Symposium (tr. Benjamin Jowett)
by Plato
Hypertext Meanings and Commentaries
from the Encyclopedia of the Self
by Mark Zimmerman

SYMPOSIUM  
  
by Plato  
  
  
  
Translated by Benjamin Jowett  
  
  
  
  
INTRODUCTION.
  
Of all the works of Plato the Symposium is the most perfect in form, and  
may be truly thought to contain more than any commentator has ever dreamed  
of; or, as Goethe said of one of his own writings, more than the author  
himself knew. For in philosophy as in prophecy glimpses of the future may  
often be conveyed in words which could hardly have been understood or  
interpreted at the time when they were uttered (compare Symp.)--which were  
wiser than the writer of them meant, and could not have been expressed by  
him if he had been interrogated about them. Yet Plato was not a mystic,  
nor in any degree affected by the Eastern influences which afterwards  
overspread the Alexandrian world. He was not an enthusiast or a  
sentimentalist, but one who aspired only to see reasoned truth, and whose  
thoughts are clearly explained in his language. There is no foreign  
element either of Egypt or of Asia to be found in his writings. And more  
than any other Platonic work the Symposium is Greek both in style and  
subject, having a beauty 'as of a statue,' while the companion Dialogue of  
the Phaedrus is marked by a sort of Gothic irregularity. More too than in  
any other of his Dialogues, Plato is emancipated from former philosophies.
The genius of Greek art seems to triumph over the traditions of  
Pythagorean, Eleatic, or Megarian systems, and 'the old quarrel of poetry  
and philosophy' has at least a superficial reconcilement. (Rep.)  
  
An unknown person who had heard of the discourses in praise of love spoken  
by Socrates and others at the banquet of Agathon is desirous of having an  
authentic account of them, which he thinks that he can obtain from  
Apollodorus, the same excitable, or rather 'mad' friend of Socrates, who is  
afterwards introduced in the Phaedo. He had imagined that the discourses  
were recent. There he is mistaken: but they are still fresh in the memory  
of his informant, who had just been repeating them to Glaucon, and is quite  
prepared to have another rehearsal of them in a walk from the Piraeus to  
Athens. Although he had not been present himself, he had heard them from  
the best authority. Aristodemus, who is described as having been in past  
times a humble but inseparable attendant of Socrates, had reported them to  
him (compare Xen. Mem.).
  
The narrative which he had heard was as follows:--  
  
Aristodemus meeting Socrates in holiday attire, is invited by him to a  
banquet at the house of Agathon, who had been sacrificing in thanksgiving  
for his tragic victory on the day previous. But no sooner has he entered  
the house than he finds that he is alone; Socrates has stayed behind in a  
fit of abstraction, and does not appear until the banquet is half over. On  
his appearing he and the host jest a little; the question is then asked by  
Pausanias, one of the guests, 'What shall they do about drinking? as they  
had been all well drunk on the day before, and drinking on two successive  
days is such a bad thing.'  This is confirmed by the authority of  
Eryximachus the physician, who further proposes that instead of listening  
to the flute-girl and her 'noise' they shall make speeches in honour of  
love, one after another, going from left to right in the order in which  
they are reclining at the table. All of them agree to this proposal, and  
Phaedrus, who is the 'father' of the idea, which he has previously  
communicated to Eryximachus, begins as follows:--  
  
He descants first of all upon the antiquity of love, which is proved by the  
authority of the poets; secondly upon the benefits which love gives to man.
The greatest of these is the sense of honour and dishonour. The lover is  
ashamed to be seen by the beloved doing or suffering any cowardly or mean  
act. And a state or army which was made up only of lovers and their loves  
would be invincible. For love will convert the veriest coward into an  
inspired hero.
  
And there have been true loves not only of men but of women also. Such was  
the love of Alcestis, who dared to die for her husband, and in recompense  
of her virtue was allowed to come again from the dead. But Orpheus, the  
miserable harper, who went down to Hades alive, that he might bring back  
his wife, was mocked with an apparition only, and the gods afterwards  
contrived his death as the punishment of his cowardliness. The love of  
Achilles, like that of Alcestis, was courageous and true; for he was  
willing to avenge his lover Patroclus, although he knew that his own death  
would immediately follow: and the gods, who honour the love of the beloved  
above that of the lover, rewarded him, and sent him to the islands of the  
blest.
  
