The Symposium

Foreword

By Ben Potter

Love and Philosophy

By Ed Whelan

All You Need Is Love... And Wine

By Ben Potter

Always Change For Love

By Van Bryan

Wine in Ancient Greece

By Van Bryan

Alcoholism in the Greco-Roman World

By Dale Vernor

Plato: The Symposium

With

Analysis of 'Plato: The Symposium' By The Translator

Foreword

By

Ben Potter

Plato's Symposium (c.385-370BC) is, of course, that famed philosopher's treatise on the form, nature, purpose and practice of love. However, before we bring you this ancient account of all things amorous, we have a collection of contemporary commentary for your consumption.

Ed Whelan starts the ball rolling with as clear and concise an account of the text as you are likely to find anywhere within the Classics section of your local bookstore. If you're positively itching with classical fervour and are desperate to devour Plato's philosophical prose as quickly as possible, but would like to get the gist of what the heck he'll be talking about, then quickly devour Ed's article and race straight to the main event.

From this excellent starting point, my own article highlights what the Symposium can tell us about two of the most ubiquitous, yet often overlooked, aspects of ancient Greek culture: wine-drinking and homosexuality. Readers familiar with my entropic style will be unsurprised to learn that on this journey we wander a little from the beaten path and touch on both the sublime (Plato's theory of the Forms) and the ridiculous (Piers Morgan).

Next up, Van Bryan outlines what practical advice this most famous of all famous discussions on love can have for our own, real-life relationships today. He brings to the fore a controversial proposition: that the most tried and trusted piece of advice that most of us have ever given, or received, when dealing with matters of the heart might be... (how to put it tactfully?)... utter garbage!

After these slaloming synopses of the text itself, we take a step back in order to focus on the key thing that made a symposium a symposium... wine!

Once again, we are passengers of Van Bryan as, like Virgil or Beatrice (depending on how much you enjoy it), he guides us through the Greeks' attitude to, and relationship with, wine. And from these light-headed, dizzying heights we're brought back to earth with a sobering bang as Dale Vernor brews us a strong cup of reality to wash down our two tablets of self-reproach with his excellent article looking at 'Alcoholism in the Greco-Roman World'.

Perhaps you'll decide to line these articles up and knock them back with a satisfied sucking of the teeth, or maybe sip from cup to cup at random seeing which one suits your palate best, or even dispense with the aperitifs all together and greedily rush, corkscrew in hand, to the party's main event? Whatever your poison, whatever you decide to imbibe, remember to do it the way that Plato and his Symposium guests would have wanted... with love.

Cheers!

Ben Potter

October 2020

P.S. For those thirsting for yet more analysis, explanation, clarification or context regarding the Symposium, we have included the translator's twenty pages of commentary at the end of this book.

Love and Philosophy

By

Ed Whelan

Plato is regarded by many as the world’s greatest philosopher. In his dialogues, he examined everything from the nature of reality, to ethics, to beauty, to the state. The Symposium is the summation of Plato’s ideas on love, and have proven very influential.

The main character in the dialogues is the great philosopher Socrates, who inspired Plato. Scholars have been trying to understand for centuries which of the ideas expressed in the Platonic dialogues are Plato’s and which are Socrates’.

The Symposium

The Symposium was named after the cultural and social practice of the same name, which was a post-banquet gathering in which men would drink, listen to music, and relax. Typically, there was a great deal of conversation and witty talk. Guests would drink too much and would say things they would never say. The events portrayed in the Symposium dialogue took place in 385 BC. In the text, there are seven speakers, all based on historical characters.

Characters in the Symposium

It is important to understand the characters in the dialogue in order to understand the philosophical arguments put forward by Plato. Phaedrus was an Athenian aristocrat and a friend of Socrates. Pausanias was a legal professional and Eryximachus was a physician. The great comic playwright Aristophanes was also present at the banquet. The host of the banquet was Agathon, a tragic playwright. Socrates is also present, as is Alcibiades, the notorious Athenian politician and general who played such a prominent role in the Peloponnesian War.  They all offer different definitions of Love.

The Speeches

Like all the Platonic dialogues, the work, which is very literary, consists mainly of speeches. Socrates arrives at the party late because he had been lost in contemplation. Agathon invites his guests, to make a speech in praise of love. Phaedrus goes first. He quotes some poets and argues that Love was the first of the gods and promotes excellence and goodness in people. He argued that there is also a lower sort of love, one based on desire and sexual gratification. Then there is a kind of divine love which involves a lover teaching his beloved virtue and wisdom. Next spoke the doctor, Eryximachus, who says love is moderation and balance.

Aristophanes was the next speaker. Already drunk, he launches into the mythical story of his own making. The story went that Zeus, angered by humanity, cut people in two. Because of this, they spend their whole lives wandering in search of their other half. When they find their missing part, or half, they are complete, and this is love.

Next up is Agathon, who gave an elaborate speech arguing that love is the youngest of the gods. The object of love, according to Agathon, is nothing less than beauty.

Socrates then spoke. He disagreed with Agathon, stating that he mistook the object of love with its intrinsic nature. He then told the following story: He once met a wise woman, who called herself Diotima. Love was a spirit, Socrates learned, that helped us to attain what we desired and needed. It is a spirit or daimon and it mediates between the gods and men, reproducing itself either through the birth of new beings or new ideas.  Socrates held that the world of the senses is based on Forms which exist in an eternal realm. Thus, love is the desire or spirit which lifts the human soul to the knowledge of the Forms. The Forms were the essence of things from which flow what we perceive as reality; they are called ‘ideas’ in some translations. One of the most important Forms was the form of beauty, and Socrates said love can guide a person to its contemplation. He showed how love can help the human mind ascend to a higher, eternal realm, one beyond the temporal world of the senses.

At this point, the notorious Alcibiades, who is very drunk and rowdy, butted in.  He interrupted everyone to tell them how he tried to seduce Socrates. In Ancient Greece, sexual relationships between males were tolerated, and those between an older man and a younger man were considered praiseworthy. Alcibiades’ story showed that Socrates had no interest in sexual pleasure. The party becomes chaotic and disorderly. Soon everyone passed out, except the philosopher, who left and went about his business.

Platonic Love

The Symposium is very important in the philosophical tradition. In the work, Plato rejected the idea that love is about desire and sexual gratification. However, many of the speeches make valid points about love, and each one can be seen as taking us nearer the truth. For Socrates, love was a spirit that helps a person better understand the fundamental nature of reality, or Forms. In the dialogue, Plato, vis-a-vis Socrates, argued the highest love is the philosopher’s love of the truth, contained in the Forms. This love of the truth is what distinguishes the philosopher. This is what is known as Platonic Love: a love that unites souls by uniting them with the truth.

Conclusion

The Symposium is among the most beautiful of the philosophical dialogues written by Plato, and it is very readable. It is one of the most important texts on love, and it provides insight into Plato’s philosophical system.

All You Need Is Love... And Wine

By

Ben Potter

The next time you attend a symposium at your local learning annex, take with you a bottle of wine or a pitcher of cocktails. If security try to turf you out on the grounds that drinking isn’t appropriate for such an occasion, then scoff.

Scoff like you’ve never scoffed before!

For the Athenians, a symposium was a ritualised drinking-party, a holy, night-long, god-venerating blow-out. Although food would have been consumed, this would have happened before the serious business of getting good and drunk got under way.

A symposium would have had all-male guest-lists where men reclined on couches (shared one between two) spaced around the perimeter of a room. This facilitated the free turn-taking not only of speech, but also drink. Indeed, it seems drinking by turn from a bowl, rather than from individual cups, may have been the norm.

The Symposium of Plato, whilst philosophically stimulating, is also the most literarily intriguing of all of his works. Not only this, but it also, “offers us special insight into two central features of social life in Classical Greece: the formal drinking-party and homosexuality” (Christopher Gill).

However, putting aside for one second the ‘homosexual’ nature of The Symposium, it primarily deals with a subject with which we are all well-acquainted, be it through experience or ignorance, love.

Indeed, a synopsis of the plot makes it sound like a bad, bawdy joke: an aristocrat, a lawyer, a doctor, a comedian, a dramatist, and a philosopher lie around getting drunk and talking about love. Their party is hijacked by a man who is simultaneously the city’s most notorious pervert and brilliant military commander.

Each man (Phaedrus, Pausanias, Eryximachus, Aristophanes, Agathon, Socrates and Alcibiades respectively) is encouraged to make a speech of praise (encomium) about eros.

This use of real historical figures in a creative setting blurs fact and fiction (Norman Mailer called it ‘faction’). Plato distances himself from any culpability or inaccuracy by having the whole story recounted some 15 years after the party took place and third, forth, or sometimes fifth hand.

N.B. The translation of eros is a little shaky, but partly because the ancient definition of it was too. In this context it is considered to be either desire, passionate sexual desire, or the god Eros. Understandably with such subtlety and ambiguity, the translation usually winds up simply as ‘love’.

Phaedrus begins with a speech extolling the benefits of going into battle side-by-side with soldiers for whom you feel love. He cites Achilles knowingly and willingly dying for his love of Patroclus as evidence that this ‘do ask, do tell’ policy will heighten the performance of fighting men.

Incidentally, this passage is used as evidence that the Greeks assumed Achilles and Patroclus had a homosexual relationship.

Here we should briefly stop and address sexuality and homosexuality in Athens. The permeations and details are too many and too subtle to fully do justice here. However, as a rule of thumb we can say (using our modern language) that most men were, by default, bisexual and promiscuous.

There was no shame or stigma attached to the use of prostitutes; indeed, upper-class prostitutes (hetairai) were probably the best educated and most sophisticated women in society.

As a consequence, or cause, sexual jealously as we know it, seems a small factor. Though the righteous wrath of the cuckold appears to be timeless.

James Davidson makes the excellent point that in Classical Athens, most evidence indicates a predominantly heterosexual society, wherein sexual activity was largely centred on wives and (female) prostitutes.

The truly ‘homosexual’ aspect is difficult to explain, or at least difficult to correlate to our modern definitions. Loosely speaking, straight/gay is a post-Freudian concept and doesn’t quite cut it here.

There certainly isn’t Christian culture’s idea that homosexuality is unacceptable, though in “Ionia and elsewhere in the Persian Empire the rule is that [gay] love-affairs are wrong”(182b).

The presence of long-term, monogamous, adult, homosexual relationships are rare, but documented. Indeed, in The Symposium, Agathon and Pausanias are in this very type of relationship.

The problem encountered by these two (and others) is the idea of money for sex. Two adult free-citizens having a reciprocal sexual relationship was fine, but when one benefited financially (even from a loan or gift), the result could be a charge of prostitution and therefore loss of citizenship-rights.

This goes to show that, whilst Athens is often thought of as being both the cradle of democracy and (ludicrously) the birthplace of homosexuality, it was actually very difficult to conduct a modern, gay relationship there.

Pausanias, in his speech, talks about common love, which is merely sex (with a woman or a boy), and heavenly love, which honors and respects the other and wishes an exchange of intelligence and wisdom… and sex.

The arrogant and obnoxious Eryximachus comes across as an absolute crushing bore. He says love is in all things and also believes it is medicinal. The motivation of his speech seems purely for self-aggrandizement and he is immediately mocked by the next speaker, Aristophanes.

In stark contrast to Eryximachus, Aristophanes tells a fanciful and amusing, mock-creation story of how we used to be fused in two i.e. with 4 legs, 2 faces etc. There were men-men, women-women, and androgynous women-men, but we overstepped our boundaries and were rent in twain by an angry Zeus. Thus, whomever you have sexual desire for indicates to whom you had originally been attached.

This account is one that remained very popular throughout history as, in far from monogamous times, Aristophanes was propounding the virtues of soul-mates.

Agathon gives a poorly argued and disjointed speech. He seems flawed, facile, shallow and simple.

This particular symposium is supposedly in honor of Agathon’s victory at the dramatic festival ‘The Lenaia’. Is Plato‘s representation of him an implication that he doesn’t think much of his dramatic quality?

Clearly, Agathon’s speech is deliberately simple and weak. Thus Socrates has a chance to pick it to pieces, as is typical of most of Plato‘s dialogues.

The ‘Socratic method’ – to us more like modern teaching techniques – is to educate someone through a series of leading questions. The Meno is Plato‘s best example of this; he gets an ignorant slave to solve a mathematical problem simply by asking him leading questions, not actually giving him any information.

Having finished with Agathon, Socrates tells a theory of love he has heard from Diotima of Mantinea.

The speech illustrates the force of eros, but paradoxically without desire.

This may have seemed more contradictory and confusing to the Athenians than it does to us. We bound about the word ‘love’ with extraordinary abandon; to the extent that people talk of ‘loving’ their new car or, even more perversely and disturbingly, ‘loving’ Piers Morgan.

The love that Diotima, through Socrates, is talking about, is one that pursues true wisdom, immortality and the possession of ‘the good’.

The ideas of Pausanias, those of an older lover tutoring a younger, are supported, but without the necessary climax of sexual gratification.

This is from where (and for why) the concept of ‘Platonic love’ was developed. It could just as easily have been called Socratic love, but the distinction between the two voices is extremely murky.

Socrates goes on to talk of how we can see physical beauty, and in turn, we can more easily recognise mental beauty. From here we can begin to search for Beauty in itself.

Plato is coming back to his popular recurring theme of Forms, i.e. that there is a perfect, ethereal Form of everything for which we must be continually searching.

At this point Alcibiades barges in, totally drunk and with a prostitute on his arm.

He complains everyone is too sober, exalts Socrates’ philosophical virtues and attempts to seduce him. Even though Socrates flirts back, he doesn’t give in: “he completely triumphed over my good looks – and despised, scorned and insulted them”(219c).

This, semi-comic interlude (along with that of Aristophanes earlier) shows that Plato is flexing his literary muscles as much as his philosophical ones. Most of the speeches have, unusually for him, been left without judgement. This leaves the reader with the feeling that he is less confidant in (or less concerned with) his philosophical assertions than in other dialogues.

Socrates lends fuel to this fire when he states that: “anyone who is an expert in writing tragedy must also be an expert in writing comedy”(223d). This is a fine reflection on The Symposium as the most well-rounded and readable of all Plato‘s dialogues.

The text, fittingly and beautifully, peters out with maudlin undertones, much like a jolly night drinking with friends that winds down as the sun rises. The overload of joy at good company and too much alcohol, combined with the fatigue brought on by being unwilling to end such beautiful, and seemingly essential, discourse.

Always Change For Love

By

Van Bryan

So, that’s probably a strange thing to say, right?

After all, the popular opinion today is that you shouldn’t change for love and that your spouse shouldn’t make you change. I am who I am and that’s all that I am!

That certainly seems to be the mindset these days; at least that’s what my single friends tell me. They spend their evenings swiping left on their smart phones and making connections with total strangers on Tinder or J-swipe or…whatever.

“Never change for love.” That’s the battle cry.

Besides, if you just be yourself, surely you will find somebody just like you and you will inevitably fall in love.

Right?

“Wrong!” says Plato.

The problem with never changing who you are for love, or never letting your spouse change who you are, is that who you are might very well be a terrible person. What if who you are is an inconsiderate sociopath? Or worse, what if you are a sophist?

What I’m trying to say is that maybe a bit of change wouldn’t be so bad. Perhaps we really should let our lovers change us. Who knows? Maybe they will make us better.

In Plato’s Symposium, Socrates, Plato’s teacher and the man dubbed “the Father of Western Philosophy”, is joined by a handful of important Athenian figures of the age, the most notable of which are the general Alcibiades and the comic playwright Aristophanes. They all gather to discuss the topic of love.

For the more initiated of you, you will recall that there are no shortage of interesting ideas to discuss in Symposium. However, today we are looking at the speech of Pausanias and the assertion that we ought to let our lover change us.

Pausanias first notes that love is the only thing that can justify some questionable behavior. Under normal circumstances, we might look strangely at a man who lies all night on a front porch. However, when we learn that this man is doing this in pursuit of his lover, then his behavior not only becomes somewhat acceptable, but even admirable.

“And in the pursuit of his love the custom of mankind allows him to do many strange things, which philosophy would bitterly censure if they were done from any motive of interest or wish for office or power. He may pray, and entreat, an supplicate, and swear, and lie on a mat at the door, and endure a slavery worse than that of any slave…” – Plato (Symposium)

Heck, Pausanias tells us that even the gods will forgive you if you commit some transgression whilst in pursuit of your love, and we all know how unforgiving those gods can be.

So love seems to be something of great power and importance. However, Pausanias tells us that, just like anything, there can be good and bad love.

It all comes down to your motivations. Why do you love somebody? It may very well be that you love somebody because they are beautiful or wealthy. This, however, is not true love, and is actually quite dishonorable.

Pausanias tells us that we ought to love our lover’s soul, not their beauty or their bank account. To love either of the latter is truly a base thing, because both of these things are temporary. The beauty of youth invariable recedes, and misfortune may befall any rich man and reduce him to a peasant. Where will your love be then? It will take wings and fly!

“Evil is the vulgar lover who loves the body rather than the soul, inasmuch as he is not even stable because he loves a thing which is in itself unstable…” –Plato (Symposium)

So don’t love your spouse’s beauty and don’t love their account balance. What do you love? Their virtue!

“There remains only one way of honorable attachment which custom allows in the beloved, and this is the way of virtue.” – Plato (Symposium)

Okay, so Plato isn’t telling us that, come next Valentine’s Day, we write on the card, “Dear Honey, I love your virtue.”

Instead, he is telling us that we ought to be drawn to a person for their inner qualities. We should fall in love with the beauty of their soul and its capacity for virtue and goodness.

Moreover, we should, ideally, find somebody who has different virtues than us. This is where the whole “let your lover change you” thing comes into play.

Find somebody who has different qualities than you. Perhaps they are brave when you are timid. Maybe they are organized while you are messy. Whatever the situation, you should find somebody who possesses qualities that you yourself lack, and then let that person seduce you into becoming a better version of yourself.

True love does not mean loving your spouse for who they are right now. True love means that two people are committed to educating each other in the ways of virtue and enduring the stormy seas that result of such a union.

“This is that love which is the love of the heavenly goddess, and is heavenly, and of great price to the individual and the cities, making the lover and the beloved alike eager in the work of their own improvement.” –Plato (Symposium)

Make sense?

So the next time you think your spouse is trying to change you, just remember that they probably are, and you really ought to let them.

Wine in Ancient Greece

By

Van Bryan

While the ancient philosophers were attempting to unearth truth through intellectual discourse, they were often doing so with a cup of wine in hand and plenty more waiting in a nearby carafe. These “symposia” were intellectual gatherings where the philosophers of ancient Greece would collect around a table and allow the conversation and wine to flow freely.

This image of ancient intellectuals collecting around a generous serving of wine, is often depicted in several dialogues written by the likes of Aristotle and Plato. Perhaps most notably this type of scene can be experienced through the reading of Symposium by Plato. And while it might be common to assume modern philosophers are depressed introverts, the ancients really knew how to have a good time.

Events like those depicted in Symposium call close attention to the culture of ancient Greece. Specifically, it inadvertently gives us an insight on the importance of wine as a cultural staple during ancient times. It is often considered that ancient Greece is the foundation for much of western civilization. And wine is no exception to that rule.

The importance of wine in ancient Greece has been well established by archaeological digs that have unearthed extravagant gold and silver goblets from as far back as the Mycenaean era of Greece. Such artefacts demonstrated that said people were not only fierce warriors, but also people of sophistication who were aware of wine and respected it greatly. One artefact of particular interest is the Cup of Nestor. A Golden goblet, discovered by Heinrich Schliemann in 1876 in the ancient civilization of Mycenae. The goblet is believed to have belonged to the ancient king Nestor of Pylos who was a prominent character in The Iliad. Homer describes the goblet of Nestor when he writes:

“There were four handles on it,

around each one a pair of golden doves was feeding.

Below were two supports. When that cup was full,

another man could hardly lift it from the table,

but, old as he was, Nestor picked it up with ease.”

It is commonly held that large scale production, distribution, and consumption of wine began on the prominent island of Crete. Depictions of primitive wine presses can be seen on the walls of Minoan tombs dating as far back to 3000 BCE. Clay goblets and carafes have been uncovered across the island including in the ancient palace of King Minos in the city of Knossos. It is believed the craft of wine making began on this island and slowly made the transfer to the mainland of Greece.

The ancient Greeks traded wine as a commercial product for centuries across the regions. Indeed, Greek wine was traded throughout the entire known ancient world. Wines from islands such as Crete, Rhodes, and Lesbos were especially popular. Homer himself writes about the wonderful supply of wine found in cellars outside the city of Troy. The Aegean was so saturated with wine trading ships that Homer would refer to it as “the wine-dark sea”.

In order to accommodate this high demand in the wine trade, the ancients developed new storage techniques that would allow their wines to be transported long distances without spoiling. Before the time of air-tight glass bottles, wine left in a regular barrel would be exposed to oxygen and spoil quickly. The ancient Greeks began the practice of sealing these wine barrels with pine resin, as to prevent the wine from spoiling. The resin helped make the barrels air-tight while simultaneously adding a distinct pine aroma to the drink. This distinctive taste is still alive today in the form of “Restina”, a modern white wine that still maintains the unique flavor from ancient times.

