The Symposium (‘The Drinking Party’)

APOLLODORUS:[172a] I believe I am quite well prepared to relate the events you are asking me about, for just the other day I happened to be going into Athens from my home in Phalerum¹ when an acquaintance of mine caught sight of me from behind and called after me, jokily,²

‘Phalerian! You there, Apollodorus! Wait for me, will you?’

So I stopped and waited.

‘I have just been looking for you, Apollodorus. I wanted to get from you the story about that party of Agathon’s with Socrates, Alcibiades and the rest,[172b] the time when they were all together at dinner, and to hear what they said in their speeches on the subject of love. Someone else was telling me, who had heard about it from Phoenix, son of Philippus, and he said that you knew about it too. Actually he could not give any clear account of it, so you must tell me. You are in the best position to report the words of your friend.³ But tell me this first’, he went on. ‘Were you at that party yourself or not?’

‘It certainly looks as if your informant was rather confused’, I replied,[172c] ‘if you think the party you are asking about occurred recently enough for me to be there’.

‘Yes, I did think so’, he replied.

‘But how could you think so, Glaucon?’ I said. ‘Don’t you know that it is now many years⁴ since Agathon lived in Athens, and it is not yet three years since I began to associate with Socrates and to make it my daily business to know everything he says and does? Before that[173a] I used to think I was achieving something when I was in fact running round in circles aimlessly, in the most miserable state, just like you now, and I thought philosophy⁵ was the last thing I should be doing’.

‘Don’t make fun of me’, he said. ‘Just tell me when that party took place’.

‘When you and I were still boys’, I replied, ‘in the year when Agathon won the prize with his first tragedy⁶ and on the day after he and the members of the cast held the sacrificial feast to celebrate the victory’.

‘Oh, then it really was a long time ago’, he replied. ‘But who told you about it? Was it Socrates himself?’

[173b] ‘Certainly not’, I said. ‘It was actually the man who told Phoenix, someone called Aristodemus of Cydathenaeum, a small man, who never wore any shoes. He had been at the party, and I think there was no more devoted admirer⁷ of Socrates at that time. But of course I asked Socrates myself some questions afterwards about what I had heard from Aristodemus, and he confirmed what Aristodemus had said’.

‘Then’, said Glaucon, ‘do tell me. The city road is in any case convenient for conversation between fellow-travellers’.

So it happened that as we went on our way we talked about the speeches,[173c] with the result that, as I said at the beginning, I am quite well prepared. If you really want me to recount them to all of you as well, then that is what I had better do. Anyway, whenever I talk myself on any philosophical subject or I listen to others talking, quite apart from thinking it is doing me good I enjoy it enormously. But when I listen to other kinds of discussion, especially from people like you, rich money-makers, I get bored on my own account and at the same time I feel sorry for you, my companions, because you think you are achieving something when you are achieving nothing.[173d] On the other hand you perhaps believe that I am the one who is unfortunate,⁸ and I suppose you are right. But in your case I don’t merely suppose you are unfortunate, I know it.

FRIEND: You are quite incorrigible, Apollodorus. You are always disparaging yourself and everyone else as well. I really do believe you think everyone except Socrates is miserable, starting with you. However you got that nickname, ‘Softy’,⁹ I cannot imagine. You are always like this when you speak, raging against yourself and everyone else except Socrates.

APOLLODORUS:[173e] Obviously then, my dear friend, if I think as I do about myself and all of you I am completely mad!

FRIEND: It is not worth quarrelling about these things now, Apollodorus. Please do what we asked you and tell us what they said in their speeches.

APOLLODORUS: Well then, those speeches went something like this – no, I shall begin at the beginning and try to tell you the whole story[174a] as Aristodemus told me.

Aristodemus said that he and Socrates chanced to meet when the latter was fresh from the baths and wearing his sandals, two rare events for him, so he asked him where he was going, having got himself up so beautifully.

‘To Agathon’s for dinner’, Socrates replied. ‘I avoided the celebrations yesterday, being afraid of the crush, but I agreed I would come today. So that is why I have beautified myself like this, a beautiful guest for a beautiful host. But you, now:[174b] how do you feel about possibly coming to dinner when you have not been invited?’

Aristodemus said that he replied, ‘I shall do whatever you say’.

‘Well, come with me then’, said Socrates, ‘and we will spoil the old saying by altering the words. We will make it say that “to good men’s feasts¹⁰ good men go unbidden”. After all, Homer himself comes close not merely to spoiling it but to treating it with contempt. He represents Agamemnon as an exceptionally valiant warrior and Menelaus as “a faint-hearted spearman”,¹¹ and when Agamemnon after sacrificing is giving a banquet¹² he has Menelaus[174c] coming to the feast unbidden, and so the worse man going to the feast of a better’.

Aristodemus said that, after listening to this, he replied, ‘I am rather afraid, Socrates, that in my case I shall come closer to Homer’s version than to yours, being an inferior man going uninvited to the feast of a wise¹³ one. If you take me along you had better see what excuse you will give, because I shall not admit I came uninvited – I shall say I was invited by you’.

[174d]‘ “As we two go further on the way”’,¹⁴ was the reply, ‘we shall decide on our story. Come on, now’.

After a conversation like this Aristodemus said they walked on. As Socrates proceeded along the road he became absorbed in his own thoughts and started to fall behind; when Aristodemus waited Socrates told him to go on ahead. Arriving at Agathon’s house[174e] Aristodemus found the door open and himself standing there, he said, in a ridiculous situation. One of the domestic servants immediately received him and led him to where all the other guests had taken their places, and he found them about to begin dinner. As soon as Agathon saw him he called out, ‘Aristodemus, how lucky! You are just in time for dinner. If you have come for some other purpose, do postpone it. I was looking for you yesterday to invite you but I could not find you. But how is it you have not brought Socrates to join us?’

I turned round to look behind me, Aristodemus said, but I could not see Socrates anywhere. So I replied that I had been invited there to dinner by Socrates and that it was I in fact who had come with him.

‘I am very glad you came’, said Agathon, ‘but where is the man?’

[175a] ‘He was coming into the house behind me just now. I wonder myself where he might be’.

‘Go and look for Socrates and bring him in’, said Agathon to a servant. ‘Now, Aristodemus, do take a place¹⁵ beside Eryximachus’.

Aristodemus said that one servant brought him water to wash with before he took his place, while another appeared and said, ‘Socrates is here but has withdrawn into your neighbours’ doorway and is just standing there, and though I have been calling him he will not come inside’.

‘How odd’, said Agathon. ‘Call him again and keep on calling him’.

[175b] ‘No’, said Aristodemus, ‘let him alone. This is one of his habits. Sometimes he turns aside and stands still wherever he happens to be. He will come in very soon, I think. Don’t disturb him, leave him alone’.

‘Well, if you think so then that is what we had better do’, replied Agathon. ‘Now, you servants, lay your feast before the rest of us. At any rate you put on the table whatever you like when no one is supervising you – and supervising is something I have never yet done. So on this occasion treat these other guests, as well as me, as if you had invited us all to dinner yourselves. Look after us well and you will earn our thanks’. [175c]After this they started dinner, Aristodemus said, but still Socrates did not come. Agathon kept trying to have him summoned but Aristodemus would not allow it. After delaying for a little while in that habitual way of his, Socrates eventually arrived, but by then they were about halfway through dinner. Agathon, who happened to be alone on the bottom couch, called out, ‘Socrates, come over here beside me so that I may enjoy the benefit of being in contact with that piece of wisdom which came into your mind in that doorway.[175d] Obviously you are now in possession of the answer you were looking for, otherwise you would not have stopped looking’.

Socrates sat down. ‘It would be a happy state of affairs, Agathon, if wisdom were something that could flow between us through mere contact, from the one who is full to one who is empty, like water flowing along a strand of wool from a full cup to an empty one. If that is how it is with wisdom also, then I greatly value having the place next to you [175e]because I think that I shall get my fill from you of your abundant and beautiful wisdom. My own wisdom is certainly of an inferior sort, and, like a dream, of doubtful reality, whereas yours is already brilliant and full of promise – witness the fact that it was so conspicuous the day before yesterday and shone forth from you so splendidly, young as you are, in the presence of more than thirty thousand Greek spectators’.

‘Socrates, you are being sarcastic’,¹⁶ said Agathon. ‘A little later on you and I will each plead our claim to wisdom, and Dionysus¹⁷ will be our judge. But now you must pay attention to your dinner before anything else’.

[176a] After this, said Aristodemus, Socrates arranged himself on the couch and ate his dinner along with all the rest, and when they had poured libations and sung in praise of the god and done all the customary things, they turned to the question of drinking. According to Aristodemus, Pausanias was the first to speak, roughly as follows.

‘Well now, gentlemen’, he said, ‘how shall we make our drinking easy for ourselves? I must say to you that after yesterday’s bout I am really in very poor shape and I could do with a breathing space. I imagine that is the case with most of you who were at yesterday’s celebrations,[176b] so think about how we might make our drinking as easy as possible’.

‘This is a very good idea of yours, Pausanias’, Aristophanes replied, ‘making it a first requirement to give ourselves some respite from drinking. I speak as one of those soaked in drink yesterday’.

Eryximachus, the son of Acumenus, had been listening. ‘Very well said’, he added. ‘But there is still one of you I should like to hear from as to whether he feels strong enough to drink – Agathon?’

‘No’, said Agathon, ‘I am certainly not up to it either’.

[176c] ‘It would be a stroke of luck for us, I think’, continued Eryximachus, ‘that is, for Aristodemus, Phaedrus, and me, and for our other friends here, if you, the most stalwart drinkers, have now given up. We always did have weak heads. I am not counting Socrates; he is unaffected either way, so he will not mind whichever we do. So, since it seems to me that no one here present is keen on drinking much wine, perhaps I would not be too unpopular if I spoke the truth about the nature of drunkenness.[176d] What has become very clear to me as a result of my profession as a doctor is that drunkenness is bad for people, and I would not care to drink a lot myself if I could avoid it, or recommend doing so to anyone else, especially if that person had a hangover from the previous day’.

According to Aristodemus, Phaedrus of Myrrhinous joined in. ‘I for one always take your advice, especially in medical matters, and on this occasion the rest will do so too if they are sensible’.[176e] At this they all agreed not to make heavy drinking the rule for the present party, but to drink only as much as they would enjoy.

‘Well then’, said Eryximachus, ‘since it is settled that each of us should drink just so much as he wants, and there is no compulsion, I have another suggestion to make about the girl who plays the aulos¹⁸ who has just come in: let us tell her to go away and play to herself or, if she likes, to the women in their rooms, while for this evening we entertain each other with talk. And if you like I am ready with a proposal about the kind of talk we might have’.

[177a] They all welcomed his suggestion and asked him to explain further. So he did. ‘For what I am going to say, I will begin in the manner of Euripides’ Melanippe:¹⁹ “not mine is the story”. My suggestion comes from Phaedrus here. He is always complaining to me. “Isn’t it shocking, Eryximachus”, he says, “that while some other gods have had hymns and paeans composed for them by the poets, not a single one of all the many poets that have ever been has composed an encomium to the god Love, despite his great antiquity and importance![177b] Just consider for a moment those good²⁰ sophists²¹ such as the excellent Prodicus: they write prose eulogies of heroes²² like Heracles, which is perhaps not very surprising, but I once came across a book by a learned man in which salt was the subject of extraordinary praise because of its usefulness – and you might find quite a few other things similarly eulogised.[177c] To think that people devote so much effort to subjects like that, but no one to this day has undertaken to celebrate Love in the way he deserves! So completely has this great god been neglected”.

‘It seems to me that Phaedrus has a point. I should therefore very much like²³ to gratify him in this matter and make a contribution, and I think also that this is a fitting occasion for those of us here present to pay honour to the god. If you too think as I do,[177d] we would have plenty to occupy us if we passed the time in making speeches. My proposal is that each of us should make a speech in praise of Love,²⁴ the finest he can manage, going from left to right, and, since Phaedrus is occupying the first place on the left and is also the originator of the subject, he should begin’.

‘No one will vote against you, Eryximachus’, said Socrates. ‘I would hardly say no, since the only subject I can claim to know about is love,²⁵ and the same is true I rather think of Agathon and Pausanias,²⁶ and certainly true of Aristophanes,[177e] whose whole time is taken up with Dionysus and Aphrodite.²⁷ In fact it is true of everyone I see here. However, I should say that the arrangement is hardly fair on those of us who will be speaking last; but if those before us don’t disappoint, and speak well, we shan’t complain. Let Phaedrus go first and speak in praise of Love, and good luck to him’.

All the rest echoed his sentiments and repeated Socrates’ instruction to begin.[178a] Now, Aristodemus did not entirely remember all that each speaker said, nor do I²⁸ remember everything that Aristodemus told me, but I will tell you what seemed to me particularly worth recording from the most memorable speeches.

Aristodemus told me, as I have said, that Phaedrus was the first to speak, and he began with the point that Love is a great god and particularly revered by men and gods by reason of his birth.²⁹ ‘It is because he is the oldest of the gods that he[178b] is honoured’, he said, ‘and there is good evidence for this. Love has no parents, and none have ever been ascribed to him by anyone, prose-writer or poet. The poet Hesiod says³⁰ that first of all Chaos came into being,

“then there was

broad-bosomed Earth, the eternally firm foundation of all things,

and Love”.

‘Acusilaus too agrees with Hesiod and says that after Chaos there came into being these two, Earth and Love. And Parmenides also says of the origin³¹ of Love,

“First of all gods was fashioned Love”.

[178c] ‘So it is widely agreed that Love is the oldest of the gods, and he is also the source of our greatest blessings.³² For I certainly cannot say what greater blessing there can be for any man to have right from youth than a virtuous³³ lover,³⁴ or what can be better for a lover than a beloved boy³⁵ who is himself virtuous. For those feelings which ought to be the lifelong guide of men whose aim is to live a good³⁶ life cannot be implanted either by advantageous connexions or public honours or wealth or anything else so well as they are by[178d] love. And what are those feelings? Shame³⁷ at dishonourable³⁸ and pride³⁹ in honourable behaviour. Without these feelings it is not possible either for a state or for an individual to do any noble or great work. Therefore I declare that if any man who is in love were to be revealed doing something dishonourable or submitting dishonourably to someone without defending himself, because of cowardice, he would not find it as painful to be seen by his father or his friends or anyone like that as he would to be seen by his beloved.[178e] Clearly the same is true in the case of the beloved, that he feels particularly ashamed if ever he is seen by his lovers to be involved in something dishonourable. If only some means might be found for a state or an army to consist of pairs of lovers, there would be no better people to run their country, for they would avoid any act that brought disgrace and would compete with each other in winning honour.[179a] Moreover they would be victorious over virtually every other army, even if they were only few in number, as long as they fought side by side. Certainly a man in love who deserted his post or threw away his arms would mind less being seen by the whole world than by his beloved; sooner than this he would choose to die a thousand deaths. And as for abandoning his beloved or failing to go to his aid in danger – no one is so cowardly that he cannot be inspired to courage⁴⁰ by Love himself, to be the equal of the man who is very courageous⁴¹ by nature.[179b] It is exactly as Homer describes a god ‘breathing might’ into some of the heroes:⁴² in just the same way Love provides from his own being this inspiration for those in love.

‘There is another point. Only those in love⁴³ are prepared to die for one another, women as well as men. Every Greek will find sufficient evidence for this claim in the example of Alcestis, the daughter of Pelias. She was the only person willing to die for her husband even though he had a father and a mother still living.[179c] She so much surpassed them in devotion⁴⁴ because of her love⁴⁵ that she made them look like strangers to their own son, related to him only in name. When she had actually given up her life for him, so noble did it seem not only to men but also to the gods, that they sent back her soul⁴⁶ from the Underworld. Out of the many that have done great deeds, she is one of very few who have been granted this privilege; yet the gods sent back her soul because of their great admiration for what she did.[179d] So they too pay particular honour to the zeal and courage⁴⁷ that come from love. In the case of Orpheus, however, the son of Oeagrus, they sent him back from the Underworld without achieving his object: they showed him only a phantom of the wife he had come to recover, and did not give her back to him in the flesh, because they thought he lacked spirit; he was only a lyre-player and did not dare actually to die, as Alcestis did, for the sake of love. Instead he contrived to enter the Underworld while he was still alive. So, because of this they punished him, and brought about his death at the hands of women.