Pausanias, who was sitting next, then takes up the tale:--He says that  
Phaedrus should have distinguished the heavenly love from the earthly,  
before he praised either. For there are two loves, as there are two  
Aphrodites--one the daughter of Uranus, who has no mother and is the elder  
and wiser goddess, and the other, the daughter of Zeus and Dione, who is  
popular and common. The first of the two loves has a noble purpose, and  
delights only in the intelligent nature of man, and is faithful to the end,  
and has no shadow of wantonness or lust. The second is the coarser kind of  
love, which is a love of the body rather than of the soul, and is of women  
and boys as well as of men. Now the actions of lovers vary, like every  
other sort of action, according to the manner of their performance. And in  
different countries there is a difference of opinion about male loves.  
Some, like the Boeotians, approve of them; others, like the Ionians, and  
most of the barbarians, disapprove of them; partly because they are aware  
of the political dangers which ensue from them, as may be seen in the  
instance of Harmodius and Aristogeiton. At Athens and Sparta there is an  
apparent contradiction about them. For at times they are encouraged, and  
then the lover is allowed to play all sorts of fantastic tricks; he may  
swear and forswear himself (and 'at lovers' perjuries they say Jove  
laughs'); he may be a servant, and lie on a mat at the door of his love,  
without any loss of character; but there are also times when elders look  
grave and guard their young relations, and personal remarks are made. The  
truth is that some of these loves are disgraceful and others honourable.  
The vulgar love of the body which takes wing and flies away when the bloom  
of youth is over, is disgraceful, and so is the interested love of power or  
wealth; but the love of the noble mind is lasting. The lover should be  
tested, and the beloved should not be too ready to yield. The rule in our  
country is that the beloved may do the same service to the lover in the way  
of virtue which the lover may do to him.
  
A voluntary service to be rendered for the sake of virtue and wisdom is  
permitted among us; and when these two customs--one the love of youth, the  
other the practice of virtue and philosophy--meet in one, then the lovers  
may lawfully unite. Nor is there any disgrace to a disinterested lover in  
being deceived: but the interested lover is doubly disgraced, for if he  
loses his love he loses his character; whereas the noble love of the other  
remains the same, although the object of his love is unworthy: for nothing  
can be nobler than love for the sake of virtue. This is that love of the  
heavenly goddess which is of great price to individuals and cities, making  
them work together for their improvement.
  
The turn of Aristophanes comes next; but he has the hiccough, and therefore  
proposes that Eryximachus the physician shall cure him or speak in his  
turn. Eryximachus is ready to do both, and after prescribing for the  
hiccough, speaks as follows:--  
  
He agrees with Pausanias in maintaining that there are two kinds of love;  
but his art has led him to the further conclusion that the empire of this  
double love extends over all things, and is to be found in animals and  
plants as well as in man. In the human body also there are two loves; and  
the art of medicine shows which is the good and which is the bad love, and  
persuades the body to accept the good and reject the bad, and reconciles  
conflicting elements and makes them friends. Every art, gymnastic and  
husbandry as well as medicine, is the reconciliation of opposites; and this  
is what Heracleitus meant, when he spoke of a harmony of opposites: but in  
strictness he should rather have spoken of a harmony which succeeds  
opposites, for an agreement of disagreements there cannot be. Music too is  
concerned with the principles of love in their application to harmony and  
rhythm. In the abstract, all is simple, and we are not troubled with the  
twofold love; but when they are applied in education with their  
accompaniments of song and metre, then the discord begins. Then the old  
tale has to be repeated of fair Urania and the coarse Polyhymnia, who must  
be indulged sparingly, just as in my own art of medicine care must be taken  
that the taste of the epicure be gratified without inflicting upon him the  
attendant penalty of disease.
  
There is a similar harmony or disagreement in the course of the seasons and  
in the relations of moist and dry, hot and cold, hoar frost and blight; and  
diseases of all sorts spring from the excesses or disorders of the element  
of love. The knowledge of these elements of love and discord in the  
heavenly bodies is termed astronomy, in the relations of men towards gods  
and parents is called divination. For divination is the peacemaker of gods  
and men, and works by a knowledge of the tendencies of merely human loves  
to piety and impiety. Such is the power of love; and that love which is  
just and temperate has the greatest power, and is the source of all our  
happiness and friendship with the gods and with one another. I dare say  
that I have omitted to mention many things which you, Aristophanes, may  
supply, as I perceive that you are cured of the hiccough.
  