An interesting anecdote states that the use of pine resin was for a very different reason. According to this hypothesis, Roman soldiers would regularly plunder the cities of Greece and make off with their stores of wine. The Greek citizens became so angry that they began using pine resin to add a bitter aroma to their wine. The Roman invaders would try one sip of this distinctive wine, taste the bitterness and assume it was spoiled. In this way the Greeks would keep their wines and the invaders would be none the wiser. This idea would seem to lead to the thought that the Greeks would take measures to protect their wines while the invaders would make off with their women and treasures. At least they had their priorities straight…

Wine in ancient Greece was of enormous cultural significance. The ancients drank wine to praise the gods and expand their minds. They studied it intently to decipher it’s presumed health benefits and its obvious drawbacks.

It was a nutritional staple, a religious experience. The production, distribution, and consumption of wine is so deeply ingrained with the culture of ancient Greece, that you simply cannot have one without the other.

Alcoholism in the Greco-Roman World

By

Dale Vernor

Binge drinking is nothing new. Gilgamesh, the semi-mythical Mesopotamian king who lived around 2,800 BC, is reported to have promised his workers “(a river of) ale, beer, and wine”,… which doesn’t exactly suggest moderation.

Indeed, most practices, beliefs, and attitudes linked to alcohol use date back to the earlier cultures… but that doesn’t mean its consumption didn’t change over time and between cultures.

In both the ancient Greek and Roman world, alcohol was an important element often taken for pleasure, for social reasons, and for medicinal purposes. However, as the Roman Empire grew, drinking began to change. The Romans’ traditional values that were modeled on those of the Greeks—such as frugality, temperance, and simplicity—were slowly replaced by heavy drinking and other vices, including degeneracy, blind ambition, and corruption.

Drinking for Pleasure and at Social Settings

The manner in which alcohol, mainly wine, was consumed played a part in preventing or minimizing alcoholism in these cultures.

The consumption of wine was famously a part of the Greek Symposium, an important Hellenic social institution during which young men were introduced into aristocratic society. Men of respected families engaged in discussions and debates while wine was served.

The overseer of the Symposium, the Symposiarch, would decide how strong the wine should be depending on the kind of discussions to take place. If the event was a sensual indulgence, it would be stronger; for serious discussions, it would be light. Both Romans and Greeks mixed wine with water because drinking pure wine was seen as a habit associated with uncivilized people.

At a Greek Symposium, women weren’t allowed and wine was taken after dinner. At the similar Roman Convivium, wine was served before, during, and after a meal, and women were allowed at the gathering.

When Drinking Got Out of Hand

While foreign visitors occasionally reported of “mass drunkenness”, overall the ancient Greeks were generally considered very temperate among ancient people. Perhaps this was because of their rules and literature that stressed moderate drinking, recommended diluting wine with water, and praised temperance. For instance, Xenophon and Plato spoke highly of moderate wine consumption because it was good for health and promoting happiness, but they were also critical of the habit of drunkenness.

Nonetheless, there were exceptions, folks who believed in drinking to excess.

Take the cult of Dionysus, the Greek god of wine. Followers of Dionysus believed that becoming intoxicated brought them closer to their deity.

The Macedonians also, among Greeks, perceived intemperance as a sign of masculinity, so men could drink to intoxicate themselves. Alexander the Great is a famous example, and may have died as a result of his habit.

Given these and other cases of excessive consumption, it is not surprising that the ancient Greeks had hangover remedies, such as taking boiled cabbage.

In contrast to the Greek ideal, the Romans had drinking habits that encouraged excessive consumption of wine, such as:

- They began drinking before meals on empty stomachs.

- They consumed excessive quantities of wine and food, and then vomited so that they had room for more.

- They played drinking games, including one where somebody would drink as many cups of wine as a throw of a dice indicated.

Clearly, in the first and second centuries BC, it was not uncommon to encounter intoxication among Greeks and Romans. However, initially it was not a universal vice and famous people like Cato the Elder and Julius Caesar only took wine in moderation. As moral values associated with drinking continued to decay, the habit of excessive drinking became more widespread.

Alcoholism isn’t just a modern phenomenon; it was present during ancient times, too. Perhaps today’s alcohol use and abuse is a reflection and an extension of what happened in times before. It was and will be with us always…all that changes is how we deal with it.

Watered Wine anyone?

The Symposium

By

Plato

Translated by Benjamin Jowett

SYMPOSIUM

PERSONS OF THE DIALOGUE: Apollodorus, who repeats to his companion

the dialogue which he had heard from Aristodemus, and had already once

narrated to Glaucon. Phaedrus, Pausanias, Eryximachus, Aristophanes,

Agathon, Socrates, Alcibiades, A Troop of Revellers.

SCENE: The House of Agathon.

Concerning the things about which you ask to be informed I believe that

I am not ill-prepared with an answer. For the day before yesterday I

was coming from my own home at Phalerum to the city, and one of my

acquaintance, who had caught a sight of me from behind, calling out

playfully in the distance, said: Apollodorus, O thou Phalerian (Probably

a play of words on (Greek), 'bald-headed.') man, halt! So I did as I

was bid; and then he said, I was looking for you, Apollodorus, only just

now, that I might ask you about the speeches in praise of love, which

were delivered by Socrates, Alcibiades, and others, at Agathon's supper.

Phoenix, the son of Philip, told another person who told me of them;

his narrative was very indistinct, but he said that you knew, and I wish

that you would give me an account of them. Who, if not you, should be

the reporter of the words of your friend? And first tell me, he said,

were you present at this meeting?

Your informant, Glaucon, I said, must have been very indistinct indeed,

if you imagine that the occasion was recent; or that I could have been

of the party.

Why, yes, he replied, I thought so.

Impossible: I said. Are you ignorant that for many years Agathon has not

resided at Athens; and not three have elapsed since I became acquainted

with Socrates, and have made it my daily business to know all that he

says and does. There was a time when I was running about the world,

fancying myself to be well employed, but I was really a most wretched

being, no better than you are now. I thought that I ought to do anything

rather than be a philosopher.

Well, he said, jesting apart, tell me when the meeting occurred.

In our boyhood, I replied, when Agathon won the prize with his first

tragedy, on the day after that on which he and his chorus offered the

sacrifice of victory.

Then it must have been a long while ago, he said; and who told you--did

Socrates?

No indeed, I replied, but the same person who told Phoenix;--he was a

little fellow, who never wore any shoes, Aristodemus, of the deme of

Cydathenaeum. He had been at Agathon's feast; and I think that in

those days there was no one who was a more devoted admirer of Socrates.

Moreover, I have asked Socrates about the truth of some parts of his

narrative, and he confirmed them. Then, said Glaucon, let us have the

tale over again; is not the road to Athens just made for conversation?

And so we walked, and talked of the discourses on love; and therefore,

as I said at first, I am not ill-prepared to comply with your request,

and will have another rehearsal of them if you like. For to speak or to

hear others speak of philosophy always gives me the greatest pleasure,

to say nothing of the profit. But when I hear another strain, especially

that of you rich men and traders, such conversation displeases me; and

I pity you who are my companions, because you think that you are doing

something when in reality you are doing nothing. And I dare say that

you pity me in return, whom you regard as an unhappy creature, and very

probably you are right. But I certainly know of you what you only think

of me--there is the difference.

COMPANION: I see, Apollodorus, that you are just the same--always

speaking evil of yourself, and of others; and I do believe that you pity

all mankind, with the exception of Socrates, yourself first of all, true

in this to your old name, which, however deserved, I know not how you

acquired, of Apollodorus the madman; for you are always raging against

yourself and everybody but Socrates.

APOLLODORUS: Yes, friend, and the reason why I am said to be mad, and

out of my wits, is just because I have these notions of myself and you;

no other evidence is required.

COMPANION: No more of that, Apollodorus; but let me renew my request

that you would repeat the conversation.

APOLLODORUS: Well, the tale of love was on this wise:--But perhaps I had

better begin at the beginning, and endeavour to give you the exact words

of Aristodemus:

He said that he met Socrates fresh from the bath and sandalled; and as

the sight of the sandals was unusual, he asked him whither he was going

that he had been converted into such a beau:--

To a banquet at Agathon's, he replied, whose invitation to his sacrifice

of victory I refused yesterday, fearing a crowd, but promising that I

would come to-day instead; and so I have put on my finery, because he is

such a fine man. What say you to going with me unasked?

I will do as you bid me, I replied.

Follow then, he said, and let us demolish the proverb:--

'To the feasts of inferior men the good unbidden go;'

instead of which our proverb will run:--

'To the feasts of the good the good unbidden go;'

and this alteration may be supported by the authority of Homer himself,

who not only demolishes but literally outrages the proverb. For, after

picturing Agamemnon as the most valiant of men, he makes Menelaus, who

is but a fainthearted warrior, come unbidden (Iliad) to the banquet of

Agamemnon, who is feasting and offering sacrifices, not the better to

the worse, but the worse to the better.

I rather fear, Socrates, said Aristodemus, lest this may still be my

case; and that, like Menelaus in Homer, I shall be the inferior person,

who 'To the feasts of the wise unbidden goes.'

But I shall say that I was bidden of you, and then you will have to make

an excuse.

'Two going together,'

he replied, in Homeric fashion, one or other of them may invent an

excuse by the way (Iliad).

This was the style of their conversation as they went along. Socrates

dropped behind in a fit of abstraction, and desired Aristodemus, who was

waiting, to go on before him. When he reached the house of Agathon

he found the doors wide open, and a comical thing happened. A servant

coming out met him, and led him at once into the banqueting-hall in

which the guests were reclining, for the banquet was about to begin.

Welcome, Aristodemus, said Agathon, as soon as he appeared--you are just

in time to sup with us; if you come on any other matter put it off, and

make one of us, as I was looking for you yesterday and meant to have

asked you, if I could have found you. But what have you done with

Socrates?

I turned round, but Socrates was nowhere to be seen; and I had to

explain that he had been with me a moment before, and that I came by his

invitation to the supper.

You were quite right in coming, said Agathon; but where is he himself?

He was behind me just now, as I entered, he said, and I cannot think

what has become of him.

Go and look for him, boy, said Agathon, and bring him in; and do you,

Aristodemus, meanwhile take the place by Eryximachus.

The servant then assisted him to wash, and he lay down, and presently

another servant came in and reported that our friend Socrates had

retired into the portico of the neighbouring house. 'There he is fixed,'

said he, 'and when I call to him he will not stir.'

How strange, said Agathon; then you must call him again, and keep

calling him.

Let him alone, said my informant; he has a way of stopping anywhere and

losing himself without any reason. I believe that he will soon appear;

do not therefore disturb him.

Well, if you think so, I will leave him, said Agathon. And then, turning

to the servants, he added, 'Let us have supper without waiting for him.

Serve up whatever you please, for there is no one to give you orders;

hitherto I have never left you to yourselves. But on this occasion

imagine that you are our hosts, and that I and the company are your

guests; treat us well, and then we shall commend you.' After this,

supper was served, but still no Socrates; and during the meal Agathon

several times expressed a wish to send for him, but Aristodemus

objected; and at last when the feast was about half over--for the fit,

as usual, was not of long duration--Socrates entered. Agathon, who was

reclining alone at the end of the table, begged that he would take

the place next to him; that 'I may touch you,' he said, 'and have the

benefit of that wise thought which came into your mind in the portico,

and is now in your possession; for I am certain that you would not have

come away until you had found what you sought.'

How I wish, said Socrates, taking his place as he was desired, that

wisdom could be infused by touch, out of the fuller into the emptier

man, as water runs through wool out of a fuller cup into an emptier one;

if that were so, how greatly should I value the privilege of reclining

at your side! For you would have filled me full with a stream of wisdom

plenteous and fair; whereas my own is of a very mean and questionable

sort, no better than a dream. But yours is bright and full of promise,

and was manifested forth in all the splendour of youth the day before

yesterday, in the presence of more than thirty thousand Hellenes.

You are mocking, Socrates, said Agathon, and ere long you and I will

have to determine who bears off the palm of wisdom--of this Dionysus

shall be the judge; but at present you are better occupied with supper.

Socrates took his place on the couch, and supped with the rest; and then

libations were offered, and after a hymn had been sung to the god,

and there had been the usual ceremonies, they were about to commence

drinking, when Pausanias said, And now, my friends, how can we drink

with least injury to ourselves? I can assure you that I feel severely

the effect of yesterday's potations, and must have time to recover; and

I suspect that most of you are in the same predicament, for you were

of the party yesterday. Consider then: How can the drinking be made

easiest?

I entirely agree, said Aristophanes, that we should, by all means, avoid

hard drinking, for I was myself one of those who were yesterday drowned

in drink.

I think that you are right, said Eryximachus, the son of Acumenus; but

I should still like to hear one other person speak: Is Agathon able to

drink hard?

I am not equal to it, said Agathon.

Then, said Eryximachus, the weak heads like myself, Aristodemus,

Phaedrus, and others who never can drink, are fortunate in finding

that the stronger ones are not in a drinking mood. (I do not include

Socrates, who is able either to drink or to abstain, and will not mind,

whichever we do.) Well, as of none of the company seem disposed to drink

much, I may be forgiven for saying, as a physician, that drinking deep

is a bad practice, which I never follow, if I can help, and certainly

do not recommend to another, least of all to any one who still feels the

effects of yesterday's carouse.

I always do what you advise, and especially what you prescribe as a

physician, rejoined Phaedrus the Myrrhinusian, and the rest of the

company, if they are wise, will do the same.

It was agreed that drinking was not to be the order of the day, but that

they were all to drink only so much as they pleased.

Then, said Eryximachus, as you are all agreed that drinking is to be

voluntary, and that there is to be no compulsion, I move, in the next

place, that the flute-girl, who has just made her appearance, be told

to go away and play to herself, or, if she likes, to the women who are

within (compare Prot.). To-day let us have conversation instead; and,

if you will allow me, I will tell you what sort of conversation. This

proposal having been accepted, Eryximachus proceeded as follows:--

I will begin, he said, after the manner of Melanippe in Euripides,

'Not mine the word'

which I am about to speak, but that of Phaedrus. For often he says to me

in an indignant tone:--'What a strange thing it is, Eryximachus, that,

whereas other gods have poems and hymns made in their honour, the great

and glorious god, Love, has no encomiast among all the poets who are

so many. There are the worthy sophists too--the excellent Prodicus for

example, who have descanted in prose on the virtues of Heracles and

other heroes; and, what is still more extraordinary, I have met with a

philosophical work in which the utility of salt has been made the theme

of an eloquent discourse; and many other like things have had a like

honour bestowed upon them. And only to think that there should have been

an eager interest created about them, and yet that to this day no one

has ever dared worthily to hymn Love's praises! So entirely has this

great deity been neglected.' Now in this Phaedrus seems to me to be

quite right, and therefore I want to offer him a contribution; also I

think that at the present moment we who are here assembled cannot do

better than honour the god Love. If you agree with me, there will be

no lack of conversation; for I mean to propose that each of us in turn,

going from left to right, shall make a speech in honour of Love. Let him

give us the best which he can; and Phaedrus, because he is sitting first

on the left hand, and because he is the father of the thought, shall

begin.

No one will vote against you, Eryximachus, said Socrates. How can I

oppose your motion, who profess to understand nothing but matters of

love; nor, I presume, will Agathon and Pausanias; and there can be

no doubt of Aristophanes, whose whole concern is with Dionysus and

Aphrodite; nor will any one disagree of those whom I see around me. The

proposal, as I am aware, may seem rather hard upon us whose place is

last; but we shall be contented if we hear some good speeches first. Let

Phaedrus begin the praise of Love, and good luck to him. All the company

expressed their assent, and desired him to do as Socrates bade him.

Aristodemus did not recollect all that was said, nor do I recollect all

that he related to me; but I will tell you what I thought most worthy of

remembrance, and what the chief speakers said.

Phaedrus began by affirming that Love is a mighty god, and wonderful

among gods and men, but especially wonderful in his birth. For he is the

eldest of the gods, which is an honour to him; and a proof of his claim

to this honour is, that of his parents there is no memorial; neither

poet nor prose-writer has ever affirmed that he had any. As Hesiod

says:--

'First Chaos came, and then broad-bosomed Earth, The everlasting seat of

all that is, And Love.'

In other words, after Chaos, the Earth and Love, these two, came into

being. Also Parmenides sings of Generation:

'First in the train of gods, he fashioned Love.'

And Acusilaus agrees with Hesiod. Thus numerous are the witnesses who

acknowledge Love to be the eldest of the gods. And not only is he the

eldest, he is also the source of the greatest benefits to us. For I know

not any greater blessing to a young man who is beginning life than a

virtuous lover, or to the lover than a beloved youth. For the principle

which ought to be the guide of men who would nobly live--that principle,

I say, neither kindred, nor honour, nor wealth, nor any other motive is

able to implant so well as love. Of what am I speaking? Of the sense of

honour and dishonour, without which neither states nor individuals ever

do any good or great work. And I say that a lover who is detected in

doing any dishonourable act, or submitting through cowardice when

any dishonour is done to him by another, will be more pained at being

detected by his beloved than at being seen by his father, or by his

companions, or by any one else. The beloved too, when he is found in

any disgraceful situation, has the same feeling about his lover. And if

there were only some way of contriving that a state or an army should be

made up of lovers and their loves (compare Rep.), they would be the very

best governors of their own city, abstaining from all dishonour, and

emulating one another in honour; and when fighting at each other's side,

although a mere handful, they would overcome the world. For what lover

would not choose rather to be seen by all mankind than by his beloved,

either when abandoning his post or throwing away his arms? He would be

ready to die a thousand deaths rather than endure this. Or who would

desert his beloved or fail him in the hour of danger? The veriest coward

would become an inspired hero, equal to the bravest, at such a time;

Love would inspire him. That courage which, as Homer says, the god

breathes into the souls of some heroes, Love of his own nature infuses

into the lover.

Love will make men dare to die for their beloved--love alone; and women

as well as men. Of this, Alcestis, the daughter of Pelias, is a monument

to all Hellas; for she was willing to lay down her life on behalf of her

husband, when no one else would, although he had a father and mother;

but the tenderness of her love so far exceeded theirs, that she made

them seem to be strangers in blood to their own son, and in name only

related to him; and so noble did this action of hers appear to the gods,

as well as to men, that among the many who have done virtuously she is

one of the very few to whom, in admiration of her noble action, they

have granted the privilege of returning alive to earth; such exceeding

honour is paid by the gods to the devotion and virtue of love. But

Orpheus, the son of Oeagrus, the harper, they sent empty away, and

presented to him an apparition only of her whom he sought, but herself

they would not give up, because he showed no spirit; he was only a

harp-player, and did not dare like Alcestis to die for love, but was

contriving how he might enter Hades alive; moreover, they afterwards

caused him to suffer death at the hands of women, as the punishment

of his cowardliness. Very different was the reward of the true love of

Achilles towards his lover Patroclus--his lover and not his love (the

notion that Patroclus was the beloved one is a foolish error into which

Aeschylus has fallen, for Achilles was surely the fairer of the two,

fairer also than all the other heroes; and, as Homer informs us, he was

still beardless, and younger far). And greatly as the gods honour the

virtue of love, still the return of love on the part of the beloved to

the lover is more admired and valued and rewarded by them, for the lover

is more divine; because he is inspired by God. Now Achilles was quite

aware, for he had been told by his mother, that he might avoid death and

return home, and live to a good old age, if he abstained from slaying

Hector. Nevertheless he gave his life to revenge his friend, and dared

to die, not only in his defence, but after he was dead. Wherefore the

gods honoured him even above Alcestis, and sent him to the Islands of

the Blest. These are my reasons for affirming that Love is the eldest

and noblest and mightiest of the gods; and the chiefest author and giver

of virtue in life, and of happiness after death.