[179e] ‘Achilles, the son of Thetis, however, they honoured and sent to the Isles of the Blest.⁴⁸ For when he found out from his mother that if he killed Hector he too would die, but if he did not kill him he would return home and live to old age, he nevertheless dared to make the choice of standing up for his lover Patroclus⁴⁹ and avenging him; thus he also died, and died for his sake.[180a] (Aeschylus actually talks nonsense when he asserts that it was Achilles who was the lover of Patroclus: Achilles was not only more beautiful than Patroclus but also more beautiful than all the rest of the heroes, and still beardless; and according to Homer he was much younger.⁵⁰) As a consequence the gods, out of extreme admiration, honoured Achilles to an exceptional degree for having such a high regard for his lover. Although the gods show particular honour to the kind of excellence that comes from passionate love,[180b] it is those cases where the beloved shows his devotion⁵¹ to his lover rather than the other way round that they appreciate and admire more and reward more generously, because a lover has a god within him and he is thus more akin to the divine than the beloved. This is why the gods paid more honour to Achilles than to Alcestis and sent him to the Isles of the Blest.

‘These are my reasons, then, for saying that Love is the oldest of gods and most worthy of honour, and most powerful in helping men achieve excellence and happiness⁵² both during life and after death’.

[180c] This was, roughly speaking, the speech Phaedrus made, according to Aristodemus, and after him there were some other speeches which Aristodemus did not altogether remember. Passing over these he related next the speech of Pausanias.

‘It seems to me, Phaedrus, that our subject has not been set out in the right way’, said Pausanias. ‘I mean that we have simply been told to deliver an encomium on Love, just like that. If there were only one Love it would be all very well, but in fact that is not the case: Love is not single, and that being so it is better to state first of all which sort of Love should be praised.[180d] I shall therefore try to put this right by first explaining which Love is the one to be praised, and then by praising the god in the way he deserves.

‘We all know that Aphrodite is always accompanied by Love. If there were only a single Aphrodite there would only be a single Love. But since there are two Aphrodites there must be two Loves also. And it cannot be denied that there are two goddesses. One, older obviously, is the daughter of Uranus and had no mother, and we call her “Heavenly⁵³ Aphrodite”; the younger is the child of Zeus and Dione and we call her “Common⁵⁴ Aphrodite”.[180e] It follows then that the Love who works with the latter Aphrodite should correctly be called “Common Love” and the other “Heavenly Love”.

‘All the gods deserve our praise, but however that may be, what I have to do now is describe the sphere of activity that is the concern of each of the two Loves. To begin with, it is true of every activity that it is in itself neither right nor wrong.⁵⁵ [181a]Take what we are doing now, drinking or singing or talking. None of these activities is right in itself; the manner of its doing decides how it will turn out. Only if it is done in the right and proper way is it right; if not, it is wrong. Now, the same is true of loving and of Love: not every Love is right and deserves our praise,⁵⁶ only the Love who directs us to love in the right way.

‘The Love who belongs to Common Aphrodite is truly common and engages in his activity as opportunity offers. [181b]This is the Love that inferior people experience. In the first place men of this sort love women quite as much as boys,⁵⁷ and secondly, their bodies more than their souls, and thirdly, the stupidest people possible, since they have regard only for the act itself and do not care whether it is rightly done or not. Hence their activity is governed by chance, and as likely to be bad as good. The reason is that the Common Aphrodite, with whom this Love is associated, is far younger than the other Aphrodite, and because of her parentage she has characteristics[181c] both of the male and of the female.

‘However, the Love who accompanies the heavenly goddess (and who does not descend from the female but only from the male) is the love of boys, and that goddess is older and entirely free from wantonness.⁵⁸ Hence those who are inspired by this love incline to the male, preferring what has by nature more vigour and intelligence. Moreover, even among men who love younger members of their own sex it is possible to recognise those who are motivated purely by this heavenly love,[181d] in that they do not love boys before the stage when their intelligence begins to develop, which is near the time when they begin to grow a beard. I believe that those who wait until then to embark on a love affair are prepared to spend their whole life with this individual and to live in partnership with him. They will not take him at a time when he is young and inexperienced, and then deceive him, contemptuously leaving him and running off to someone else.

‘There ought really to be a law against starting a love affair with mere boys, to prevent a great deal of effort being spent on something of uncertain outcome, because with young boys it is uncertain how well or badly in body or soul⁵⁹ they will turn out.[181e] Good men of course lay down this rule for themselves of their own accord, but some similar restriction should be imposed on those lovers of the common sort, just as we prevent them as far as we can from having love affairs with free-born women.⁶⁰ [182a]It is men like these who have given rise to disapproval and caused some people to go so far as to state that gratifying⁶¹ lovers is wrong, but their disapproval is based on the ill-judged and improper behaviour of this latter kind of lovers, since certainly no activity that is carried on in a decent and lawful manner can justly be called blameworthy.

‘Now, in many states their conventional attitude to love has been defined in straightforward terms and is consequently easy to understand, but the attitude here in Athens, and also in Sparta,⁶² is complex. [182b]In Elis and Boeotia⁶³ and wherever men are not skilled in argument, they simply have a rule that it is fine to gratify lovers, and no one young or old would say that it was wrong. The reason is, I suppose, that, not being good speakers, they want to spare themselves the trouble of trying to win over young men with persuasive speech. However, in much of Ionia and elsewhere, and in the Persian empire generally, the conventional view is that gratifying lovers is wrong.⁶⁴ The Persians condemn it, as they also condemn philosophy and going to gymnasia,⁶⁵ because their form of government is tyranny.⁶⁶[182c] I imagine it does not suit the rulers that high aspirations or ties of friendship and loyalty should arise among their subjects, and these are the emotions which are likely to be produced by love more than by anything else. This is the painful lesson which our tyrants here in Athens learned, since it was the love of Aristogiton for Harmodius and the latter’s unwavering devotion in return that put an end to their rule.⁶⁷ Thus in places where it has been established as wrong to gratify lovers,[182d] this attitude exists because of the moral failings of those who established it: ruthless self-interest in the rulers, and cowardice in the ruled. But where the practice is simply thought to be fine, this attitude exists because of the laziness of mind⁶⁸ of those who established it.

‘Compared with this our laws and customs here in Athens have been laid down to much better effect, but as I was saying they are not easy to understand. Think about it. It is said to be finer to conduct a love affair openly rather than secretly, and especially with the noblest and best individuals, even if they are less good-looking than some. Again, it is said that the degree of encouragement given by everyone to the lover is astonishing, which does not suggest he is about to do something disgraceful. If he succeeds in his aim people think it is to his credit;[182e] only if he fails is it a disgrace. When the lover in his attempt to win his beloved performs extraordinary acts our custom deems his actions praiseworthy, though if anyone else were to dare to behave in this way in the pursuit of any other aim and with anything other than this in view, he would incur[183a] the strongest disapproval.

‘If a man wanted to get money from someone, for example, or gain a political office or some other position of power, just imagine him being willing to do the kind of things that lovers do to woo their beloved: begging him with supplications and entreaties, swearing oaths, sleeping in his doorway, willingly enduring the kind of slavery even a slave would not put up with. Friends and enemies alike would prevent him from acting in this way, his enemies jeering at his obsequiousness and servility,[183b] his friends remonstrating with him and feeling embarrassed by his actions. But when it is a lover doing all these things people find his behaviour quite charming, and our custom allows him to act as he does without reproach, the assumption being that he is engaged in some splendid enterprise. The strangest thing of all is that when a lover swears an oath and breaks it – at least this is what people say – he and he alone is forgiven by the gods, for an oath sworn in passion, they say, has no validity.

[183c] ‘So, as the convention here in Athens has it, a lover is granted complete licence by both gods and men. Accordingly one might suppose that, in this city, being in love or showing affection towards a lover are regarded as splendid for both parties.

‘On the other hand, consider how fathers put tutors in charge of their sons when the latter have attracted lovers, and instruct them not to let the sons speak to their lovers. Consider also how the boys’ peers and friends jeer at them if they see anything of the sort going on, and their elders do nothing to prevent or rebuke the jeering[183d] as they would if what was being said was out of order. Anyone seeing all this would surely conclude that, contrary to what he thought before, behaviour of this kind is regarded here as very wrong indeed. But the truth is, I think, as I said at the start, that it is not a simple matter. The practice is neither right in itself nor wrong in itself, but it is right if it is done in the right way and wrong if it is done in the wrong way. It is wrongly done to gratify a bad man, or gratify in a bad way, and it is rightly done to gratify a good⁶⁹ man, or gratify in the right way.

‘The bad man is the lover of the common sort, the one who loves the body rather than the soul.[183e] He is not constant, because the thing he loves is not constant. As soon as the physical bloom that he fell in love with begins to fade, “he flits away and is gone”,⁷⁰ revealing the worthlessness of his protestations and promises. But the lover who loves a virtuous character remains constant for life, because he is joined with that which remains constant.

[184a] ‘Now, our custom here in Athens aims to put both classes of lovers well and truly to the test, the good to be gratified, the bad shunned. Accordingly the lover is encouraged to pursue but the beloved to run away, because then a competition or test is set up which will reveal to which of the two classes the lover and the beloved respectively belong. This is the reason why, in the first place, we consider it shameful for the beloved to be won over by a lover too quickly: time should elapse, for after all, time seems to be a good test of most things. Secondly, we also consider it shameful for him to be won over by money or political influence, and this is the case[184b] both if he is subjected to threats and submits without resisting, and if he is treated kindly with financial or political inducements and fails to reject these with contempt. For neither situation seems to offer lasting security, quite apart from the fact that no true friendship can develop on that basis.

‘So, according to our custom only one method is left by which the beloved can gratify his lover in the right way. I have already explained how here in Athens we accept it as customary for lovers willingly to endure[184c] any form of slavery for the sake of a beloved without being reproached for obsequiousness. There is one other form of voluntary slavery – but only one – which we also accept and which is beyond reproach. This is the slavery that is directed to excellence. We take the view that if someone is willing to devote himself to another person in the belief that through that person he will become a better man himself in some kind of wisdom⁷¹ or in any other part whatever of excellence,⁷² then this kind of voluntary slavery is not wrong, nor is it obsequiousness. It is necessary therefore that these two customs – the one to do with loving boys, the other with pursuing wisdom⁷³ and the other parts of excellence – should exist[184d] each in the appropriate partner if it is going to turn out to be right for the beloved to gratify the lover. For then, when a lover and his beloved come together, each will have his own principle.⁷⁴ The lover will believe that by being of service in any way to the beloved who has gratified him he will be justified in so serving him. The beloved will believe that by helping in any way the one who is making him wise and good he too will be justified in so helping him. Thus the lover will be able to contribute to his beloved’s understanding⁷⁵ and excellence in general,[184e] and the beloved will seek to acquire these qualities for his education and his wisdom in general. Therefore, when these two principles exist and are directed to the same end, then and only then does it come about that it is right for a beloved to gratify his lover; otherwise, not.

‘In this circumstance, even being deceived is not shameful, but in all other cases gratification brings shame on the beloved whether he is deceived or not. For if the beloved, believing his lover to be rich, gratifies him for the sake of money,[185a] but is deceived and gets no money because the lover turns out to be poor, it is still shameful because a beloved like that seems to reveal his true character. He shows that he is prepared to do any service to anyone for the sake of money, and this behaviour is not right. By the same token, if a beloved gratifies a lover on the grounds that the man is good and that he himself will become a better person through that man’s love, but is deceived and the man turns out to be bad and devoid of excellence, in this case his being deceived is a noble error.[185b] This beloved too seems to have made clear his own character, but he shows that he is keen to do anything for anybody for the sake of excellence and becoming a better person, and this is the noblest thing of all. Thus it is entirely right to gratify a lover when it is for the sake of excellence. This is the love that belongs to the heavenly goddess, and it is itself heavenly and of great value to the state and to individuals alike, since it compels the lover to take great care with regard to his own excellence and the beloved to do the same.[185c] But all other kinds of love belong to the other goddess, the common one.

‘This is my contribution, Phaedrus, the best I can deliver on the spur of the moment, on the subject of Love’.

Pausanias came to a pause⁷⁶ (those experts in rhetoric⁷⁷ teach me to speak in this balanced way). Aristodemus said that it was Aristophanes’ turn to speak, but either through over-eating or for some other reason he had an attack of hiccups and could not do so.[185d] The doctor Eryximachus was reclining on the next couch, so Aristophanes turned to him. ‘You are just the person, Eryximachus,⁷⁸ either to put a stop to my hiccups or to speak instead of me until I stop myself’.

‘I will do both’, replied Eryximachus. ‘I will speak in your place, and you can speak in mine when you have recovered. If in the course of my speech you hold your breath for a while and your hiccups are disposed to stop, all well and good. But if that fails, gargle with water.[185e] However, if the hiccups are very persistent, find something to tickle your nose with and make yourself sneeze. If you do this once or twice even the most obstinate case will stop’.

‘Start speaking now’, said Aristophanes, ‘and I shall do what you say’. So Eryximachus began to address them.

‘Well now, Pausanias made a good start to his speech but failed to end it adequately,[186a] so I think that I have to try to give it a proper conclusion. It seems to me that Pausanias is right in distinguishing two kinds of Love; but the fact is that Love influences not only human souls⁷⁹ in response to physical beauty,⁸⁰ he has influence on all other things and on their responses as well. Love pervades the bodies of all animals and all that is produced in the earth, which means that Love pervades virtually everything that exists. All this is something I feel I have observed from my own profession of medicine,[186b] and I know how great and wonderful the god is and how his influence extends over all things both human and divine.

‘I shall start by speaking about medicine, in order to give pride of place to that profession.⁸¹ It is the nature of bodies to have these two kinds of Love in them. As everyone agrees, bodily health and bodily sickness are different and unlike things, and when things are unlike the objects of their love and desire are unlike also. So love in the healthy body is one thing, and love in the unhealthy body is quite another. Now, Pausanias was saying a moment ago that it is right to gratify good men and wrong to gratify the immoral,[186c] and so it is with the body. It is right and, indeed, obligatory to gratify the good and healthy parts; that is what we call medicine. It is wrong to gratify the bad and diseased parts, and one truly versed in the practice of medicine will refuse to do so. In brief, medicine is knowledge of the influence of love on the body in respect of repletion and depletion;⁸² and the man with the best medical knowledge is the one who can distinguish the right from the wrong kind of love in these processes.[186d] And the man who knows how to bring about change so as to convert the one into the other, and who also knows how to implant love where it is required and remove it where it is not, is a skilful practitioner.⁸³ In fact he must be able to reconcile the most hostile elements in the body and make them love⁸⁴ one another. The most hostile are the extreme opposites, hot and cold, bitter and sweet, dry and moist, and so on.[186e] It was because he knew how to impart love and unanimity to these opposites that our forebear Asclepius founded our profession,⁸⁵ or so say the poets – like those here⁸⁶ – and I believe them. Medicine therefore is, as I say, entirely directed by this god,[187a] as are gymnastic training and agriculture also.

Now, it is obvious to anyone who gives even the slightest thought to the matter that the same reconciliation of opposites applies in music. This perhaps is what Heraclitus meant,⁸⁷ although his actual wording is not accurate; for he says of “the One”⁸⁸ that “it is in agreement while being in disagreement with itself, like the harmony⁸⁹ of the taut bow or the lyre”. However, to speak of a harmony as being in disagreement with itself, or as existing when it is composed of elements still in disagreement, is quite absurd. But perhaps what he meant was that harmony is created out of elements, namely the high and the low, that were originally in disagreement but were subsequently brought into agreement through the art of music.[187b] For of course harmony could not arise out of the elements high and low while they were still in disagreement, because harmony is concord and concord is a kind of agreement, and agreement is impossible between elements that are in disagreement as long as they remain in that state. It is impossible to create harmony where instead of agreement there is disagreement. The same is true of rhythm. Rhythm is created when elements which were originally in disagreement, namely the fast and the slow,[187c] are subsequently brought into agreement. Here it is music that creates agreement in all these things by implanting mutual love and unanimity between the different elements, just as in the previous case it was medicine. Music too, therefore, is knowledge of the influence of love, in this case in respect of harmony and rhythm.