Aristophanes is the next speaker:--  
  
He professes to open a new vein of discourse, in which he begins by  
treating of the origin of human nature. The sexes were originally three,  
men, women, and the union of the two; and they were made round--having four  
hands, four feet, two faces on a round neck, and the rest to correspond.  
Terrible was their strength and swiftness; and they were essaying to scale  
heaven and attack the gods. Doubt reigned in the celestial councils; the  
gods were divided between the desire of quelling the pride of man and the  
fear of losing the sacrifices. At last Zeus hit upon an expedient. Let us  
cut them in two, he said; then they will only have half their strength, and  
we shall have twice as many sacrifices. He spake, and split them as you  
might split an egg with an hair; and when this was done, he told Apollo to  
give their faces a twist and re-arrange their persons, taking out the  
wrinkles and tying the skin in a knot about the navel. The two halves went  
about looking for one another, and were ready to die of hunger in one  
another's arms. Then Zeus invented an adjustment of the sexes, which  
enabled them to marry and go their way to the business of life. Now the  
characters of men differ accordingly as they are derived from the original  
man or the original woman, or the original man-woman. Those who come from  
the man-woman are lascivious and adulterous; those who come from the woman  
form female attachments; those who are a section of the male follow the  
male and embrace him, and in him all their desires centre. The pair are  
inseparable and live together in pure and manly affection; yet they cannot  
tell what they want of one another. But if Hephaestus were to come to them  
with his instruments and propose that they should be melted into one and  
remain one here and hereafter, they would acknowledge that this was the  
very expression of their want. For love is the desire of the whole, and  
the pursuit of the whole is called love. There was a time when the two  
sexes were only one, but now God has halved them,--much as the  
Lacedaemonians have cut up the Arcadians,--and if they do not behave  
themselves he will divide them again, and they will hop about with half a  
nose and face in basso relievo. Wherefore let us exhort all men to piety,  
that we may obtain the goods of which love is the author, and be reconciled  
to God, and find our own true loves, which rarely happens in this world.  
And now I must beg you not to suppose that I am alluding to Pausanias and  
Agathon (compare Protag.), for my words refer to all mankind everywhere.
  
Some raillery ensues first between Aristophanes and Eryximachus, and then  
between Agathon, who fears a few select friends more than any number of  
spectators at the theatre, and Socrates, who is disposed to begin an  
argument. This is speedily repressed by Phaedrus, who reminds the  
disputants of their tribute to the god. Agathon's speech follows:--  
  
He will speak of the god first and then of his gifts: He is the fairest  
and blessedest and best of the gods, and also the youngest, having had no  
existence in the old days of Iapetus and Cronos when the gods were at war.
The things that were done then were done of necessity and not of love. For  
love is young and dwells in soft places,--not like Ate in Homer, walking on  
the skulls of men, but in their hearts and souls, which are soft enough.  
He is all flexibility and grace, and his habitation is among the flowers,  
and he cannot do or suffer wrong; for all men serve and obey him of their  
own free will, and where there is love there is obedience, and where  
obedience, there is justice; for none can be wronged of his own free will.  
And he is temperate as well as just, for he is the ruler of the desires,  
and if he rules them he must be temperate. Also he is courageous, for he  
is the conqueror of the lord of war. And he is wise too; for he is a poet,  
and the author of poesy in others. He created the animals; he is the  
inventor of the arts; all the gods are his subjects; he is the fairest and  
best himself, and the cause of what is fairest and best in others; he makes  
men to be of one mind at a banquet, filling them with affection and  
emptying them of disaffection; the pilot, helper, defender, saviour of men,  
in whose footsteps let every man follow, chanting a strain of love. Such  
is the discourse, half playful, half serious, which I dedicate to the god.
  
The turn of Socrates comes next. He begins by remarking satirically that  
he has not understood the terms of the original agreement, for he fancied  
that they meant to speak the true praises of love, but now he finds that  
they only say what is good of him, whether true or false. He begs to be  
absolved from speaking falsely, but he is willing to speak the truth, and  
proposes to begin by questioning Agathon. The result of his questions may  
be summed up as follows:--  
  
Love is of something, and that which love desires is not that which love is  
or has; for no man desires that which he is or has. And love is of the  
beautiful, and therefore has not the beautiful. And the beautiful is the  
good, and therefore, in wanting and desiring the beautiful, love also wants  
and desires the good. Socrates professes to have asked the same questions  
and to have obtained the same answers from Diotima, a wise woman of  
Mantinea, who, like Agathon, had spoken first of love and then of his  
works. Socrates, like Agathon, had told her that Love is a mighty god and  
also fair, and she had shown him in return that Love was neither, but in a  
mean between fair and foul, good and evil, and not a god at all, but only a  
great demon or intermediate power (compare the speech of Eryximachus) who  
conveys to the gods the prayers of men, and to men the commands of the  
gods.
  
Socrates asks: Who are his father and mother? To this Diotima replies  
that he is the son of Plenty and Poverty, and partakes of the nature of  
both, and is full and starved by turns. Like his mother he is poor and  
squalid, lying on mats at doors (compare the speech of Pausanias); like his  
father he is bold and strong, and full of arts and resources. Further, he  
is in a mean between ignorance and knowledge:--in this he resembles the  
philosopher who is also in a mean between the wise and the ignorant. Such  
is the nature of Love, who is not to be confused with the beloved.
  
But Love desires the beautiful; and then arises the question, What does he  
desire of the beautiful? He desires, of course, the possession of the  
beautiful;--but what is given by that? For the beautiful let us substitute  
the good, and we have no difficulty in seeing the possession of the good to  
be happiness, and Love to be the desire of happiness, although the meaning  
of the word has been too often confined to one kind of love. And Love  
desires not only the good, but the everlasting possession of the good. Why  
then is there all this flutter and excitement about love? Because all men  
and women at a certain age are desirous of bringing to the birth. And love  
is not of beauty only, but of birth in beauty; this is the principle of  
immortality in a mortal creature. When beauty approaches, then the  
conceiving power is benign and diffuse; when foulness, she is averted and  
morose.
  
