Symposium | Page 9

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