‘Now, in the construction of harmony and rhythm there is no difficulty in discerning the influence of love, and love as a duality is not as yet in evidence here. But when it is a case of employing [187d] rhythm and harmony in real life, either when creating new music, that is to say in composition, or when making correct use of tunes and metres that already exist, that is to say in education,⁹⁰ at this point difficulties arise and there is need of a skilful practitioner. We return yet again to the same theme, that it is the well-ordered⁹¹ individuals, including those who, while not yet well-ordered, will be helped by love to become so, who should be gratified, and their love safeguarded. Theirs is the beautiful, the heavenly Love, the Love that comes from the muse Urania.⁹²[187e] But the other Love, the common one, comes from Polymnia, and should be used, if at all, with caution, so that the pleasure he brings may be enjoyed but no licentiousness implanted. Similarly, in my own profession, it is no small effort to deal properly with the appetites stimulated by cookery in order that the pleasure this brings may be enjoyed without ill effect. So, in music, in medicine and in every thing else, human as well as divine, one must, so far as possible, watch out for both kinds of Love; for they are both present.[188a]

‘Even the seasons of the year have a full measure of both kinds of Love in their composition. When the elements I was mentioning just now, hot and cold, dry and wet, enjoy the advantage of orderly love in their relations with one another, they achieve a harmony and a blending in the right proportions.⁹³ Then they bring abundance and well-being not only to humans but to all other animals and plant life, and do no harm. But whenever the other, violent sort of Love gains control of the seasons, he causes much destruction and harm.[188b] This is when plague and many other abnormal diseases tend to appear and afflict animals and plants. Frost, hail and blight arise from excess or disorder in the balance of such erotic influences. It is the knowledge of the relationship of these things to the movements of the heavenly bodies and the seasons of the year which we call astronomy.

‘Furthermore, all sacrifices and all matters that are the province of seers – that is to say, all the ways in which gods and men have dealings with one another –[188c] are entirely concerned with either the safeguarding or the cure of Love. For if, instead of gratifying and honouring the moderate Love and giving him pride of place in every enterprise, people honour the other Love, then every kind of impiety, towards parents living or dead as well as towards the gods, is likely to result. Indeed divination has been charged with the task of watching out for those who have this sort of love, and curing them. Divination is also the agent which brings about good relations between gods and humans[188d] because it knows what aspects of love in people’s lives have an effect on correct religious behaviour.

‘This is how great, how mighty, in short how complete the power of Love is in all his aspects. But it is the Love who is concerned with the good and finds fulfilment in it in company with temperance and justice, whether here on earth or among the gods, who has the greatest power and gives us all our happiness. It is he who enables us to associate and be friends with one another and with the gods, our masters.[188e]

‘Well now, I too may have passed over many things in my praise of Love, but if so it was not deliberate. If I have omitted anything it is up to you, Aristophanes, to fill the gap. However, if you have it in mind to praise the god in some other way, then proceed, and praise him, since you have got rid of your hiccups’.

[189a] Aristodemus said that Aristophanes duly took his turn. ‘The hiccups have certainly stopped’, he said, ‘though not before I applied the sneezing cure. It surprises me that the good order⁹⁴ of one’s body desires the kind of ticklings and noises that make up a sneeze. When I resorted to sneezing the hiccups stopped immediately’.

‘Watch what you are saying, my dear Aristophanes’, said Eryximachus. ‘If you play the fool beforehand[189b] you force me to look out for more jokes during your speech as well, when you could speak without interruption’.

Aristophanes laughed and replied, ‘Well said, Eryximachus, and please forget I spoke. There is no need for you to be on the look-out, because I am anxious enough on my own behalf about what I am going to say. My fear is not of being funny – that would be a bonus and very suitable for one of my profession – but of being ridiculous’.

‘You think you’ll get away with your barbed remarks, Aristophanes’, Eryximachus said. ‘But be careful and do not say what you cannot justify later.[189c] Then perhaps I will decide to let you off’.

‘In fact, Eryximachus’, said Aristophanes. ‘it is my intention to take a different line from you and Pausanias. It is my belief that people have entirely failed to understand the power of Love, for if they had understood they would have erected the greatest temples and altars to him and would offer up the largest sacrifices. As it is, nothing of the sort is done for him, though he deserves it more than anyone else. For he is the most benevolent of gods to humankind,[189d] our helper and the healer of those ills whose cure would bring the greatest happiness to the human race. I am going to try to explain his power to you all, and then you in your turn can teach everyone else. In the first place you have to understand the nature of our human anatomy and what it has undergone. Once upon a time⁹⁵ our anatomy was quite different from what it is now. In the first place there were not merely two sexes as there are now, male and female,[189e] but three, and the third was a combination of the other two. This sex itself has disappeared but its name, androgynous, survives. At that time the androgynous sex was distinct in form and name, having physical features from both the male and the female, but only the name now exists, and that as a term of insult.⁹⁶

‘Secondly, the form of every person was completely round, with back and sides making a circle, and with four arms, the same number of legs, and two faces exactly alike[190a] set on a round neck. There was one head for the two faces (which looked in opposite ways), four ears, two sets of genitals and everything else as you might guess from these particulars. They walked about upright, as we do today, backwards or forwards as they pleased. Whenever they wanted to move fast they pushed off from the ground and quickly wheeled over and over in a circle with their eight limbs, like those acrobats who perform cartwheels by whirling round with their legs straight out.

‘The reason for the sexes[190b] being as they were and three in number is that originally the male was the offspring of the Sun, the female of the Earth, and the androgynous of the Moon,⁹⁷ which shares the nature of both Sun and Earth. Because they resembled their parents the offspring themselves were round and their movement was circular also. They were awesome in strength and might, and their ambition was great too. They made an assault on the gods, and what Homer says about Ephialtes and Otus⁹⁸ is said about these too, that they tried to make an ascent to heaven[190c] in order to attack the gods.

Zeus and the other gods deliberated about what they should do but found no solution. They could hardly kill them and annihilate the whole race with thunderbolts as they had the giants, for then they would be putting an end also to the worship and sacrifices they received from human beings, but neither could they put up with their insolence. After much hard thought Zeus delivered his conclusion. ‘I think I have a plan’, he said, ‘that will allow humans to exist but at the same time put an end to their outrageous behaviour by making them weaker.[190d] For the present I shall split each one of them in half, and that will make them weaker, and at the same time they will be more useful to us by being greater in number. They will walk upright on two legs, and if they persist in their insolence and refuse to keep quiet I will split them in half again, and they will have to hop about on one leg only’.

So saying he proceeded to cut everyone in two, just as people cut up sorb-apples[190e] for preserving or slice eggs with a hair. As he divided them he told Apollo to take each separated half and turn round the face and half neck to the cut side, so that each person by contemplating its own cut surface might behave more moderately. He also told Apollo to heal their wounds. So Apollo proceeded to turn the faces round and gathered the skin all together on the belly, as we now call it, like a purse with a drawstring, leaving one opening in the centre which he fastened with a knot, and which is now called the navel. He also smoothed out [191a]most of the wrinkles and fashioned the chest, using a tool such as shoemakers use when they smooth out wrinkles in leather on the last. But he let a few wrinkles remain, around the belly and navel, to be a reminder of what happened ages ago.

‘After the original nature of every human being had been severed in this way, the two parts longed for each other and tried to come together again. They threw their arms around one another in close embrace, desiring to be reunited,[191b] and they began to die of hunger and general inactivity because they refused to do anything at all as separate beings. Whenever one of the two died and the other was left alone, the survivor would look for another mate to embrace, either the half of an original woman, as we now call it, or the half of a man. But in any case they were beginning to die out until Zeus took pity on them and thought up another plan: he moved their genital organs round to the front. Up until then they had their genitals on (what was originally) the outside of their bodies,[191c] and conception and birth took place not in the body after physical union but, as with cicadas,⁹⁹ in the ground. By moving their genitals round to the front, Zeus now caused them to reproduce by intercourse with one another through these organs, the male penetrating the female. He did this in order that when couples encountered one another and embraced, if a man encountered a woman, he might impregnate her and the race might continue, and if a man encountered another man, at any rate they might achieve satisfaction from the union and after this respite turn to their tasks and get on with[191d] the business of life.

‘So it is that ever since that far-off time, love¹⁰⁰ of one person for another has been inborn in human beings, and its role is to restore us to our ancient state by trying to make unity out of duality and to heal our human condition. For each of us is a mere tally¹⁰¹ of a person, one of two sides of a filleted fish, one half of an original whole. We are all continually searching for our other half. Those men who are sliced from originals which comprised both sexes (formerly called androgynous) are lovers of women, and most adulterers originate from this sex, as do adulteresses and all women who are lovers of men.[191e] Women who are sliced from the wholly female sex are not at all interested in men but are attracted towards other women, and female homosexuals come from this original sex. Men who are sliced from the wholly male original seek out males, and being slices of the male, while they are still boys they feel affection for¹⁰² men and take pleasure in lying beside or entwined with them.[192a] In youth and young manhood this sort of male is the best because he is by nature the most manly.¹⁰³ Some people say such males are without shame, but that is not true. They do what they do not out of shamelessness but out of confidence, courage and manliness, and they embrace that which is like themselves. And there is good evidence for this in the fact that only males of this type, when they are grown up, prove to be the real men in politics. Once they reach manhood, they become lovers of boys and are[192b] not naturally inclined to marry or produce children, though they are compelled by convention. They are quite content to live out their lives with one another and not marry. In short, such a male is as a boy a lover of men, and as a man a lover of boys, always embracing his own kind.

‘Now, whenever a lover of boys, or anyone else for that matter, meets his own actual other half, the pair are overcome to an extraordinary degree by sensations of affection,¹⁰⁴ intimacy¹⁰⁵ and love,¹⁰⁶[192c] and they virtually refuse to be parted from each other even for a short time. These are the couples who pass their whole lives together; yet they could not say what it is they want from one another. For no one would suppose it to be only the desire for love-making that causes the one to yearn for the other so intensely. It is clear that the soul of each wants something else which it cannot put into words[192d] but it feels instinctively what it wants and expresses it in riddles. If the god Hephaestus, welding tools in hand, were to stand over them where they lie together, and ask, “What is it that you two want from each other?” they would be unable to answer. Suppose he were to ask them again, “Is this your desire,¹⁰⁷ to be always together, as close as possible, and never parted from each other day or night? If this is what you want, I am ready to join you together and fuse you until, instead of two, you become one.[192e] For your whole lives long the two of you will live together as one, and when you die you will die together and even in the Underworld you will be one rather than two. Tell me if this is what you long for¹⁰⁸ and if it will satisfy you to achieve this”.

‘We know that no one who heard these words would deny them or would admit to wanting anything else. He would simply think that to join with and melt into his beloved, so that instead of two they should become one, was exactly what he had so long desired. The reason is that our nature was originally like this and we were a whole, and the desire and pursuit of the whole is called love.[193a] In the past, as I say, we were one, but at the present time through our wrongdoing we have been made by Zeus to live apart, as the Arcadians have been by the Spartans.¹⁰⁹ And if we are not well-behaved¹¹⁰ towards the gods, the fear is that we may be split up once more and go around looking like the people you see in profile on monuments, sawn in half along the line of the nose, or like the half-dice used as tallies.¹¹¹ For this reason we should all promote reverence towards the gods in all things so as to avoid the fate we do not want[193b] and obtain the one we do want, taking Love as our guide and our leader. No one should oppose Love (and he opposes him whoever is the enemy of the gods¹¹²). For if we become friends and make our peace with the god then we shall find and join our own particular beloved, which happens rarely at the present time.

‘I hope Eryximachus won’t treat my speech as comedy and take it that I am alluding to Pausanias and Agathon. It may be that those two really do belong to this category[193c] and are both wholly male in origin, but I am actually talking about men and women everywhere when I say that if we were to achieve that perfect love in which each of us meets his own beloved and so returns to his original state, then the human race would be happy. If this would be the best outcome of all, it follows that in the present circumstances what comes nearest to this ideal is best; that is, to find a beloved who is after one’s own heart. If we are to praise the god who brings this about then it is[193d] Love that by rights we should praise. It is Love who in the present confers on us the greatest benefit by leading us to that which is nearest to ourselves, and for the future gives us high hopes that if we show reverence to the gods, he will restore us to our original state, and heal us and make us blessed and happy.

‘This is my speech about Love, Eryximachus’, Aristophanes concluded, ‘and very different from yours. As I asked you, please do not treat it as funny, but let us listen to what all the remaining speakers have to say, or rather, the other two: only Agathon and Socrates are left’.

[193e] ‘I shall heed what you say’, said Eryximachus (according to Aristodemus). ‘In fact I found your speech most enjoyable. If I were not well aware that Socrates and Agathon are experts on the subject of love I should be very worried in case they would find nothing to say in view of the wide variety of things that have been said already. As it is, though, I am quite confident’.

[194a] ‘That is because you have already made your own successful contribution, Eryximachus’, said Socrates. ‘If you were where I am now, or rather, where I shall be perhaps, when Agathon too has made a splendid speech, you would be very worried indeed and in the state of panic I am in now’.

‘Your praise, Socrates, has a wicked purpose’, said Agathon. ‘You want to make me lose my head at the thought of the audience having high expectations of a great speech from me’.

[194b] ‘But I saw your assurance and confidence’, Socrates replied, ‘when you went on to the platform with the actors and looked straight ahead at that huge audience without being in the least perturbed, and just before your own plays were to be performed too. I should have to be extremely forgetful to think you would lose your head now at the thought of a few people like us’.

‘What do you mean, Socrates?’ said Agathon. ‘Surely you don’t think me so obsessed by the theatre as not to realise that, to anyone with any sense, a small but thoughtful audience is far more terrifying than a large and thoughtless one?’

[194c] ‘Of course not, Agathon’, he said. ‘In your case I couldn’t possibly think anything so crass. I know very well that if you were faced with people you considered intelligent¹¹³ you would take more notice of them than of the general public. But after all, we too were there in the theatre and were part of the general public, so perhaps we are not these select few. However, if you did come across other people who were intelligent, you might well feel ashamed in front of them if you thought perhaps you were doing something wrong – what do you say?’

‘You’re right’, he said.

‘But in the case of the general public, you would not feel ashamed in front of them if you thought you were doing something wrong?’

[194d] At this point, Aristodemus said, Phaedrus interrupted. ‘My dear Agathon’, he said, ‘if you answer Socrates it won’t matter to him any more if our arrangement comes to nothing so long as he has someone to talk to, especially someone good-looking. I enjoy hearing him talk myself but I also have to think about the encomium to Love and see that I get a speech from every one of you. So when the two of you have each rendered your due to the god, then you may have your discussion’.

[194e] ‘Quite right, Phaedrus’, said Agathon. ‘There is nothing to prevent me making my speech, and there will be many future opportunities to talk to Socrates.

‘I wish first to explain how my speech should proceed, and then to proceed with my speech.¹¹⁴ All the earlier speakers seem to me not to have been eulogising the god but felicitating humans on the good things of which he is the source. But no one has described the nature of him [195a]who has bestowed these good things. Since the only proper way to make a eulogy of anyone is to describe first his nature and then the nature of the good things of which he is the source, so in the case of Love it is right for us to praise first his nature and then his gifts. Now, it is my contention that of those happy beings, the gods, the happiest of all – if they will allow me to say so without taking offence – is Love, because he is supreme in beauty and goodness.¹¹⁵ He is the most beautiful in the following ways. First, Phaedrus, he is the youngest of the gods,¹¹⁶[195b] and he himself provides good evidence for what I say, for by his speed he outstrips old age, and everyone knows how fast old age advances; at any rate it comes upon us faster than it should. Love has a natural hatred of old age and never approaches anywhere near it. He always consorts with the young – “like goes with like”, the old saying is right – so he is young himself. Therefore, much as I agree with Phaedrus in general, I cannot agree with him that Love is more ancient than those deities, Cronus and Iapetus.[195c] I say he is the youngest of the gods, and eternally young, and those bygone events among the gods which Hesiod and Parmenides relate, if they were telling the truth, happened through Necessity and not Love. For there would have been no castrations of gods or binding in chains or any other use of force if Love had already been among them. There would instead have been amity¹¹⁷ and peace, as there is now, ever since Love has held sway over them.