But why again does this extend not only to men but also to animals?  
Because they too have an instinct of immortality. Even in the same  
individual there is a perpetual succession as well of the parts of the  
material body as of the thoughts and desires of the mind; nay, even  
knowledge comes and goes. There is no sameness of existence, but the new  
mortality is always taking the place of the old. This is the reason why  
parents love their children--for the sake of immortality; and this is why  
men love the immortality of fame. For the creative soul creates not  
children, but conceptions of wisdom and virtue, such as poets and other  
creators have invented. And the noblest creations of all are those of  
legislators, in honour of whom temples have been raised. Who would not  
sooner have these children of the mind than the ordinary human ones?  
(Compare Bacon's Essays, 8:--'Certainly the best works and of greatest  
merit for the public have proceeded from the unmarried or childless men;  
which both in affection and means have married and endowed the public.')  
  
I will now initiate you, she said, into the greater mysteries; for he who  
would proceed in due course should love first one fair form, and then many,  
and learn the connexion of them; and from beautiful bodies he should  
proceed to beautiful minds, and the beauty of laws and institutions, until  
he perceives that all beauty is of one kindred; and from institutions he  
should go on to the sciences, until at last the vision is revealed to him  
of a single science of universal beauty, and then he will behold the  
everlasting nature which is the cause of all, and will be near the end. In  
the contemplation of that supreme being of love he will be purified of  
earthly leaven, and will behold beauty, not with the bodily eye, but with  
the eye of the mind, and will bring forth true creations of virtue and  
wisdom, and be the friend of God and heir of immortality.
  
Such, Phaedrus, is the tale which I heard from the stranger of Mantinea,  
and which you may call the encomium of love, or what you please.
  
The company applaud the speech of Socrates, and Aristophanes is about to  
say something, when suddenly a band of revellers breaks into the court, and  
the voice of Alcibiades is heard asking for Agathon. He is led in drunk,  
and welcomed by Agathon, whom he has come to crown with a garland. He is  
placed on a couch at his side, but suddenly, on recognizing Socrates, he  
starts up, and a sort of conflict is carried on between them, which Agathon  
is requested to appease. Alcibiades then insists that they shall drink,  
and has a large wine-cooler filled, which he first empties himself, and  
then fills again and passes on to Socrates. He is informed of the nature  
of the entertainment; and is ready to join, if only in the character of a  
drunken and disappointed lover he may be allowed to sing the praises of  
Socrates:--  
  
He begins by comparing Socrates first to the busts of Silenus, which have  
images of the gods inside them; and, secondly, to Marsyas the flute-player.
For Socrates produces the same effect with the voice which Marsyas did with  
the flute. He is the great speaker and enchanter who ravishes the souls of  
men; the convincer of hearts too, as he has convinced Alcibiades, and made  
him ashamed of his mean and miserable life. Socrates at one time seemed  
about to fall in love with him; and he thought that he would thereby gain a  
wonderful opportunity of receiving lessons of wisdom. He narrates the  
failure of his design. He has suffered agonies from him, and is at his  
wit's end. He then proceeds to mention some other particulars of the life  
of Socrates; how they were at Potidaea together, where Socrates showed his  
superior powers of enduring cold and fatigue; how on one occasion he had  
stood for an entire day and night absorbed in reflection amid the wonder of  
the spectators; how on another occasion he had saved Alcibiades' life; how  
at the battle of Delium, after the defeat, he might be seen stalking about  
like a pelican, rolling his eyes as Aristophanes had described him in the  
Clouds. He is the most wonderful of human beings, and absolutely unlike  
anyone but a satyr. Like the satyr in his language too; for he uses the  
commonest words as the outward mask of the divinest truths.
  
When Alcibiades has done speaking, a dispute begins between him and Agathon  
and Socrates. Socrates piques Alcibiades by a pretended affection for  
Agathon. Presently a band of revellers appears, who introduce disorder  
into the feast; the sober part of the company, Eryximachus, Phaedrus, and  
others, withdraw; and Aristodemus, the follower of Socrates, sleeps during  
the whole of a long winter's night. When he wakes at cockcrow the  
revellers are nearly all asleep. Only Socrates, Aristophanes, and Agathon  
hold out; they are drinking from a large goblet, which they pass round, and  
Socrates is explaining to the two others, who are half-asleep, that the  
genius of tragedy is the same as that of comedy, and that the writer of  
tragedy ought to be a writer of comedy also. And first Aristophanes drops,  
and then, as the day is dawning, Agathon. Socrates, having laid them to  
rest, takes a bath and goes to his daily avocations until the evening.  
Aristodemus follows.
  
