Analysis reveals how play and danger shape the idyllic setting in Plato's Phaedrus, indicating deeper philosophical implications.
I argue that the Boreas and Oreithyia myth’s locus amoenus setting introduces two central concepts: play (paidia) and danger within the apparent idyll. As Plato further develops the setting of Socrates and Phaedrus’s locus amoenus, he draws out distinctly Platonic versions of these two ideas focused on spending one’s leisure time in a way that pleases the gods and hence assures the soul’s ascension to the realm of the divine.
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Meredith Gilman (2025) studied this question.
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