‘So, Love is young, and as well as being young he is tender. But[195d] he lacks a poet like Homer who can demonstrate his tenderness, as Homer does for Ate when he says that she is both a goddess¹¹⁸ and tender – or her feet at least are tender:¹¹⁹

“Tender are her feet, for not on the ground does she set them,

But stepping on the heads of men she makes her way”.

He seems to me to give clear evidence of her tenderness when he says that she does not walk on what is hard but only on what is soft,[195e] and we will use the same sort of evidence to show that Love too is tender. For Love does not walk on the ground, nor does he walk on the heads, for heads after all are not so very soft, but in the softest things there are he moves and lives, for he has set up his dwelling in the characters and souls of gods and humans. But not in every soul that presents itself, for whenever he encounters a soul with a hard and inflexible character he departs, but whenever he finds a soft character, there he lodges. Since he always fastens on to the softest of soft parts with his entire being, he must be very tender himself.[196a] So, then, he is very young and very tender, and he is supple in form as well. For if he were hard and inflexible he would not be able to enfold his object completely nor to pass unnoticed through the entire soul as he enters and leaves. Good evidence of his lithe and supple form is his gracefulness, which all agree Love possesses to an exceptional degree. For gracelessness and Love are always at war. Love spends his time among flowers: that is the reason for the beauty of his complexion. But where there is no bloom of body or soul or of anything else, or where the bloom has withered,[196b] there Love does not alight; but where there is a place full of flowers and fragrance, there he settles and remains.

‘Concerning, then, the beauty of the god, though much remains unsaid, that must suffice. It is concerning the virtue¹²⁰ of Love that I must now speak. The most important thing is that Love does no injustice either to god or man, and no injustice is done to him either by man or god. Anything done to him is not done by force, and when he acts he does not act by force: force and Love have nothing to do with each other.[196c] For everyone is in all things the willing servant of Love, and whatever is agreed to by voluntary consent, “the laws, the city’s king”¹²¹ declare to be just.

‘In addition to justice, Love possesses self-control¹²² in very large measure. For all agree that self-control means overcoming pleasures and desires, and also that no pleasure is stronger than Love. If, then, pleasures are weaker, they will be overcome by Love, and Love will overcome them, and if Love overcomes pleasures and desires, he must be exceptionally self-controlled.

‘As for bravery,[196d] against Love “not even Ares can stand firm”.¹²³ For that god of war does not hold Love captive: Love has captured Ares – love of Aphrodite that is to say – or so the story¹²⁴ goes. He who holds captive is stronger than the one who is captured. And he who overcomes the bravest of all others must be himself the very bravest.

‘Now, I have spoken about the justice and self-control and bravery of the god; it remains for me to speak about his wisdom,¹²⁵ and I must try as best I can not to fall short in my attempt. In the first place let me say that the god is a skilful poet – in order that I too, like Eryximachus, may pay honour to my craft¹²⁶–[196e] and he is also able to make another person a poet too. At any rate, at his touch every man becomes a poet “though formerly unvisited by the Muse”.¹²⁷ This we can properly take as evidence that Love is a skilful creator in virtually every form of artistic creation; for no one could give or teach another something which he does not possess or know himself.[197a] And who will deny that it is by the wisdom of Love that all living things are begotten and born? Do we not know that in the practice of a craft any man who has this god for a teacher will turn out to be brilliant and famous, while the man untouched by Love will remain obscure? Similarly it was under the guidance of love and desire¹²⁸ that Apollo discovered archery and medicine and divination, so that he too[197b] can be called a pupil of Love. So also the arts¹²⁹ of the Muses, the metal-work of Hephaestus, the weaving of Athena and Zeus’s governance of gods and men were all learnt by those gods under the tutelage of Love. Thus the particular interests of the gods were established only when Love had been born among them, love of beauty obviously, since there is no love of ugliness. Before that time, as I said at the start, many terrible deeds were done among the gods, so the story goes, under the rule of Necessity. But ever since this god was born, from the love of the beautiful every good thing for gods and men has come into existence.

[197c] ‘So it is my belief, Phaedrus, that Love is not only supreme in beauty and goodness himself but is also the source of beauty and goodness in all other things. Indeed, I feel I must speak about him in verse and say that it is he who creates

Peace among humankind, windless calm on the open sea,

Rest for the winds and sleep in sorrow.

[197d]‘It is Love who takes from us our sense of estrangement and fills us with a sense of kinship; who causes us to associate with one another as on this occasion, and at festivals, dances and sacrifices is the guiding spirit. He imparts gentleness, he banishes harshness; he is lavish with goodwill, sparing of ill-will; he is gracious and kindly; viewed with admiration by the wise and with wonder by the gods; coveted by those with no share of him, precious to those whose share is large; the father of luxury, delicacy, glamour, delight, desire and longing. He looks after good and cares nothing for bad; in toil, in fear, in longing, in discourse, [197e] he is steersman, defender, comrade and saviour without compare, who confers order¹³⁰ upon gods and humans alike, the finest and best guide, whom every man should follow, singing beautiful hymns in his honour, taking part in the song he sings to enchant the minds of all gods and humans alike.

‘This, then, Phaedrus, is my speech, to be offered up to the god. I have made it playful in part but moderately serious too, to the best of my ability’.

[198a]Aristodemus said that when Agathon finished speaking all the guests burst into applause, and everyone thought that the young man had spoken in a manner worthy of the god and of himself. Socrates turned to Eryximachus.

‘Well, son of Acumenus, do you still think that my earlier fears were unfounded? Was I not a true prophet when I said just now that Agathon was going to deliver a brilliant speech and that I should be left with nothing to say?’¹³¹

‘As far as Agathon’s speech is concerned’, replied Eryximachus, ‘I accept that you spoke like a true prophet, but as for your having nothing to say, I think not’.

[198b] ‘My dear man’, exclaimed Socrates, ‘how can I or anyone else not be left feeling that he has nothing to say, when he has to follow a discourse of such beauty and variety! The earlier parts were wonderful of course, but it was the final passage which must have stunned every listener with the beauty of its language. As I reflected that I would not be able to give a speech myself anywhere near as fine, I almost turned tail with shame – or would have done so if I could have escaped. The speech reminded me[198c] of Gorgias, so much so that I had the Gorgon experience as in Homer:¹³² I was afraid Agathon would conclude his speech by challenging mine with the eloquence of Gorgias, that brilliant orator, and – like the Gorgon – would turn me into stone, unable to utter a word. It was then I realised what a fool I had been in agreeing with you to take my turn and[198d] deliver a eulogy of Love, and in saying I was an expert on the subject of love, despite, as it turned out, knowing nothing about how to compose a eulogy of anything. For in my naivety I thought I had only to speak the truth about the subject of the eulogy. This should be the foundation, I thought, and on the basis of the facts one selected the finest examples and arranged them to best effect. Assuming, then, that I knew the true way to eulogise, I even felt confident that I was going to speak well. But actually, as it now appears, this is not the way to deliver a[198e] eulogy at all. Instead one should attribute to the subject the greatest and finest qualities possible whether they are truly there or not, and if what one says is not true, that doesn’t matter. It now seems that the original proposal was not that each of us should really praise Love but that we should give the appearance¹³³ of doing so. This is the reason, I believe, that when you people attribute various qualities to Love, you go through all the stories that are told about him, and then declare that he is like this or like that and is the source of this good thing or that, in order to make him appear a paragon of beauty and goodness. This is obviously effective in the case of the ignorant,[199a] but surely not to those who know. And your praise certainly sounds fine and impressive. However, it seems I did not know how to make a eulogy, and it was in ignorance that I agreed to take my turn to eulogise. “My tongue it was that swore; my mind is not under oath”.¹³⁴ Goodbye to my promise! I don’t intend to eulogise in that way (for I could not do it); but if you like I am prepared to tell the[199b] truth about Love in my own fashion, though not in competition with your speeches; I do not want to be a laughing-stock. Phaedrus,¹³⁵ you might find out whether there is any call for a speech that entails listening to the truth about Love, spoken in whatever words and phrases happen to come into my head at the time’.

According to Aristodemus, Phaedrus and the others told Socrates to speak exactly as he thought he should.

‘Then there is still one thing more, Phaedrus’, said Socrates. ‘Would you let me ask Agathon a few trivial questions, so that I can get his agreement on some points and then make my speech on that basis?’

[199c] ‘Of course’, said Phaedrus. ‘Ask away’. After that, according to Aristodemus, Socrates began at roughly the following point.

‘I certainly thought you began your speech in the right way, my dear Agathon, when you said you had first to demonstrate what kind of being Love is, and then to proceed to his characteristic activity.¹³⁶ That is the sort of beginning I very much approve of. And since you have already described in magnificent style what he is like, please tell me this further thing: is Love such that he is love of something,[199d] or is he love of nothing? (I don’t mean “of” as in the question, “Is Love the child of some particular mother or father?”¹³⁷ The question whether Love is love of a mother or father in that sense would be ridiculous.) But suppose I asked you about the essential meaning of the word “father”, and whether “father” was a father of something or not. To give the right answer you would surely reply that “father” was a father of a son or of a daughter. Isn’t that so?’

‘Of course’, said Agathon.

‘And you would say the same in the case of a mother?’ Agathon agreed.

[199e] ‘Then perhaps you wouldn’t object to answering a few more questions’, said Socrates, ‘so that you will understand better what I have in mind. If I were to ask you, “What about the essential meaning of ‘brother’: is ‘brother’ a brother of something or is he not?”’ Agathon said he was.

‘Of a brother or a sister?’

‘Yes’.

‘Now’, said Socrates. ‘apply the same test to love. Is Love love of something or is he love of nothing?’

‘Certainly Love is love of something’.

[200a] ‘Well then, keep this¹³⁸ in your mind, remembering what it is that Love is love of’, said Socrates, ‘and for now tell me this: does Love desire¹³⁹ that thing which he is love of, or not?’

‘Certainly he desires it’.

‘And does he desire and love it when he has in his possession that thing which he desires and loves, or when he does not have it?’

‘Probably when he does not have it’, said Agathon.

‘Now, instead of saying “probably”’, said Socrates, ‘consider whether it isn’t necessarily true that that which desires, desires what it lacks,[200b] or, put another way, there is no desire if there is no lack. That seems to me, Agathon, an inescapable conclusion. What do you think?’

‘It seems so to me too’.

‘Very good. So, would a man who was tall wish¹⁴⁰ to be tall, or a man who was strong wish to be strong?’

‘From what has just been agreed that is impossible’.

‘Exactly, because someone who has these attributes would not be lacking in them’.

‘True’.

‘But suppose’, said Socrates, ‘that a man who was already strong also wished to be strong, or a fast runner also wished to be fast, or a healthy man healthy: in these and all similar cases you might perhaps imagine that people who are like this and have[200c] these particular attributes also desire to have the attributes they have (and I am saying all this because I don’t want us to get the wrong idea). If you think about it, Agathon, it must be the case that these people already possess their respective attributes whether they want to or not, and why would they also desire to have what they have? Therefore, when someone says, “I am healthy and I wish to be healthy”, or “I am rich and I wish to be rich”, or, “I desire exactly what I have”, we will say to him,[200d] “My friend, you already possess wealth (or health or strength). What you really wish for is the continuing possession of these things in the future, for at the moment you have them whether you wish it or not”. When you say, “I desire what I already have”, consider whether you don’t actually mean, “I wish I may continue to have in the future what I already have at present”. Surely our friend would agree?’ Aristodemus said that Agathon assented.

Socrates went on, ‘So, then, he desires the possession and presence in the future of those things which he has at present. But isn’t this equivalent to loving that thing which is not yet available to him and which he does not yet have?[200e]

‘Certainly it is’.

‘Then this man and everyone who feels desire, desires what is not in his possession or presence, so that what he does not have, or what he is not, or what he lacks, these are the sorts of things that are the objects of desire and love. Isn’t this so?’

‘Certainly’.

‘Well now’, said Socrates, ‘let us sum up our conclusions so far. Isn’t Love, first, of something, and, secondly, of something that he lacks?’

[201a] ‘Yes’.

‘On this basis, then, please recall what you said in your speech that Love was love of. I will remind you if you like. I think you said something like this, that the interests of the gods were established by reason of their love of beautiful things; for there is no love of ugly things, you said.¹⁴¹ Didn’t you say something like this?’

‘Yes I did’.

‘And reasonably enough, Agathon’, said Socrates. ‘And if this is the case, then surely Love is love of beauty and not of ugliness?’

Agathon agreed.

[201b] ‘And we have already agreed that what he loves is what he lacks and does not possess?’

‘Yes’.

‘Then the conclusion is that what Love lacks and does not have is beauty’.

‘That must be true’.

‘And do you call a thing beautiful which lacks beauty and does not possess it in any respect?’

‘Certainly not’.

‘Then if this is so do you still say that Love is beautiful?’

To this Agathon replied, ‘Socrates, it rather looks as though I understood nothing of what I was saying at the time’.

[201c] ‘You spoke very well,¹⁴² Agathon. Just one more small thing – doesn’t what is good also seem to you beautiful?’

‘Yes’.

‘So if Love is lacking in what is beautiful, and what is good is beautiful, then he will also be lacking in what is good’.

‘Socrates, I cannot argue against you, so let it be as you say’.

‘There is no difficulty in arguing against Socrates, beloved Agathon; what you cannot argue against is the truth. But it is time I let you go.

[201d] ‘Now I shall recount to you all a discourse about Love which I once heard given by a woman from Mantinea, who was called Diotima.¹⁴³ She was an expert¹⁴⁴ on that subject and on many other subjects too. There was one occasion in particular, before the plague,¹⁴⁵ when she procured for the Athenians, after they had performed sacrifices, a ten-year postponement of that disease. She it was who taught me the whole subject of love, and it is the things she had to say about it that I shall try to recount to you, starting from the conclusions that Agathon and I reached together but speaking now on my own as best I can. As you demonstrated, Agathon, one should first define who[201e] Love is and what he is like, before talking about his characteristic activity.

‘I think it will be easiest to proceed as did my visitor from Mantinea with me on that occasion, by question and answer. I said much the same sort of things to her as Agathon said to me just now, that Love was a great god and that he was love of what is beautiful. She set about refuting¹⁴⁶ me with those arguments that I have just used against Agathon, demonstrating that according to my own account Love was neither beautiful nor good.

‘And I protested. “What do you mean, Diotima? Are you actually saying Love is ugly and bad?”

“Watch what you say!” she exclaimed. “Do you really think that if something is not beautiful it has to be ugly?”

[202a] “I certainly do”.

“And something that is not wise is ignorant, I suppose? Have you not noticed that there is something in between wisdom¹⁴⁷ and ignorance?”

“And what is that?”

“Correct belief.¹⁴⁸ I am talking about having a correct belief without being able to give a reason for it. Don’t you realise that this state cannot be called knowing – for how can it be knowledge¹⁴⁹ if it lacks reason? And it is not ignorance either – for how can it be ignorance if it has hit upon the truth? Correct belief clearly occupies just such a middle state, between wisdom¹⁵⁰ and ignorance”.

“That is true”, I said.

[202b] “Don’t then insist that what is not beautiful has to be ugly, and what is not good has to be bad. Similarly with Love. When you yourself admit that Love is not good and not beautiful that is no reason for thinking he has to be ugly and bad. He is something between the two”.

“At any rate surely everyone agrees that he is a great god”.

“By ‘everyone’, she went on, “do you mean all who know, or do you include those who are ignorant?”

“I mean absolutely everyone”.

‘Then she laughed.

“How could Love be acknowledged to be[202c] a great god by those who say he is not a god at all?”

“Who are they?” I asked.

“Why, you for one, and I for another”.

“How can you say that?” I demanded.

“Easily”, she replied. “Answer me this. Don’t you say that all gods are happy and beautiful? Would you go so far as to say that any god was not?”

“No, by Zeus, I would not”.

“And don’t you mean by the happy those who are in possession of what is good and beautiful?”

“Certainly”.

[202d] “Yet in the case of Love you have agreed that it is through his lack of good and beautiful things that he desires those very things he lacks?”

“Yes, I have”.

“So how could one be a god who has no portion of what is beautiful or good?”

“Not possibly, as it now appears”.

“Do you see then”, she said, “that you also do not believe that Love is a god?”