...
  
If it be true that there are more things in the Symposium of Plato than any  
commentator has dreamed of, it is also true that many things have been  
imagined which are not really to be found there. Some writings hardly  
admit of a more distinct interpretation than a musical composition; and  
every reader may form his own accompaniment of thought or feeling to the  
strain which he hears. The Symposium of Plato is a work of this character,  
and can with difficulty be rendered in any words but the writer's own.  
There are so many half-lights and cross-lights, so much of the colour of  
mythology, and of the manner of sophistry adhering--rhetoric and poetry,  
the playful and the serious, are so subtly intermingled in it, and vestiges  
of old philosophy so curiously blend with germs of future knowledge, that  
agreement among interpreters is not to be expected. The expression 'poema  
magis putandum quam comicorum poetarum,' which has been applied to all the  
writings of Plato, is especially applicable to the Symposium.
  
The power of love is represented in the Symposium as running through all  
nature and all being: at one end descending to animals and plants, and  
attaining to the highest vision of truth at the other. In an age when man  
was seeking for an expression of the world around him, the conception of  
love greatly affected him. One of the first distinctions of language and  
of mythology was that of gender; and at a later period the ancient  
physicist, anticipating modern science, saw, or thought that he saw, a sex  
in plants; there were elective affinities among the elements, marriages of  
earth and heaven. (Aesch. Frag. Dan.)  Love became a mythic personage whom  
philosophy, borrowing from poetry, converted into an efficient cause of  
creation. The traces of the existence of love, as of number and figure,  
were everywhere discerned; and in the Pythagorean list of opposites male  
and female were ranged side by side with odd and even, finite and infinite.
  
But Plato seems also to be aware that there is a mystery of love in man as  
well as in nature, extending beyond the mere immediate relation of the  
sexes. He is conscious that the highest and noblest things in the world  
are not easily severed from the sensual desires, or may even be regarded as  
a spiritualized form of them. We may observe that Socrates himself is not  
represented as originally unimpassioned, but as one who has overcome his  
passions; the secret of his power over others partly lies in his passionate  
but self-controlled nature. In the Phaedrus and Symposium love is not  
merely the feeling usually so called, but the mystical contemplation of the  
beautiful and the good. The same passion which may wallow in the mire is  
capable of rising to the loftiest heights--of penetrating the inmost secret  
of philosophy. The highest love is the love not of a person, but of the  
highest and purest abstraction. This abstraction is the far-off heaven on  
which the eye of the mind is fixed in fond amazement. The unity of truth,  
the consistency of the warring elements of the world, the enthusiasm for  
knowledge when first beaming upon mankind, the relativity of ideas to the  
human mind, and of the human mind to ideas, the faith in the invisible, the  
adoration of the eternal nature, are all included, consciously or  
unconsciously, in Plato's doctrine of love.
  
The successive speeches in praise of love are characteristic of the  
speakers, and contribute in various degrees to the final result; they are  
all designed to prepare the way for Socrates, who gathers up the threads  
anew, and skims the highest points of each of them. But they are not to be  
regarded as the stages of an idea, rising above one another to a climax.  
They are fanciful, partly facetious performances, 'yet also having a  
certain measure of seriousness,' which the successive speakers dedicate to  
the god. All of them are rhetorical and poetical rather than dialectical,  
but glimpses of truth appear in them. When Eryximachus says that the  
principles of music are simple in themselves, but confused in their  
application, he touches lightly upon a difficulty which has troubled the  
moderns as well as the ancients in music, and may be extended to the other  
applied sciences. That confusion begins in the concrete, was the natural  
feeling of a mind dwelling in the world of ideas. When Pausanias remarks  
that personal attachments are inimical to despots. The experience of Greek  
history confirms the truth of his remark. When Aristophanes declares that  
love is the desire of the whole, he expresses a feeling not unlike that of  
the German philosopher, who says that 'philosophy is home sickness.'  When  
Agathon says that no man 'can be wronged of his own free will,' he is  
alluding playfully to a serious problem of Greek philosophy (compare Arist.
Nic. Ethics). So naturally does Plato mingle jest and earnest, truth and  
opinion in the same work.
  
The characters--of Phaedrus, who has been the cause of more philosophical  
discussions than any other man, with the exception of Simmias the Theban  
(Phaedrus); of Aristophanes, who disguises under comic imagery a serious  
purpose; of Agathon, who in later life is satirized by Aristophanes in the  
Thesmophoriazusae, for his effeminate manners and the feeble rhythms of his  
verse; of Alcibiades, who is the same strange contrast of great powers and  
great vices, which meets us in history--are drawn to the life; and we may  
suppose the less-known characters of Pausanias and Eryximachus to be also  
true to the traditional recollection of them (compare Phaedr., Protag.; and  
compare Sympos. with Phaedr.). We may also remark that Aristodemus is  
called 'the little' in Xenophon's Memorabilia (compare Symp.).
  
