for they would not have attached this very name to that most noble art by which the future is discerned, and have called it a mad art; but considering it noble when it happens by the divine decree, they gave it this name; but the men of the present day, by ignorantly inserting the letter τ, have called it the prophetic art[122]. Since also with respect to the investigation of the future by people in their senses, which is made by means of birds and other signs, inasmuch as men by means of reflection, furnished themselves by human thought with intelligence and information, they gave it the name of prognostication[123], which the moderns, by using the emphatic long õ, now call augury. But how much more perfect and valuable, then, prophecy is than augury, one name than the other, and one effect than the other, by so much did the ancients testify that madness is more noble than sound sense, that which comes from God than that which proceeds from men. 49. Moreover, for those dire diseases and afflictions, which continued in some families in consequence of ancient crimes committed by some or other of them, madness springing up and prophesying to those to whom it was proper, discovered a remedy, fleeing for refuge to prayers and services of the gods, whence obtaining purifications and atoning rites, it made him who possessed it sound, both for the present and the future, by discovering to him, who was rightly mad and possessed, a release from present evils. There is a third possession and madness proceeding from the Muses, which seizing