"A story is not true if it states that one should bestow more favour on the non-lover when a lover is present, just because the one is mad and the other is sound-minded. For if it were simply the case that madness is bad, it would be acceptable to say this. However, enormous advantages now come to us through madness once it is given as a divine gift. In fact, the prophetess at Delphi and the priestesses at Dodona 244B do a great deal of good for Greece, both privately and publicly, when they are mad, but they accomplish little or nothing when they are sound-minded. And if we were also to mention the Sibyl and those others who have recourse to inspired prophecy, foretelling many things to many people and correcting their ways for the future, we would be giving a lengthy description of what is obvious to everyone.
"And yet it is worth producing the evidence that those ancients who assigned the names did not regard madness as shameful or a matter of reproach, 244C or else they would not have connected this particular word with the sublime skill that discerns the future by calling that skill manic. No, they realised that it was good, and gave it that name whenever it arises from divine providence. But people today, tastelessly inserting the letter T, have called it mantic. And when people in their right minds conduct their inquiry into the future through birds and other signs, which furnish human opinion with intelligence and information on the basis of thought, the ancients called the skill oionoistic, but nowadays the moderns, being solemn with their long O sounds, call it oiOnistic. 244D And so to this extent, the mantic is more perfect and venerable than the oiOnistic, when name is compared to name and outcomeis compared to outcome. And to this extent, the ancients bear witness to the superiority of madness from god over sound-mindedness originating among humans.
"Then again, when diseases and the greatest afflictions occur in certain families, born of guilt from the distant past, madness has arisen, and exercising its prophetic power has found a means of release 244E for those in need, by resorting to prayers and services to the gods. From this, madness hits upon purifications and rites, rendering its possessor healthy, there and then and for all time, by finding a way out of the present 245A evils for the person who is mad and possessed in the right way. A third madness and possession is from the Muses. This takes a tender and pure soul, arouses her and sends her into a frenzy of odes and other poetry, embellishes countless deeds of the ancient past, and educates future generations. But the man who arrives at the portals of poetry devoid of the Muses' madness, convinced that he may be a poet through competent technique, is himself incomplete and so is his poetry; and those works of a sound-minded man are set at nought by the poetry of the man who is mad.
245B "Such are the beautiful achievements wrought by madness born of the gods, and I could relate even more to you, so let us have no fear on that account. Nor should any argument trouble us and make us afraid that we should prefer the sound-minded person as a friend rather than the moved one. No, this argument should triumph only if it proves that love is not sent by the gods as a boon both to the lover and the loved one. But we, for our part, must prove the very opposite: that the madness of love is given by the gods 245C to confer the greatest good fortune. And the proof will sound incredible to the clever folk but credible to the wise.