The speeches have been said to follow each other in pairs: Phaedrus and  
Pausanias being the ethical, Eryximachus and Aristophanes the physical  
speakers, while in Agathon and Socrates poetry and philosophy blend  
together. The speech of Phaedrus is also described as the mythological,  
that of Pausanias as the political, that of Eryximachus as the scientific,  
that of Aristophanes as the artistic (!), that of Socrates as the  
philosophical. But these and similar distinctions are not found in Plato;  
--they are the points of view of his critics, and seem to impede rather  
than to assist us in understanding him.
  
When the turn of Socrates comes round he cannot be allowed to disturb the  
arrangement made at first. With the leave of Phaedrus he asks a few  
questions, and then he throws his argument into the form of a speech  
(compare Gorg., Protag.). But his speech is really the narrative of a  
dialogue between himself and Diotima. And as at a banquet good manners  
would not allow him to win a victory either over his host or any of the  
guests, the superiority which he gains over Agathon is ingeniously  
represented as having been already gained over himself by her. The  
artifice has the further advantage of maintaining his accustomed profession  
of ignorance (compare Menex.). Even his knowledge of the mysteries of  
love, to which he lays claim here and elsewhere (Lys.), is given by  
Diotima.
  
The speeches are attested to us by the very best authority. The madman  
Apollodorus, who for three years past has made a daily study of the actions  
of Socrates--to whom the world is summed up in the words 'Great is  
Socrates'--he has heard them from another 'madman,' Aristodemus, who was  
the 'shadow' of Socrates in days of old, like him going about barefooted,  
and who had been present at the time. 'Would you desire better witness?'   
The extraordinary narrative of Alcibiades is ingeniously represented as  
admitted by Socrates, whose silence when he is invited to contradict gives  
consent to the narrator. We may observe, by the way, (1) how the very  
appearance of Aristodemus by himself is a sufficient indication to Agathon  
that Socrates has been left behind; also, (2) how the courtesy of Agathon  
anticipates the excuse which Socrates was to have made on Aristodemus'  
behalf for coming uninvited; (3) how the story of the fit or trance of  
Socrates is confirmed by the mention which Alcibiades makes of a similar  
fit of abstraction occurring when he was serving with the army at Potidaea;  
like (4) the drinking powers of Socrates and his love of the fair, which  
receive a similar attestation in the concluding scene; or the attachment of  
Aristodemus, who is not forgotten when Socrates takes his departure. (5)  
We may notice the manner in which Socrates himself regards the first five  
speeches, not as true, but as fanciful and exaggerated encomiums of the god  
Love; (6) the satirical character of them, shown especially in the appeals  
to mythology, in the reasons which are given by Zeus for reconstructing the  
frame of man, or by the Boeotians and Eleans for encouraging male loves;  
(7) the ruling passion of Socrates for dialectics, who will argue with  
Agathon instead of making a speech, and will only speak at all upon the  
condition that he is allowed to speak the truth. We may note also the  
touch of Socratic irony, (8) which admits of a wide application and reveals  
a deep insight into the world:--that in speaking of holy things and persons  
there is a general understanding that you should praise them, not that you  
should speak the truth about them--this is the sort of praise which  
Socrates is unable to give. Lastly, (9) we may remark that the banquet is  
a real banquet after all, at which love is the theme of discourse, and huge  
quantities of wine are drunk.
  
The discourse of Phaedrus is half-mythical, half-ethical; and he himself,  
true to the character which is given him in the Dialogue bearing his name,  
is half-sophist, half-enthusiast. He is the critic of poetry also, who  
compares Homer and Aeschylus in the insipid and irrational manner of the  
schools of the day, characteristically reasoning about the probability of  
matters which do not admit of reasoning. He starts from a noble text:  
'That without the sense of honour and dishonour neither states nor  
individuals ever do any good or great work.'  But he soon passes on to more  
common-place topics. The antiquity of love, the blessing of having a  
lover, the incentive which love offers to daring deeds, the examples of  
Alcestis and Achilles, are the chief themes of his discourse. The love of  
women is regarded by him as almost on an equality with that of men; and he  
makes the singular remark that the gods favour the return of love which is  
made by the beloved more than the original sentiment, because the lover is  
of a nobler and diviner nature.
  