This, or something like this, was the speech of Phaedrus; and some other

speeches followed which Aristodemus did not remember; the next which he

repeated was that of Pausanias. Phaedrus, he said, the argument has not

been set before us, I think, quite in the right form;--we should not be

called upon to praise Love in such an indiscriminate manner. If there

were only one Love, then what you said would be well enough; but since

there are more Loves than one,--should have begun by determining which

of them was to be the theme of our praises. I will amend this defect;

and first of all I will tell you which Love is deserving of praise, and

then try to hymn the praiseworthy one in a manner worthy of him. For we

all know that Love is inseparable from Aphrodite, and if there were

only one Aphrodite there would be only one Love; but as there are two

goddesses there must be two Loves. And am I not right in asserting that

there are two goddesses? The elder one, having no mother, who is called

the heavenly Aphrodite--she is the daughter of Uranus; the younger, who

is the daughter of Zeus and Dione--her we call common; and the Love

who is her fellow-worker is rightly named common, as the other love is

called heavenly. All the gods ought to have praise given to them, but

not without distinction of their natures; and therefore I must try to

distinguish the characters of the two Loves. Now actions vary according

to the manner of their performance. Take, for example, that which we

are now doing, drinking, singing and talking--these actions are not in

themselves either good or evil, but they turn out in this or that way

according to the mode of performing them; and when well done they are

good, and when wrongly done they are evil; and in like manner not every

love, but only that which has a noble purpose, is noble and worthy

of praise. The Love who is the offspring of the common Aphrodite is

essentially common, and has no discrimination, being such as the meaner

sort of men feel, and is apt to be of women as well as of youths, and

is of the body rather than of the soul--the most foolish beings are the

objects of this love which desires only to gain an end, but never thinks

of accomplishing the end nobly, and therefore does good and evil quite

indiscriminately. The goddess who is his mother is far younger than

the other, and she was born of the union of the male and female, and

partakes of both. But the offspring of the heavenly Aphrodite is derived

from a mother in whose birth the female has no part,--she is from the

male only; this is that love which is of youths, and the goddess being

older, there is nothing of wantonness in her. Those who are inspired by

this love turn to the male, and delight in him who is the more valiant

and intelligent nature; any one may recognise the pure enthusiasts in

the very character of their attachments. For they love not boys, but

intelligent beings whose reason is beginning to be developed, much about

the time at which their beards begin to grow. And in choosing young men

to be their companions, they mean to be faithful to them, and pass their

whole life in company with them, not to take them in their inexperience,

and deceive them, and play the fool with them, or run away from one to

another of them. But the love of young boys should be forbidden by law,

because their future is uncertain; they may turn out good or bad, either

in body or soul, and much noble enthusiasm may be thrown away upon them;

in this matter the good are a law to themselves, and the coarser sort

of lovers ought to be restrained by force; as we restrain or attempt to

restrain them from fixing their affections on women of free birth. These

are the persons who bring a reproach on love; and some have been led to

deny the lawfulness of such attachments because they see the impropriety

and evil of them; for surely nothing that is decorously and lawfully

done can justly be censured. Now here and in Lacedaemon the rules about

love are perplexing, but in most cities they are simple and easily

intelligible; in Elis and Boeotia, and in countries having no gifts of

eloquence, they are very straightforward; the law is simply in favour of

these connexions, and no one, whether young or old, has anything to say

to their discredit; the reason being, as I suppose, that they are men

of few words in those parts, and therefore the lovers do not like the

trouble of pleading their suit. In Ionia and other places, and generally

in countries which are subject to the barbarians, the custom is held

to be dishonourable; loves of youths share the evil repute in which

philosophy and gymnastics are held, because they are inimical to

tyranny; for the interests of rulers require that their subjects should

be poor in spirit (compare Arist. Politics), and that there should be no

strong bond of friendship or society among them, which love, above all

other motives, is likely to inspire, as our Athenian tyrants learned by

experience; for the love of Aristogeiton and the constancy of Harmodius

had a strength which undid their power. And, therefore, the ill-repute

into which these attachments have fallen is to be ascribed to the evil

condition of those who make them to be ill-reputed; that is to say, to

the self-seeking of the governors and the cowardice of the governed; on

the other hand, the indiscriminate honour which is given to them in some

countries is attributable to the laziness of those who hold this opinion

of them. In our own country a far better principle prevails, but, as

I was saying, the explanation of it is rather perplexing. For, observe

that open loves are held to be more honourable than secret ones, and

that the love of the noblest and highest, even if their persons are

less beautiful than others, is especially honourable. Consider, too,

how great is the encouragement which all the world gives to the lover;

neither is he supposed to be doing anything dishonourable; but if he

succeeds he is praised, and if he fail he is blamed. And in the pursuit

of his love the custom of mankind allows him to do many strange things,

which philosophy would bitterly censure if they were done from any

motive of interest, or wish for office or power. He may pray, and

entreat, and supplicate, and swear, and lie on a mat at the door, and

endure a slavery worse than that of any slave--in any other case friends

and enemies would be equally ready to prevent him, but now there is no

friend who will be ashamed of him and admonish him, and no enemy will

charge him with meanness or flattery; the actions of a lover have a

grace which ennobles them; and custom has decided that they are highly

commendable and that there no loss of character in them; and, what is

strangest of all, he only may swear and forswear himself (so men say),

and the gods will forgive his transgression, for there is no such thing

as a lover's oath. Such is the entire liberty which gods and men have

allowed the lover, according to the custom which prevails in our part of

the world. From this point of view a man fairly argues that in Athens

to love and to be loved is held to be a very honourable thing. But when

parents forbid their sons to talk with their lovers, and place them

under a tutor's care, who is appointed to see to these things, and their

companions and equals cast in their teeth anything of the sort which

they may observe, and their elders refuse to silence the reprovers

and do not rebuke them--any one who reflects on all this will, on the

contrary, think that we hold these practices to be most disgraceful.

But, as I was saying at first, the truth as I imagine is, that whether

such practices are honourable or whether they are dishonourable is not a

simple question; they are honourable to him who follows them honourably,

dishonourable to him who follows them dishonourably. There is dishonour

in yielding to the evil, or in an evil manner; but there is honour in

yielding to the good, or in an honourable manner. Evil is the vulgar

lover who loves the body rather than the soul, inasmuch as he is not

even stable, because he loves a thing which is in itself unstable, and

therefore when the bloom of youth which he was desiring is over, he

takes wing and flies away, in spite of all his words and promises;

whereas the love of the noble disposition is life-long, for it becomes

one with the everlasting. The custom of our country would have both of

them proven well and truly, and would have us yield to the one sort of

lover and avoid the other, and therefore encourages some to pursue,

and others to fly; testing both the lover and beloved in contests and

trials, until they show to which of the two classes they respectively

belong. And this is the reason why, in the first place, a hasty

attachment is held to be dishonourable, because time is the true test of

this as of most other things; and secondly there is a dishonour in being

overcome by the love of money, or of wealth, or of political power,

whether a man is frightened into surrender by the loss of them, or,

having experienced the benefits of money and political corruption, is

unable to rise above the seductions of them. For none of these things

are of a permanent or lasting nature; not to mention that no generous

friendship ever sprang from them. There remains, then, only one way of

honourable attachment which custom allows in the beloved, and this is

the way of virtue; for as we admitted that any service which the lover

does to him is not to be accounted flattery or a dishonour to himself,

so the beloved has one way only of voluntary service which is not

dishonourable, and this is virtuous service.

For we have a custom, and according to our custom any one who does

service to another under the idea that he will be improved by him either

in wisdom, or in some other particular of virtue--such a voluntary

service, I say, is not to be regarded as a dishonour, and is not open

to the charge of flattery. And these two customs, one the love of youth,

and the other the practice of philosophy and virtue in general, ought to

meet in one, and then the beloved may honourably indulge the lover. For

when the lover and beloved come together, having each of them a law, and

the lover thinks that he is right in doing any service which he can to

his gracious loving one; and the other that he is right in showing any

kindness which he can to him who is making him wise and good; the one

capable of communicating wisdom and virtue, the other seeking to acquire

them with a view to education and wisdom, when the two laws of love are

fulfilled and meet in one--then, and then only, may the beloved yield

with honour to the lover. Nor when love is of this disinterested sort is

there any disgrace in being deceived, but in every other case there is

equal disgrace in being or not being deceived. For he who is gracious to

his lover under the impression that he is rich, and is disappointed of

his gains because he turns out to be poor, is disgraced all the same:

for he has done his best to show that he would give himself up to any

one's 'uses base' for the sake of money; but this is not honourable. And

on the same principle he who gives himself to a lover because he is a

good man, and in the hope that he will be improved by his company, shows

himself to be virtuous, even though the object of his affection turn

out to be a villain, and to have no virtue; and if he is deceived he has

committed a noble error. For he has proved that for his part he will do

anything for anybody with a view to virtue and improvement, than which

there can be nothing nobler. Thus noble in every case is the acceptance

of another for the sake of virtue. This is that love which is the

love of the heavenly godess, and is heavenly, and of great price to

individuals and cities, making the lover and the beloved alike eager in

the work of their own improvement. But all other loves are the offspring

of the other, who is the common goddess. To you, Phaedrus, I offer this

my contribution in praise of love, which is as good as I could make

extempore.

Pausanias came to a pause--this is the balanced way in which I have

been taught by the wise to speak; and Aristodemus said that the turn of

Aristophanes was next, but either he had eaten too much, or from some

other cause he had the hiccough, and was obliged to change turns with

Eryximachus the physician, who was reclining on the couch below him.

Eryximachus, he said, you ought either to stop my hiccough, or to speak

in my turn until I have left off.

I will do both, said Eryximachus: I will speak in your turn, and do you

speak in mine; and while I am speaking let me recommend you to hold your

breath, and if after you have done so for some time the hiccough is

no better, then gargle with a little water; and if it still continues,

tickle your nose with something and sneeze; and if you sneeze once or

twice, even the most violent hiccough is sure to go. I will do as you

prescribe, said Aristophanes, and now get on.

Eryximachus spoke as follows: Seeing that Pausanias made a fair

beginning, and but a lame ending, I must endeavour to supply his

deficiency. I think that he has rightly distinguished two kinds of love.

But my art further informs me that the double love is not merely an

affection of the soul of man towards the fair, or towards anything, but

is to be found in the bodies of all animals and in productions of the

earth, and I may say in all that is; such is the conclusion which I seem

to have gathered from my own art of medicine, whence I learn how great

and wonderful and universal is the deity of love, whose empire extends

over all things, divine as well as human. And from medicine I will begin

that I may do honour to my art. There are in the human body these two

kinds of love, which are confessedly different and unlike, and being

unlike, they have loves and desires which are unlike; and the desire of

the healthy is one, and the desire of the diseased is another; and as

Pausanias was just now saying that to indulge good men is honourable,

and bad men dishonourable:--so too in the body the good and healthy

elements are to be indulged, and the bad elements and the elements of

disease are not to be indulged, but discouraged. And this is what the

physician has to do, and in this the art of medicine consists: for

medicine may be regarded generally as the knowledge of the loves and

desires of the body, and how to satisfy them or not; and the best

physician is he who is able to separate fair love from foul, or to

convert one into the other; and he who knows how to eradicate and how to

implant love, whichever is required, and can reconcile the most hostile

elements in the constitution and make them loving friends, is a skilful

practitioner. Now the most hostile are the most opposite, such as

hot and cold, bitter and sweet, moist and dry, and the like. And my

ancestor, Asclepius, knowing how to implant friendship and accord in

these elements, was the creator of our art, as our friends the poets

here tell us, and I believe them; and not only medicine in every branch

but the arts of gymnastic and husbandry are under his dominion. Any one

who pays the least attention to the subject will also perceive that in

music there is the same reconciliation of opposites; and I suppose that

this must have been the meaning of Heracleitus, although his words are

not accurate; for he says that The One is united by disunion, like the

harmony of the bow and the lyre. Now there is an absurdity saying that

harmony is discord or is composed of elements which are still in a state

of discord. But what he probably meant was, that harmony is composed of

differing notes of higher or lower pitch which disagreed once, but are

now reconciled by the art of music; for if the higher and lower notes

still disagreed, there could be no harmony,--clearly not. For harmony

is a symphony, and symphony is an agreement; but an agreement of

disagreements while they disagree there cannot be; you cannot harmonize

that which disagrees. In like manner rhythm is compounded of elements

short and long, once differing and now in accord; which accordance, as

in the former instance, medicine, so in all these other cases, music

implants, making love and unison to grow up among them; and thus music,

too, is concerned with the principles of love in their application to

harmony and rhythm. Again, in the essential nature of harmony and rhythm

there is no difficulty in discerning love which has not yet become

double. But when you want to use them in actual life, either in the

composition of songs or in the correct performance of airs or metres

composed already, which latter is called education, then the difficulty

begins, and the good artist is needed. Then the old tale has to be

repeated of fair and heavenly love--the love of Urania the fair and

heavenly muse, and of the duty of accepting the temperate, and those

who are as yet intemperate only that they may become temperate, and of

preserving their love; and again, of the vulgar Polyhymnia, who must

be used with circumspection that the pleasure be enjoyed, but may not

generate licentiousness; just as in my own art it is a great matter so

to regulate the desires of the epicure that he may gratify his tastes

without the attendant evil of disease. Whence I infer that in music, in

medicine, in all other things human as well as divine, both loves ought

to be noted as far as may be, for they are both present.

The course of the seasons is also full of both these principles; and

when, as I was saying, the elements of hot and cold, moist and dry,

attain the harmonious love of one another and blend in temperance and

harmony, they bring to men, animals, and plants health and plenty, and

do them no harm; whereas the wanton love, getting the upper hand and

affecting the seasons of the year, is very destructive and injurious,

being the source of pestilence, and bringing many other kinds of

diseases on animals and plants; for hoar-frost and hail and blight

spring from the excesses and disorders of these elements of love, which

to know in relation to the revolutions of the heavenly bodies and the

seasons of the year is termed astronomy. Furthermore all sacrifices and

the whole province of divination, which is the art of communion between

gods and men--these, I say, are concerned only with the preservation

of the good and the cure of the evil love. For all manner of impiety is

likely to ensue if, instead of accepting and honouring and reverencing

the harmonious love in all his actions, a man honours the other love,

whether in his feelings towards gods or parents, towards the living or

the dead. Wherefore the business of divination is to see to these loves

and to heal them, and divination is the peacemaker of gods and men,

working by a knowledge of the religious or irreligious tendencies which

exist in human loves. Such is the great and mighty, or rather omnipotent

force of love in general. And the love, more especially, which is

concerned with the good, and which is perfected in company with

temperance and justice, whether among gods or men, has the greatest

power, and is the source of all our happiness and harmony, and makes us

friends with the gods who are above us, and with one another. I dare say

that I too have omitted several things which might be said in praise

of Love, but this was not intentional, and you, Aristophanes, may now

supply the omission or take some other line of commendation; for I

perceive that you are rid of the hiccough.

Yes, said Aristophanes, who followed, the hiccough is gone; not,

however, until I applied the sneezing; and I wonder whether the harmony

of the body has a love of such noises and ticklings, for I no sooner

applied the sneezing than I was cured.

Eryximachus said: Beware, friend Aristophanes, although you are going

to speak, you are making fun of me; and I shall have to watch and see

whether I cannot have a laugh at your expense, when you might speak in

peace.

You are right, said Aristophanes, laughing. I will unsay my words; but

do you please not to watch me, as I fear that in the speech which I

am about to make, instead of others laughing with me, which is to the

manner born of our muse and would be all the better, I shall only be

laughed at by them.

Do you expect to shoot your bolt and escape, Aristophanes? Well, perhaps

if you are very careful and bear in mind that you will be called to

account, I may be induced to let you off.

Aristophanes professed to open another vein of discourse; he had a

mind to praise Love in another way, unlike that either of Pausanias or

Eryximachus. Mankind, he said, judging by their neglect of him, have

never, as I think, at all understood the power of Love. For if they had

understood him they would surely have built noble temples and altars,

and offered solemn sacrifices in his honour; but this is not done, and

most certainly ought to be done: since of all the gods he is the best

friend of men, the helper and the healer of the ills which are the great

impediment to the happiness of the race. I will try to describe his

power to you, and you shall teach the rest of the world what I am

teaching you. In the first place, let me treat of the nature of man and

what has happened to it; for the original human nature was not like

the present, but different. The sexes were not two as they are now, but

originally three in number; there was man, woman, and the union of the

two, having a name corresponding to this double nature, which had once

a real existence, but is now lost, and the word 'Androgynous' is only

preserved as a term of reproach. In the second place, the primeval man

was round, his back and sides forming a circle; and he had four hands

and four feet, one head with two faces, looking opposite ways, set on a

round neck and precisely alike; also four ears, two privy members,

and the remainder to correspond. He could walk upright as men now do,

backwards or forwards as he pleased, and he could also roll over and

over at a great pace, turning on his four hands and four feet, eight in

all, like tumblers going over and over with their legs in the air; this

was when he wanted to run fast. Now the sexes were three, and such as I

have described them; because the sun, moon, and earth are three; and the

man was originally the child of the sun, the woman of the earth, and the

man-woman of the moon, which is made up of sun and earth, and they were

all round and moved round and round like their parents. Terrible was

their might and strength, and the thoughts of their hearts were great,

and they made an attack upon the gods; of them is told the tale of Otys

and Ephialtes who, as Homer says, dared to scale heaven, and would

have laid hands upon the gods. Doubt reigned in the celestial councils.

Should they kill them and annihilate the race with thunderbolts, as they

had done the giants, then there would be an end of the sacrifices and

worship which men offered to them; but, on the other hand, the gods

could not suffer their insolence to be unrestrained. At last, after a

good deal of reflection, Zeus discovered a way. He said: 'Methinks I

have a plan which will humble their pride and improve their manners; men

shall continue to exist, but I will cut them in two and then they will

be diminished in strength and increased in numbers; this will have the

advantage of making them more profitable to us. They shall walk upright

on two legs, and if they continue insolent and will not be quiet, I will

split them again and they shall hop about on a single leg.' He spoke and

cut men in two, like a sorb-apple which is halved for pickling, or

as you might divide an egg with a hair; and as he cut them one after

another, he bade Apollo give the face and the half of the neck a turn

in order that the man might contemplate the section of himself: he would

thus learn a lesson of humility. Apollo was also bidden to heal their

wounds and compose their forms. So he gave a turn to the face and pulled

the skin from the sides all over that which in our language is called

the belly, like the purses which draw in, and he made one mouth at

the centre, which he fastened in a knot (the same which is called the

navel); he also moulded the breast and took out most of the wrinkles,

much as a shoemaker might smooth leather upon a last; he left a few,

however, in the region of the belly and navel, as a memorial of the

primeval state. After the division the two parts of man, each desiring

his other half, came together, and throwing their arms about one

another, entwined in mutual embraces, longing to grow into one, they

were on the point of dying from hunger and self-neglect, because they

did not like to do anything apart; and when one of the halves died and

the other survived, the survivor sought another mate, man or woman as

we call them,--being the sections of entire men or women,--and clung to

that. They were being destroyed, when Zeus in pity of them invented a

new plan: he turned the parts of generation round to the front, for this

had not been always their position, and they sowed the seed no longer as

hitherto like grasshoppers in the ground, but in one another; and after

the transposition the male generated in the female in order that by the

mutual embraces of man and woman they might breed, and the race might

continue; or if man came to man they might be satisfied, and rest, and

go their ways to the business of life: so ancient is the desire of one

another which is implanted in us, reuniting our original nature, making

one of two, and healing the state of man. Each of us when separated,

having one side only, like a flat fish, is but the indenture of a man,

and he is always looking for his other half. Men who are a section

of that double nature which was once called Androgynous are lovers of

women; adulterers are generally of this breed, and also adulterous women

who lust after men: the women who are a section of the woman do not care

for men, but have female attachments; the female companions are of this

sort. But they who are a section of the male follow the male, and while

they are young, being slices of the original man, they hang about men

and embrace them, and they are themselves the best of boys and youths,

because they have the most manly nature. Some indeed assert that they

are shameless, but this is not true; for they do not act thus from any

want of shame, but because they are valiant and manly, and have a manly

countenance, and they embrace that which is like them. And these when

they grow up become our statesmen, and these only, which is a great

proof of the truth of what I am saving. When they reach manhood they

are lovers of youth, and are not naturally inclined to marry or beget

children,--if at all, they do so only in obedience to the law; but they

are satisfied if they may be allowed to live with one another unwedded;

and such a nature is prone to love and ready to return love, always

embracing that which is akin to him. And when one of them meets with his

other half, the actual half of himself, whether he be a lover of youth

or a lover of another sort, the pair are lost in an amazement of love

and friendship and intimacy, and one will not be out of the other's

sight, as I may say, even for a moment: these are the people who pass

their whole lives together; yet they could not explain what they desire

of one another. For the intense yearning which each of them has towards

the other does not appear to be the desire of lover's intercourse, but

of something else which the soul of either evidently desires and cannot

tell, and of which she has only a dark and doubtful presentiment.

