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← Plato's Ethics on the Black Horse

The Phaedrus Passage: What Plato Actually Wrote About the Black Horse

Evidence rating: CONFIRMED. Every quotation on this page is Benjamin Jowett's 1871 translation of Plato's Phaedrus, which is in the public domain. You can check each one against the free copies linked at the bottom. The use of the black horse for American parents in 2026 is this site's reading, and it is labeled as ours.

The rest of this section leans on one image from a book written about 2,400 years ago. It is only fair to show you the image itself first, in Plato's own words, before anyone tells you what it means.

Plato (about 428 to 348 BC) was an Athenian philosopher. Phaedrus is one of his dialogues: a conversation, written as a script, between his teacher Socrates and a young man named Phaedrus, set outside Athens by the river Ilissus. Partway through, Socrates tries to describe the human soul. He says a straight description would be too long, so he gives a picture instead.

Go deeper. This page walks through the passage once. Four pages below it go further:

  • The two horses, line by line: the key lines in the Jowett, Loeb 1914, and Fowler translations side by side, and where to read them free.
  • The black horse bargains: what the Greek says the black horse does with words, agreement, delay, and "pretend to have forgotten," set against the 2024 to 2026 calendar of automatic draft registration.
  • What scholars say the black horse is: appetite, hubris, and the horse that moves first, from the Republic tradition to a 2025 Seoul National University paper.
  • Theuth and the appearance of wisdom: the same dialogue's warning about people who "seem to know many things" from reading summaries.

How to find the lines: Stephanus numbers​

Every serious edition of Plato prints small numbers and letters in the margin, such as 246a or 254e. They are called Stephanus numbers, after Henri Estienne (Stephanus in Latin), who printed a complete Plato in 1578. They work like chapter and verse in a Bible. Any translation, in any language, uses the same numbers, so you can say "Phaedrus 253d" and anyone can find the line.

The whole horse image runs from about 246a to 254e.

246a–b: the picture​

Socrates sets up the figure:

"And let the figure be composite—a pair of winged horses and a charioteer. Now the winged horses and the charioteers of the gods are all of them noble and of noble descent, but those of other races are mixed; the human charioteer drives his in a pair; and one of them is noble and of noble breed, and the other is ignoble and of ignoble breed; and the driving of them of necessity gives a great deal of trouble to him." — Plato, Phaedrus 246a–b, trans. Jowett

So there are three parts to a person. A driver, and two horses that do not want the same things. The driver's whole job is to get the pair to pull one way.

247b: the heavy horse drags the chariot down​

The gods' chariots are balanced and fly easily. Ours struggle:

"The chariots of the gods in even poise, obeying the rein, glide rapidly; but the others labour, for the vicious steed goes heavily, weighing down the charioteer to the earth when his steed has not been thoroughly trained:—and this is the hour of agony and extremest conflict for the soul." — Phaedrus 247b

"Vicious" here is the old sense: full of vice, badly trained. The point is weight. The untrained horse does not fight in a dramatic way at first. It just pulls down.

253d–e: the two horses described​

Later, Socrates comes back to the picture and describes each horse.

The white horse:

"The right-hand horse is upright and cleanly made; he has a lofty neck and an aquiline nose; his colour is white, and his eyes dark; he is a lover of honour and modesty and temperance, and the follower of true glory; he needs no touch of the whip, but is guided by word and admonition only." — Phaedrus 253d

The black horse:

"The other is a crooked lumbering animal, put together anyhow; he has a short thick neck; he is flat-faced and of a dark colour, with grey eyes and blood-red complexion; the mate of insolence and pride, shag-eared and deaf, hardly yielding to whip and spur." — Phaedrus 253e

Two details matter for the rest of this section. The white horse can be guided "by word" alone: tell it what is right and it goes. The black horse is "deaf." Words do not reach it.

254a–b: the black horse pulls, and the others give in​

Plato's example is desire. The driver sees someone beautiful. The white horse, "as always under the government of shame," holds back. The black horse does not:

"the other, heedless of the pricks and of the blows of the whip, plunges and runs away, giving all manner of trouble to his companion and the charioteer ... They at first indignantly oppose him and will not be urged on to do terrible and unlawful deeds; but at last, when he persists in plaguing them, they yield and agree to do as he bids them." — Phaedrus 254a–b

Notice what happens. The driver and the good horse know better. They say no. The black horse keeps pushing, and they give in, not because they were persuaded, but because they got tired of the pressure.

254c–d: the black horse accuses the others of cowardice​

When the driver finally pulls back hard, the black horse turns on him:

"the other, when the pain is over which the bridle and the fall had given him, having with difficulty taken breath, is full of wrath and reproaches, which he heaps upon the charioteer and his fellow-steed, for want of courage and manhood, declaring that they have been false to their agreement and guilty of desertion." — Phaedrus 254c–d

This is worth reading twice. The part of the soul that wants to give in is the one that calls the others cowards and deserters. It uses the language of loyalty against the part that is actually being loyal.

254b–d: the black horse is a talker, and it bargains​

Scholars who read the Greek closely point out something the English can hide: the black horse is not just strong, it is persuasive. A 2012 thesis on the Phaedrus, summarizing a scholar it cites as Nightingale, puts it this way:

"Note in particular, the eloquence of the black [or dark] horse. [F]irst he gets the other parts of the soul to 'agree to do his bidding' ... when they break this agreement, he 'censures' and 'reviles' them for 'abandoning their posts out of cowardice and unmanliness' (c7-8); having 'agreed to their request that they put the matter off' (d2), he later 'reminds them when they pretend to have forgotten'" — thesis on the Phaedrus, DiVA portal, 2012, summarizing Nightingale on 254b–d

The full breakdown, with the Greek verbs, is on The Black Horse Bargains. Three things are in that sentence. The black horse gets agreement, not just obedience. It accepts a delay, "put the matter off," because a delay is a win for it. And it counts on the others to "pretend to have forgotten." Plato even uses a soldier's word: the other parts are accused of "abandoning their posts."