There is something of a sophistical ring in the speech of Phaedrus, which  
recalls the first speech in imitation of Lysias, occurring in the Dialogue  
called the Phaedrus. This is still more marked in the speech of Pausanias  
which follows; and which is at once hyperlogical in form and also extremely  
confused and pedantic. Plato is attacking the logical feebleness of the  
sophists and rhetoricians, through their pupils, not forgetting by the way  
to satirize the monotonous and unmeaning rhythms which Prodicus and others  
were introducing into Attic prose (compare Protag.). Of course, he is  
'playing both sides of the game,' as in the Gorgias and Phaedrus; but it is  
not necessary in order to understand him that we should discuss the  
fairness of his mode of proceeding. The love of Pausanias for Agathon has  
already been touched upon in the Protagoras, and is alluded to by  
Aristophanes. Hence he is naturally the upholder of male loves, which,  
like all the other affections or actions of men, he regards as varying  
according to the manner of their performance. Like the sophists and like  
Plato himself, though in a different sense, he begins his discussion by an  
appeal to mythology, and distinguishes between the elder and younger love.  
The value which he attributes to such loves as motives to virtue and  
philosophy is at variance with modern and Christian notions, but is in  
accordance with Hellenic sentiment. The opinion of Christendom has not  
altogether condemned passionate friendships between persons of the same  
sex, but has certainly not encouraged them, because though innocent in  
themselves in a few temperaments they are liable to degenerate into fearful  
evil. Pausanias is very earnest in the defence of such loves; and he  
speaks of them as generally approved among Hellenes and disapproved by  
barbarians. His speech is 'more words than matter,' and might have been  
composed by a pupil of Lysias or of Prodicus, although there is no hint  
given that Plato is specially referring to them. As Eryximachus says, 'he  
makes a fair beginning, but a lame ending.'  
  
Plato transposes the two next speeches, as in the Republic he would  
transpose the virtues and the mathematical sciences. This is done partly  
to avoid monotony, partly for the sake of making Aristophanes 'the cause of  
wit in others,' and also in order to bring the comic and tragic poet into  
juxtaposition, as if by accident. A suitable 'expectation' of Aristophanes  
is raised by the ludicrous circumstance of his having the hiccough, which  
is appropriately cured by his substitute, the physician Eryximachus. To  
Eryximachus Love is the good physician; he sees everything as an  
intelligent physicist, and, like many professors of his art in modern  
times, attempts to reduce the moral to the physical; or recognises one law  
of love which pervades them both. There are loves and strifes of the body  
as well as of the mind. Like Hippocrates the Asclepiad, he is a disciple  
of Heracleitus, whose conception of the harmony of opposites he explains in  
a new way as the harmony after discord; to his common sense, as to that of  
many moderns as well as ancients, the identity of contradictories is an  
absurdity. His notion of love may be summed up as the harmony of man with  
himself in soul as well as body, and of all things in heaven and earth with  
one another.
  
Aristophanes is ready to laugh and make laugh before he opens his mouth,  
just as Socrates, true to his character, is ready to argue before he begins  
to speak. He expresses the very genius of the old comedy, its coarse and  
forcible imagery, and the licence of its language in speaking about the  
gods. He has no sophistical notions about love, which is brought back by  
him to its common-sense meaning of love between intelligent beings. His  
account of the origin of the sexes has the greatest (comic) probability and  
verisimilitude. Nothing in Aristophanes is more truly Aristophanic than  
the description of the human monster whirling round on four arms and four  
legs, eight in all, with incredible rapidity. Yet there is a mixture of  
earnestness in this jest; three serious principles seem to be insinuated:--  
first, that man cannot exist in isolation; he must be reunited if he is to  
be perfected: secondly, that love is the mediator and reconciler of poor,  
divided human nature: thirdly, that the loves of this world are an  
indistinct anticipation of an ideal union which is not yet realized.
  
The speech of Agathon is conceived in a higher strain, and receives the  
real, if half-ironical, approval of Socrates. It is the speech of the  
tragic poet and a sort of poem, like tragedy, moving among the gods of  
Olympus, and not among the elder or Orphic deities. In the idea of the  
antiquity of love he cannot agree; love is not of the olden time, but  
present and youthful ever. The speech may be compared with that speech of  
Socrates in the Phaedrus in which he describes himself as talking  
dithyrambs. It is at once a preparation for Socrates and a foil to him.  
The rhetoric of Agathon elevates the soul to 'sunlit heights,' but at the  
same time contrasts with the natural and necessary eloquence of Socrates.  
Agathon contributes the distinction between love and the works of love, and  
also hints incidentally that love is always of beauty, which Socrates  
afterwards raises into a principle. While the consciousness of discord is  
stronger in the comic poet Aristophanes, Agathon, the tragic poet, has a  
deeper sense of harmony and reconciliation, and speaks of Love as the  
creator and artist.
  
All the earlier speeches embody common opinions coloured with a tinge of  
philosophy. They furnish the material out of which Socrates proceeds to  
form his discourse, starting, as in other places, from mythology and the  
opinions of men. From Phaedrus he takes the thought that love is stronger  
than death; from Pausanias, that the true love is akin to intellect and  
political activity; from Eryximachus, that love is a universal phenomenon  
and the great power of nature; from Aristophanes, that love is the child of  
want, and is not merely the love of the congenial or of the whole, but (as  
he adds) of the good; from Agathon, that love is of beauty, not however of  
beauty only, but of birth in beauty. As it would be out of character for  
Socrates to make a lengthened harangue, the speech takes the form of a  
dialogue between Socrates and a mysterious woman of foreign extraction.  
She elicits the final truth from one who knows nothing, and who, speaking  
by the lips of another, and himself a despiser of rhetoric, is proved also  
to be the most consummate of rhetoricians (compare Menexenus).
  