Suppose Hephaestus, with his instruments, to come to the pair who are

lying side by side and to say to them, 'What do you people want of one

another?' they would be unable to explain. And suppose further, that

when he saw their perplexity he said: 'Do you desire to be wholly one;

always day and night to be in one another's company? for if this is what

you desire, I am ready to melt you into one and let you grow together,

so that being two you shall become one, and while you live live a common

life as if you were a single man, and after your death in the world

below still be one departed soul instead of two--I ask whether this

is what you lovingly desire, and whether you are satisfied to attain

this?'--there is not a man of them who when he heard the proposal would

deny or would not acknowledge that this meeting and melting into one

another, this becoming one instead of two, was the very expression of

his ancient need (compare Arist. Pol.). And the reason is that human

nature was originally one and we were a whole, and the desire and

pursuit of the whole is called love. There was a time, I say, when we

were one, but now because of the wickedness of mankind God has dispersed

us, as the Arcadians were dispersed into villages by the Lacedaemonians

(compare Arist. Pol.). And if we are not obedient to the gods, there is

a danger that we shall be split up again and go about in basso-relievo,

like the profile figures having only half a nose which are sculptured

on monuments, and that we shall be like tallies. Wherefore let us exhort

all men to piety, that we may avoid evil, and obtain the good, of which

Love is to us the lord and minister; and let no one oppose him--he is

the enemy of the gods who opposes him. For if we are friends of the God

and at peace with him we shall find our own true loves, which rarely

happens in this world at present. I am serious, and therefore I must beg

Eryximachus not to make fun or to find any allusion in what I am saying

to Pausanias and Agathon, who, as I suspect, are both of the manly

nature, and belong to the class which I have been describing. But my

words have a wider application--they include men and women everywhere;

and I believe that if our loves were perfectly accomplished, and each

one returning to his primeval nature had his original true love, then

our race would be happy. And if this would be best of all, the best

in the next degree and under present circumstances must be the nearest

approach to such an union; and that will be the attainment of a

congenial love. Wherefore, if we would praise him who has given to

us the benefit, we must praise the god Love, who is our greatest

benefactor, both leading us in this life back to our own nature, and

giving us high hopes for the future, for he promises that if we are

pious, he will restore us to our original state, and heal us and make

us happy and blessed. This, Eryximachus, is my discourse of love, which,

although different to yours, I must beg you to leave unassailed by the

shafts of your ridicule, in order that each may have his turn; each, or

rather either, for Agathon and Socrates are the only ones left.

Indeed, I am not going to attack you, said Eryximachus, for I thought

your speech charming, and did I not know that Agathon and Socrates are

masters in the art of love, I should be really afraid that they would

have nothing to say, after the world of things which have been said

already. But, for all that, I am not without hopes.

Socrates said: You played your part well, Eryximachus; but if you were

as I am now, or rather as I shall be when Agathon has spoken, you would,

indeed, be in a great strait.

You want to cast a spell over me, Socrates, said Agathon, in the hope

that I may be disconcerted at the expectation raised among the audience

that I shall speak well.

I should be strangely forgetful, Agathon replied Socrates, of the

courage and magnanimity which you showed when your own compositions were

about to be exhibited, and you came upon the stage with the actors and

faced the vast theatre altogether undismayed, if I thought that your

nerves could be fluttered at a small party of friends.

Do you think, Socrates, said Agathon, that my head is so full of the

theatre as not to know how much more formidable to a man of sense a few

good judges are than many fools?

Nay, replied Socrates, I should be very wrong in attributing to you,

Agathon, that or any other want of refinement. And I am quite aware that

if you happened to meet with any whom you thought wise, you would care

for their opinion much more than for that of the many. But then we,

having been a part of the foolish many in the theatre, cannot be

regarded as the select wise; though I know that if you chanced to be in

the presence, not of one of ourselves, but of some really wise man, you

would be ashamed of disgracing yourself before him--would you not?

Yes, said Agathon.

But before the many you would not be ashamed, if you thought that you

were doing something disgraceful in their presence?

Here Phaedrus interrupted them, saying: not answer him, my dear Agathon;

for if he can only get a partner with whom he can talk, especially a

good-looking one, he will no longer care about the completion of our

plan. Now I love to hear him talk; but just at present I must not forget

the encomium on Love which I ought to receive from him and from every

one. When you and he have paid your tribute to the god, then you may

talk.

Very good, Phaedrus, said Agathon; I see no reason why I should not

proceed with my speech, as I shall have many other opportunities of

conversing with Socrates. Let me say first how I ought to speak, and

then speak:--

The previous speakers, instead of praising the god Love, or unfolding

his nature, appear to have congratulated mankind on the benefits which

he confers upon them. But I would rather praise the god first, and then

speak of his gifts; this is always the right way of praising everything.

May I say without impiety or offence, that of all the blessed gods he

is the most blessed because he is the fairest and best? And he is the

fairest: for, in the first place, he is the youngest, and of his youth

he is himself the witness, fleeing out of the way of age, who is swift

enough, swifter truly than most of us like:--Love hates him and will not

come near him; but youth and love live and move together--like to like,

as the proverb says. Many things were said by Phaedrus about Love in

which I agree with him; but I cannot agree that he is older than Iapetus

and Kronos:--not so; I maintain him to be the youngest of the gods, and

youthful ever. The ancient doings among the gods of which Hesiod

and Parmenides spoke, if the tradition of them be true, were done of

Necessity and not of Love; had Love been in those days, there would have

been no chaining or mutilation of the gods, or other violence, but peace

and sweetness, as there is now in heaven, since the rule of Love began.

Love is young and also tender; he ought to have a poet like Homer to

describe his tenderness, as Homer says of Ate, that she is a goddess and

tender:--

'Her feet are tender, for she sets her steps, Not on the ground but on

the heads of men:'

herein is an excellent proof of her tenderness,--that she walks not

upon the hard but upon the soft. Let us adduce a similar proof of the

tenderness of Love; for he walks not upon the earth, nor yet upon the

skulls of men, which are not so very soft, but in the hearts and souls

of both gods and men, which are of all things the softest: in them

he walks and dwells and makes his home. Not in every soul without

exception, for where there is hardness he departs, where there is

softness there he dwells; and nestling always with his feet and in all

manner of ways in the softest of soft places, how can he be other than

the softest of all things? Of a truth he is the tenderest as well as

the youngest, and also he is of flexile form; for if he were hard and

without flexure he could not enfold all things, or wind his way into and

out of every soul of man undiscovered. And a proof of his flexibility

and symmetry of form is his grace, which is universally admitted to be

in an especial manner the attribute of Love; ungrace and love are always

at war with one another. The fairness of his complexion is revealed by

his habitation among the flowers; for he dwells not amid bloomless or

fading beauties, whether of body or soul or aught else, but in the place

of flowers and scents, there he sits and abides. Concerning the beauty

of the god I have said enough; and yet there remains much more which I

might say. Of his virtue I have now to speak: his greatest glory is that

he can neither do nor suffer wrong to or from any god or any man; for

he suffers not by force if he suffers; force comes not near him, neither

when he acts does he act by force. For all men in all things serve him

of their own free will, and where there is voluntary agreement, there,

as the laws which are the lords of the city say, is justice. And

not only is he just but exceedingly temperate, for Temperance is the

acknowledged ruler of the pleasures and desires, and no pleasure ever

masters Love; he is their master and they are his servants; and if he

conquers them he must be temperate indeed. As to courage, even the God

of War is no match for him; he is the captive and Love is the lord,

for love, the love of Aphrodite, masters him, as the tale runs; and the

master is stronger than the servant. And if he conquers the bravest of

all others, he must be himself the bravest. Of his courage and justice

and temperance I have spoken, but I have yet to speak of his wisdom; and

according to the measure of my ability I must try to do my best. In the

first place he is a poet (and here, like Eryximachus, I magnify my art),

and he is also the source of poesy in others, which he could not be if

he were not himself a poet. And at the touch of him every one becomes

a poet, even though he had no music in him before (A fragment of the

Sthenoaoea of Euripides.); this also is a proof that Love is a good poet

and accomplished in all the fine arts; for no one can give to another

that which he has not himself, or teach that of which he has no

knowledge. Who will deny that the creation of the animals is his doing?

Are they not all the works of his wisdom, born and begotten of him?

And as to the artists, do we not know that he only of them whom love

inspires has the light of fame?--he whom Love touches not walks

in darkness. The arts of medicine and archery and divination were

discovered by Apollo, under the guidance of love and desire; so that he

too is a disciple of Love. Also the melody of the Muses, the metallurgy

of Hephaestus, the weaving of Athene, the empire of Zeus over gods and

men, are all due to Love, who was the inventor of them. And so Love set

in order the empire of the gods--the love of beauty, as is evident, for

with deformity Love has no concern. In the days of old, as I began by

saying, dreadful deeds were done among the gods, for they were ruled

by Necessity; but now since the birth of Love, and from the Love of

the beautiful, has sprung every good in heaven and earth. Therefore,

Phaedrus, I say of Love that he is the fairest and best in himself, and

the cause of what is fairest and best in all other things. And there

comes into my mind a line of poetry in which he is said to be the god

who

'Gives peace on earth and calms the stormy deep, Who stills the winds

and bids the sufferer sleep.'

This is he who empties men of disaffection and fills them with

affection, who makes them to meet together at banquets such as these: in

sacrifices, feasts, dances, he is our lord--who sends courtesy and sends

away discourtesy, who gives kindness ever and never gives unkindness;

the friend of the good, the wonder of the wise, the amazement of the

gods; desired by those who have no part in him, and precious to those

who have the better part in him; parent of delicacy, luxury, desire,

fondness, softness, grace; regardful of the good, regardless of the

evil: in every word, work, wish, fear--saviour, pilot, comrade, helper;

glory of gods and men, leader best and brightest: in whose footsteps

let every man follow, sweetly singing in his honour and joining in that

sweet strain with which love charms the souls of gods and men. Such

is the speech, Phaedrus, half-playful, yet having a certain measure of

seriousness, which, according to my ability, I dedicate to the god.

When Agathon had done speaking, Aristodemus said that there was a

general cheer; the young man was thought to have spoken in a manner

worthy of himself, and of the god. And Socrates, looking at Eryximachus,

said: Tell me, son of Acumenus, was there not reason in my fears? and

was I not a true prophet when I said that Agathon would make a wonderful

oration, and that I should be in a strait?

The part of the prophecy which concerns Agathon, replied Eryximachus,

appears to me to be true; but not the other part--that you will be in a

strait.

Why, my dear friend, said Socrates, must not I or any one be in a strait

who has to speak after he has heard such a rich and varied discourse? I

am especially struck with the beauty of the concluding words--who could

listen to them without amazement? When I reflected on the immeasurable

inferiority of my own powers, I was ready to run away for shame, if

there had been a possibility of escape. For I was reminded of Gorgias,

and at the end of his speech I fancied that Agathon was shaking at me

the Gorginian or Gorgonian head of the great master of rhetoric, which

was simply to turn me and my speech into stone, as Homer says (Odyssey),

and strike me dumb. And then I perceived how foolish I had been in

consenting to take my turn with you in praising love, and saying that

I too was a master of the art, when I really had no conception how

anything ought to be praised. For in my simplicity I imagined that the

topics of praise should be true, and that this being presupposed, out

of the true the speaker was to choose the best and set them forth in the

best manner. And I felt quite proud, thinking that I knew the nature of

true praise, and should speak well. Whereas I now see that the intention

was to attribute to Love every species of greatness and glory,

whether really belonging to him or not, without regard to truth or

falsehood--that was no matter; for the original proposal seems to have

been not that each of you should really praise Love, but only that

you should appear to praise him. And so you attribute to Love every

imaginable form of praise which can be gathered anywhere; and you say

that 'he is all this,' and 'the cause of all that,' making him appear

the fairest and best of all to those who know him not, for you cannot

impose upon those who know him. And a noble and solemn hymn of praise

have you rehearsed. But as I misunderstood the nature of the praise when

I said that I would take my turn, I must beg to be absolved from the

promise which I made in ignorance, and which (as Euripides would say

(Eurip. Hyppolytus)) was a promise of the lips and not of the mind.

Farewell then to such a strain: for I do not praise in that way; no,

indeed, I cannot. But if you like to hear the truth about love, I

am ready to speak in my own manner, though I will not make myself

ridiculous by entering into any rivalry with you. Say then, Phaedrus,

whether you would like to have the truth about love, spoken in any words

and in any order which may happen to come into my mind at the time. Will

that be agreeable to you?

Aristodemus said that Phaedrus and the company bid him speak in

any manner which he thought best. Then, he added, let me have your

permission first to ask Agathon a few more questions, in order that I

may take his admissions as the premisses of my discourse.

I grant the permission, said Phaedrus: put your questions. Socrates then

proceeded as follows:--

In the magnificent oration which you have just uttered, I think that you

were right, my dear Agathon, in proposing to speak of the nature of Love

first and afterwards of his works--that is a way of beginning which I

very much approve. And as you have spoken so eloquently of his nature,

may I ask you further, Whether love is the love of something or of

nothing? And here I must explain myself: I do not want you to say that

love is the love of a father or the love of a mother--that would be

ridiculous; but to answer as you would, if I asked is a father a father

of something? to which you would find no difficulty in replying, of a

son or daughter: and the answer would be right.

Very true, said Agathon.

And you would say the same of a mother?

He assented.

Yet let me ask you one more question in order to illustrate my meaning:

Is not a brother to be regarded essentially as a brother of something?

Certainly, he replied.

That is, of a brother or sister?

Yes, he said.

And now, said Socrates, I will ask about Love:--Is Love of something or

of nothing?

Of something, surely, he replied.

Keep in mind what this is, and tell me what I want to know--whether Love

desires that of which love is.

Yes, surely.

And does he possess, or does he not possess, that which he loves and

desires?

Probably not, I should say.

Nay, replied Socrates, I would have you consider whether 'necessarily'

is not rather the word. The inference that he who desires something

is in want of something, and that he who desires nothing is in want of

nothing, is in my judgment, Agathon, absolutely and necessarily true.

What do you think?

I agree with you, said Agathon.

Very good. Would he who is great, desire to be great, or he who is

strong, desire to be strong?

That would be inconsistent with our previous admissions.

True. For he who is anything cannot want to be that which he is?

Very true.

And yet, added Socrates, if a man being strong desired to be strong, or

being swift desired to be swift, or being healthy desired to be healthy,

in that case he might be thought to desire something which he already

has or is. I give the example in order that we may avoid misconception.

For the possessors of these qualities, Agathon, must be supposed to have

their respective advantages at the time, whether they choose or not; and

who can desire that which he has? Therefore, when a person says, I am

well and wish to be well, or I am rich and wish to be rich, and I desire

simply to have what I have--to him we shall reply: 'You, my friend,

having wealth and health and strength, want to have the continuance of

them; for at this moment, whether you choose or no, you have them. And

when you say, I desire that which I have and nothing else, is not your

meaning that you want to have what you now have in the future?' He must

agree with us--must he not?

He must, replied Agathon.

Then, said Socrates, he desires that what he has at present may be

preserved to him in the future, which is equivalent to saying that he

desires something which is non-existent to him, and which as yet he has

not got:

Very true, he said.

Then he and every one who desires, desires that which he has not

already, and which is future and not present, and which he has not, and

is not, and of which he is in want;--these are the sort of things which

love and desire seek?

Very true, he said.

Then now, said Socrates, let us recapitulate the argument. First, is not

love of something, and of something too which is wanting to a man?

Yes, he replied.

Remember further what you said in your speech, or if you do not remember

I will remind you: you said that the love of the beautiful set in

order the empire of the gods, for that of deformed things there is no

love--did you not say something of that kind?

Yes, said Agathon.

Yes, my friend, and the remark was a just one. And if this is true, Love

is the love of beauty and not of deformity?

He assented.

And the admission has been already made that Love is of something which

a man wants and has not?

True, he said.

Then Love wants and has not beauty?

Certainly, he replied.

And would you call that beautiful which wants and does not possess

beauty?

Certainly not.

Then would you still say that love is beautiful?

Agathon replied: I fear that I did not understand what I was saying.

You made a very good speech, Agathon, replied Socrates; but there is

yet one small question which I would fain ask:--Is not the good also the

beautiful?

Yes.

Then in wanting the beautiful, love wants also the good?

I cannot refute you, Socrates, said Agathon:--Let us assume that what

you say is true.

Say rather, beloved Agathon, that you cannot refute the truth; for

Socrates is easily refuted.

And now, taking my leave of you, I would rehearse a tale of love which I

heard from Diotima of Mantineia (compare 1 Alcibiades), a woman wise in

this and in many other kinds of knowledge, who in the days of old, when

the Athenians offered sacrifice before the coming of the plague, delayed

the disease ten years. She was my instructress in the art of love, and

I shall repeat to you what she said to me, beginning with the admissions

made by Agathon, which are nearly if not quite the same which I made

to the wise woman when she questioned me: I think that this will be

the easiest way, and I shall take both parts myself as well as I can

(compare Gorgias). As you, Agathon, suggested (supra), I must speak

first of the being and nature of Love, and then of his works. First I

said to her in nearly the same words which he used to me, that Love was

a mighty god, and likewise fair; and she proved to me as I proved to him

that, by my own showing, Love was neither fair nor good. 'What do you

mean, Diotima,' I said, 'is love then evil and foul?' 'Hush,' she cried;

'must that be foul which is not fair?' 'Certainly,' I said. 'And is that

which is not wise, ignorant? do you not see that there is a mean between

wisdom and ignorance?' 'And what may that be?' I said. 'Right opinion,'

she replied; 'which, as you know, being incapable of giving a reason,

is not knowledge (for how can knowledge be devoid of reason? nor again,

ignorance, for neither can ignorance attain the truth), but is clearly

something which is a mean between ignorance and wisdom.' 'Quite true,'

I replied. 'Do not then insist,' she said, 'that what is not fair is of

necessity foul, or what is not good evil; or infer that because love

is not fair and good he is therefore foul and evil; for he is in a mean

between them.' 'Well,' I said, 'Love is surely admitted by all to be a

great god.' 'By those who know or by those who do not know?' 'By all.'

'And how, Socrates,' she said with a smile, 'can Love be acknowledged to

be a great god by those who say that he is not a god at all?' 'And who

are they?' I said. 'You and I are two of them,' she replied. 'How can

that be?' I said. 'It is quite intelligible,' she replied; 'for you

yourself would acknowledge that the gods are happy and fair--of course

you would--would you dare to say that any god was not?' 'Certainly not,'

I replied. 'And you mean by the happy, those who are the possessors of

things good or fair?' 'Yes.' 'And you admitted that Love, because he

was in want, desires those good and fair things of which he is in want?'

'Yes, I did.' 'But how can he be a god who has no portion in what is

either good or fair?' 'Impossible.' 'Then you see that you also deny the

divinity of Love.'

'What then is Love?' I asked; 'Is he mortal?' 'No.' 'What then?' 'As in

the former instance, he is neither mortal nor immortal, but in a mean

between the two.' 'What is he, Diotima?' 'He is a great spirit (daimon),

and like all spirits he is intermediate between the divine and the

mortal.' 'And what,' I said, 'is his power?' 'He interprets,' she

replied, 'between gods and men, conveying and taking across to the gods

the prayers and sacrifices of men, and to men the commands and replies

of the gods; he is the mediator who spans the chasm which divides them,

and therefore in him all is bound together, and through him the arts of

the prophet and the priest, their sacrifices and mysteries and charms,

and all prophecy and incantation, find their way. For God mingles not

with man; but through Love all the intercourse and converse of God

with man, whether awake or asleep, is carried on. The wisdom which

understands this is spiritual; all other wisdom, such as that of arts

and handicrafts, is mean and vulgar. Now these spirits or intermediate

powers are many and diverse, and one of them is Love.' 'And who,' I

said, 'was his father, and who his mother?' 'The tale,' she said, 'will

take time; nevertheless I will tell you. On the birthday of Aphrodite

there was a feast of the gods, at which the god Poros or Plenty, who is

the son of Metis or Discretion, was one of the guests. When the feast

was over, Penia or Poverty, as the manner is on such occasions, came

about the doors to beg. Now Plenty who was the worse for nectar (there

was no wine in those days), went into the garden of Zeus and fell into

a heavy sleep, and Poverty considering her own straitened circumstances,

plotted to have a child by him, and accordingly she lay down at his side

and conceived Love, who partly because he is naturally a lover of the

beautiful, and because Aphrodite is herself beautiful, and also because

he was born on her birthday, is her follower and attendant. And as his

parentage is, so also are his fortunes. In the first place he is always

poor, and anything but tender and fair, as the many imagine him; and he

is rough and squalid, and has no shoes, nor a house to dwell in; on the

bare earth exposed he lies under the open heaven, in the streets, or at

the doors of houses, taking his rest; and like his mother he is always

in distress. Like his father too, whom he also partly resembles, he is

always plotting against the fair and good; he is bold, enterprising,

strong, a mighty hunter, always weaving some intrigue or other, keen in

the pursuit of wisdom, fertile in resources; a philosopher at all times,

terrible as an enchanter, sorcerer, sophist. He is by nature neither

mortal nor immortal, but alive and flourishing at one moment when he is

in plenty, and dead at another moment, and again alive by reason of his

father's nature. But that which is always flowing in is always flowing

out, and so he is never in want and never in wealth; and, further, he

is in a mean between ignorance and knowledge. The truth of the matter

is this: No god is a philosopher or seeker after wisdom, for he is wise

already; nor does any man who is wise seek after wisdom. Neither do the

ignorant seek after wisdom. For herein is the evil of ignorance, that he

who is neither good nor wise is nevertheless satisfied with himself:

he has no desire for that of which he feels no want.' 'But who then,

Diotima,' I said, 'are the lovers of wisdom, if they are neither the

wise nor the foolish?' 'A child may answer that question,' she replied;

'they are those who are in a mean between the two; Love is one of them.

For wisdom is a most beautiful thing, and Love is of the beautiful; and

therefore Love is also a philosopher or lover of wisdom, and being a

lover of wisdom is in a mean between the wise and the ignorant. And of

this too his birth is the cause; for his father is wealthy and wise, and

his mother poor and foolish. Such, my dear Socrates, is the nature of

the spirit Love. The error in your conception of him was very natural,

and as I imagine from what you say, has arisen out of a confusion of

love and the beloved, which made you think that love was all beautiful.

