Prayer to Pan

The closing words of the Phaedrus. Socrates and Phaedrus have spent the day by a stream outside the walls, in a place sacred to Pan and the Nymphs, and before leaving they pray to the local gods — as one did on quitting ground belonging to another.

Δοίητέ μοι καλῷ γενέσθαι τἄνδοθεν — grant that I become beautiful within. For the Greeks kalos is first of all bodily beauty, the concern of the wrestling ground; Socrates asks for exactly that, but of the inside, turning an everyday word against everyday use.

Ἔξωθεν δ᾽ ὅσ᾽ ἔχω, τοῖς ἐντὸς εἶναί μοι φίλια — and let what I have outside be on good terms with what is within. Not a renunciation of external goods but a request that they should not be at war with the inner ones: there is no asceticism here.

And the conclusion is a joke with a solid floor. "Let me have as much gold as no one but a temperate man could carry or cart away." A temperate man would carry very little. Wealth is asked for and in the same breath defined so that the request limits itself.

How this text was obtained. It replaced a corrupt reading from Greek Wikisource, on account of which the card had been flagged. It was collated from two editions and three witnesses, including a diplomatic transcription of the manuscript; the 1912 critical edition was taken as the base. The divergences from Hermann's edition (Πᾶν against Πάν, ὅσα ἔχω against ὅσ᾽ ἔχω) are small and do not touch the sense.