“In that case”, I said, “what might Love be? Is he mortal?”

“No”.

“What then?”

“As in the previous instances”, she said, “something in between mortal and immortal”.

“What is he then, Diotima?”

[202e] “He is a great spirit,¹⁵¹ Socrates. All spirits are intermediate between god and mortal”.

“What is the function of a spirit?” I asked.

“Interpreting and conveying all that passes between gods and humans: from humans, petitions and sacrificial offerings, and from gods, instructions and the favours they return. Spirits, being intermediary, fill the space between the other two, so that all are bound together into one entity. It is by means of spirits that all divination can take place, the whole craft of seers and priests, with their sacrifices,[203a] rites and spells, and all prophecy and magic. Deity and humanity are completely separate, but through the mediation of spirits all converse and communication from gods to humans, waking and sleeping, is made possible. The man who is wise in these matters is a man of the spirit,¹⁵² whereas the man who is wise in a skill¹⁵³ or a manual craft,¹⁵⁴ which is a different sort of expertise, is materialistic.¹⁵⁵ These spirits are many and of many kinds, and one of them is Love”.

“And who are his father and mother?” I asked.

“That is quite a long story”, she said, “but I will tell you all the same.[203b] When Aphrodite was born,¹⁵⁶ all the gods held a feast. One of those present was Poros¹⁵⁷ (Resource), whose mother was Metis¹⁵⁸ (Cleverness). When the feast was over, Penia (Poverty) came begging, as happens on these occasions, and she stood by the door. Poros got drunk on the nectar – in those days wine did not exist – and having wandered into the garden of Zeus was overcome with drink and went to sleep. Then Penia, because she herself had no resource, thought of a scheme to have a child by Poros, and accordingly she lay down beside him and became pregnant with[203c] a son, Love. Because Love was conceived during Aphrodite’s birthday feast and also because he is by his nature a lover of¹⁵⁹ the beautiful, and Aphrodite is beautiful, he has become her follower and attendant.

“However, since he is the son not only of Poros but also of Penia, he is in this position: he is always poor and, far from being the tender and beautiful creature that most people imagine, he is in fact hard and [203d]rough, without shoes for his feet or a roof over his head. He is always sleeping on the bare ground without bedding, lying in the open in doorways and on the street, and because he is his mother’s son, want is his constant companion. But on the other hand he also resembles his father, scheming to get what is beautiful and good, being bold and keen and ready for action, a cunning hunter, always contriving some trick or other, an eager searcher after knowledge,¹⁶⁰ resourceful, a lifelong lover of[203e] wisdom,¹⁶¹ clever with magic and potions, and a sophist.¹⁶² His nature is neither that of an immortal nor that of a mortal, but in the course of a single day he will live and flourish for a while when he has the resources, then after a time he will start to fade away, only to come to life again through that part of his nature which he has inherited from his father. Yet his resources always slip through his fingers, so that although he is never destitute, neither is he rich. He is always midway between the two, just as he is between wisdom and ignorance.

[204a] “The truth of the matter is this. No god pursues wisdom or desires to be wise because gods are wise already, and no one who is wise already pursues wisdom. But neither do ignorant people pursue wisdom or desire to be wise, for the problem of ignorance is this, that someone who is neither fine and good¹⁶³ nor wise¹⁶⁴ is still quite satisfied with himself. No one desires what he does not think he lacks”.

“But who then are those who pursue wisdom, Diotima”, I asked, “if they are neither the wise nor the ignorant?”

[204b] “Even a child would know the answer to that by now”, she replied. “It is those who are in between, and Love is one of them. For wisdom is a most beautiful thing, and Love is love of¹⁶⁵ the beautiful, so Love must be a philosopher,¹⁶⁶ and a philosopher is in a middle state between a wise man and an ignorant one. The reason for this too lies in his parentage: he has a father who is wise and resourceful, and a mother who is neither.

“This, then, is the nature of that particular spirit, my dear Socrates. But there was nothing surprising in the view you held yourself about the nature of Love. “Judging from what you say, [204c]I think you believed that Love was that which is loved, not that which loves. This is the reason, I suppose, why Love appeared to you to be supremely beautiful. But in fact the one which is really beautiful and delicate, flawless and endowed with every blessing, is the beloved object, while the one which loves is by contrast of an entirely different character, such as I have just described”.

“All right, Diotima”, I replied. “You are very persuasive. If Love is as you say, what need does he supply in the lives of people?”

[204d] “That is the next thing I will try to teach you, Socrates”, she said. “I have just described Love’s nature and parentage. Also, he is love of beautiful things, according to you. But what if someone asked us, ‘What does it mean, Socrates and Diotima, to say that Love is love of beautiful things?’ Or to put it more clearly: what does the lover¹⁶⁷ of beautiful things actually desire?¹⁶⁸

“To possess them”, I replied.

“But your answer raises yet another question: what will he gain by possessing beautiful things?”

‘I said I certainly could not give a ready answer to that question.

[204e] “Well”, she said, “suppose one changed the question and asked about the good instead of the beautiful: ‘Come now, Socrates, what does the lover of good things actually desire?’”

“To possess the good things”, I replied.

“And what will he gain if he possesses them?”

“Ah, that is an easier question to answer: he will be happy”.

[205a] “Yes”, she replied. “The happy are happy through the possession of good things, and there is no need to ask further why anyone wishes to be happy. That answer seems to have brought the matter to a conclusion”.¹⁶⁹

“True”, I said.

“About this wish, this desire – do you think it is common to all? Do all humans wish always¹⁷⁰ to possess good things, or what?”

“Yes”, I replied, “it is as you say a wish common to all”.

“Why is it, then, Socrates, that if in fact all people always love the same things[205b] we do not describe all people as being in love, instead of saying that some are and that others are not?”

“I wonder about that myself”, I replied.

“There is no need to wonder”, she said. “The reason is that we are picking out one particular kind of love and giving it the name which applies to all, but for the other kinds of love we use different names”.

“Can you give me another example?” I asked.

“Yes, there is this one. You realise that the word ‘poetry’ [originally meant ‘creation’ and that ‘creation’]¹⁷¹ is a term of wide application. When something comes into existence which has not existed before, the whole cause of this is ‘creation’.[205c] The products of every craft are creations and the craftsmen who make them are all creators”.¹⁷²

“That is so”.

“But you also know”, she went on, “that they are not all called creators. They have other names, and only that one part of creation which is separated off from the rest and is the part that is concerned with song and verse is called by the original name of the whole class, which is poetry, and only those to whom this part of creation belongs are called poets”.

“That is so”.

[205d] “Well, the same is true of love. In general the truth is that for everyone, all desire for good things and for being happy¹⁷³ is ‘guileful and most mighty love’.¹⁷⁴ People who turn to love in one of its many other forms – money-making or athletics or philosophy – are not then called ‘lovers’ or said to be ‘in love’. It is only those who ardently pursue one particular form who attract those terms which should belong to the whole class: they alone feel ‘love’, or are ‘in love’, or are ‘lovers’.

“You are very probably right”, I said.

[205e] “Yes, and you will hear it said that lovers are people who are looking for their own other half. But what I say, my friend, is that love is not directed towards a half, or a whole either, unless that half or whole is actually something good, since people are quite prepared to have their own hands or feet amputated if they believe that these parts of themselves are diseased. So it is not, I think, part of themselves that people cling to, unless there is someone who calls what belongs to him and is his own the good and what does not belong to him the bad.[206a] The fact is that the only thing people love is the good. Do you think there is anything else?”

“By Zeus, there is nothing else”, I said.

“Well then”, she went on, “can we say without qualification that people love the good?”

“Yes”, I replied.

“But shouldn’t we add that what they love is that the good should be theirs?”

“We should”.

“And not only that”, she said, “but that the good should always be theirs?”

“Yes, we must add that too”.

“Then we can sum up”, she said. “Love is the desire to possess the good always”.

“That is very true”.

[206b] “Then since this is always what love is”, she said, “can you tell me how those who pursue it go about it? What are they doing that the zeal and drive they show can be called love? What does this activity¹⁷⁵ really consist of? Can you say?”

“If I knew the answer, Diotima”, I replied, “I wouldn’t be so admiring of you for your wisdom, or coming to you to learn these very things”.

“Then I shall tell you”, she said. “It is giving birth in the beautiful, in respect of body and of soul”.

“I need an interpreter to tell me what you mean”, I said. “I don’t understand”.

[206c] “Then I shall speak more clearly”, she replied. “All human beings are pregnant,¹⁷⁶ Socrates, in body and in soul, and when we reach maturity it is natural that we desire to give birth. It is not possible to give birth in what is ugly,¹⁷⁷ only in the beautiful. I say that because the intercourse of a man and a woman¹⁷⁸ is a kind of giving birth. It is something divine, this process of pregnancy and procreation. It is an aspect of immortality in the otherwise mortal creature, and it cannot take place in what is discordant.[206d] Now, the ugly is not in accord with anything divine, whereas the beautiful accords well. So at this birth Beauty takes on the roles of Fate and Eileithyia.¹⁷⁹ For this reason, whenever the pregnant being approaches the beautiful, it is in favourable mood. It melts with joy, gives birth and procreates. In the face of ugliness, however, it frowns and contracts with pain, and shrivelling up it fails to procreate, and it holds back its offspring in great suffering. This is the reason why, for a pregnant being now ready to give birth, there is much excitement at the presence[206e] of the beautiful because its possessor will deliver the pregnant one from great pain. For the object of love, Socrates”, she said, “is not, as you think, simply the beautiful”.

“What, then?”

“It is procreating and giving birth in the beautiful”.

“All right”, I said.

“It certainly is”, she replied. “But why is the object of love procreation? Because procreation is a kind of everlastingness and immortality for the mortal creature, as far as anything can be.[207a] If the object of love is indeed everlasting possession of the good, as we have already agreed, it is immortality together with the good that must necessarily be desired. Hence it must follow that the object of love is also immortality”.

‘All these things Diotima taught me on the occasions when she spoke about love. On one occasion she asked me, “What do you think, Socrates, is the cause of this love and desire? Do you not notice what a state all beasts are in, birds as well as four-footed animals, when they feel the desire to procreate? All sick and in the grip of love,[207b] they are concerned first for copulation and then for rearing the offspring, and they are ready to fight it out on their behalf, the weakest against the strongest, even to the death, worn out themselves by hunger in the attempt to feed them, yet ready to do whatever else is necessary. One might suppose that humans do these things because they reason about it. But animals – what cause is there for them to be so affected by love? [207c]Can you tell me why?”

‘Again I replied that I did not know. She retorted, “And do you suppose you will ever become expert on the subject of love if you are not going to think about this matter?”

“But Diotima, as I said just now, it is precisely because I recognise that I need teachers that I have come to you. Just tell me the reason for this and for everything else to do with love”.

“Well then”, she said, “if you believe that love is by its nature directed towards that thing which we have agreed upon many times, you should not be surprised. For in the animal world and among humans the same explanation applies, that mortal nature[207d] seeks as far as it can to exist for ever and to be immortal. But the only way it can achieve this is by continual generation,¹⁸⁰ the process by which it always leaves behind another new thing to replace the old. Consider the time when any living thing is described as being alive and being the same individual – as a man, for example, is said to be the same person from childhood until old age. Although he is referred to as the same person, he never keeps the same constituents; he is always being renewed, while things like hair, flesh, bones, blood – in fact the entire body – are constantly passing away.[207e] This happens not only in the body but also in the soul. A soul’s habits, characteristics, beliefs, desires, pleasures, pains, fears, none of these things ever remain constant in an individual, but some are always coming into being while others pass away. Stranger still is the situation with the various branches of our knowledge.¹⁸¹[208a] Not only do they too come and go, so that we do not remain the same in the case of them either, but it is also true of each single thing we know. Consider what we call revising or practising.¹⁸² We do this because knowledge leaves us. Forgetting is the loss of knowledge, and revising, by implanting a fresh memory in place of the one that is departing, preserves our knowledge so that it seems to be the same. In this way everything mortal is preserved, not by remaining entirely the same for ever, which is the mark of the divine,[208b] but by leaving behind another new thing of the same kind in the place of what is growing old and passing away. By this means, Socrates”, she said, “what is mortal-body and every creature else-partakes of immortality; but what is immortal does so differently. So do not be surprised that everything naturally values its own offspring. This universal zeal and love is for the sake of immortality”.

I was surprised to hear this speech. “Well now, Diotima”, I said. “I know you are very wise, but is this really how things are?”[208c] Like the perfect sophist¹⁸³ she replied: “Believe me, Socrates. You have only to look at humankind’s love of honour and you will be surprised at your absurdity regarding the matters I have just mentioned, unless you think about it and reflect how strongly people are affected by the desire to become famous and ‘to lay up immortal glory for all time’.¹⁸⁴ For the sake of this they are prepared to run risks even more than for their children – spend their money, endure any kind of suffering, even die in the cause. Do you suppose”,[208d] she went on, “that Alcestis would have died to save Admetus, or Achilles would have sacrificed his life to avenge Patroclus, or your Athenian king Codrus would have perished before his time for the sake of his sons’ succession, if they had not thought that the memory of their virtue,¹⁸⁵ which indeed we still have of them, would be immortal? Far from it”, she said. “I think that it is for the sake of immortal fame¹⁸⁶ and this kind of glorious reputation¹⁸⁷ that everyone strives to the utmost, and the better they are the more they strive:[208e] for they desire what is immortal.

“Those whose pregnancy is of the body”, she went on, “are drawn more towards women, and they express their love through the procreation of children, ensuring for themselves, they think, for all time to come, immortality and remembrance and happiness in this way. But [there are]¹⁸⁸ those whose pregnancy is of the soul – those who are pregnant in their souls even more than in their bodies,[209a] with the kind of offspring which it is fitting for the soul to conceive and bear. What offspring are these? Wisdom¹⁸⁹ and the rest of virtue,¹⁹⁰ of which the poets are all procreators, as well as those craftsmen who are regarded as innovators. But by far the most important and beautiful expression of this wisdom is the good ordering¹⁹¹ of cities and households; and the names for this kind of wisdom are moderation and justice.

“When someone has been pregnant in soul with these things from youth[209b] and is of the right age but unmarried,¹⁹² he now feels the desire to give birth and procreate. He too, I think, goes about looking for the beautiful in which to procreate; for he will never procreate in the ugly. In his pregnant state he welcomes bodies that are beautiful rather than ugly, and if he comes across one who has a beautiful, noble and gifted soul as well, then he particularly welcomes the combination. In the presence of this person his words immediately flow in abundance about virtue and about[209c] the qualities and practices that make for a good man, and he embarks on his education. For I think that by attaching himself to the beautiful and associating with it, which he will be keeping in mind even when absent, he gives birth to and procreates the offspring with which he has long been pregnant, and in company with that other share in nurturing what they have created together. The result is that such a couple have a much closer partnership with each other and a stronger tie of affection than is the case with the parents of mortal children, since the offspring they share in have more beauty and immortality. For anyone who looked at Homer and Hesiod and all the other great poets would envy them because of the kind of offspring they have left behind them, and would rather be the parent of children like these, who have conferred on their progenitors immortal glory and fame,[209d] than of ordinary human children.

“For another example”, she said, “look at the sort of children Lycurgus¹⁹³ left behind in Sparta to be the salvation of Sparta and, one might say, of Greece itself. And Solon¹⁹⁴ too is honoured by you Athenians as the procreator of your laws, and other men[209e] are similarly honoured in many other places in Greece and beyond, who by their many fine achievements have procreated virtue of every kind. Many sacred cults have been set up in their honour because of the nature of those children, but none has ever yet been set up because of mortal children.

“These are aspects of the mystery of love¹⁹⁵ that perhaps you too, Socrates, might be initiated into.[210a] But for the final initiation and revelation, to which all this has been merely preliminary for someone on the right track, I am not sure if you have the capability. However I will do my utmost to explain to you, and you must try to follow if you can.

“A person who would set out on this path in the right way must begin in youth by directing his attention to beautiful bodies, and first of all, if his guide is leading him aright, he should fall in love with the body of one individual only, and there procreate beautiful discourse. Then he will realise for himself that the beauty of any one body is [210b]closely akin to that of any other body, and that if what is beautiful in form¹⁹⁶ is to be pursued it is folly not to regard the beauty in all bodies as one and the same. When he has understood this he should slacken his intense passion for one body, despising it and considering it a small thing, and become a lover of all beautiful bodies.

