For Tony Long:

Plato's Phaedrus obtrusively foregrounds issues of the rhetoric and reality of madness, inspiration, and mimēsis. In this most “poetic” of dialogues these issues are embodied by an (ironically?) inspired Socrates, and commentators have long been at a loss to nail down the precise ratio of play to seriousness in his myth of the charioteer. This essay examines how the rhetoric of Socrates' famous palinode both raises and defuses problems that have perplexed commentators concerning the status of the poetic, prophetic, and initiatory lives in the scheme of the myth: why are such lives ranked low in one place, yet lauded at the beginning of the speech as the purveyors of the greatest blessings? The palinode, however, provides suggestive indications as to the possibility of a new model of inspiration. Not the least achievement of the speech is to use a conventional framework to present a radical rethinking of the impingement of the divine upon human consciousness. The rhetoric of the speech reflects a changing conception of reality, as a philosophical model of inspiration displaces Plato's (tendentious) presentation of the contemporary cultural realities of divine madness and influence.