For the beloved is the truly beautiful, and delicate, and perfect, and

blessed; but the principle of love is of another nature, and is such as

I have described.'

I said, 'O thou stranger woman, thou sayest well; but, assuming Love to

be such as you say, what is the use of him to men?' 'That, Socrates,'

she replied, 'I will attempt to unfold: of his nature and birth I have

already spoken; and you acknowledge that love is of the beautiful. But

some one will say: Of the beautiful in what, Socrates and Diotima?--or

rather let me put the question more clearly, and ask: When a man loves

the beautiful, what does he desire?' I answered her 'That the beautiful

may be his.' 'Still,' she said, 'the answer suggests a further question:

What is given by the possession of beauty?' 'To what you have asked,'

I replied, 'I have no answer ready.' 'Then,' she said, 'let me put the

word "good" in the place of the beautiful, and repeat the question once

more: If he who loves loves the good, what is it then that he loves?'

'The possession of the good,' I said. 'And what does he gain who

possesses the good?' 'Happiness,' I replied; 'there is less difficulty

in answering that question.' 'Yes,' she said, 'the happy are made happy

by the acquisition of good things. Nor is there any need to ask why a

man desires happiness; the answer is already final.' 'You are right.'

I said. 'And is this wish and this desire common to all? and do all men

always desire their own good, or only some men?--what say you?' 'All

men,' I replied; 'the desire is common to all.' 'Why, then,' she

rejoined, 'are not all men, Socrates, said to love, but only some of

them? whereas you say that all men are always loving the same things.'

'I myself wonder,' I said, 'why this is.' 'There is nothing to wonder

at,' she replied; 'the reason is that one part of love is separated

off and receives the name of the whole, but the other parts have other

names.' 'Give an illustration,' I said. She answered me as follows:

'There is poetry, which, as you know, is complex and manifold. All

creation or passage of non-being into being is poetry or making, and the

processes of all art are creative; and the masters of arts are all poets

or makers.' 'Very true.' 'Still,' she said, 'you know that they are not

called poets, but have other names; only that portion of the art which

is separated off from the rest, and is concerned with music and metre,

is termed poetry, and they who possess poetry in this sense of the word

are called poets.' 'Very true,' I said. 'And the same holds of love. For

you may say generally that all desire of good and happiness is only the

great and subtle power of love; but they who are drawn towards him

by any other path, whether the path of money-making or gymnastics or

philosophy, are not called lovers--the name of the whole is appropriated

to those whose affection takes one form only--they alone are said to

love, or to be lovers.' 'I dare say,' I replied, 'that you are right.'

'Yes,' she added, 'and you hear people say that lovers are seeking for

their other half; but I say that they are seeking neither for the half

of themselves, nor for the whole, unless the half or the whole be also a

good. And they will cut off their own hands and feet and cast them away,

if they are evil; for they love not what is their own, unless perchance

there be some one who calls what belongs to him the good, and what

belongs to another the evil. For there is nothing which men love but

the good. Is there anything?' 'Certainly, I should say, that there is

nothing.' 'Then,' she said, 'the simple truth is, that men love the

good.' 'Yes,' I said. 'To which must be added that they love the

possession of the good?' 'Yes, that must be added.' 'And not only the

possession, but the everlasting possession of the good?' 'That must be

added too.' 'Then love,' she said, 'may be described generally as the

love of the everlasting possession of the good?' 'That is most true.'

'Then if this be the nature of love, can you tell me further,' she said,

'what is the manner of the pursuit? what are they doing who show all

this eagerness and heat which is called love? and what is the object

which they have in view? Answer me.' 'Nay, Diotima,' I replied, 'if I

had known, I should not have wondered at your wisdom, neither should I

have come to learn from you about this very matter.' 'Well,' she said,

'I will teach you:--The object which they have in view is birth in

beauty, whether of body or soul.' 'I do not understand you,' I said;

'the oracle requires an explanation.' 'I will make my meaning clearer,'

she replied. 'I mean to say, that all men are bringing to the birth in

their bodies and in their souls. There is a certain age at which human

nature is desirous of procreation--procreation which must be in beauty

and not in deformity; and this procreation is the union of man and

woman, and is a divine thing; for conception and generation are an

immortal principle in the mortal creature, and in the inharmonious they

can never be. But the deformed is always inharmonious with the divine,

and the beautiful harmonious. Beauty, then, is the destiny or goddess

of parturition who presides at birth, and therefore, when approaching

beauty, the conceiving power is propitious, and diffusive, and benign,

and begets and bears fruit: at the sight of ugliness she frowns and

contracts and has a sense of pain, and turns away, and shrivels up, and

not without a pang refrains from conception. And this is the reason why,

when the hour of conception arrives, and the teeming nature is full,

there is such a flutter and ecstasy about beauty whose approach is the

alleviation of the pain of travail. For love, Socrates, is not, as you

imagine, the love of the beautiful only.' 'What then?' 'The love of

generation and of birth in beauty.' 'Yes,' I said. 'Yes, indeed,' she

replied. 'But why of generation?' 'Because to the mortal creature,

generation is a sort of eternity and immortality,' she replied; 'and if,

as has been already admitted, love is of the everlasting possession

of the good, all men will necessarily desire immortality together with

good: Wherefore love is of immortality.'

All this she taught me at various times when she spoke of love. And I

remember her once saying to me, 'What is the cause, Socrates, of love,

and the attendant desire? See you not how all animals, birds, as well as

beasts, in their desire of procreation, are in agony when they take the

infection of love, which begins with the desire of union; whereto is

added the care of offspring, on whose behalf the weakest are ready to

battle against the strongest even to the uttermost, and to die for them,

and will let themselves be tormented with hunger or suffer anything

in order to maintain their young. Man may be supposed to act thus from

reason; but why should animals have these passionate feelings? Can you

tell me why?' Again I replied that I did not know. She said to me: 'And

do you expect ever to become a master in the art of love, if you do not

know this?' 'But I have told you already, Diotima, that my ignorance is

the reason why I come to you; for I am conscious that I want a teacher;

tell me then the cause of this and of the other mysteries of love.'

'Marvel not,' she said, 'if you believe that love is of the immortal,

as we have several times acknowledged; for here again, and on the same

principle too, the mortal nature is seeking as far as is possible to be

everlasting and immortal: and this is only to be attained by generation,

because generation always leaves behind a new existence in the place of

the old. Nay even in the life of the same individual there is succession

and not absolute unity: a man is called the same, and yet in the short

interval which elapses between youth and age, and in which every animal

is said to have life and identity, he is undergoing a perpetual process

of loss and reparation--hair, flesh, bones, blood, and the whole body

are always changing. Which is true not only of the body, but also of the

soul, whose habits, tempers, opinions, desires, pleasures, pains, fears,

never remain the same in any one of us, but are always coming and going;

and equally true of knowledge, and what is still more surprising to us

mortals, not only do the sciences in general spring up and decay,

so that in respect of them we are never the same; but each of them

individually experiences a like change. For what is implied in the word

"recollection," but the departure of knowledge, which is ever being

forgotten, and is renewed and preserved by recollection, and appears to

be the same although in reality new, according to that law of succession

by which all mortal things are preserved, not absolutely the same, but

by substitution, the old worn-out mortality leaving another new and

similar existence behind--unlike the divine, which is always the same

and not another? And in this way, Socrates, the mortal body, or mortal

anything, partakes of immortality; but the immortal in another way.

Marvel not then at the love which all men have of their offspring; for

that universal love and interest is for the sake of immortality.'

I was astonished at her words, and said: 'Is this really true, O

thou wise Diotima?' And she answered with all the authority of an

accomplished sophist: 'Of that, Socrates, you may be assured;--think

only of the ambition of men, and you will wonder at the senselessness of

their ways, unless you consider how they are stirred by the love of an

immortality of fame. They are ready to run all risks greater far than

they would have run for their children, and to spend money and undergo

any sort of toil, and even to die, for the sake of leaving behind them

a name which shall be eternal. Do you imagine that Alcestis would have

died to save Admetus, or Achilles to avenge Patroclus, or your own

Codrus in order to preserve the kingdom for his sons, if they had not

imagined that the memory of their virtues, which still survives among

us, would be immortal? Nay,' she said, 'I am persuaded that all men do

all things, and the better they are the more they do them, in hope of

the glorious fame of immortal virtue; for they desire the immortal.

'Those who are pregnant in the body only, betake themselves to women and

beget children--this is the character of their love; their offspring,

as they hope, will preserve their memory and giving them the blessedness

and immortality which they desire in the future. But souls which are

pregnant--for there certainly are men who are more creative in their

souls than in their bodies--conceive that which is proper for the soul

to conceive or contain. And what are these conceptions?--wisdom and

virtue in general. And such creators are poets and all artists who are

deserving of the name inventor. But the greatest and fairest sort of

wisdom by far is that which is concerned with the ordering of states

and families, and which is called temperance and justice. And he who in

youth has the seed of these implanted in him and is himself inspired,

when he comes to maturity desires to beget and generate. He wanders

about seeking beauty that he may beget offspring--for in deformity he

will beget nothing--and naturally embraces the beautiful rather than

the deformed body; above all when he finds a fair and noble and

well-nurtured soul, he embraces the two in one person, and to such an

one he is full of speech about virtue and the nature and pursuits of a

good man; and he tries to educate him; and at the touch of the beautiful

which is ever present to his memory, even when absent, he brings forth

that which he had conceived long before, and in company with him tends

that which he brings forth; and they are married by a far nearer tie and

have a closer friendship than those who beget mortal children, for the

children who are their common offspring are fairer and more immortal.

Who, when he thinks of Homer and Hesiod and other great poets, would

not rather have their children than ordinary human ones? Who would not

emulate them in the creation of children such as theirs, which have

preserved their memory and given them everlasting glory? Or who would

not have such children as Lycurgus left behind him to be the saviours,

not only of Lacedaemon, but of Hellas, as one may say? There is Solon,

too, who is the revered father of Athenian laws; and many others there

are in many other places, both among Hellenes and barbarians, who have

given to the world many noble works, and have been the parents of virtue

of every kind; and many temples have been raised in their honour for the

sake of children such as theirs; which were never raised in honour of

any one, for the sake of his mortal children.

'These are the lesser mysteries of love, into which even you, Socrates,

may enter; to the greater and more hidden ones which are the crown of

these, and to which, if you pursue them in a right spirit, they will

lead, I know not whether you will be able to attain. But I will do my

utmost to inform you, and do you follow if you can. For he who would

proceed aright in this matter should begin in youth to visit beautiful

forms; and first, if he be guided by his instructor aright, to love one

such form only--out of that he should create fair thoughts; and soon

he will of himself perceive that the beauty of one form is akin to the

beauty of another; and then if beauty of form in general is his pursuit,

how foolish would he be not to recognize that the beauty in every form

is and the same! And when he perceives this he will abate his violent

love of the one, which he will despise and deem a small thing, and

will become a lover of all beautiful forms; in the next stage he will

consider that the beauty of the mind is more honourable than the beauty

of the outward form. So that if a virtuous soul have but a little

comeliness, he will be content to love and tend him, and will search out

and bring to the birth thoughts which may improve the young, until he

is compelled to contemplate and see the beauty of institutions and laws,

and to understand that the beauty of them all is of one family, and that

personal beauty is a trifle; and after laws and institutions he will

go on to the sciences, that he may see their beauty, being not like

a servant in love with the beauty of one youth or man or institution,

himself a slave mean and narrow-minded, but drawing towards and

contemplating the vast sea of beauty, he will create many fair and noble

thoughts and notions in boundless love of wisdom; until on that shore he

grows and waxes strong, and at last the vision is revealed to him of

a single science, which is the science of beauty everywhere. To this I

will proceed; please to give me your very best attention:

'He who has been instructed thus far in the things of love, and who has

learned to see the beautiful in due order and succession, when he comes

toward the end will suddenly perceive a nature of wondrous beauty (and

this, Socrates, is the final cause of all our former toils)--a nature

which in the first place is everlasting, not growing and decaying, or

waxing and waning; secondly, not fair in one point of view and foul

in another, or at one time or in one relation or at one place fair, at

another time or in another relation or at another place foul, as if fair

to some and foul to others, or in the likeness of a face or hands or any

other part of the bodily frame, or in any form of speech or knowledge,

or existing in any other being, as for example, in an animal, or

in heaven, or in earth, or in any other place; but beauty absolute,

separate, simple, and everlasting, which without diminution and without

increase, or any change, is imparted to the ever-growing and perishing

beauties of all other things. He who from these ascending under the

influence of true love, begins to perceive that beauty, is not far from

the end. And the true order of going, or being led by another, to the

things of love, is to begin from the beauties of earth and mount upwards

for the sake of that other beauty, using these as steps only, and from

one going on to two, and from two to all fair forms, and from fair forms

to fair practices, and from fair practices to fair notions, until from

fair notions he arrives at the notion of absolute beauty, and at last

knows what the essence of beauty is. This, my dear Socrates,' said the

stranger of Mantineia, 'is that life above all others which man should

live, in the contemplation of beauty absolute; a beauty which if you

once beheld, you would see not to be after the measure of gold, and

garments, and fair boys and youths, whose presence now entrances you;

and you and many a one would be content to live seeing them only and

conversing with them without meat or drink, if that were possible--you

only want to look at them and to be with them. But what if man had eyes

to see the true beauty--the divine beauty, I mean, pure and clear and

unalloyed, not clogged with the pollutions of mortality and all the

colours and vanities of human life--thither looking, and holding

converse with the true beauty simple and divine? Remember how in that

communion only, beholding beauty with the eye of the mind, he will be

enabled to bring forth, not images of beauty, but realities (for he

has hold not of an image but of a reality), and bringing forth and

nourishing true virtue to become the friend of God and be immortal, if

mortal man may. Would that be an ignoble life?'

Such, Phaedrus--and I speak not only to you, but to all of you--were the

words of Diotima; and I am persuaded of their truth. And being persuaded

of them, I try to persuade others, that in the attainment of this

end human nature will not easily find a helper better than love: And

therefore, also, I say that every man ought to honour him as I myself

honour him, and walk in his ways, and exhort others to do the same,

and praise the power and spirit of love according to the measure of my

ability now and ever.

The words which I have spoken, you, Phaedrus, may call an encomium of

love, or anything else which you please.

When Socrates had done speaking, the company applauded, and Aristophanes

was beginning to say something in answer to the allusion which Socrates

had made to his own speech, when suddenly there was a great knocking at

the door of the house, as of revellers, and the sound of a flute-girl

was heard. Agathon told the attendants to go and see who were the

intruders. 'If they are friends of ours,' he said, 'invite them in, but

if not, say that the drinking is over.' A little while afterwards they

heard the voice of Alcibiades resounding in the court; he was in a great

state of intoxication, and kept roaring and shouting 'Where is Agathon?

Lead me to Agathon,' and at length, supported by the flute-girl and some

of his attendants, he found his way to them. 'Hail, friends,' he said,

appearing at the door crowned with a massive garland of ivy and violets,

his head flowing with ribands. 'Will you have a very drunken man as

a companion of your revels? Or shall I crown Agathon, which was my

intention in coming, and go away? For I was unable to come yesterday,

and therefore I am here to-day, carrying on my head these ribands, that

taking them from my own head, I may crown the head of this fairest and

wisest of men, as I may be allowed to call him. Will you laugh at me

because I am drunk? Yet I know very well that I am speaking the truth,

although you may laugh. But first tell me; if I come in shall we have

the understanding of which I spoke (supra Will you have a very drunken

man? etc.)? Will you drink with me or not?'

The company were vociferous in begging that he would take his place

among them, and Agathon specially invited him. Thereupon he was led in

by the people who were with him; and as he was being led, intending to

crown Agathon, he took the ribands from his own head and held them in

front of his eyes; he was thus prevented from seeing Socrates, who made

way for him, and Alcibiades took the vacant place between Agathon and

Socrates, and in taking the place he embraced Agathon and crowned him.

Take off his sandals, said Agathon, and let him make a third on the same

couch.

By all means; but who makes the third partner in our revels? said

Alcibiades, turning round and starting up as he caught sight of

Socrates. By Heracles, he said, what is this? here is Socrates always

lying in wait for me, and always, as his way is, coming out at all sorts

of unsuspected places: and now, what have you to say for yourself, and

why are you lying here, where I perceive that you have contrived to find

a place, not by a joker or lover of jokes, like Aristophanes, but by the

fairest of the company?

Socrates turned to Agathon and said: I must ask you to protect me,

Agathon; for the passion of this man has grown quite a serious matter to

me. Since I became his admirer I have never been allowed to speak to

any other fair one, or so much as to look at them. If I do, he goes wild

with envy and jealousy, and not only abuses me but can hardly keep his

hands off me, and at this moment he may do me some harm. Please to see

to this, and either reconcile me to him, or, if he attempts violence,

protect me, as I am in bodily fear of his mad and passionate attempts.

There can never be reconciliation between you and me, said Alcibiades;

but for the present I will defer your chastisement. And I must beg

you, Agathon, to give me back some of the ribands that I may crown the

marvellous head of this universal despot--I would not have him complain

of me for crowning you, and neglecting him, who in conversation is the

conqueror of all mankind; and this not only once, as you were the day

before yesterday, but always. Whereupon, taking some of the ribands, he

crowned Socrates, and again reclined.

Then he said: You seem, my friends, to be sober, which is a thing not to

be endured; you must drink--for that was the agreement under which I

was admitted--and I elect myself master of the feast until you are

well drunk. Let us have a large goblet, Agathon, or rather, he said,

addressing the attendant, bring me that wine-cooler. The wine-cooler

which had caught his eye was a vessel holding more than two quarts--this

he filled and emptied, and bade the attendant fill it again for

Socrates. Observe, my friends, said Alcibiades, that this ingenious

trick of mine will have no effect on Socrates, for he can drink any

quantity of wine and not be at all nearer being drunk. Socrates drank

the cup which the attendant filled for him.

Eryximachus said: What is this, Alcibiades? Are we to have neither

conversation nor singing over our cups; but simply to drink as if we

were thirsty?

Alcibiades replied: Hail, worthy son of a most wise and worthy sire!

The same to you, said Eryximachus; but what shall we do?

That I leave to you, said Alcibiades.

'The wise physician skilled our wounds to heal (from Pope's Homer, Il.)'

shall prescribe and we will obey. What do you want?

Well, said Eryximachus, before you appeared we had passed a resolution

that each one of us in turn should make a speech in praise of love, and

as good a one as he could: the turn was passed round from left to right;

and as all of us have spoken, and you have not spoken but have well

drunken, you ought to speak, and then impose upon Socrates any task

which you please, and he on his right hand neighbour, and so on.

That is good, Eryximachus, said Alcibiades; and yet the comparison of

a drunken man's speech with those of sober men is hardly fair; and

I should like to know, sweet friend, whether you really believe what

Socrates was just now saying; for I can assure you that the very reverse

is the fact, and that if I praise any one but himself in his presence,

whether God or man, he will hardly keep his hands off me.

For shame, said Socrates.

Hold your tongue, said Alcibiades, for by Poseidon, there is no one else

whom I will praise when you are of the company.

Well then, said Eryximachus, if you like praise Socrates.

What do you think, Eryximachus? said Alcibiades: shall I attack him and

inflict the punishment before you all?

What are you about? said Socrates; are you going to raise a laugh at my

expense? Is that the meaning of your praise?

I am going to speak the truth, if you will permit me.

I not only permit, but exhort you to speak the truth.

Then I will begin at once, said Alcibiades, and if I say anything which

is not true, you may interrupt me if you will, and say 'that is a lie,'

though my intention is to speak the truth. But you must not wonder if

I speak any how as things come into my mind; for the fluent and orderly

enumeration of all your singularities is not a task which is easy to a

man in my condition.

And now, my boys, I shall praise Socrates in a figure which will appear

to him to be a caricature, and yet I speak, not to make fun of him, but

only for the truth's sake. I say, that he is exactly like the busts of

Silenus, which are set up in the statuaries' shops, holding pipes and

flutes in their mouths; and they are made to open in the middle, and

have images of gods inside them. I say also that he is like Marsyas the

satyr. You yourself will not deny, Socrates, that your face is like that

of a satyr. Aye, and there is a resemblance in other points too. For

example, you are a bully, as I can prove by witnesses, if you will not

confess. And are you not a flute-player? That you are, and a performer

far more wonderful than Marsyas. He indeed with instruments used to

charm the souls of men by the power of his breath, and the players of

his music do so still: for the melodies of Olympus (compare Arist. Pol.)

are derived from Marsyas who taught them, and these, whether they are

played by a great master or by a miserable flute-girl, have a power

which no others have; they alone possess the soul and reveal the wants

of those who have need of gods and mysteries, because they are divine.