“After this he will realise that the beauty in souls¹⁹⁷ is more to be prized than that in the body. If therefore someone’s soul is good even if his physical attraction is slight, that will be enough for him, and he will love and care for that person, and seek out and give birth to the kind of discourse[210c] that will make young men better people. As a consequence he will be compelled to contemplate the beautiful as it exists in human practices and laws, to see that the beauty of it all is of one kind, and to realise that what is beautiful in a body is trivial by comparison.

“After this his guide must lead him to contemplate knowledge in its various branches, so that he can see beauty there too, and looking at what is now a wide range of beauty he is no longer[210d] slavishly content with the beauty of any one particular thing, such as the beauty of a young boy or some other person, or of one particular practice, and will not become petty and small-minded through this kind of servitude. Instead he will turn towards the vast sea of the beautiful and while contemplating it he will give birth to many beautiful, indeed magnificent, discourses and thoughts in a boundless love of wisdom until there, strengthened and invigorated, he discerns a unique kind of knowledge, which is knowledge of a beauty whose nature I will now describe.[210e] And please try to pay attention as closely as you can”, she went on.

“Anyone who has been guided to this point in the study of love and has been contemplating beautiful things in the correct way and in the right sequence, will suddenly perceive, as he now approaches the end of his study, a beauty that is marvellous in its nature – the very thing, Socrates, for the sake of which all the earlier labours were undertaken. What he sees is, in the first place, eternal;[211a] it does not come into being or perish, nor does it grow or waste away. Secondly, it is not beautiful in one respect and ugly in another, or beautiful at one time and not at another, or beautiful by one standard and ugly by another, or beautiful in one place and ugly in another because it is beautiful to some people but ugly to others. Nor, again, will the beautiful appear to him as a face is beautiful or hands or any other part of the body, nor like a discourse or a branch of knowledge or anything that exists in some other thing, whether in a living creature or in the earth or the sky[211b] or anything else. It exists on its own, single in substance¹⁹⁸ and everlasting. All other beautiful things partake of it, but in such a way that when they come into being or die the beautiful itself does not become greater or less in any respect, or undergo any change.

“Now, whenever someone starts to ascend from the things of this world through loving boys in the right way, and begins to discern that beauty, he is almost in reach of the goal. And the correct way for him to go, or be led by another,[211c] to the things of love,¹⁹⁹ is to begin from the beautiful things in this world, and using these as steps, to climb ever upwards for the sake of that other beauty, going from one to two and from two to all beautiful bodies, and from beautiful bodies to beautiful practices, and from beautiful practices to beautiful kinds of knowledge,²⁰⁰ and from beautiful kinds of knowledge finally to that particular knowledge which is knowledge solely of the beautiful itself, so that at last he may know what the beautiful itself really is.[211d] That is the life, my dear Socrates”, said the visitor from Mantinea, “which most of all a human being should live, in the contemplation of beauty itself”.

“If ever you see that beauty, it will not seem to you to be comparable with gold or dress or those beautiful boys and young men who now drive you and many others to distraction when you see them. If only you could see your beloveds and be with them all the time you would be prepared – if only it were possible – to go without food and drink, and do nothing but gaze at them and be with them. What, then, do we suppose it would be like”, she said, “for someone actually to see [211e]the beautiful itself, separate, clear and pure, unsullied by the flesh or by colour or by the rest of our mortal dross, but to perceive the beautiful itself, single in substance and divine? Do you think”, she continued, “that a person[212a] who directs his gaze to that object and contemplates it with that faculty by which it has to be viewed,²⁰¹ and stays close to it, has a poor life? Do you not reflect”, she went on, “that it is there alone, when he sees the beautiful with that by which it has to be viewed, that he will give birth to true virtue? He will give birth not to mere images of virtue but to true virtue, because it is not an image that he is grasping but the truth. When he has given birth to and nurtured true virtue it is possible for him to be loved by the gods and to become, if any human can, immortal himself”.

[212b] ‘Well, Phaedrus and all of you, these are the things that Diotima said to me, and I believe her. And since I believe, I am trying to persuade everyone else that in the attainment of this goal human nature could not easily find a better helper than Love. For this reason I declare for my part that every man should honour Love, and I myself honour the study of love and practise it to an exceptional degree. I urge everyone else to do likewise, and now and ever I praise the power and bravery of Love as best I can.[212c] So, Phaedrus, consider this speech, if you will, as my encomium to Love, or, if you prefer, call it whatever you please’.

With these words Socrates concluded his speech. Aristodemus said that everyone was praising it, and Aristophanes was trying to say something about the reference Socrates had made to his own speech, when suddenly there was a loud banging on the outside door. It sounded like a party of revellers, and[212d] they could hear a girl playing the aulos. ‘Go and see who it is’, said Agathon to the servants, ‘and if it is one of my friends, ask him in, but if not say that the drinking is over and we are calling a halt’.

Not long after, the voice of Alcibiades was heard in the courtyard; he was very drunk and shouting loudly, asking where Agathon was and demanding to be taken to Agathon. So Alcibiades was ushered in, supported by some of his[212e] attendants and the girl who played the aulos. He stood by the door, crowned with a bushy garland of ivy and violets and with an abundance of ribbons tied round his head. ‘Good evening, gentlemen’, he said. ‘Will you welcome as a fellow drinker a man already very drunk, or must I merely crown Agathon, which is what I came for, and then go away again? For I have to tell you’, he said, ‘I couldn’t come yesterday, but here I am now with ribbons on my head, to put this crown from my own head on to the head of the wisest and handsomest man, and proclaim him to be so. Will you[213a] laugh at me because I am drunk? You may laugh, but all the same I know my proclamation is true. But tell me straight away: do you agree to my terms? May I come in or not? Will you drink with me or not?’

Everyone shouted assent, telling him to come in and take a place, and Agathon invited him to join them. So in he came, escorted by his companions. Because he was simultaneously untying the ribbons in order to crown Agathon with them and had them in front of his eyes, he did not notice Socrates, who, catching sight of him, had moved over. [213b]Alcibiades sat down beside Agathon, between him and Socrates, and as he did so he embraced Agathon and crowned him.

‘Take off Alcibiades’ shoes’, said Agathon to the servants, ‘so that he can have the third place on the couch’.

‘Thank you’, said Alcibiades, ‘but who is this on my other side?’ As he spoke, he turned round and saw Socrates. At once he leaped up. ‘Heracles!’ he exclaimed, ‘What is this! You, Socrates? You were lying there to ambush me again, just as you[213c] used to do, making a sudden appearance in a place where I least expected you. Now what are you up to? And another thing, why are you on this particular couch? I notice you are not beside someone like Aristophanes who enjoys mockery too. No, you have schemed to take a place beside the best-looking man in the room’.

‘Agathon, keep him off, please’, cried Socrates. ‘I must say my passion for him has become quite a burden. From the moment I fell in love with[213d] him I have not been allowed to look at or talk to a single good-looking man, or if I do so this man here gets jealous and resentful and his behaviour is quite extraordinary – he hurls insults at me and all but hits me. Take care he doesn’t do something like this now. Do keep the peace between us, or if he tries to use force, protect me, because I am completely terrified by his mad obsession with being loved’.

‘No peace is possible’, said Alcibiades, ‘between the two of us, and I will take my revenge for these allegations later on. But as for now, Agathon, please give me[213e] back some of the ribbons to crown this man’s head too, this wonderful head of his, so that he cannot blame me for crowning you and not him. When it is a contest of words he beats every one else, not just once, like you the day before yesterday, but every time’. So saying he took some of the ribbons and crowned Socrates, and then took his place on the couch.

When he had settled himself he spoke again. ‘Well now, gentlemen, you seem to me to be quite sober. This must not be allowed; you have to drink. We have made an agreement. So for our master of ceremonies, until you have all drunk adequately, I elect – myself. Agathon, get someone to bring a really big cup, if you have one. No, there is no need. [214a]Boy, bring me that wine-cooler there’, he ordered, seeing that it held more than eight cotylae.²⁰² Having had this filled Alcibiades first drained it himself, then told them to fill it again for Socrates, saying as they did so, ‘In the case of Socrates, gentlemen, my trick is useless. However much you provide, he will drink it all and never be drunk’.

So the servant filled the wine-cooler again and Socrates was drinking from it when Eryximachus spoke. ‘How are we arranging things, then, Alcibiades?’ he asked. ‘Are we not going to have conversation or singing as the wine goes round? Are we simply[214b] going to drink like thirsty men?’

‘O Eryximachus’, said Alcibiades, ‘best son of the best and most sober²⁰³ father, my greetings to you’.

‘And the same to you. But what should we do?’

‘Whatever you say, and we must obey you. For “one learned leech is worth an army of laymen”.²⁰⁴ Therefore prescribe as you please’.

‘All right, then’, said Eryximachus. ‘Listen and I will tell you. Before you arrived we had decided that each of us should make as fine a speech as possible in praise of Love, going from left to right in turn[214c]. Since all the rest of us have spoken while you, on the other hand, have drunk all your wine but not yet spoken, you are entitled to speak, and afterwards you can give Socrates any instruction you like. He can do the same to the man on his right, and so on’.

‘That is all very well, Eryximachus’, said Alcibiades, ‘but for a drunken man to be in competition with the speeches of the sober is scarcely fair. And another thing, my[214d] dear friend: do you really believe what Socrates said just now? Do you realise that the truth is entirely the opposite of what he was saying? He is the one who starts hitting me if I try to praise anyone else, god or man, in his presence’.

‘Watch what you say!’ said Socrates.

‘By Poseidon!’ exclaimed Alcibiades, ‘You cannot deny that! I would never praise anyone else in your presence’.

‘In that case’, said Eryximachus, ‘go ahead if you want to, and praise Socrates’.

[214e] ‘What’s that?’ said Alcibiades. ‘Do you think I should, Eryximachus? Can I really take on this man and get my revenge in front of you all?’

‘Here, you, wait a bit!’ cried Socrates. ‘What do you have in mind? Will you praise me just for everyone’s amusement, or what?’

‘I shall speak the truth. Are you going to let me?’

‘If it is the truth I will certainly let you. In fact I insist on it’.

‘I will start at once’, said Alcibiades. ‘However, you must do this for me. If I say anything that is not true, please interrupt and tell me that I am mistaken, because I certainly do not intend to say what is untrue. [215a]On the other hand don’t be surprised if I get events mixed up when I try to remember them. It’s not all that easy for someone in my condition to list the particulars of your unusual nature fluently and in the right order.

‘The method of praising Socrates that I shall adopt, gentlemen, is to make comparisons. My subject here will perhaps think I am doing this for amusement but my comparisons will be for the sake of truth, not just to amuse. It is my contention that he is very like those sileni²⁰⁵ that you find in[215b] statuaries’ workshops which the craftsmen make holding pipes or auloi, and when you open them up you see that they contain small statues of the gods inside. I say also that he is like the satyr Marsyas in particular. Not even you, Socrates, could dispute the fact that you are like these creatures in appearance, and now you are going to hear how you are like them in other ways too. You treat people insolently.²⁰⁶ Isn’t that true? If you don’t admit it I will produce witnesses. But you are not an aulos-player, you say? Yes you are, and a much more[215c] amazing player than Marsyas. Marsyas used to charm everyone with his pipes through the power that came from his mouth, and we are still charmed today whenever we hear his music played. I say “his” because I ascribe to Marsyas the melodies that Olympus used to play, because it was Marsyas who taught Olympus. In the case of Olympus’s music, whether it is played by a great performer or by an ordinary aulos-girl, it takes hold of men in a unique way and, because of its divine origin, it reveals those who are in need of the gods and of initiation rites.²⁰⁷ Now you, Socrates, differ from Marsyas only in this: you achieve the same effect with simple prose rather than with pipes. For instance,[215d] when we hear someone holding forth on some topic or other, even if he is a very good speaker, he has virtually no effect on us. But whenever we hear you speaking or hear your words repeated by someone else, however mediocre the speaker may be, still we are all – woman, man or child alike – spellbound and entranced. In my own case, for example, were it not for the risk of sounding the worse for drink, I would have told you gentlemen on oath how I have been affected by this man’s words, and how I am still affected even now.[215e] Whenever I listen to him I am more upset than those driven to frenzy by the Corybantes.²⁰⁸ My heart pounds and tears flow, merely because of this man’s words, and I notice that very many others too are affected in the same way. When I used to listen to Pericles and other great orators I naturally thought they spoke well, but I was never affected to anything like the same extent. My soul wasn’t in turmoil, and I wasn’t disturbed by the thought that I was a slave to my way of living. But after listening to this Marsyas here I was[216a] very often reduced to thinking that being as I was, my kind of life was not worth living. And this, Socrates, you will not deny.

‘I am still very well aware that if I allowed myself to listen to him I would not be able to hold out and I would be affected in exactly the same way. For he compels me to admit that even with all my deficiencies I nevertheless take no care for myself, but instead I involve myself in the concerns of the Athenians. So I stop my ears to his Siren song and force myself to run away so as not to spend the rest of my life sitting here at his side.[216b] What I have felt in the presence of this one man is what no one would think I had it in me to feel in front of anyone, and that is shame. And it is only in front of him that I feel it, because I am well aware that I cannot argue against him or deny that I ought to do as he says. Yet when I leave him I am equally aware that I am giving in to my desire for honour from the public. So I skulk out of his sight like a runaway slave, and whenever I do see him I am ashamed of the admissions I have made to him. There have been many occasions[216c] when I would have been glad to see him disappear from the land of the living; but if that were to happen I know that I would be far more grieved than glad. The consequence is that I have no idea how to deal with this person.

‘That, then, is the effect that the music of this particular satyr has had on me and on many others as well. Now I am going to tell you the other ways in which he resembles those I have been comparing him with, and about the astonishing power that he has. Bear in mind that none of you really knows this man; but now that I have started, I will reveal[216d] him to you. What you see is a Socrates who is liable to fall in love with beautiful young men, is always in their company and is greatly taken by them. And then again he is also completely ignorant and knows nothing – so far as outward appearance goes. Is this not silenus-like? Of course it is. On the surface you see the moulded form of the silenus. But on the inside, once he has been opened up, you can’t imagine, my fellow-drinkers, how much self-control is to be found within. Believe me, he is not a bit interested in whether someone is good-looking, and in fact he despises good looks more than you would ever imagine[216e]. The same is true of wealth and every other mark of distinction that most people regard as a matter for congratulation. He considers that all these attributes are worthless and that we ourselves – I mean it – are of no account. He spends his whole life pretending ignorance²⁰⁹ and teasing people. But when he is in a serious mood and opened up I don’t know if anyone else has seen the statues he has inside, but I saw them once, and they seemed to me so divine and golden, so utterly[217a] beautiful and wonderful, that in brief I felt I had to do whatever Socrates told me to do.

‘So, when I thought he had become seriously interested in my youthful good looks, I considered this a godsend and a piece of amazing good fortune for me because it gave me the opportunity, in gratifying him, to hear from him everything he knew. For I was incredibly vain about my looks. Hitherto it had not been my practice to be with him alone and unaccompanied, but when I had formed my plan[217b] I started dismissing my attendant and I would be there in Socrates’ company by myself (I have to tell you the whole truth, so please pay attention and, Socrates, if I say anything false, challenge me). I would be alone with Socrates, by myself, no one else there. My assumption was that he would immediately have with me the kind of conversation any lover would have with his beloved when they were alone together, and I was delighted. But absolutely nothing like this happened. He would talk to me in his usual way, and after we had spent the day together he would take himself off.

‘Next, I invited him to exercise with me and we exercised together;[217c] and I hoped that I might at last get somewhere. So, we exercised together and wrestled together many times, when no one else was present. And guess what? I still made no progress. So, having achieved nothing by that manoeuvre, I decided I had to tackle the man head on and not give up now that I had started: I had to know how matters stood. So I sent him an invitation to dinner, exactly as a lover would do who had designs on his beloved. Not even then was he quick to reply, but he did, however, eventually accept. The first time he[217d] came he wanted to leave straight after dinner, and on that occasion, feeling embarrassed, I let him go. But the second time I had made my plan, and after dinner I kept him talking far into the night. When he wanted to leave, on the pretext that it was late I successfully pressed him to stay. He prepared to sleep on the couch next to mine, the one he had occupied at dinner, and no one other than the two of us slept in the room.

