so, paedophilia is in the news again. or
ephebophilia, as the clarifiers say, making clear
nothing. and every soul in Athens seems
a perpetrator and a victim of the crime; i
have come to understand it as a spectrum.

the young, the young, we must protect the young;
who does and doesn’t say it is a creep. so where
might i protect them from the citizen? and where
might i protect them from the serpent of my tongue? if
here, rare and slithering and beautiful, it would insert itself

into your ear. into any nubile mind, and call it
education. once upon a time, a little fiction built
the beating heart of my self-government. all fallen
on the shell-shocked ears of popular abuse. all fallen
across the scattered pages of history.


//

Phaedrus: (as Lysias, cont.)

you
really
remember (memneso)
the things having been spoken (eremenon)

and (put) it into the heart (en-thumou)

that (on the one hand)
beloveds (hoi philoi)
warn (nouthetousin) (or put-in-mind)
lovers (erontas)

of the practice (epi-tedeumatos)
being (ontos)
bad (kakou)

and (on the other hand)
no one ever yet in the household (ton oikeion)
accused (emempsato)
the not-loving (me erosin)

of
through this
badly deliberating (bouleuein)
about themselves (peri eauton)

// 234β

σὺ οὖν τῶν τε εἰρημένων μέμνησο

καὶ ἐκεῖνο ἐνθυμοῦ

ὅτι τοὺς μὲν ἐρῶντας οἱ φίλοι νουθετοῦσιν

ὡς ὄντος κακοῦ τοῦ ἐπιτηδεύματος

τοῖς δὲ μὴ ἐρῶσιν οὐδεὶς πώποτε τῶν οἰκείων ἐμέμψατο

ὡς διὰ τοῦτο κακῶς βουλευομένοις περὶ ἑαυτῶν