Symposium | Page 3

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This etext was prepared by Sue Asscher

SYMPOSIUM
by Plato

Translated by Benjamin Jowett

INTRODUCTION.
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