In Plato's early dialogues, Socrates engages in almost light-hearted banter around the subject of pederasty. He is ready to advise young men on the way to win a beloved, and he speaks openly of his own erotic arousal. But by the time Plato wrote the Phaedrus he seems to have been more troubled by the consequences of pederasty for the boy. Much of the dialogue focuses on the question whether the boy is better off accepting as his lover a man who is passionately aroused, a true erastes, or a "non-lover," a more sober sort who is not carried away by passion. Phaedrus and Socrates present various arguments on the benefits to the boy one way or the other.

Their conversation reveals a great deal about the emotional abuse of boys. An aroused lover is "extremely unpleasant to live with."(54) Such a man makes promises he does not keep, he is jealous of the boy's relationships with family and friends, he tries to keep him in a position of inferiority, and when the " bloom of youth is over,"(55) he no longer cares about the boy. "Consider this, fair youth," Socrates advises, "and know that in the friendship of the lover there is no real kindness; he has an appetite and wants to feed upon you."(56)

Through much of the dialogue, Socrates seems to favor the "non-lover," but the climax is reached when Socrates, in altogether driven language, suddenly pours forth in glorious depiction of erotic erousal. Eros is "inspired madness," it is "the greatest of heaven's blessings,"(57) and the soul possessed of it flies heavenward like a wing of feathers. Most significant, not just the man, but also the boy has erotic feelings. "His desire is as the desire of the other, but weaker,"(58) Socrates claims. The boy wants to see and touch and kiss his lover and go to bed with him. He is "bursting with passion which he understands not,"(59) and in that state he can refuse his lover nothing. If the lover is a virtuous man, and self-control and philosophy prevail, together the souls of man and boy can reach Olympian heights. What Plato seems in the Phaedrus to be struggling to say is that it is all right for the boy to be aroused, that he does not have to remain altogether passive and lacking in erotic feeling.(60)
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