[217e]‘Now, up to this point in my story it has been perfectly all right for me to tell it to anyone. But you would not have heard from me what is coming next except that, as the proverb says, wine produces the truth – never mind the bit about the children²¹⁰ – and it seems to me unfair to pass over in silence a magnificently disdainful act of Socrates when I have embarked on a eulogy of him. Now, as you know, they say that anyone who has been bitten by a snake cannot bring himself to describe what it was like except[218a] to those who have had the same experience, for they are the only ones who will understand and make allowance for anything the victim did or said in his agony. I too am in that position, but in my case the bite I have suffered is even more painful, and I suffered it in the most sensitive part – the heart or the soul or whatever one is meant to call it. I have been struck and bitten by the things they talk about in philosophy, and when these get a hold on the soul of a young man of talent, they bite more cruelly than a snake, and there is nothing he will not do or say as a consequence. And now when I look at men like Phaedrus,[218b] Agathon, Eryximachus, Pausanias, Aristodemus and Aristophanes, not to mention Socrates himself and so many others – you have all shared in the madness and frenzy of philosophy, so you will all of you hear me out, and I know you will make allowance for what was done at that time and what is going to be said now. As for you servants and anyone else who is uninitiated and won’t appreciate my story, block up your ears.

[218c] ‘So, to continue the tale, gentlemen. After the lamp had been put out and the servants had left the room, I decided that I should no longer speak equivocally but should say straight out what I was thinking. So I nudged him and said, “Socrates, are you asleep?”

“No”, he replied.

“Do you know what I am thinking?”

“No, what?”

“I think”, I said, “that you alone are a worthy lover for me, and you appear to me to shy away from mentioning the fact. This is how I feel about it. I consider that it is very foolish of me not to gratify you in this or in any other way in which you might[218d] need help from my resources or from my friends. For me, nothing is more important than to become as good²¹¹ a person as possible, and I think no one would be better fitted to assist me in this aim than you. And I for my part would feel more ashamed at what intelligent men would say if I did not gratify a man such as you than at what the unintelligent public would say if I did gratify you”.

‘He listened to all this with his very characteristic air of assumed seriousness²¹², as he often does, and replied, “My dear Alcibiades, you really must be no ordinary man if what you say about me is actually true and there is in me[218e] a certain power through which you might become a better person. You must see in me an irresistible beauty vastly superior to the physical attractions you possess. But if on this basis you are trying to strike a bargain with me and trade your beauty for mine, then your intention is to win a considerable advantage over me. What you are trying to acquire is true beauty in return for apparent²¹³ beauty, in fact you intend to get ‘gold [219a]in exchange for bronze’.²¹⁴ But look more carefully, dear boy, in case I am actually worthless and you have not noticed. I tell you, mental perception becomes keener when the eyesight starts to fail, and you are still a long way from that”.’

‘Hearing all this I replied, “I have said what I have to say, and I have said exactly what I mean. Now you must decide what you think best for you and for me”.[219b] “That, certainly, is well said”, he replied. “At some time in the future you and I will both take stock and do whatever seems best to both of us about this and other matters”.

‘After this exchange, and having as it were shot my arrows in his direction, I thought I had scored a hit. So without waiting for him to say anything more I got up and putting my heavy cloak around him (it was winter), lay down beside him under his own short cloak and put my arms around him, this truly superhuman²¹⁵ and amazing man. This was how I lay all night long. Again,[219c] Socrates, you cannot deny that I am telling the truth. Yet despite all that, he completely defeated me, and despised and mocked and insulted²¹⁶ my beauty – and in that respect I really thought I was something, gentlemen of the jury (I call you that because it is you who will deliver a verdict on Socrates’ arrogant behaviour). I swear to you by all the gods and all the goddesses too that when I got up in the morning after spending the night with Socrates, nothing more had happened than if I had slept with my father or elder brother.

[219d] ‘After that what state of mind do you think I was in? On the one hand I considered that I had been slighted, but on the other I was full of admiration for his character and self-control and manly spirit. I had encountered such a person as I would never have expected to meet for wisdom²¹⁷ and steadfastness. Therefore I had no cause to be angry with him or to deprive myself of his company, but neither did I have a way to win[219e] him over. I was well aware that he was even less vulnerable to bribery than Ajax to the sword, and he had proved impervious to the one thing I thought might catch him. I was completely at a loss; no one was ever more in thrall to anyone than I was to this man.

‘Now all this had already happened when we went on active service together to Potidaea,²¹⁸ where we shared the same mess. The first notable thing was that he survived the hardships not only better than I did but better than everyone else. Whenever we were cut off from supplies and compelled to go without food, as happens on campaign, the rest were nowhere[220a] when it came to endurance. Yet when provisions were plentiful he was unique in his enjoyment of them; in particular, while he preferred not to drink, when compelled he beat everyone at it. And the most surprising thing of all, no living person has ever seen Socrates drunk. (On this point I rather think he will be put to the test before the night is out.) Anyhow, his endurance of the rigours of winter [220b](for the winters there are severe) was remarkable, especially on one occasion when the frost was at its worst. Everyone else stayed under cover, or if they did venture out they wrapped up to an unusual extent and put on footwear and then wound felt and fleeces round their feet. But in these conditions Socrates went out wearing only the kind of cloak he always wore, and with bare feet, yet he made his way over the ice more easily than the other soldiers did who were wearing shoes, and they looked at him suspiciously, because they thought he was showing them up.

‘So much, then, for[220c] that episode. There is another story that is worth hearing, “what a thing this was too that he did and endured, stalwart man”,²¹⁹ which happened while he was there on campaign. Early one morning, having put his mind to a problem, he stood on the spot thinking about it, and when he could not get anywhere with it he didn’t give up but continued to stand there pondering. When it came to midday everyone was beginning to notice, telling each other in amazement that Socrates had been standing there thinking about something ever since daybreak. At last, in the evening after dinner, some of the Ionians carried[220d] their sleeping mats outside (by this time it was summer) so that they could sleep in the cool and at the same time watch him to see if he was going to stand there all night. And he did stand there until it was dawn and the sun rose. Then he made a prayer to the Sun and off he went.

‘It is only fair to pay my due to him, so if you don’t mind I will give you another example from the battlefield. During that battle which resulted in the generals awarding me the prize for valour, it was Socrates and no other who saved my life. He was not[220e] prepared to abandon me when I was wounded, and he saved both me and my weapons. In fact, Socrates, I told the generals at the time to give the prize to you, and you cannot fault me for saying this or deny that I am telling the truth. However, the generals had regard to my social standing and wanted to give the prize to me, and you yourself were even keener than they were that I and not you should receive it.

‘On another occasion, gentlemen, you should have seen Socrates when the army was in flight from Delium.²²⁰[221a] It happened that I was serving there as a cavalryman and he as a hoplite.²²¹ The soldiers had already scattered and he was retreating together with Laches²²² when I came across the pair of them, and I immediately encouraged them not to lose heart and I said that I would remain with them. It was here that Socrates made an even greater impression on me than at Potidaea (being on horseback myself I had less to fear). First I noticed how much better he was than Laches at keeping a cool head,[221b] and secondly how he was proceeding on his way just as he does here in Athens, exemplifying that line of yours, Aristophanes,²²³ “swaggering and casting sidelong glances”, calmly looking sideways as he does at friends and enemies alike, and showing to everyone even at a distance that, if they were thinking of taking this man on, they would have a tough fight on their hands. That was why he and his companion got safely away. Generally speaking the enemy never take on men who behave like this in war, but only go after those who are running away.

[221c]‘Many other remarkable examples might be cited in praise of Socrates. Although there are some aspects of his behaviour that are similar to other people’s, what is so utterly amazing about Socrates is that he himself is completely unlike any other human being who has ever lived, either in the past or in the present. One might, for example, compare Brasidas and others with[221d] Achilles, or in the case of Pericles one might compare him with Nestor or Antenor, and so on; one might make similar comparisons in other cases. But so unusual is our friend here, both in himself and in what he says, that however hard you looked you would never find anyone remotely like him among men of the present or of the past, unless, as I have suggested, you were to compare him, the man and his way of talking, not with any ordinary human being but with the sileni and satyrs.

‘For though this is a point I did not mention at the beginning of my speech, it is also Socrates’ discourses that are very like those images of Silenus which open up.[221e] If you let yourself listen to them they all seem utterly ridiculous at first hearing, because he wraps everything up in words and phrases which are indeed like the hide of some rude satyr. His talk is all about pack-animals and blacksmiths and cobblers and tanners, and he always seems to be saying the same things in the same words, so that any simple-minded bystander unused to this kind of thing might simply laugh at[222a] what he was saying. But if ever you see his discourse opening up and you get inside it, first you will find that his is the only discourse which has any meaning in it, and then that it is also most divine and contains the greatest number of images of virtue. Moreover, it has the widest application, or, rather, it applies to everything that one should consider if one intends to become fine and good.²²⁴

‘This, gentlemen, is what I have to say in praise of Socrates, but in order not to exclude his faults I have also told you how he insulted me.²²⁵ And I am not the only one he has treated like this. Charmides, son of Glaucon, and Euthydemus,[222b] son of Diocles have suffered similarly, and so have many others. They have been deceived into thinking that he was their lover, but then have found that they were in love with him instead. So what I say to you, Agathon, is: don’t you too be deceived by this man and like the fool in the proverb have to learn by your own bitter experience. Learn from us and beware’.

[222c] When Alcibiades finished speaking there was laughter at his frankness, because he seemed to be still in love with Socrates.

‘I think you are quite sober, Alcibiades’, said Socrates. ‘Otherwise you would never have wrapped up your speech so elegantly in an attempt to conceal your real motive in saying all this, before, speaking so casually, you hit the nail on the head at the end. Though you were pretending otherwise, the reason for your entire speech was[222d] to make Agathon and me quarrel, because you think I ought to love you and only you, and Agathon ought to be loved by you and by no one else. But I saw through it, and the plot of this satyr-play, or Silenus-play, of yours is revealed. My dear Agathon, you must not let him get away with it. Take care no one drives us apart’.

[222e] ‘I believe you are right, Socrates’, replied Agathon. ‘I cite as evidence the fact that he took his place on the couch between the two of us in order to keep us separate. He won’t gain anything by it; I shall come and take the place next to you’.

‘Please do’, said Socrates. ‘Take this place here on my right.’

‘Zeus!’ exclaimed Alcibiades. ‘What I have to put up with from the man! He thinks he has to get the better of me every single time. My amazing friend, at the very least let Agathon have the middle place, between us’.²²⁶

‘Impossible!’ declared Socrates. ‘You made a eulogy of me, and I in my turn have to praise the man on my right. So if Agathon is between us, won’t he be praising me again, rather than being praised by me? Be nice, dear friend, and don’t[223a] grudge my praising the young man. I have a strong desire to deliver a eulogy of him’.

‘Brilliant!’ exclaimed Agathon. ‘Alcibiades, I cannot possibly stay here, I absolutely must change places and be praised by Socrates’.

‘Here we go again!’ said Alcibiades. ‘When Socrates is around it is impossible for anyone else to get a look in at attractive young men. And what abundant eloquence he found to make this one here take the place beside him!’

[223b] Agathon was getting up to put himself on the right of Socrates when suddenly a crowd of revellers, having found the street door open because a guest was just leaving, made their way straight into the dining room and began to take up places. There was a general commotion and a great deal of wine was forced on everyone and there was no longer any order. Aristodemus said that Eryximachus and[223c] Phaedrus and some others went away, and he himself fell asleep and slept for some considerable time (since at that time of year the nights were long). He woke up towards dawn when the cocks were already crowing, and saw that the others were either sleeping or had left, and the only people still awake were Agathon, Aristophanes and Socrates, drinking from a large cup which they passed from left to right. Socrates was still talking to them. Aristodemus said he[223d] did not remember most of what was said because he had not been in on the beginning of the conversation and, besides, he kept dropping off to sleep. But the main point was, he said, that Socrates was pressing the others to agree that writing comedy required the same qualities in an author as writing tragedy, and the true tragic poet was a comic poet also.²²⁷ The other two were being urged to reply, but they were getting drowsy and not quite following the argument. Aristophanes fell asleep first and then, when it was already getting light, Agathon. So Socrates, having put them both to sleep, got up and left, and Aristodemus, as usual, followed him. Socrates went to the Lyceum, washed and spent the rest of the day in his customary fashion, and so, towards evening, went home to bed.

Certain words in the text carry footnotes giving their (transliterated) Greek originals, or related words, in italics. Explanations of these are to be found in the Glossary of Greek words. For all names see the Glossary of names.

1 Phalerum was the old harbour of Athens, roughly two miles south-west of the city.

2 The point of the joke is not obvious.

3 The friend is Socrates.

4 There is evidence to suggest that Agathon left Athens between 411 and 405 BC, and Socrates was put to death in 399 BC, so Plato is dating this purported encounter between Apollodorus and his friends to one of the last years of the fifth century BC.

5 ‘To do philosophy’ translates philosophein.

6 Ancient authority gives the date as the early spring of 416 BC. Plato too would have been a boy at the time.

7 ‘Admirer’ is erastēs, the term for the (usually) older male partner in a homosexual relationship but it can also mean, as here, a devoted follower. Although the middle-aged Socrates followed the traditional Athenian pattern for homosexual love by at least professing to be in love with much younger men, it was widely observed that in reality it was the younger men who fell in love with him.

8 kakodaimon; see eudaimonein.

9 In Greek, malakos; some manuscripts read manikos, ‘fanatic’.

10 Agathon’s name suggests the meaning ‘good men’; see agathos. Socrates appears to have in mind a proverb which says, ‘To inferior men’s feasts good men go unbidden’.

11 Iliad 17. 588.

12 At Iliad 2. 408.

13 sophos.

14 An altered quotation from Homer, Iliad 10. 224.

15 At an Athenian dinner party and the subsequent drinking party (symposium), both of which were attended only by men, the guests reclined on couches, one, two or three to a couch, propping themselves on their left elbows and helping themselves to food and drink from small tables in front of the couches. The couches were arranged in a rough rectangle in the dining room. A servant would wash the guests’ feet before they reclined. On the present occasion the bottom couch, probably furthest from the door, was occupied by the host Agathon (175c). Phaedrus occupied the first couch (177d).

16 hubristes; see hubrizein and footnote 206.

17 Dionysus is the patron-god of the theatre, where Agathon won his victory. He is also the god who introduced wine to humans, which Agathon expects they will soon be drinking at the symposium which will follow dinner. A ‘contest in wisdom’ could be considered to take place at 199c–201c.

18 A reeded pipe; normally a pair of auloi was played. Professional players and other entertainers were hired for parties.

19 The tragedy Melanippe the Wise, by Euripides, does not survive, but the line partly cited above ends: ‘I heard it from my mother’.

20 chrestos.

21 sophistes.

22 See Glossary of names under Heroes.

23 epithumein.

24 Eryximachus, following Phaedrus’s lead, apparently intends the subject of the speeches to be Eros, the male god of Love (who was not as celebrated at this time nor as strongly characterised as Aphrodite, goddess of Love). However, in many of the speeches that follow, the subject fluctuates between the god and the emotion of love, and in some places the word ‘love’ even seems to stand for the lover. This would have caused the Greeks fewer problems than it may cause readers of this translation, because the former did not distinguish in writing between upper- and lower-case letters. Most current texts and translations attempt to distinguish between Love and love, but the reader should be aware that in any translation the choice of upper- or lower-case initials is inevitably somewhat arbitrary.

25 ‘The subject of love’ translates [ta] erotica; see glossary.

26 Well known to be lovers; see 193b.

27 In the view attributed here to Socrates, Aristophanes’ comedies are all concerned with drink and sex, the respective provinces of those gods. Dionysus is also the patron-god of the theatre; see Glossary of names.

28 Apollodorus, the narrator of the dialogue.

29 genesis.

30 Theogony, 116–17 and 120. It was the early Greek poets, especially Hesiod, who preserved the stories about the mythical past.

31 genesis.

32 agathos.

33 chrestos.

