ABSTRACT
Early in the Phaedrus, after Phaedrus has read Lysias’ speech on love, Socrates opens his own speech on the subject with the invocation:
Come then, ye clear voiced Muses, whether it be from the nature of your song, or from the musical people of Liguria that ye came to be so styled, ‘assist the tale I tell’ under compulsion by my good friend here, to the end that he may think yet more highly of one dear to him, whom he already accounts a man of wisdom.
