Phaedrus

Phaedrus by Plato, from The Dialogues of Plato, translated by Benjamin Jowett, 96 pages

Phaedrus begins with the title character enthusiastically describing to Socrates a speech he has heard from a great rhetor, Lysias.  The speech was intended to persuade a young man to take a disinterested older man as his lover rather than a passionate suitor, denigrating romantic love as irrational and undependable.  Socrates responds with a speech of his own in the same vein, which leads into a dialogue on the nature of love, reincarnation, rhetoric, and the shortcomings of the written word.

This is sometimes regarded as one of Plato's lesser dialogues, and it is easy to see why.  It lacks a strong focus, and the great metaphor for the soul which Socrates presents is muddled and hard to grasp.  Phaedrus is not much of an interlocutor - after initiating the dialogue he does little except agree with Socrates or encourage him to continue.  Still, Plato is laying out great ideas here, from the explication of love as a madness given by the gods, akin to poetry and prophecy, to the fable of the judgement of Thamus.

This edition was translated with commentary by the great Oxford don Benjamin Jowett, the prime mover of the 19th century English Platonic revival.