Phaedrus
Phaedrus. I have never noticed it. But, for Heaven’s sake, Socrates, tell me; do you believe this tale is true?
Socrates
Socrates. If I disbelieved, as the wise men do, I should not be extraordinary; then I might give a rational explanation, that a blast of Boreas, the north wind, pushed her off the neighboring rocks as she was playing with Pharmacea, and that when she had died in this manner she was said to have been carried off by Boreas.The Mss. insert hereἢ ἐξ Ἀρείου πάγου: λέγεται γὰρ αὖ καὶ οὗτος ὁ λόγος, ὡς ἐκεῖθεν ἀλλ’ οὐκ ἐνθένδε ἡρπάσθη, or from the Areopagus, for this story is also told, that she was carried off from there and not from here. Schanz follows Bast and many editors in rejecting this as a gloss. But I, Phaedrus, think such explanations are very pretty in general, but are the inventions of a very clever and laborious and not altogether enviable man, for no other reason than because after this he must explain the forms of the Centaurs, and then that of the Chimaera, and there presses in upon him a whole crowd of such creatures, Gorgons and Pegas, and multitudes of strange, inconceivable, portentous natures. If anyone disbelieves in these, and with a rustic sort of wisdom, undertakes to explain each in accordance with probability, he will need a great deal of leisure.
