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The Two Horses, Line by Line: Phaedrus 246a and 253c–254e in Three Translations

This page puts the core lines of Plato's horse image side by side in the three English translations a reader is most likely to meet: Benjamin Jowett (1871), the Loeb Classical Library (1914), and H. N. Fowler (1925, the Loeb text as posted by the Perseus Digital Library). If a parent is going to lean on an image from a 2,400-year-old book, the parent should be able to see that the image does not depend on one translator's taste. It does not. In every version the black horse is "deaf."

The numbers in the headings (246a, 253d, and so on) are Stephanus numbers, the page-and-section markers every edition of Plato prints in its margin. They let you find the same line in any translation.

246a–b: the picture is set up​

Socrates says a plain description of the soul would take too long, so he offers a picture: "a pair of winged horses and a charioteer." In Jowett's words, the gods' horses are all "noble and of noble descent," but ours 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." — Phaedrus 246a–b, trans. Jowett (MIT Internet Classics Archive)

The Siris blog, which walked through the dialogue section by section in June 2014, quotes the same lines in Fowler's version: "first the charioteer of the human soul drives a pair, and secondly one of the horses is noble and of noble breed, but the other quite the opposite in breed and character" (Siris, "Phaedrus (Part II: Winged Horses and a Charioteer)," June 11, 2014). The blog's own one-line summary of what follows is the lesson of the whole image: "the bad horse must be trained so that it will do what the charioteer requires."

253d: the white horse​

Jowett:

"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."

Loeb, 1914:

"The horse that stands at the right hand is upright and has clean limbs; he carries his neck high, has an aquiline nose, is white in colour, and has dark eyes; he is a friend of honour joined with temperance and modesty, and a follower of true glory; he needs no whip, but is guided only by the word of command and by reason." — Loeb Classical Library, Phaedrus, 1914

A 2012 thesis on the dialogue, reading the Greek, gives the same three virtues with the Greek words beside them: "a friend of honour (τιμή) joined with temperance (σωφροσύνη) and modesty (αἰδώς)" (DiVA thesis, 2012). Aidōs is the key word. It means a sense of shame, the feeling that stops a decent person from doing what others would see as wrong. That is why the white horse can be steered by a word alone.

253e: the black horse​

Jowett:

"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."

Loeb, 1914:

"The other, however, is crooked, heavy, ill put together, his neck is short and thick, his nose flat, his colour dark, his eyes grey and bloodshot; he is the friend of insolence and pride, is shaggy-eared and deaf, hardly obedient to whip and spurs."

Three things survive every translation:

  • "Deaf." The white horse obeys "word and admonition." The black horse does not hear words at all. For this section's purpose, that is the whole point. The part of a parent that does not want to know is not persuaded by an argument, because it is not listening to arguments.
  • "Insolence and pride." The black horse is not only hungry. It is proud. TheCollector's explainer on the chariot renders the same line as "the friend of insolence and pride, shaggy-eared and deaf," and adds that the right horse "is white and shining" while "the left horse is dark with grey, bloodshot eyes" (Lynnie McIlvain, TheCollector, December 26, 2020).
  • "Hardly yielding." Not "never yielding." The black horse can be brought under control, but only with force applied again and again.

These exact Jowett lines are what people quote when they bring the image into the present. In August 2024, the writer Tomer Solomon posted a video of a black horse and a white horse that had broken loose and were galloping through London traffic, and quoted Plato in full: "I divided each soul into three -- two horses again and a charioteer; and one of the horses was good and the other bad," followed by the 253d and 253e descriptions above (@tomer_solomon, August 27, 2024). The Joad Society's 2022 summary uses the same Jowett words for the "mortal, black horse," which it calls "deformed and obstinate" (The Joad Society, May 26, 2022).

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

Jowett:

"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."

The order matters. First refusal. Then pressure. Then agreement. The driver and the good horse are not argued out of their position. They are worn out of it.

254c–e: the reproach, and the taming​

When the driver finally pulls back so hard that the black horse falls, the black horse gets up and accuses the others of cowardice:

"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, trans. Jowett

And the cure:

"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, trans. Jowett

"Several times." The black horse is not beaten in a single scene. It is beaten by repetition. The next page, The Black Horse Bargains, looks closely at what the Greek says the black horse is doing with words in these same lines.

Where to read it yourself, free​

What this means for a parent​

A parent does not need Greek to use this passage. The lines say three plain things. Part of every person is deaf to reasons. That part wins by pressure, not by persuasion. And it is beaten only by a driver who keeps pulling back. The rest of this section applies those three lines to a year in which the United States is at war with Iran and young men are being enrolled automatically on the Selective Service list.

Sources​

Research captures: twitter/t09__v097.md, t70__v830.md, t70__v831.md, t70__v835.md, t70__v837.md, t70__v839.md.

Last Updated: 2026-09-26

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