Phaedrus: Tell me, Socrates, wasn’t it here, indeed from this spot, that Boreas is said to have snatched Oreithuia from the Ilisus?

[Socrates and Phaedrus haggle over the precise location of the abduction for a few lines.]

Socrates: But if I should disbelieve it [the abduction] as the wise men do, I would not be strange; but as a wise man I would say that the wind of Boreas pushed her down from the nearest rocks as she was playing with pharmakeia (sun Pharmakeia). And thus having died, it is said she was snatched at the hands of Boreas, or from the mount of Ares. For this account also says she was snatched from there, not here. While I think such things elegant, they are from a man who is too clever, a busybody and not a fortunate man either, in so far as it is necessary for him after this to amend the form of the hippocentaur, and again, that of the centaur, and a crowd of such gorgons and pegasuses and a number of other extraordinary things as well as certain others of a strange and terrible nature. If anyone disbelieves in these creatures, and reduces each according to its likelihood, seeing that he is using a kind of rustic wisdom, he will need a lot of leisure.  For myself there is no such leisure.

Φαῖδροςεἰπέ μοι, ὦ Σώκρατες, οὐκ ἐνθένδε μέντοι ποθὲν ἀπὸ τοῦ Ἰλισοῦ λέγεται ὁ Βορέας τὴν Ὠρείθυιαν ἁρπάσαι;

paucis versibus extractis

Σωκράτηςἀλλ᾽ εἰ ἀπιστοίην, ὥσπερ οἱ σοφοί, οὐκ ἂν ἄτοπος εἴην, εἶτα σοφιζόμενος φαίην αὐτὴν πνεῦμα Βορέου κατὰ τῶν πλησίον πετρῶν σὺν Φαρμακείᾳ παίζουσαν ὦσαι, καὶ οὕτω δὴ τελευτήσασαν λεχθῆναι ὑπὸ τοῦ Βορέου ἀνάρπαστον [229δ] γεγονέναι—ἢ ἐξ Ἀρείου πάγου: λέγεται γὰρ αὖ καὶ οὗτος ὁ λόγος, ὡς ἐκεῖθεν ἀλλ᾽ οὐκ ἐνθένδε ἡρπάσθη. ἐγὼ δέ, ὦ Φαῖδρε, ἄλλως μὲν τὰ τοιαῦτα χαρίεντα ἡγοῦμαι, λίαν δὲ δεινοῦ καὶ ἐπιπόνου καὶ οὐ πάνυ εὐτυχοῦς ἀνδρός, κατ᾽ ἄλλο μὲν οὐδέν, ὅτι δ᾽ αὐτῷ ἀνάγκη μετὰ τοῦτο τὸ τῶν Ἱπποκενταύρων εἶδος ἐπανορθοῦσθαι, καὶ αὖθις τὸ τῆς Χιμαίρας, καὶ ἐπιρρεῖ δὲ ὄχλος τοιούτων Γοργόνων καὶ Πηγάσων καὶ [229ε] ἄλλων ἀμηχάνων πλήθη τε καὶ ἀτοπίαι τερατολόγων τινῶν φύσεων: αἷς εἴ τις ἀπιστῶν προσβιβᾷ κατὰ τὸ εἰκὸς ἕκαστον, ἅτε ἀγροίκῳ τινὶ σοφίᾳ χρώμενος, πολλῆς αὐτῷ σχολῆς δεήσει. ἐμοὶ δὲ πρὸς αὐτὰ οὐδαμῶς ἐστι σχολή…
Phaedrus 229b-d

The particular attitude being described in this passage, a perspective today referred to as scientific reductionism, leads Socrates to pronounce that the reduction of phenomena to scientific “facts” takes no less ingenuity than it does facts. We can not but help to giggle at Socrates’ methodological exasperation at the mismeasures and guesses of the “wise men”.

I have found it a little strange however, that when this passage has been translated, Pharmaceia (uncapitalized, like every other word, in manuscripts) is translated as the name of Oreithuia’s playmate rather than literally. Pharmaceia, as the dictionary has it, is a medicine, the first asides mention specific instances of it as an emetic and as an abortifacient. Of the three translations I have read, however, each of them translates the word as a proper name.

It would seem well-fitted and more apt to translate the word as drug here. As they are wont, the wise men deconstruct fables according to individual elements of probability, and they do so by extracting the literal from the metaphorical.

For instance, when Boreas, the North Wind, is said to have snatched someone, the wise man considers the question, “What would it mean if we said the wind ‘snatched’ and ‘took away’ someone?”. The answer, if we had discarded the possibility of theophany at the outset, and of course we have, is that the wind swept someone away to their own demise.

Similarly, donning the perspective of a wise man, when we hear that Oreithuia was playing with Pharmaceia, would we immediately think of Pharmaceia as a mere name, or would we proceed farther, considering that this name also signified something else?
I think the later is more likely. On the wise men’s take, Oreithuia has played around with drugs and, in an altered state, comes too near some perilous cliffs, when an inopportune gust pushes her over the cliff.

One could almost imagine her as a wild eyed flower child prancing in the nude on the very precipice.