The “fountain of Zeus”

logos as erotic flux in Plato’s Phaedrus

Abstract

In Plato's Phaedrus, the figuration of discourse as a kind of fluid that emanates from the mouth of the speaker and penetrates the soul of the receiver is a theme that is carefully interspersed in the text through what can be called a "vocabulary of filling". This designates a semantic field that encompasses notions relating to the liquefied state (material or metaphorical) of certain objects, as well as their characteristic movements, above all flowing into and out of containers - a filling and an emptying. This article explores the first part of the dialogue, in which the occurrences of the vocabulary are concentrated, with two aims: the first and more general aim is to unravel the way in which this lexicon constitutes the theme of discourse-flux through the dynamic interaction of three main descriptive uses: (1) of the landscape in which the dialogue is set, centred on the river Ilissus; (2) of the movement of logos as influence or inspiration; and, (3), of the relationship between the philosophical lover and beloved as an exchange of flows of desire and speech. The second and more specific aim is to use this division as an argumentative path in favour of interpreting an obscure passage of the palinode as a metaphor for the production of discourse, namely, that what the lovers “draw from Zeus” (ἐκ Διὸς ἀρύτωσιν, 253a6) and “pour” (ἐπαντλοῦντες, a7) into the soul of the beloved is, in fact, logos.