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Or does the central image of the fountain have another meaning?
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Based on
the allegory of the soul in love as described in Plato's Phaedrus:
"As I said
in the beginning of this tale, I divided each soul into three: two horses and a charioteer and one of the horses was good
and the other bad. The division may remain, but I have not yet explained in shat the goodness or badness of either consists.
the right-hand horse is upright and cleanly made; he has a lofty neck and an aquiline nose; his color is white, and his eyes
dark; he is a lover of honor 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.
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The other
is a crooked lumbering animal, put together anyhow; he has a short thick neck; he is flat faced and of a dark color; with
grey eyes and blood red complexion; the mate of insolence and pride, shag-eared and deaf, hardly yielding to whip and spur.
Now when the charioteer beholds the vision of love, and has his whole soul warmed through sense, and is full of the pricking
and ticklings of desire, the obedient steed, then as always under the government of shame, refrains from leaping on the beloved;
but 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 an the charioteer, whom he forces to approach the beloved and to remember the joys of love."
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I think Plato's description fits perfectly. A central figure, the soul in love, rides on a chariot pulled by two
winged horses: one calm and one wild.
They both exist simultaneously in the fountain.
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