But you produce the same effect with your words only, and do not require

the flute: that is the difference between you and him. When we hear any

other speaker, even a very good one, he produces absolutely no effect

upon us, or not much, whereas the mere fragments of you and your words,

even at second-hand, and however imperfectly repeated, amaze and possess

the souls of every man, woman, and child who comes within hearing of

them. And if I were not afraid that you would think me hopelessly drunk,

I would have sworn as well as spoken to the influence which they have

always had and still have over me. For my heart leaps within me more

than that of any Corybantian reveller, and my eyes rain tears when

I hear them. And I observe that many others are affected in the same

manner. I have heard Pericles and other great orators, and I thought

that they spoke well, but I never had any similar feeling; my soul was

not stirred by them, nor was I angry at the thought of my own slavish

state. But this Marsyas has often brought me to such a pass, that I

have felt as if I could hardly endure the life which I am leading (this,

Socrates, you will admit); and I am conscious that if I did not shut my

ears against him, and fly as from the voice of the siren, my fate would

be like that of others,--he would transfix me, and I should grow old

sitting at his feet. For he makes me confess that I ought not to live as

I do, neglecting the wants of my own soul, and busying myself with the

concerns of the Athenians; therefore I hold my ears and tear myself away

from him. And he is the only person who ever made me ashamed, which you

might think not to be in my nature, and there is no one else who does

the same. For I know that I cannot answer him or say that I ought not to

do as he bids, but when I leave his presence the love of popularity gets

the better of me. And therefore I run away and fly from him, and when I

see him I am ashamed of what I have confessed to him. Many a time have

I wished that he were dead, and yet I know that I should be much more

sorry than glad, if he were to die: so that I am at my wit's end.

And this is what I and many others have suffered from the flute-playing

of this satyr. Yet hear me once more while I show you how exact the

image is, and how marvellous his power. For let me tell you; none of you

know him; but I will reveal him to you; having begun, I must go on. See

you how fond he is of the fair? He is always with them and is always

being smitten by them, and then again he knows nothing and is ignorant

of all things--such is the appearance which he puts on. Is he not like a

Silenus in this? To be sure he is: his outer mask is the carved head

of the Silenus; but, O my companions in drink, when he is opened, what

temperance there is residing within! Know you that beauty and wealth and

honour, at which the many wonder, are of no account with him, and are

utterly despised by him: he regards not at all the persons who are

gifted with them; mankind are nothing to him; all his life is spent in

mocking and flouting at them. But when I opened him, and looked within

at his serious purpose, I saw in him divine and golden images of such

fascinating beauty that I was ready to do in a moment whatever Socrates

commanded: they may have escaped the observation of others, but I saw

them. Now I fancied that he was seriously enamoured of my beauty, and I

thought that I should therefore have a grand opportunity of hearing him

tell what he knew, for I had a wonderful opinion of the attractions of

my youth. In the prosecution of this design, when I next went to him, I

sent away the attendant who usually accompanied me (I will confess the

whole truth, and beg you to listen; and if I speak falsely, do you,

Socrates, expose the falsehood). Well, he and I were alone together, and

I thought that when there was nobody with us, I should hear him

speak the language which lovers use to their loves when they are by

themselves, and I was delighted. Nothing of the sort; he conversed

as usual, and spent the day with me and then went away. Afterwards I

challenged him to the palaestra; and he wrestled and closed with me

several times when there was no one present; I fancied that I might

succeed in this manner. Not a bit; I made no way with him. Lastly, as

I had failed hitherto, I thought that I must take stronger measures and

attack him boldly, and, as I had begun, not give him up, but see how

matters stood between him and me. So I invited him to sup with me, just

as if he were a fair youth, and I a designing lover. He was not easily

persuaded to come; he did, however, after a while accept the invitation,

and when he came the first time, he wanted to go away at once as soon as

supper was over, and I had not the face to detain him. The second

time, still in pursuance of my design, after we had supped, I went

on conversing far into the night, and when he wanted to go away, I

pretended that the hour was late and that he had much better remain. So

he lay down on the couch next to me, the same on which he had supped,

and there was no one but ourselves sleeping in the apartment. All this

may be told without shame to any one. But what follows I could hardly

tell you if I were sober. Yet as the proverb says, 'In vino veritas,'

whether with boys, or without them (In allusion to two proverbs.); and

therefore I must speak. Nor, again, should I be justified in concealing

the lofty actions of Socrates when I come to praise him. Moreover I

have felt the serpent's sting; and he who has suffered, as they say, is

willing to tell his fellow-sufferers only, as they alone will be likely

to understand him, and will not be extreme in judging of the sayings or

doings which have been wrung from his agony. For I have been bitten by a

more than viper's tooth; I have known in my soul, or in my heart, or in

some other part, that worst of pangs, more violent in ingenuous youth

than any serpent's tooth, the pang of philosophy, which will make a man

say or do anything. And you whom I see around me, Phaedrus and Agathon

and Eryximachus and Pausanias and Aristodemus and Aristophanes, all of

you, and I need not say Socrates himself, have had experience of the

same madness and passion in your longing after wisdom. Therefore listen

and excuse my doings then and my sayings now. But let the attendants and

other profane and unmannered persons close up the doors of their ears.

When the lamp was put out and the servants had gone away, I thought that

I must be plain with him and have no more ambiguity. So I gave him a

shake, and I said: 'Socrates, are you asleep?' 'No,' he said. 'Do

you know what I am meditating? 'What are you meditating?' he said. 'I

think,' I replied, 'that of all the lovers whom I have ever had you are

the only one who is worthy of me, and you appear to be too modest to

speak. Now I feel that I should be a fool to refuse you this or any

other favour, and therefore I come to lay at your feet all that I have

and all that my friends have, in the hope that you will assist me in the

way of virtue, which I desire above all things, and in which I believe

that you can help me better than any one else. And I should certainly

have more reason to be ashamed of what wise men would say if I were to

refuse a favour to such as you, than of what the world, who are mostly

fools, would say of me if I granted it.' To these words he replied in

the ironical manner which is so characteristic of him:--'Alcibiades, my

friend, you have indeed an elevated aim if what you say is true, and if

there really is in me any power by which you may become better; truly

you must see in me some rare beauty of a kind infinitely higher than any

which I see in you. And therefore, if you mean to share with me and to

exchange beauty for beauty, you will have greatly the advantage of me;

you will gain true beauty in return for appearance--like Diomede, gold

in exchange for brass. But look again, sweet friend, and see whether you

are not deceived in me. The mind begins to grow critical when the bodily

eye fails, and it will be a long time before you get old.' Hearing this,

I said: 'I have told you my purpose, which is quite serious, and do you

consider what you think best for you and me.' 'That is good,' he said;

'at some other time then we will consider and act as seems best about

this and about other matters.' Whereupon, I fancied that he was smitten,

and that the words which I had uttered like arrows had wounded him, and

so without waiting to hear more I got up, and throwing my coat about him

crept under his threadbare cloak, as the time of year was winter, and

there I lay during the whole night having this wonderful monster in

my arms. This again, Socrates, will not be denied by you. And yet,

notwithstanding all, he was so superior to my solicitations, so

contemptuous and derisive and disdainful of my beauty--which really, as

I fancied, had some attractions--hear, O judges; for judges you shall

be of the haughty virtue of Socrates--nothing more happened, but in the

morning when I awoke (let all the gods and goddesses be my witnesses) I

arose as from the couch of a father or an elder brother.

What do you suppose must have been my feelings, after this rejection, at

the thought of my own dishonour? And yet I could not help wondering

at his natural temperance and self-restraint and manliness. I never

imagined that I could have met with a man such as he is in wisdom and

endurance. And therefore I could not be angry with him or renounce his

company, any more than I could hope to win him. For I well knew that if

Ajax could not be wounded by steel, much less he by money; and my only

chance of captivating him by my personal attractions had failed. So

I was at my wit's end; no one was ever more hopelessly enslaved by

another. All this happened before he and I went on the expedition

to Potidaea; there we messed together, and I had the opportunity of

observing his extraordinary power of sustaining fatigue. His endurance

was simply marvellous when, being cut off from our supplies, we were

compelled to go without food--on such occasions, which often happen in

time of war, he was superior not only to me but to everybody; there was

no one to be compared to him. Yet at a festival he was the only person

who had any real powers of enjoyment; though not willing to drink, he

could if compelled beat us all at that,--wonderful to relate! no

human being had ever seen Socrates drunk; and his powers, if I am not

mistaken, will be tested before long. His fortitude in enduring cold was

also surprising. There was a severe frost, for the winter in that region

is really tremendous, and everybody else either remained indoors, or if

they went out had on an amazing quantity of clothes, and were well shod,

and had their feet swathed in felt and fleeces: in the midst of this,

Socrates with his bare feet on the ice and in his ordinary dress marched

better than the other soldiers who had shoes, and they looked daggers at

him because he seemed to despise them.

I have told you one tale, and now I must tell you another, which is

worth hearing,

'Of the doings and sufferings of the enduring man'

while he was on the expedition. One morning he was thinking about

something which he could not resolve; he would not give it up, but

continued thinking from early dawn until noon--there he stood fixed

in thought; and at noon attention was drawn to him, and the rumour ran

through the wondering crowd that Socrates had been standing and thinking

about something ever since the break of day. At last, in the evening

after supper, some Ionians out of curiosity (I should explain that this

was not in winter but in summer), brought out their mats and slept in

the open air that they might watch him and see whether he would stand

all night. There he stood until the following morning; and with the

return of light he offered up a prayer to the sun, and went his way

(compare supra). I will also tell, if you please--and indeed I am bound

to tell--of his courage in battle; for who but he saved my life? Now

this was the engagement in which I received the prize of valour: for I

was wounded and he would not leave me, but he rescued me and my arms;

and he ought to have received the prize of valour which the generals

wanted to confer on me partly on account of my rank, and I told them so,

(this, again, Socrates will not impeach or deny), but he was more eager

than the generals that I and not he should have the prize. There was

another occasion on which his behaviour was very remarkable--in the

flight of the army after the battle of Delium, where he served among the

heavy-armed,--I had a better opportunity of seeing him than at Potidaea,

for I was myself on horseback, and therefore comparatively out of

danger. He and Laches were retreating, for the troops were in flight,

and I met them and told them not to be discouraged, and promised to

remain with them; and there you might see him, Aristophanes, as you

describe (Aristoph. Clouds), just as he is in the streets of Athens,

stalking like a pelican, and rolling his eyes, calmly contemplating

enemies as well as friends, and making very intelligible to anybody,

even from a distance, that whoever attacked him would be likely to

meet with a stout resistance; and in this way he and his companion

escaped--for this is the sort of man who is never touched in war; those

only are pursued who are running away headlong. I particularly observed

how superior he was to Laches in presence of mind. Many are the marvels

which I might narrate in praise of Socrates; most of his ways might

perhaps be paralleled in another man, but his absolute unlikeness to any

human being that is or ever has been is perfectly astonishing. You

may imagine Brasidas and others to have been like Achilles; or you may

imagine Nestor and Antenor to have been like Pericles; and the same may

be said of other famous men, but of this strange being you will never be

able to find any likeness, however remote, either among men who now are

or who ever have been--other than that which I have already suggested of

Silenus and the satyrs; and they represent in a figure not only himself,

but his words. For, although I forgot to mention this to you before,

his words are like the images of Silenus which open; they are ridiculous

when you first hear them; he clothes himself in language that is like

the skin of the wanton satyr--for his talk is of pack-asses and smiths

and cobblers and curriers, and he is always repeating the same things

in the same words (compare Gorg.), so that any ignorant or inexperienced

person might feel disposed to laugh at him; but he who opens the bust

and sees what is within will find that they are the only words which

have a meaning in them, and also the most divine, abounding in fair

images of virtue, and of the widest comprehension, or rather extending

to the whole duty of a good and honourable man.

This, friends, is my praise of Socrates. I have added my blame of him

for his ill-treatment of me; and he has ill-treated not only me, but

Charmides the son of Glaucon, and Euthydemus the son of Diocles, and

many others in the same way--beginning as their lover he has ended by

making them pay their addresses to him. Wherefore I say to you, Agathon,

'Be not deceived by him; learn from me and take warning, and do not be a

fool and learn by experience, as the proverb says.'

When Alcibiades had finished, there was a laugh at his outspokenness;

for he seemed to be still in love with Socrates. You are sober,

Alcibiades, said Socrates, or you would never have gone so far about

to hide the purpose of your satyr's praises, for all this long story is

only an ingenious circumlocution, of which the point comes in by the

way at the end; you want to get up a quarrel between me and Agathon, and

your notion is that I ought to love you and nobody else, and that you

and you only ought to love Agathon. But the plot of this Satyric or

Silenic drama has been detected, and you must not allow him, Agathon, to

set us at variance.

I believe you are right, said Agathon, and I am disposed to think that

his intention in placing himself between you and me was only to divide

us; but he shall gain nothing by that move; for I will go and lie on the

couch next to you.

Yes, yes, replied Socrates, by all means come here and lie on the couch

below me.

Alas, said Alcibiades, how I am fooled by this man; he is determined to

get the better of me at every turn. I do beseech you, allow Agathon to

lie between us.

Certainly not, said Socrates, as you praised me, and I in turn ought to

praise my neighbour on the right, he will be out of order in praising me

again when he ought rather to be praised by me, and I must entreat you

to consent to this, and not be jealous, for I have a great desire to

praise the youth.

Hurrah! cried Agathon, I will rise instantly, that I may be praised by

Socrates.

The usual way, said Alcibiades; where Socrates is, no one else has any

chance with the fair; and now how readily has he invented a specious

reason for attracting Agathon to himself.

Agathon arose in order that he might take his place on the couch by

Socrates, when suddenly a band of revellers entered, and spoiled the

order of the banquet. Some one who was going out having left the door

open, they had found their way in, and made themselves at home; great

confusion ensued, and every one was compelled to drink large quantities

of wine. Aristodemus said that Eryximachus, Phaedrus, and others went

away--he himself fell asleep, and as the nights were long took a good

rest: he was awakened towards daybreak by a crowing of cocks, and

when he awoke, the others were either asleep, or had gone away; there

remained only Socrates, Aristophanes, and Agathon, who were drinking out

of a large goblet which they passed round, and Socrates was discoursing

to them. Aristodemus was only half awake, and he did not hear the

beginning of the discourse; the chief thing which he remembered was

Socrates compelling the other two to acknowledge that the genius of

comedy was the same with that of tragedy, and that the true artist in

tragedy was an artist in comedy also. To this they were constrained to

assent, being drowsy, and not quite following the argument. And first

of all Aristophanes dropped off, then, when the day was already

dawning, Agathon. Socrates, having laid them to sleep, rose to depart;

Aristodemus, as his manner was, following him. At the Lyceum he took a

bath, and passed the day as usual. In the evening he retired to rest at

his own home.

END

Analysis of Plato's Symposium

By

Benjamin Jowett

Of all the works of Plato the Symposium is the most perfect in form,

and may be truly thought to contain more than any commentator has ever

dreamed of; or, as Goethe said of one of his own writings, more than the

author himself knew. For in philosophy as in prophecy glimpses of the

future may often be conveyed in words which could hardly have been

understood or interpreted at the time when they were uttered (compare

Symp.)--which were wiser than the writer of them meant, and could not

have been expressed by him if he had been interrogated about them.

Yet Plato was not a mystic, nor in any degree affected by the Eastern

influences which afterwards overspread the Alexandrian world. He was

not an enthusiast or a sentimentalist, but one who aspired only to

see reasoned truth, and whose thoughts are clearly explained in his

language. There is no foreign element either of Egypt or of Asia to

be found in his writings. And more than any other Platonic work the

Symposium is Greek both in style and subject, having a beauty 'as of

a statue,' while the companion Dialogue of the Phaedrus is marked by

a sort of Gothic irregularity. More too than in any other of his

Dialogues, Plato is emancipated from former philosophies. The genius of

Greek art seems to triumph over the traditions of Pythagorean, Eleatic,

or Megarian systems, and 'the old quarrel of poetry and philosophy' has

at least a superficial reconcilement. (Rep.)

An unknown person who had heard of the discourses in praise of love

spoken by Socrates and others at the banquet of Agathon is desirous of

having an authentic account of them, which he thinks that he can

obtain from Apollodorus, the same excitable, or rather 'mad' friend of

Socrates, who is afterwards introduced in the Phaedo. He had imagined

that the discourses were recent. There he is mistaken: but they are

still fresh in the memory of his informant, who had just been repeating

them to Glaucon, and is quite prepared to have another rehearsal of them

in a walk from the Piraeus to Athens. Although he had not been present

himself, he had heard them from the best authority. Aristodemus, who

is described as having been in past times a humble but inseparable

attendant of Socrates, had reported them to him (compare Xen. Mem.).

The narrative which he had heard was as follows:--

Aristodemus meeting Socrates in holiday attire, is invited by him to

a banquet at the house of Agathon, who had been sacrificing in

thanksgiving for his tragic victory on the day previous. But no sooner

has he entered the house than he finds that he is alone; Socrates has

stayed behind in a fit of abstraction, and does not appear until the

banquet is half over. On his appearing he and the host jest a little;

the question is then asked by Pausanias, one of the guests, 'What shall

they do about drinking? as they had been all well drunk on the day

before, and drinking on two successive days is such a bad thing.' This

is confirmed by the authority of Eryximachus the physician, who further

proposes that instead of listening to the flute-girl and her 'noise'

they shall make speeches in honour of love, one after another, going

from left to right in the order in which they are reclining at the

table. All of them agree to this proposal, and Phaedrus, who is

the 'father' of the idea, which he has previously communicated to

Eryximachus, begins as follows:--

He descants first of all upon the antiquity of love, which is proved by

the authority of the poets; secondly upon the benefits which love gives

to man. The greatest of these is the sense of honour and dishonour.

The lover is ashamed to be seen by the beloved doing or suffering any

cowardly or mean act. And a state or army which was made up only of

lovers and their loves would be invincible. For love will convert the

veriest coward into an inspired hero.

And there have been true loves not only of men but of women also. Such

was the love of Alcestis, who dared to die for her husband, and in

recompense of her virtue was allowed to come again from the dead. But

Orpheus, the miserable harper, who went down to Hades alive, that he

might bring back his wife, was mocked with an apparition only, and

the gods afterwards contrived his death as the punishment of his

cowardliness. The love of Achilles, like that of Alcestis, was

courageous and true; for he was willing to avenge his lover Patroclus,

although he knew that his own death would immediately follow: and

the gods, who honour the love of the beloved above that of the lover,

rewarded him, and sent him to the islands of the blest.

Pausanias, who was sitting next, then takes up the tale:--He says that

Phaedrus should have distinguished the heavenly love from the earthly,

before he praised either. For there are two loves, as there are two

Aphrodites--one the daughter of Uranus, who has no mother and is the

elder and wiser goddess, and the other, the daughter of Zeus and Dione,

who is popular and common. The first of the two loves has a noble

purpose, and delights only in the intelligent nature of man, and is

faithful to the end, and has no shadow of wantonness or lust. The second

is the coarser kind of love, which is a love of the body rather than of

the soul, and is of women and boys as well as of men. Now the actions of

lovers vary, like every other sort of action, according to the manner of

their performance. And in different countries there is a difference of

opinion about male loves. Some, like the Boeotians, approve of them;

others, like the Ionians, and most of the barbarians, disapprove of

them; partly because they are aware of the political dangers which ensue

from them, as may be seen in the instance of Harmodius and Aristogeiton.

At Athens and Sparta there is an apparent contradiction about them. For

at times they are encouraged, and then the lover is allowed to play all

sorts of fantastic tricks; he may swear and forswear himself (and 'at

lovers' perjuries they say Jove laughs'); he may be a servant, and lie

on a mat at the door of his love, without any loss of character; but

there are also times when elders look grave and guard their young

relations, and personal remarks are made. The truth is that some of

these loves are disgraceful and others honourable. The vulgar love of

the body which takes wing and flies away when the bloom of youth is

over, is disgraceful, and so is the interested love of power or wealth;

but the love of the noble mind is lasting. The lover should be tested,

and the beloved should not be too ready to yield. The rule in our

country is that the beloved may do the same service to the lover in the

way of virtue which the lover may do to him.

A voluntary service to be rendered for the sake of virtue and wisdom is

permitted among us; and when these two customs--one the love of youth,

the other the practice of virtue and philosophy--meet in one, then the

lovers may lawfully unite. Nor is there any disgrace to a disinterested

lover in being deceived: but the interested lover is doubly disgraced,

for if he loses his love he loses his character; whereas the noble

love of the other remains the same, although the object of his love is

unworthy: for nothing can be nobler than love for the sake of virtue.

This is that love of the heavenly goddess which is of great price to

individuals and cities, making them work together for their improvement.