34 erastes.

35 eromenos, one of two terms (the other is paidika) for the younger male in a pederastic relationship. See Introduction p.viii.

36 kalos.

37 aischune.

38 aischros.

39 philotimia.

40 arete.

41 aristos; see agathos.

42 As Apollo into Aeneas at Iliad 20.110.

43 ‘those in love’, in Greek hoi erontes; see eran.

44 philia; see philein.

45 eros.

46 psuche.

47 arete.

48 In Greek myth, islands in the legendary far west of the Greek world where after death specially favoured mortals, notably some of the heroes, pass a blissful afterlife, rather than having a phantom existence in the Underworld like everyone else.

49 Homer in the Iliad did not make Achilles and Patroclus lovers, but Aeschylus represents them as such in Myrmidons, a lost tragedy from which a few quotations survive.

50 See lIiad 11.786–7.

51 agapan. The general Greek assumption was that in a pederastic relationship only the lover felt sexual desire, eros, and the beloved reciprocated with affection and admiration. It appears from 179c (see footnote 45) that Phaedrus thought Alcestis was motivated by sexual love and so not strictly comparable with a beloved boy.

52 eudaimonia.

53 In Greek, Ouranios, ‘Uranian’, i.e. related to Ouranos, ‘Heaven’, the god whose name is commonly spelled Uranus in English. The Greeks had two stories about the birth of Aphrodite. One said that she was the daughter of Zeus and Dione (compare 203b and footnote 156), the other that she belonged to the previous generation of gods and rose fully formed out of the sea near Cyprus from the foam surrounding the severed genitals of Uranus (grandfather of Zeus).

54 In Greek, Pandemos, ‘belonging to all the people’; hence, ‘popular’, ‘common’ and so ‘ordinary’, ‘vulgar’.

55 kalos and aischros. Throughout Pausanias’ speech, ‘right’ and ‘wrong’ translate respectively the Greek kalos and aischros (in their various forms; see glossary). Those who argue that these concepts are not found among the Greeks have a strong case. Nevertheless, I have chosen to use ‘right’ and ‘wrong’ here because the tone of this particular speech suggested to me that these are the nearest equivalent in English to the speaker’s meaning. Those who do not agree might prefer to substitute ‘noble’ and ‘disgraceful’ as appropriate.

56 It looks as if the statement at 180e, that ‘all gods deserve our praise’, was merely a conventional phrase to ward off possible retribution from the gods.

57 paides, plural of pais.

58 hubris.

59 psuche.

60 In Athens, as in ancient Greece in general, women who were not slaves were under the guardianship of their father, husband or nearest male relation, who exercised tight legal control of their sexual activity.

61 In Plato’s Greek a youth is euphemistically said to ‘gratify’ (charizesthai) his lover when he grants him sexual favours.

62 The phrase ‘in Sparta’ is in all the manuscripts but several editors prefer to delete it as being inappropriate, or to put it after ‘Elis’, where they think it more appropriate (one reason being that Spartans were notoriously ‘not skilled in argument’).

63 Independent states in Greece.

64 Plato is writing here of his own time (in the decade after 385; see footnote 109), when the Greeks living in Ionia on the west coast of Asia Minor came under Persian rule after 386 BC.

65 Gymnasia, being places of education as well as of nude physical exercise, offered pederastic and homosexual opportunities.

66 The name given to the rule of an absolute monarch, and usually of one who had seized power illegally. The Persians at this period were ruled by a dynastic monarchy. After the rise of democracy in Athens during the fifth century BC the idea of tyranny became repugnant to the Athenians.

67 Harmodius and Aristogiton killed Hipparchus, brother of the Athenian tyrant Hippias, in 514 BC.

68 psuche.

69 chrestos.

70 A reference to Homer, Iliad 2.71.

71 sophia.

72 As well as wisdom (sophia, which in this context means skills or accomplishments), the other parts of a man’s virtue or personal excellence (arete) are justice, good sense or self-control (sophrosune) and bravery, together with piety.

73 ‘pursuing wisdom’ here translates philosophia.

74 nomos.

75 phronesis.

76 ‘Pausanias came to a pause’ translates the Greek Pausaniou pausamenou, two very similar-sounding words, each with four syllables of corresponding length; hence the reference to balance.

77 ‘the sophoi’ (plural of sophos; see sophia).

78 His name could be punned upon as ‘Hiccup-fighter’.

79 psuche.

80 The Greek indicates male beauty, but could include female beauty.

81 techne.

82 Ill-health was sometimes ascribed to an imbalance of elements in the body, which might be thought to be overfull of one element and empty of another.

83 agathos demiourgos.

84 eran.

85 techne.

86 Agathon and Aristophanes.

87 The philosopher Heraclitus was notorious for the obscurity of his sayings. This saying can be found in H. Diels and W. Kranz, Die Fragmente der Vorsokratiker (often reprinted), Vol. 1, Herakleitos B51.

88 The universe.

89 harmonia; the fundamental meaning is ‘a fitting together’, ‘structure’, but the word has musical connotations also. ‘Harmony’ as understood in ancient Greek music does not exactly correspond with the modern notion of harmony.

90 This refers to that part of elementary education which consisted of learning poetry by heart and then how to sing it to the lyre.

91 kosmioi; see kosmos.

92 ‘The heavenly one’, the name of one of the Muses, who were the goddesses of artistic inspiration. Eryximachus is suggesting that the poetry and music inspired by Urania is morally good, but the kind inspired by Polymnia (another Muse; her name may also be spelled Polumnia) might not be so. The name Polymnia, ‘she of many hymns’, suggests plurality and so, perhaps, vulgarity. The Republic suggests that Plato himself thought that the moral effect of most kinds of poetry and music was bad.

93 ‘in the right proportions’ translates sophron; see sophrosune.

94 A sly joke against Eryximachus’ speech, hence the latter’s sharp response.

95 Aristophanes’ story, which resembles a folk-tale or a fable, is not known elsewhere.

96 androgunos. For the Greeks generally it denoted not Aristophanes’ creation but an effeminate or cowardly man.

97 See Helios, Gaea and Selene in Glossary of names.

98 Mythical giants. See Odyssey 11, 305–20.

99 It is not clear what Plato thought about the reproductive behaviour of cicadas.

100 eros.

101 A tally is one of two corresponding halves of a small object such as a coin or a dice (see 193a), one part being kept by each of two parties as proof of a transaction between them.

102 philein.

103 or ‘bravest’; see under andreia.

104 philia; see philein.

105 oikeiotes.

106 eros.

107 epithumein.

108 eran.

109 It is usually thought that this simile refers anachronistically to the dispersal by the Spartans of the people of Mantinea in Arcadia to their original villages. Since the dispersal took place in 385 BC and is the latest datable event mentioned in the Symposium, it has been concluded by most commentators that this is the earliest possible date for Plato’s composition of the dialogue. See Introduction footnote 3.

110 kosmioi; see under kosmos.

111 See footnote 101.

112 The meaning of this obscure parenthesis is disputed.

113 sophos.

114 For the style see Gorgias in the Glossary of names.

115 ‘supreme in goodness’ translates aristos; see agathos.

116 Phaedrus had said he was the oldest, 178ab.

117 philia; see philein.

118 Ate means ‘Infatuation’, the divine personification of delusion. Sent by the gods as a punishment for a transgression, she entered into the minds of men so that they made disastrous decisions.

119 Iliad 19. 92–3.

120 arete; see footnote 72.

121 A quotation from Alcidamas, a contemporary rhetorician.

122 sophrosune.

123 An altered line from the lost tragedy Thyestes by Sophocles. Agathon has substituted Love for Necessity.

124 The story is told by Homer in Odyssey 8. 266ff.

125 sophia; in this context, poetic skill. See footnote 72.

126 techne.

127 A line from the lost tragedy Stheneboea by Euripides, meaning ‘however unpoetical he was before’.

128 epithumia.

129 mousike.

130 kosmos.

131 See aporein in glossary.

132 The reference is to Odyssey 11.634–5, where Odysseus retreats at the threat of the Gorgon’s head. This is a punning joke based on the similarity of name between the mythological female monsters the Gorgons and the contemporary Sicilian Greek orator Gorgias, Agathon’s stylistic exemplar. The head of the Gorgon Medusa turned to stone anyone who looked at it.

133 See doxa in glossary.

134 A notorious line (612) from the tragedy Hippolytus by Euripides, quoted here not altogether accurately.

135 Phaedrus has taken on the role of master of ceremonies because the idea that Love should be eulogised originated with him. He had also prevented Socrates from questioning Agathon.

136 ‘characteristic activity’ translates erga (plural of ergon; see glossary).

137 In Greek idiom, a statement in the form, ‘Love is of’ a person could mean that Love is ‘the child of’ that person. It seems that Socrates wants to make it clear that in his question he is not interested in that use of ‘of’, but rather in the ‘of’ that introduces the object of love. Love implies an object, just like other relationship words such as ‘brother’. The Greek in the manuscripts seems a little confused and may not be exactly what Plato originally wrote.

138 Commentators are divided as to the meaning. The two possibilities are (1) that ‘this’ refers to the conclusion just reached, and Agathon is then being asked in addition to remember that earlier (at 197d) he had said that Love was love of beauty; and (2) that ‘this’ is an anticipatory reference to the next clause and Agathon is being asked to keep in mind and remember only what he has just agreed, namely that Love is love of something.

139 epithumein.

140 boulesthai.

141 See 197b.

142 kalos (adverb); see glossary.

143 Probably a fictional character; see Glossary of names.

144 sophos.

145 Athens was struck by a devastating plague in 430 BC.

146 See elenchein.

147 sophia.

148 orthe doxa; some translators and commentators translate as ‘true belief’ or ‘right opinion’. All three translations mean the same thing.

149 See under epistasthai.

150 phronesis.

151 daimon (the source of English ‘demon’), which can mean ‘a god’ but often denotes a lesser or local deity. Here Diotima characterises Love as a lesser deity, something between a god and a human. The Greeks of Plato’s day would usually have thought of Love simply as a god, but not one of the most important, Olympian, deities. See Gods and Love in Glossary of names.

152 daimonios, ‘a man of the spirit’, ‘spiritual’; see footnote 151 above.

153 techne.

154 cheirourgia.

155 banausos (English ‘banausic’).

156 Diotima appears to follow the story that Aphrodite was the normally-born child of Zeus and Dione; see 180d and footnote 53. The rest of the narrative seems to be Plato’s own invention.

157 The Greeks commonly personified natural phenomena and in so doing made them into deities (often unimportant, as here). They sometimes explained them by constructing relationships between them, as is the case here with Poros and Penia.

158 The first wife of Zeus and mother of Athena, the goddess of wisdom.

159 Here and at 204b in the same phrase Diotima expresses ‘love of beauty’ by, unusually, the preposition peri, which more properly means ‘love in the matter of the beautiful’. At 206e she is going to claim that Love is not simply ‘of beauty’ or ‘of the beautiful’ but ‘of procreating and giving birth in the beautiful’, thus refining what she had said at 203c and 204b. It would appear that in these two places Diotima uses peri rather than the simple ‘of’ so as not to commit herself.

160 phronesis.

161 ‘Lover of wisdom’ from philosophein.

162 sophistes.

163 kalos kagathos.

164 phronimos.

165 peri; see footnote 159.

166 philosophos; see philosophein.

167 ho eron, ‘the one who loves’; see eran.

168 ‘desire’, from eran, which means both ‘to love’ and, as here, ‘to feel desire for’. Similarly in the case of the noun, ‘love of’ can mean ‘desire for’.

169 telos. See -glossary.

170 Greek word order, sometimes ambiguous, suggests here that ‘always’ goes with ‘wishes’ rather than ‘possess’, but the proximity of ‘always’ and ‘possess’ prepares the reader for Diotima saying at the end of 206a that love is the desire to possess the good always.

171 The words in brackets are not in the Greek but are needed in the translation because modern English has no word equivalent to Greek poiesis, which means both ‘poetry’ and ‘creation’.

172 poietai; see poiesis.

173 eudaimonein.

174 Apparently a poetic quotation, from a source unknown to us.

175 ergon.

176 Diotima uses the language of sexual intercourse and birth to describe the feelings and sexual activity mainly of the male. On the images of pregnancy and procreation see F. Sheffield, ‘Psychic Pregnancy and Platonic Epistemology’, Oxford Studies in Ancient Philosophy XX (summer 2001), 1–35.

177 aischros.

178 Some Greeks believed that women too emitted a kind of seminal fluid at the moment of conception.

179 The goddess of childbirth.

180 genesis.

181 see under epistasthai.

182 ‘revising or practising’ translates melete; see glossary.

183 Perhaps the confidence of her answer was thought characteristic of sophists (see sophistes).

184 A line of poetry from an unknown source.

185 Or ‘courage’; see arete.

186 arete.

187 doxa.

188 The verb supplied is missing in the Greek.

189 phronesis.

190 See footnote 72.

191 diakosmesis; see under kosmos.

192 This word in Greek, ēitheos, is an editor’s emendation of the manuscripts’ theios, ‘divinely inspired’; in the view of other editors the reading ‘divinely inspired’ makes better sense.

193 Lycurgus was the legendary founder of the Spartan legal and military systems. The defeat of the invading Persians by the Spartan army in the Persian Wars could be said to have saved Greece from conquest in the early fifth century BC. For Lycurgus see Glossary of names.

194 Solon’s constitutional reforms at Athens in the early sixth century BC paved the way for the development of democracy in that city state. See Glossary of names.

195 erotica. Diotima is speaking as if Socrates was now reaching the final stages of initiation into a religious mystery-cult. See Mysteries in Glossary of names.

196 eidos. See glossary.

197 psuche.

198 monoeides; literally, ‘in single form’.

199 erotica. See glossary.

200 mathemata (plural) is used here rather than episteme. See glossary.

201 Plato in Republic 533d calls this faculty ‘the eye of the soul’ (psuche); it is elsewhere associated with nous, mind or intellect.

202 A cotylē measures nearly half a pint (or quarter of a litre).

203 sophron.

204 Homer, Iliad 11. 514; the translation is adapted from that of R.G. Bury.

205 Sileni were minor nature deities, like satyrs, portrayed in Greek art with snub noses and bulging eyes, and so looking like Socrates, it was commonly said. See Satyrs in Glossary of names.

206 See glossary under hubrizein. The insolence of satyrs took the form of drunken violence and sexual assault, whereas that of Socrates was perceived by his victims (usually his interlocutors) to be his sarcastic or ironic attitude towards them, which made them feel that, rather like the victims of unprovoked assault, they were being treated with contempt.

207 Initiation into a mystery religion; Olympus’s music had a diagnostic effect, we are being told, on those whose minds were disturbed.

208 Votaries of a mystery religion. They were noted for their wild dances and music which had a cathartic and so curative effect on the mentally disturbed.

209 eironeuomenos.

210 There was a proverb, ‘Truth is revealed by wine and children’ (or possibly, ‘slaves’; see pais).

211 beltistos.

212 eironikos; see eironeuomenos.

213 See doxa in glossary.

214 A reference to Homer, Iliad 6. 234–6, where a Greek warrior exchanges his golden armour for a Trojan’s brazen armour (‘because Zeus took away his wits’).

215 daimonios; see footnote 152.

216 hubrizein.

217 phronesis.

218 A city on the north-east coast of Greece, which revolted from Athenian control in 432 BC. The Athenians besieged it for two years before capturing it.

219 Homer, Odyssey 4.242 and 271 (slightly misquoted).

220 In 424 BC the Athenians invaded Boeotia, an independent state bordering their territory to the north-west, and established a stronghold at Delium. When the bulk of the army was returning to Athens it was attacked by the Boeotians and heavily defeated.

221 A hoplite was a heavily-armed foot-soldier.

222 An Athenian general at that time; see Glossary of names.

223 Aristophanes, Clouds 362 (slightly misquoted).

224 kalos kagathos.

225 hubrizein.

226 The seating arrangements on this bottom couch after Alcibiades arrived, were, from left to right, as follows:

Original placing: Agathon, Alcibiades, Socrates.

Alcibiades proposes: Alcibiades, Agathon, Socrates.

Socrates suggests: Alcibiades, Socrates, Agathon.

227 In Plato’s day, a writer of tragedy and a writer of comedy were following separate professions.