For a parent, the modern version is easy to recognize. Not tonight. After the holidays. When there's actually a bill. Postponement feels like a reasonable compromise. In Plato, it is how the black horse wins.

254e: how the black horse is tamed​

The driver does not win by argument. He wins by pulling back, again and again:

"he falls back like a racer at the barrier, and with a still more violent wrench drags the bit out of the teeth of the wild steed ... And when this has happened several times and the villain has ceased from his wanton way, he is tamed and humbled, and follows the will of the charioteer." — Phaedrus 254e

It takes repetition. It hurts. It works.

A second translation says the same thing​

If you worry that one Victorian translator colored the meaning, compare the 1914 Loeb Classical Library translation, a standard English text for scholars. Of the black horse it says: "he is the friend of insolence and pride, is shaggy-eared and deaf, hardly obedient to whip and spurs" (Loeb Classical Library, Phaedrus, 1914). "Deaf" survives the change of translator. So does the point: words do not reach this horse.

What scholars disagree about​

Honest readers of Plato do not all agree on what the black horse is, and you should know that before anyone, including this site, builds an argument on it.

  • Not simply evil. Elizabeth Belfiore, in "Dancing with the Gods: The Myth of the Chariot in Plato's Phaedrus," argues against the reading that the black horse is "an ineradicable evil in the soul," because "it is always the black horse who initiates movement (254a5-6, 254d4-7)." The same article reports G. R. F. Ferrari's view that "the charioteer's task is not to repress or eradicate the desires represented by the black horse but to learn from them and to integrate the whole soul by allowing these desires to find their proper place within it" (Belfiore, preview on Scribd).
  • Maybe not the same three parts as the Republic. Sung-Hoon Kang of Seoul National University argued in 2025 that the traditional match between the two horses and the Republic's spirit and appetite "originates with ancient Platonists," and that "the white horse represents the disposition of aidōs" (a sense of shame or respect) "while the black horse represents the disposition of hubris" (Kang, August 31, 2025).

More readings, including Nussbaum's and the Aeschylus parallel, are gathered on What Scholars Say the Black Horse Is. Both views help a parent rather than hurt. If the black horse is not evil, then the parent who wants peace at home is not a bad person. If it is hubris, the overconfidence that says I already know how this ends, then the lesson fits even better: it is the horse that does not need to read.

Elsewhere in the Phaedrus: the appearance of wisdom​

The same dialogue has a second story that speaks to anyone who gets their news in headlines. Near the end (274e–275b), the Egyptian god Theuth offers King Thamus the invention of writing as a cure for forgetfulness. Thamus refuses. In Fowler's translation, as quoted by the Siris blog:

"You have invented an elixir not of memory, but of reminding; and you offer your pupils the appearance of wisdom, not true wisdom, for they will read many things without instruction and will therefore seem to know many things, when they are for the most part ignorant and hard to get along with, since they are not wise, but only appear wise." — Plato, Phaedrus 275a–b, trans. H. N. Fowler, as quoted by Siris, June 13, 2014

Plato was worried about writing. Swap in the phone in your hand and the complaint is sharper than ever: we "seem to know many things" because we have seen many headlines. The cure in both cases is the same. Go back to the thing itself. The full story, including Jowett's line about "a paternal love of your own children," is on Theuth and the Appearance of Wisdom.

What Plato meant, and what this site adds​

Be clear about one thing. In the Phaedrus the black horse's pull is bodily appetite, and Plato's example is sexual desire. He did not write about wars, drafts, or parents. When this site talks about "the black horse" for a parent, it means the same kind of force: the part of us that wants what is pleasant and easy right now, is deaf to reasons, and keeps pushing until we give in. That is a fair reading of the passage. It is still our reading.

Plato's Republic, written around the same period, splits the soul the same way (reason, spirit, appetite). There Socrates defines courage in a way that fits a parent's situation closely. Courage is "a kind of salvation":

"Of the opinion respecting things to be feared, what they are and of what nature, which the law implants through education; and I mean by the words 'under all circumstances' to intimate that in pleasure or in pain, or under the influence of desire or fear, a man preserves, and does not lose this opinion." — Plato, Republic IV, 429c–d, trans. Jowett

And a few pages later:

"And he is to be deemed courageous whose spirit retains in pleasure and in pain the commands of reason about what he ought or ought not to fear?" — Republic IV, 442b–c

So in Plato's terms, comfort (pleasure) and fear (pain) are the two ways a person loses hold of what reason has told him. The black horse pulls toward the pleasant. Fear knocks the white horse off its footing. The fuller three-part mapping is on The Chariot and the Two Horses.

What a citizen can check​

  • Open the Jowett text on Project Gutenberg or the MIT Internet Classics Archive and search for "crooked lumbering." The description of the black horse is right there.
  • Compare a second translation. The Perseus Digital Library has H. N. Fowler's 1925 Loeb translation, section by section, with the Greek beside it. Go to 253d and 254a and see whether the meaning holds.
  • Read 254a–d slowly and ask one question: in your own life right now, which voice is calling the careful part of you disloyal?

Sources on this page​

Research captures: twitter/t09__v097.md, t09__v099.md, t70__v829.md, t70__v830.md, t70__v837.md, t70__v839.md.

Last Updated: 2026-09-26

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