The turn of Aristophanes comes next; but he has the hiccough, and

therefore proposes that Eryximachus the physician shall cure him

or speak in his turn. Eryximachus is ready to do both, and after

prescribing for the hiccough, speaks as follows:--

He agrees with Pausanias in maintaining that there are two kinds of

love; but his art has led him to the further conclusion that the empire

of this double love extends over all things, and is to be found in

animals and plants as well as in man. In the human body also there are

two loves; and the art of medicine shows which is the good and which is

the bad love, and persuades the body to accept the good and reject the

bad, and reconciles conflicting elements and makes them friends. Every

art, gymnastic and husbandry as well as medicine, is the reconciliation

of opposites; and this is what Heracleitus meant, when he spoke of a

harmony of opposites: but in strictness he should rather have spoken of

a harmony which succeeds opposites, for an agreement of disagreements

there cannot be. Music too is concerned with the principles of love in

their application to harmony and rhythm. In the abstract, all is simple,

and we are not troubled with the twofold love; but when they are applied

in education with their accompaniments of song and metre, then the

discord begins. Then the old tale has to be repeated of fair Urania and

the coarse Polyhymnia, who must be indulged sparingly, just as in my

own art of medicine care must be taken that the taste of the epicure be

gratified without inflicting upon him the attendant penalty of disease.

There is a similar harmony or disagreement in the course of the seasons

and in the relations of moist and dry, hot and cold, hoar frost and

blight; and diseases of all sorts spring from the excesses or disorders

of the element of love. The knowledge of these elements of love and

discord in the heavenly bodies is termed astronomy, in the relations of

men towards gods and parents is called divination. For divination is the

peacemaker of gods and men, and works by a knowledge of the tendencies

of merely human loves to piety and impiety. Such is the power of love;

and that love which is just and temperate has the greatest power, and

is the source of all our happiness and friendship with the gods and with

one another. I dare say that I have omitted to mention many things which

you, Aristophanes, may supply, as I perceive that you are cured of the

hiccough.

Aristophanes is the next speaker:--

He professes to open a new vein of discourse, in which he begins by

treating of the origin of human nature. The sexes were originally three,

men, women, and the union of the two; and they were made round--having

four hands, four feet, two faces on a round neck, and the rest to

correspond. Terrible was their strength and swiftness; and they were

essaying to scale heaven and attack the gods. Doubt reigned in the

celestial councils; the gods were divided between the desire of quelling

the pride of man and the fear of losing the sacrifices. At last Zeus hit

upon an expedient. Let us cut them in two, he said; then they will only

have half their strength, and we shall have twice as many sacrifices. He

spake, and split them as you might split an egg with an hair; and when

this was done, he told Apollo to give their faces a twist and re-arrange

their persons, taking out the wrinkles and tying the skin in a knot

about the navel. The two halves went about looking for one another, and

were ready to die of hunger in one another's arms. Then Zeus invented an

adjustment of the sexes, which enabled them to marry and go their way

to the business of life. Now the characters of men differ accordingly

as they are derived from the original man or the original woman, or the

original man-woman. Those who come from the man-woman are lascivious and

adulterous; those who come from the woman form female attachments; those

who are a section of the male follow the male and embrace him, and in

him all their desires centre. The pair are inseparable and live together

in pure and manly affection; yet they cannot tell what they want of one

another. But if Hephaestus were to come to them with his instruments

and propose that they should be melted into one and remain one here and

hereafter, they would acknowledge that this was the very expression of

their want. For love is the desire of the whole, and the pursuit of the

whole is called love. There was a time when the two sexes were only one,

but now God has halved them,--much as the Lacedaemonians have cut up

the Arcadians,--and if they do not behave themselves he will divide

them again, and they will hop about with half a nose and face in basso

relievo. Wherefore let us exhort all men to piety, that we may obtain

the goods of which love is the author, and be reconciled to God, and

find our own true loves, which rarely happens in this world. And now I

must beg you not to suppose that I am alluding to Pausanias and Agathon

(compare Protag.), for my words refer to all mankind everywhere.

Some raillery ensues first between Aristophanes and Eryximachus, and

then between Agathon, who fears a few select friends more than any

number of spectators at the theatre, and Socrates, who is disposed to

begin an argument. This is speedily repressed by Phaedrus, who reminds

the disputants of their tribute to the god. Agathon's speech follows:--

He will speak of the god first and then of his gifts: He is the fairest

and blessedest and best of the gods, and also the youngest, having had

no existence in the old days of Iapetus and Cronos when the gods were

at war. The things that were done then were done of necessity and not

of love. For love is young and dwells in soft places,--not like Ate

in Homer, walking on the skulls of men, but in their hearts and

souls, which are soft enough. He is all flexibility and grace, and his

habitation is among the flowers, and he cannot do or suffer wrong; for

all men serve and obey him of their own free will, and where there is

love there is obedience, and where obedience, there is justice; for

none can be wronged of his own free will. And he is temperate as well as

just, for he is the ruler of the desires, and if he rules them he must

be temperate. Also he is courageous, for he is the conqueror of the lord

of war. And he is wise too; for he is a poet, and the author of poesy in

others. He created the animals; he is the inventor of the arts; all the

gods are his subjects; he is the fairest and best himself, and the cause

of what is fairest and best in others; he makes men to be of one mind

at a banquet, filling them with affection and emptying them of

disaffection; the pilot, helper, defender, saviour of men, in whose

footsteps let every man follow, chanting a strain of love. Such is the

discourse, half playful, half serious, which I dedicate to the god.

The turn of Socrates comes next. He begins by remarking satirically

that he has not understood the terms of the original agreement, for he

fancied that they meant to speak the true praises of love, but now he

finds that they only say what is good of him, whether true or false. He

begs to be absolved from speaking falsely, but he is willing to speak

the truth, and proposes to begin by questioning Agathon. The result of

his questions may be summed up as follows:--

Love is of something, and that which love desires is not that which love

is or has; for no man desires that which he is or has. And love is of

the beautiful, and therefore has not the beautiful. And the beautiful

is the good, and therefore, in wanting and desiring the beautiful, love

also wants and desires the good. Socrates professes to have asked the

same questions and to have obtained the same answers from Diotima, a

wise woman of Mantinea, who, like Agathon, had spoken first of love and

then of his works. Socrates, like Agathon, had told her that Love is a

mighty god and also fair, and she had shown him in return that Love was

neither, but in a mean between fair and foul, good and evil, and not a

god at all, but only a great demon or intermediate power (compare the

speech of Eryximachus) who conveys to the gods the prayers of men, and

to men the commands of the gods.

Socrates asks: Who are his father and mother? To this Diotima replies

that he is the son of Plenty and Poverty, and partakes of the nature of

both, and is full and starved by turns. Like his mother he is poor and

squalid, lying on mats at doors (compare the speech of Pausanias);

like his father he is bold and strong, and full of arts and resources.

Further, he is in a mean between ignorance and knowledge:--in this he

resembles the philosopher who is also in a mean between the wise and the

ignorant. Such is the nature of Love, who is not to be confused with the

beloved.

But Love desires the beautiful; and then arises the question, What does

he desire of the beautiful? He desires, of course, the possession of

the beautiful;--but what is given by that? For the beautiful let us

substitute the good, and we have no difficulty in seeing the possession

of the good to be happiness, and Love to be the desire of happiness,

although the meaning of the word has been too often confined to one

kind of love. And Love desires not only the good, but the everlasting

possession of the good. Why then is there all this flutter and

excitement about love? Because all men and women at a certain age are

desirous of bringing to the birth. And love is not of beauty only, but

of birth in beauty; this is the principle of immortality in a mortal

creature. When beauty approaches, then the conceiving power is benign

and diffuse; when foulness, she is averted and morose.

But why again does this extend not only to men but also to animals?

Because they too have an instinct of immortality. Even in the same

individual there is a perpetual succession as well of the parts of the

material body as of the thoughts and desires of the mind; nay, even

knowledge comes and goes. There is no sameness of existence, but the new

mortality is always taking the place of the old. This is the reason why

parents love their children--for the sake of immortality; and this is

why men love the immortality of fame. For the creative soul creates not

children, but conceptions of wisdom and virtue, such as poets and other

creators have invented. And the noblest creations of all are those of

legislators, in honour of whom temples have been raised. Who would not

sooner have these children of the mind than the ordinary human ones?

(Compare Bacon's Essays, 8:--'Certainly the best works and of greatest

merit for the public have proceeded from the unmarried or childless men;

which both in affection and means have married and endowed the public.')

I will now initiate you, she said, into the greater mysteries; for he

who would proceed in due course should love first one fair form, and

then many, and learn the connexion of them; and from beautiful bodies

he should proceed to beautiful minds, and the beauty of laws and

institutions, until he perceives that all beauty is of one kindred; and

from institutions he should go on to the sciences, until at last the

vision is revealed to him of a single science of universal beauty, and

then he will behold the everlasting nature which is the cause of all,

and will be near the end. In the contemplation of that supreme being of

love he will be purified of earthly leaven, and will behold beauty, not

with the bodily eye, but with the eye of the mind, and will bring forth

true creations of virtue and wisdom, and be the friend of God and heir

of immortality.

Such, Phaedrus, is the tale which I heard from the stranger of Mantinea,

and which you may call the encomium of love, or what you please.

The company applaud the speech of Socrates, and Aristophanes is about to

say something, when suddenly a band of revellers breaks into the court,

and the voice of Alcibiades is heard asking for Agathon. He is led

in drunk, and welcomed by Agathon, whom he has come to crown with

a garland. He is placed on a couch at his side, but suddenly, on

recognizing Socrates, he starts up, and a sort of conflict is carried

on between them, which Agathon is requested to appease. Alcibiades then

insists that they shall drink, and has a large wine-cooler filled,

which he first empties himself, and then fills again and passes on to

Socrates. He is informed of the nature of the entertainment; and is

ready to join, if only in the character of a drunken and disappointed

lover he may be allowed to sing the praises of Socrates:--

He begins by comparing Socrates first to the busts of Silenus, which

have images of the gods inside them; and, secondly, to Marsyas the

flute-player. For Socrates produces the same effect with the voice which

Marsyas did with the flute. He is the great speaker and enchanter

who ravishes the souls of men; the convincer of hearts too, as he has

convinced Alcibiades, and made him ashamed of his mean and miserable

life. Socrates at one time seemed about to fall in love with him; and he

thought that he would thereby gain a wonderful opportunity of receiving

lessons of wisdom. He narrates the failure of his design. He has

suffered agonies from him, and is at his wit's end. He then proceeds to

mention some other particulars of the life of Socrates; how they were at

Potidaea together, where Socrates showed his superior powers of enduring

cold and fatigue; how on one occasion he had stood for an entire day and

night absorbed in reflection amid the wonder of the spectators; how on

another occasion he had saved Alcibiades' life; how at the battle

of Delium, after the defeat, he might be seen stalking about like a

pelican, rolling his eyes as Aristophanes had described him in the

Clouds. He is the most wonderful of human beings, and absolutely unlike

anyone but a satyr. Like the satyr in his language too; for he uses the

commonest words as the outward mask of the divinest truths.

When Alcibiades has done speaking, a dispute begins between him

and Agathon and Socrates. Socrates piques Alcibiades by a pretended

affection for Agathon. Presently a band of revellers appears, who

introduce disorder into the feast; the sober part of the company,

Eryximachus, Phaedrus, and others, withdraw; and Aristodemus, the

follower of Socrates, sleeps during the whole of a long winter's night.

When he wakes at cockcrow the revellers are nearly all asleep. Only

Socrates, Aristophanes, and Agathon hold out; they are drinking from a

large goblet, which they pass round, and Socrates is explaining to the

two others, who are half-asleep, that the genius of tragedy is the same

as that of comedy, and that the writer of tragedy ought to be a writer

of comedy also. And first Aristophanes drops, and then, as the day is

dawning, Agathon. Socrates, having laid them to rest, takes a bath and

goes to his daily avocations until the evening. Aristodemus follows.

...

If it be true that there are more things in the Symposium of Plato than

any commentator has dreamed of, it is also true that many things have

been imagined which are not really to be found there. Some writings

hardly admit of a more distinct interpretation than a musical

composition; and every reader may form his own accompaniment of thought

or feeling to the strain which he hears. The Symposium of Plato is a

work of this character, and can with difficulty be rendered in any words

but the writer's own. There are so many half-lights and cross-lights,

so much of the colour of mythology, and of the manner of sophistry

adhering--rhetoric and poetry, the playful and the serious, are so

subtly intermingled in it, and vestiges of old philosophy so curiously

blend with germs of future knowledge, that agreement among interpreters

is not to be expected. The expression 'poema magis putandum quam

comicorum poetarum,' which has been applied to all the writings of

Plato, is especially applicable to the Symposium.

The power of love is represented in the Symposium as running through all

nature and all being: at one end descending to animals and plants, and

attaining to the highest vision of truth at the other. In an age

when man was seeking for an expression of the world around him, the

conception of love greatly affected him. One of the first distinctions

of language and of mythology was that of gender; and at a later period

the ancient physicist, anticipating modern science, saw, or thought

that he saw, a sex in plants; there were elective affinities among the

elements, marriages of earth and heaven. (Aesch. Frag. Dan.) Love became

a mythic personage whom philosophy, borrowing from poetry, converted

into an efficient cause of creation. The traces of the existence of

love, as of number and figure, were everywhere discerned; and in the

Pythagorean list of opposites male and female were ranged side by side

with odd and even, finite and infinite.

But Plato seems also to be aware that there is a mystery of love in man

as well as in nature, extending beyond the mere immediate relation of

the sexes. He is conscious that the highest and noblest things in the

world are not easily severed from the sensual desires, or may even be

regarded as a spiritualized form of them. We may observe that Socrates

himself is not represented as originally unimpassioned, but as one who

has overcome his passions; the secret of his power over others partly

lies in his passionate but self-controlled nature. In the Phaedrus and

Symposium love is not merely the feeling usually so called, but the

mystical contemplation of the beautiful and the good. The same passion

which may wallow in the mire is capable of rising to the loftiest

heights--of penetrating the inmost secret of philosophy. The highest

love is the love not of a person, but of the highest and purest

abstraction. This abstraction is the far-off heaven on which the eye of

the mind is fixed in fond amazement. The unity of truth, the consistency

of the warring elements of the world, the enthusiasm for knowledge when

first beaming upon mankind, the relativity of ideas to the human

mind, and of the human mind to ideas, the faith in the invisible,

the adoration of the eternal nature, are all included, consciously or

unconsciously, in Plato's doctrine of love.

The successive speeches in praise of love are characteristic of the

speakers, and contribute in various degrees to the final result; they

are all designed to prepare the way for Socrates, who gathers up the

threads anew, and skims the highest points of each of them. But they are

not to be regarded as the stages of an idea, rising above one another

to a climax. They are fanciful, partly facetious performances, 'yet also

having a certain measure of seriousness,' which the successive speakers

dedicate to the god. All of them are rhetorical and poetical rather than

dialectical, but glimpses of truth appear in them. When Eryximachus says

that the principles of music are simple in themselves, but confused

in their application, he touches lightly upon a difficulty which has

troubled the moderns as well as the ancients in music, and may be

extended to the other applied sciences. That confusion begins in the

concrete, was the natural feeling of a mind dwelling in the world of

ideas. When Pausanias remarks that personal attachments are inimical

to despots. The experience of Greek history confirms the truth of his

remark. When Aristophanes declares that love is the desire of the whole,

he expresses a feeling not unlike that of the German philosopher, who

says that 'philosophy is home sickness.' When Agathon says that no man

'can be wronged of his own free will,' he is alluding playfully to a

serious problem of Greek philosophy (compare Arist. Nic. Ethics). So

naturally does Plato mingle jest and earnest, truth and opinion in the

same work.

The characters--of Phaedrus, who has been the cause of more

philosophical discussions than any other man, with the exception of

Simmias the Theban (Phaedrus); of Aristophanes, who disguises under

comic imagery a serious purpose; of Agathon, who in later life is

satirized by Aristophanes in the Thesmophoriazusae, for his effeminate

manners and the feeble rhythms of his verse; of Alcibiades, who is the

same strange contrast of great powers and great vices, which meets us

in history--are drawn to the life; and we may suppose the less-known

characters of Pausanias and Eryximachus to be also true to the

traditional recollection of them (compare Phaedr., Protag.; and compare

Sympos. with Phaedr.). We may also remark that Aristodemus is called

'the little' in Xenophon's Memorabilia (compare Symp.).

The speeches have been said to follow each other in pairs: Phaedrus and

Pausanias being the ethical, Eryximachus and Aristophanes the physical

speakers, while in Agathon and Socrates poetry and philosophy blend

together. The speech of Phaedrus is also described as the mythological,

that of Pausanias as the political, that of Eryximachus as the

scientific, that of Aristophanes as the artistic (!), that of Socrates

as the philosophical. But these and similar distinctions are not found

in Plato;--they are the points of view of his critics, and seem to

impede rather than to assist us in understanding him.

When the turn of Socrates comes round he cannot be allowed to disturb

the arrangement made at first. With the leave of Phaedrus he asks a few

questions, and then he throws his argument into the form of a speech

(compare Gorg., Protag.). But his speech is really the narrative of a

dialogue between himself and Diotima. And as at a banquet good manners

would not allow him to win a victory either over his host or any of

the guests, the superiority which he gains over Agathon is ingeniously

represented as having been already gained over himself by her. The

artifice has the further advantage of maintaining his accustomed

profession of ignorance (compare Menex.). Even his knowledge of the

mysteries of love, to which he lays claim here and elsewhere (Lys.), is

given by Diotima.

The speeches are attested to us by the very best authority. The madman

Apollodorus, who for three years past has made a daily study of the

actions of Socrates--to whom the world is summed up in the words 'Great

is Socrates'--he has heard them from another 'madman,' Aristodemus,

who was the 'shadow' of Socrates in days of old, like him going about

barefooted, and who had been present at the time. 'Would you desire

better witness?' The extraordinary narrative of Alcibiades is

ingeniously represented as admitted by Socrates, whose silence when he

is invited to contradict gives consent to the narrator. We may observe,

by the way, (1) how the very appearance of Aristodemus by himself is

a sufficient indication to Agathon that Socrates has been left behind;

also, (2) how the courtesy of Agathon anticipates the excuse which

Socrates was to have made on Aristodemus' behalf for coming uninvited;

(3) how the story of the fit or trance of Socrates is confirmed by the

mention which Alcibiades makes of a similar fit of abstraction occurring

when he was serving with the army at Potidaea; like (4) the drinking

powers of Socrates and his love of the fair, which receive a similar

attestation in the concluding scene; or the attachment of Aristodemus,

who is not forgotten when Socrates takes his departure. (5) We may

notice the manner in which Socrates himself regards the first five

speeches, not as true, but as fanciful and exaggerated encomiums of the

god Love; (6) the satirical character of them, shown especially in

the appeals to mythology, in the reasons which are given by Zeus for

reconstructing the frame of man, or by the Boeotians and Eleans

for encouraging male loves; (7) the ruling passion of Socrates for

dialectics, who will argue with Agathon instead of making a speech, and

will only speak at all upon the condition that he is allowed to speak

the truth. We may note also the touch of Socratic irony, (8) which

admits of a wide application and reveals a deep insight into the

world:--that in speaking of holy things and persons there is a general

understanding that you should praise them, not that you should speak the

truth about them--this is the sort of praise which Socrates is unable to

give. Lastly, (9) we may remark that the banquet is a real banquet after

all, at which love is the theme of discourse, and huge quantities of

wine are drunk.

The discourse of Phaedrus is half-mythical, half-ethical; and he

himself, true to the character which is given him in the Dialogue

bearing his name, is half-sophist, half-enthusiast. He is the critic

of poetry also, who compares Homer and Aeschylus in the insipid

and irrational manner of the schools of the day, characteristically

reasoning about the probability of matters which do not admit of

reasoning. He starts from a noble text: 'That without the sense of

honour and dishonour neither states nor individuals ever do any good

or great work.' But he soon passes on to more common-place topics. The

antiquity of love, the blessing of having a lover, the incentive which

love offers to daring deeds, the examples of Alcestis and Achilles, are

the chief themes of his discourse. The love of women is regarded by him

as almost on an equality with that of men; and he makes the singular

remark that the gods favour the return of love which is made by the

beloved more than the original sentiment, because the lover is of a

nobler and diviner nature.

There is something of a sophistical ring in the speech of Phaedrus,

which recalls the first speech in imitation of Lysias, occurring in the

Dialogue called the Phaedrus. This is still more marked in the speech of

Pausanias which follows; and which is at once hyperlogical in form and

also extremely confused and pedantic. Plato is attacking the logical

feebleness of the sophists and rhetoricians, through their pupils, not

forgetting by the way to satirize the monotonous and unmeaning rhythms

which Prodicus and others were introducing into Attic prose (compare

Protag.). Of course, he is 'playing both sides of the game,' as in the

Gorgias and Phaedrus; but it is not necessary in order to understand him

that we should discuss the fairness of his mode of proceeding. The

love of Pausanias for Agathon has already been touched upon in the

Protagoras, and is alluded to by Aristophanes. Hence he is naturally the

upholder of male loves, which, like all the other affections or

actions of men, he regards as varying according to the manner of their

performance. Like the sophists and like Plato himself, though in a

different sense, he begins his discussion by an appeal to mythology,

and distinguishes between the elder and younger love. The value which

he attributes to such loves as motives to virtue and philosophy is at

variance with modern and Christian notions, but is in accordance with

Hellenic sentiment. The opinion of Christendom has not altogether

condemned passionate friendships between persons of the same sex, but

has certainly not encouraged them, because though innocent in themselves

in a few temperaments they are liable to degenerate into fearful evil.

Pausanias is very earnest in the defence of such loves; and he speaks of

them as generally approved among Hellenes and disapproved by barbarians.

His speech is 'more words than matter,' and might have been composed by

a pupil of Lysias or of Prodicus, although there is no hint given that

Plato is specially referring to them. As Eryximachus says, 'he makes a

fair beginning, but a lame ending.'

Plato transposes the two next speeches, as in the Republic he would

transpose the virtues and the mathematical sciences. This is done partly

to avoid monotony, partly for the sake of making Aristophanes 'the cause

of wit in others,' and also in order to bring the comic and tragic

poet into juxtaposition, as if by accident. A suitable 'expectation' of

Aristophanes is raised by the ludicrous circumstance of his having the

hiccough, which is appropriately cured by his substitute, the physician

Eryximachus. To Eryximachus Love is the good physician; he sees

everything as an intelligent physicist, and, like many professors of his

art in modern times, attempts to reduce the moral to the physical; or

recognises one law of love which pervades them both. There are loves

and strifes of the body as well as of the mind. Like Hippocrates the

Asclepiad, he is a disciple of Heracleitus, whose conception of the

harmony of opposites he explains in a new way as the harmony after

discord; to his common sense, as to that of many moderns as well as

ancients, the identity of contradictories is an absurdity. His notion of

love may be summed up as the harmony of man with himself in soul as well

as body, and of all things in heaven and earth with one another.

Aristophanes is ready to laugh and make laugh before he opens his mouth,

just as Socrates, true to his character, is ready to argue before he

begins to speak. He expresses the very genius of the old comedy, its

coarse and forcible imagery, and the licence of its language in speaking

about the gods. He has no sophistical notions about love, which

is brought back by him to its common-sense meaning of love between

intelligent beings. His account of the origin of the sexes has the

greatest (comic) probability and verisimilitude. Nothing in Aristophanes

is more truly Aristophanic than the description of the human monster

whirling round on four arms and four legs, eight in all, with incredible

rapidity. Yet there is a mixture of earnestness in this jest; three

serious principles seem to be insinuated:--first, that man cannot exist

in isolation; he must be reunited if he is to be perfected: secondly,

that love is the mediator and reconciler of poor, divided human nature:

thirdly, that the loves of this world are an indistinct anticipation of

an ideal union which is not yet realized.

The speech of Agathon is conceived in a higher strain, and receives the

real, if half-ironical, approval of Socrates. It is the speech of the

tragic poet and a sort of poem, like tragedy, moving among the gods of

Olympus, and not among the elder or Orphic deities. In the idea of the

antiquity of love he cannot agree; love is not of the olden time, but

present and youthful ever. The speech may be compared with that speech

of Socrates in the Phaedrus in which he describes himself as talking

dithyrambs. It is at once a preparation for Socrates and a foil to him.

The rhetoric of Agathon elevates the soul to 'sunlit heights,' but at

the same time contrasts with the natural and necessary eloquence of

Socrates. Agathon contributes the distinction between love and the works

of love, and also hints incidentally that love is always of beauty,

which Socrates afterwards raises into a principle. While the

consciousness of discord is stronger in the comic poet Aristophanes,

Agathon, the tragic poet, has a deeper sense of harmony and

reconciliation, and speaks of Love as the creator and artist.

All the earlier speeches embody common opinions coloured with a tinge of

philosophy. They furnish the material out of which Socrates proceeds to

form his discourse, starting, as in other places, from mythology and

the opinions of men. From Phaedrus he takes the thought that love is

stronger than death; from Pausanias, that the true love is akin to

intellect and political activity; from Eryximachus, that love is a

universal phenomenon and the great power of nature; from Aristophanes,

that love is the child of want, and is not merely the love of the

congenial or of the whole, but (as he adds) of the good; from Agathon,

that love is of beauty, not however of beauty only, but of birth

in beauty. As it would be out of character for Socrates to make a

lengthened harangue, the speech takes the form of a dialogue between

Socrates and a mysterious woman of foreign extraction. She elicits the

final truth from one who knows nothing, and who, speaking by the lips

of another, and himself a despiser of rhetoric, is proved also to be the

most consummate of rhetoricians (compare Menexenus).

The last of the six discourses begins with a short argument which

overthrows not only Agathon but all the preceding speakers by the help

of a distinction which has escaped them. Extravagant praises have been

ascribed to Love as the author of every good; no sort of encomium was

too high for him, whether deserved and true or not. But Socrates has no

talent for speaking anything but the truth, and if he is to speak the

truth of Love he must honestly confess that he is not a good at all: for

love is of the good, and no man can desire that which he has. This

piece of dialectics is ascribed to Diotima, who has already urged

upon Socrates the argument which he urges against Agathon. That the

distinction is a fallacy is obvious; it is almost acknowledged to be so

by Socrates himself. For he who has beauty or good may desire more of

them; and he who has beauty or good in himself may desire beauty and

good in others. The fallacy seems to arise out of a confusion between

the abstract ideas of good and beauty, which do not admit of degrees,

and their partial realization in individuals.

But Diotima, the prophetess of Mantineia, whose sacred and superhuman

character raises her above the ordinary proprieties of women, has taught

Socrates far more than this about the art and mystery of love. She has

taught him that love is another aspect of philosophy. The same want in

the human soul which is satisfied in the vulgar by the procreation of

children, may become the highest aspiration of intellectual desire.

As the Christian might speak of hungering and thirsting after

righteousness; or of divine loves under the figure of human (compare

Eph. 'This is a great mystery, but I speak concerning Christ and the

church'); as the mediaeval saint might speak of the 'fruitio Dei;' as

Dante saw all things contained in his love of Beatrice, so Plato would

have us absorb all other loves and desires in the love of knowledge.

Here is the beginning of Neoplatonism, or rather, perhaps, a proof (of

which there are many) that the so-called mysticism of the East was

not strange to the Greek of the fifth century before Christ. The first

tumult of the affections was not wholly subdued; there were longings of

a creature moving about in worlds not realized, which no art could

satisfy. To most men reason and passion appear to be antagonistic both

in idea and fact. The union of the greatest comprehension of knowledge

and the burning intensity of love is a contradiction in nature, which

may have existed in a far-off primeval age in the mind of some Hebrew

prophet or other Eastern sage, but has now become an imagination only.

Yet this 'passion of the reason' is the theme of the Symposium of Plato.

And as there is no impossibility in supposing that 'one king, or son of

a king, may be a philosopher,' so also there is a probability that there

may be some few--perhaps one or two in a whole generation--in whom the

light of truth may not lack the warmth of desire. And if there be such

natures, no one will be disposed to deny that 'from them flow most of

the benefits of individuals and states;' and even from imperfect

combinations of the two elements in teachers or statesmen great good may

often arise.

Yet there is a higher region in which love is not only felt, but

satisfied, in the perfect beauty of eternal knowledge, beginning with

the beauty of earthly things, and at last reaching a beauty in which

all existence is seen to be harmonious and one. The limited affection

is enlarged, and enabled to behold the ideal of all things. And here the

highest summit which is reached in the Symposium is seen also to be the

highest summit which is attained in the Republic, but approached from

another side; and there is 'a way upwards and downwards,' which is the

same and not the same in both. The ideal beauty of the one is the ideal

good of the other; regarded not with the eye of knowledge, but of faith

and desire; and they are respectively the source of beauty and the

source of good in all other things. And by the steps of a 'ladder

reaching to heaven' we pass from images of visible beauty (Greek), and

from the hypotheses of the Mathematical sciences, which are not yet

based upon the idea of good, through the concrete to the abstract, and,

by different paths arriving, behold the vision of the eternal (compare

Symp. (Greek) Republic (Greek) also Phaedrus). Under one aspect 'the

idea is love'; under another, 'truth.' In both the lover of wisdom is

the 'spectator of all time and of all existence.' This is a 'mystery'

in which Plato also obscurely intimates the union of the spiritual and

fleshly, the interpenetration of the moral and intellectual faculties.

The divine image of beauty which resides within Socrates has been

revealed; the Silenus, or outward man, has now to be exhibited.

The description of Socrates follows immediately after the speech of

Socrates; one is the complement of the other. At the height of divine

inspiration, when the force of nature can no further go, by way of

contrast to this extreme idealism, Alcibiades, accompanied by a troop of

revellers and a flute-girl, staggers in, and being drunk is able to tell

of things which he would have been ashamed to make known if he had been

sober. The state of his affections towards Socrates, unintelligible to

us and perverted as they appear, affords an illustration of the power

ascribed to the loves of man in the speech of Pausanias. He does not

suppose his feelings to be peculiar to himself: there are several other

persons in the company who have been equally in love with Socrates,

and like himself have been deceived by him. The singular part of this

confession is the combination of the most degrading passion with the

desire of virtue and improvement. Such an union is not wholly untrue to

human nature, which is capable of combining good and evil in a degree

beyond what we can easily conceive. In imaginative persons, especially,

the God and beast in man seem to part asunder more than is natural in

a well-regulated mind. The Platonic Socrates (for of the real Socrates

this may be doubted: compare his public rebuke of Critias for his

shameful love of Euthydemus in Xenophon, Memorabilia) does not regard

the greatest evil of Greek life as a thing not to be spoken of; but it

has a ridiculous element (Plato's Symp.), and is a subject for irony, no

less than for moral reprobation (compare Plato's Symp.). It is also used

as a figure of speech which no one interpreted literally (compare Xen.

Symp.). Nor does Plato feel any repugnance, such as would be felt in

modern times, at bringing his great master and hero into connexion with

nameless crimes. He is contented with representing him as a saint, who

has won 'the Olympian victory' over the temptations of human nature. The

fault of taste, which to us is so glaring and which was recognized

by the Greeks of a later age (Athenaeus), was not perceived by Plato

himself. We are still more surprised to find that the philosopher is

incited to take the first step in his upward progress (Symp.) by the

beauty of young men and boys, which was alone capable of inspiring the

modern feeling of romance in the Greek mind. The passion of love took

the spurious form of an enthusiasm for the ideal of beauty--a worship

as of some godlike image of an Apollo or Antinous. But the love of youth

when not depraved was a love of virtue and modesty as well as of beauty,

the one being the expression of the other; and in certain Greek states,

especially at Sparta and Thebes, the honourable attachment of a youth to

an elder man was a part of his education. The 'army of lovers and their

beloved who would be invincible if they could be united by such a tie'

(Symp.), is not a mere fiction of Plato's, but seems actually to have

existed at Thebes in the days of Epaminondas and Pelopidas, if we

may believe writers cited anonymously by Plutarch, Pelop. Vit. It is

observable that Plato never in the least degree excuses the depraved

love of the body (compare Charm.; Rep.; Laws; Symp.; and once more

Xenophon, Mem.), nor is there any Greek writer of mark who condones or

approves such connexions. But owing partly to the puzzling nature of the

subject these friendships are spoken of by Plato in a manner different

from that customary among ourselves. To most of them we should hesitate

to ascribe, any more than to the attachment of Achilles and Patroclus in

Homer, an immoral or licentious character. There were many, doubtless,

to whom the love of the fair mind was the noblest form of friendship

(Rep.), and who deemed the friendship of man with man to be higher

than the love of woman, because altogether separated from the bodily

appetites. The existence of such attachments may be reasonably

attributed to the inferiority and seclusion of woman, and the want of

a real family or social life and parental influence in Hellenic cities;

and they were encouraged by the practice of gymnastic exercises, by the

meetings of political clubs, and by the tie of military companionship.

They were also an educational institution: a young person was specially

entrusted by his parents to some elder friend who was expected by them

to train their son in manly exercises and in virtue. It is not likely

that a Greek parent committed him to a lover, any more than we should

to a schoolmaster, in the expectation that he would be corrupted by him,

but rather in the hope that his morals would be better cared for than

was possible in a great household of slaves.

It is difficult to adduce the authority of Plato either for or against

such practices or customs, because it is not always easy to determine

whether he is speaking of 'the heavenly and philosophical love, or

of the coarse Polyhymnia:' and he often refers to this (e.g. in the

Symposium) half in jest, yet 'with a certain degree of seriousness.'

We observe that they entered into one part of Greek literature, but not

into another, and that the larger part is free from such associations.

Indecency was an element of the ludicrous in the old Greek Comedy, as

it has been in other ages and countries. But effeminate love was always

condemned as well as ridiculed by the Comic poets; and in the New Comedy

the allusions to such topics have disappeared. They seem to have been no

longer tolerated by the greater refinement of the age. False sentiment

is found in the Lyric and Elegiac poets; and in mythology 'the greatest

of the Gods' (Rep.) is not exempt from evil imputations. But the morals

of a nation are not to be judged of wholly by its literature. Hellas

was not necessarily more corrupted in the days of the Persian and

Peloponnesian wars, or of Plato and the Orators, than England in the

time of Fielding and Smollett, or France in the nineteenth century. No

one supposes certain French novels to be a representation of ordinary

French life. And the greater part of Greek literature, beginning

with Homer and including the tragedians, philosophers, and, with the

exception of the Comic poets (whose business was to raise a laugh

by whatever means), all the greater writers of Hellas who have been

preserved to us, are free from the taint of indecency.

Some general considerations occur to our mind when we begin to reflect

on this subject. (1) That good and evil are linked together in human

nature, and have often existed side by side in the world and in man to

an extent hardly credible. We cannot distinguish them, and are therefore

unable to part them; as in the parable 'they grow together unto the

harvest:' it is only a rule of external decency by which society can

divide them. Nor should we be right in inferring from the prevalence of

any one vice or corruption that a state or individual was demoralized

in their whole character. Not only has the corruption of the best been

sometimes thought to be the worst, but it may be remarked that this very

excess of evil has been the stimulus to good (compare Plato, Laws, where

he says that in the most corrupt cities individuals are to be found

beyond all praise). (2) It may be observed that evils which admit of

degrees can seldom be rightly estimated, because under the same name

actions of the most different degrees of culpability may be included. No

charge is more easily set going than the imputation of secret wickedness

(which cannot be either proved or disproved and often cannot be defined)

when directed against a person of whom the world, or a section of it, is

predisposed to think evil. And it is quite possible that the malignity

of Greek scandal, aroused by some personal jealousy or party enmity, may

have converted the innocent friendship of a great man for a noble youth

into a connexion of another kind. Such accusations were brought against

several of the leading men of Hellas, e.g. Cimon, Alcibiades, Critias,

Demosthenes, Epaminondas: several of the Roman emperors were assailed

by similar weapons which have been used even in our own day against

statesmen of the highest character. (3) While we know that in this

matter there is a great gulf fixed between Greek and Christian Ethics,

yet, if we would do justice to the Greeks, we must also acknowledge that

there was a greater outspokenness among them than among ourselves about

the things which nature hides, and that the more frequent mention of

such topics is not to be taken as the measure of the prevalence of

offences, or as a proof of the general corruption of society. It is

likely that every religion in the world has used words or practised

rites in one age, which have become distasteful or repugnant to another.

We cannot, though for different reasons, trust the representations

either of Comedy or Satire; and still less of Christian Apologists.

(4) We observe that at Thebes and Lacedemon the attachment of an

elder friend to a beloved youth was often deemed to be a part of his

education; and was encouraged by his parents--it was only shameful if

it degenerated into licentiousness. Such we may believe to have been the

tie which united Asophychus and Cephisodorus with the great Epaminondas

in whose companionship they fell (Plutarch, Amat.; Athenaeus on the

authority of Theopompus). (5) A small matter: there appears to be a

difference of custom among the Greeks and among ourselves, as between

ourselves and continental nations at the present time, in modes of

salutation. We must not suspect evil in the hearty kiss or embrace of

a male friend 'returning from the army at Potidaea' any more than in

a similar salutation when practised by members of the same family. But

those who make these admissions, and who regard, not without pity, the

victims of such illusions in our own day, whose life has been blasted

by them, may be none the less resolved that the natural and healthy

instincts of mankind shall alone be tolerated (Greek); and that the

lesson of manliness which we have inherited from our fathers shall not

degenerate into sentimentalism or effeminacy. The possibility of an

honourable connexion of this kind seems to have died out with Greek

civilization. Among the Romans, and also among barbarians, such as the

Celts and Persians, there is no trace of such attachments existing in

any noble or virtuous form.

(Compare Hoeck's Creta and the admirable and exhaustive article of Meier

in Ersch and Grueber's Cyclopedia on this subject; Plutarch, Amatores;

Athenaeus; Lysias contra Simonem; Aesch. c. Timarchum.)

The character of Alcibiades in the Symposium is hardly less remarkable

than that of Socrates, and agrees with the picture given of him in the

first of the two Dialogues which are called by his name, and also with

the slight sketch of him in the Protagoras. He is the impersonation of

lawlessness--'the lion's whelp, who ought not to be reared in the

city,' yet not without a certain generosity which gained the hearts of

men,--strangely fascinated by Socrates, and possessed of a genius which

might have been either the destruction or salvation of Athens. The

dramatic interest of the character is heightened by the recollection of

his after history. He seems to have been present to the mind of Plato

in the description of the democratic man of the Republic (compare also

Alcibiades 1).

There is no criterion of the date of the Symposium, except that which

is furnished by the allusion to the division of Arcadia after the

destruction of Mantinea. This took place in the year B.C. 384, which is

the forty-fourth year of Plato's life. The Symposium cannot therefore be

regarded as a youthful work. As Mantinea was restored in the year 369,

the composition of the Dialogue will probably fall between 384 and

369. Whether the recollection of the event is more likely to have been

renewed at the destruction or restoration of the city, rather than at

some intermediate period, is a consideration not worth raising.

The Symposium is connected with the Phaedrus both in style and subject;

they are the only Dialogues of Plato in which the theme of love is

discussed at length. In both of them philosophy is regarded as a sort of

enthusiasm or madness; Socrates is himself 'a prophet new inspired' with

Bacchanalian revelry, which, like his philosophy, he characteristically

pretends to have derived not from himself but from others. The Phaedo

also presents some points of comparison with the Symposium. For there,

too, philosophy might be described as 'dying for love;' and there are

not wanting many touches of humour and fancy, which remind us of the

Symposium. But while the Phaedo and Phaedrus look backwards and forwards

to past and future states of existence, in the Symposium there is no

break between this world and another; and we rise from one to the other

by a regular series of steps or stages, proceeding from the particulars

of sense to the universal of reason, and from one universal to many,

which are finally reunited in a single science (compare Rep.). At first

immortality means only the succession of existences; even knowledge

comes and goes. Then follows, in the language of the mysteries, a higher

and a higher degree of initiation; at last we arrive at the perfect

vision of beauty, not relative or changing, but eternal and absolute;

not bounded by this world, or in or out of this world, but an aspect of

the divine, extending over all things, and having no limit of space or

time: this is the highest knowledge of which the human mind is capable.

Plato does not go on to ask whether the individual is absorbed in the

sea of light and beauty or retains his personality. Enough for him to

have attained the true beauty or good, without enquiring precisely into

the relation in which human beings stood to it. That the soul has such

a reach of thought, and is capable of partaking of the eternal nature,

seems to imply that she too is eternal (compare Phaedrus). But Plato

does not distinguish the eternal in man from the eternal in the world or

in God. He is willing to rest in the contemplation of the idea, which

to him is the cause of all things (Rep.), and has no strength to go

further.

The Symposium of Xenophon, in which Socrates describes himself as

a pander, and also discourses of the difference between sensual

and sentimental love, likewise offers several interesting points

of comparison. But the suspicion which hangs over other writings

of Xenophon, and the numerous minute references to the Phaedrus and

Symposium, as well as to some of the other writings of Plato, throw

a doubt on the genuineness of the work. The Symposium of Xenophon, if

written by him at all, would certainly show that he wrote against Plato,

and was acquainted with his works. Of this hostility there is no trace

in the Memorabilia. Such a rivalry is more characteristic of an imitator

than of an original writer. The (so-called) Symposium of Xenophon

may therefore have no more title to be regarded as genuine than the

confessedly spurious Apology.

There are no means of determining the relative order in time of the

Phaedrus, Symposium, Phaedo. The order which has been adopted in

this translation rests on no other principle than the desire to bring

together in a series the memorials of the life of Socrates.

END

Table of Contents

N.B. The translation of eros is a little shaky, but partly because the ancient definition of it was too. In this context it is considered to be either desire, passionate sexual desire, or the god Eros. Understandably with such subtlety and ambiguity, the translation usually winds up simply as ‘love’.

The truly ‘homosexual’ aspect is difficult to explain, or at least difficult to correlate to our modern definitions. Loosely speaking, straight/gay is a post-Freudian concept and doesn’t quite cut it here.

This may have seemed more contradictory and confusing to the Athenians than it does to us. We bound about the word ‘love’ with extraordinary abandon; to the extent that people talk of ‘loving’ their new car or, even more perversely and disturbingly, ‘loving’ Piers Morgan.

At this point Alcibiades barges in, totally drunk and with a prostitute on his arm.