The last of the six discourses begins with a short argument which  
overthrows not only Agathon but all the preceding speakers by the help of a  
distinction which has escaped them. Extravagant praises have been ascribed  
to Love as the author of every good; no sort of encomium was too high for  
him, whether deserved and true or not. But Socrates has no talent for  
speaking anything but the truth, and if he is to speak the truth of Love he  
must honestly confess that he is not a good at all: for love is of the  
good, and no man can desire that which he has. This piece of dialectics is  
ascribed to Diotima, who has already urged upon Socrates the argument which  
he urges against Agathon. That the distinction is a fallacy is obvious; it  
is almost acknowledged to be so by Socrates himself. For he who has beauty  
or good may desire more of them; and he who has beauty or good in himself  
may desire beauty and good in others. The fallacy seems to arise out of a  
confusion between the abstract ideas of good and beauty, which do not admit  
of degrees, and their partial realization in individuals.
  
But Diotima, the prophetess of Mantineia, whose sacred and superhuman  
character raises her above the ordinary proprieties of women, has taught  
Socrates far more than this about the art and mystery of love. She has  
taught him that love is another aspect of philosophy. The same want in the  
human soul which is satisfied in the vulgar by the procreation of children,  
may become the highest aspiration of intellectual desire. As the Christian  
might speak of hungering and thirsting after righteousness; or of divine  
loves under the figure of human (compare Eph. 'This is a great mystery, but  
I speak concerning Christ and the church'); as the mediaeval saint might  
speak of the 'fruitio Dei;' as Dante saw all things contained in his love  
of Beatrice, so Plato would have us absorb all other loves and desires in  
the love of knowledge. Here is the beginning of Neoplatonism, or rather,  
perhaps, a proof (of which there are many) that the so-called mysticism of  
the East was not strange to the Greek of the fifth century before Christ.  
The first tumult of the affections was not wholly subdued; there were  
longings of a creature   
  
Moving about in worlds not realized,  
  
which no art could satisfy. To most men reason and passion appear to be  
antagonistic both in idea and fact. The union of the greatest  
comprehension of knowledge and the burning intensity of love is a  
contradiction in nature, which may have existed in a far-off primeval age  
in the mind of some Hebrew prophet or other Eastern sage, but has now  
become an imagination only. Yet this 'passion of the reason' is the theme  
of the Symposium of Plato. And as there is no impossibility in supposing  
that 'one king, or son of a king, may be a philosopher,' so also there is a  
probability that there may be some few--perhaps one or two in a whole  
generation--in whom the light of truth may not lack the warmth of desire.  
And if there be such natures, no one will be disposed to deny that 'from  
them flow most of the benefits of individuals and states;' and even from  
imperfect combinations of the two elements in teachers or statesmen great  
good may often arise.
  
Yet there is a higher region in which love is not only felt, but satisfied,  
in the perfect beauty of eternal knowledge, beginning with the beauty of  
earthly things, and at last reaching a beauty in which all existence is  
seen to be harmonious and one. The limited affection is enlarged, and  
enabled to behold the ideal of all things. And here the highest summit  
which is reached in the Symposium is seen also to be the highest summit  
which is attained in the Republic, but approached from another side; and  
there is 'a way upwards and downwards,' which is the same and not the same  
in both. The ideal beauty of the one is the ideal good of the other;  
regarded not with the eye of knowledge, but of faith and desire; and they  
are respectively the source of beauty and the source of good in all other  
things. And by the steps of a 'ladder reaching to heaven' we pass from  
images of visible beauty (Greek), and from the hypotheses of the  
Mathematical sciences, which are not yet based upon the idea of good,  
through the concrete to the abstract, and, by different paths arriving,  
behold the vision of the eternal (compare Symp. (Greek) Republic (Greek)  
also Phaedrus). Under one aspect 'the idea is love'; under another,  
'truth.'  In both the lover of wisdom is the 'spectator of all time and of  
all existence.'  This is a 'mystery' in which Plato also obscurely  
intimates the union of the spiritual and fleshly, the interpenetration of  
the moral and intellectual faculties.
  
The divine image of beauty which resides within Socrates has been revealed;  
the Silenus, or outward man, has now to be exhibited. The description of  
Socrates follows immediately after the speech of Socrates; one is the  
complement of the other. At the height of divine inspiration, when the  
force of nature can no further go, by way of contrast to this extreme  
idealism, Alcibiades, accompanied by a troop of revellers and a flute-girl,  
staggers in, and being drunk is able to tell of things which he would have  
been ashamed to make known if he had been sober. The state of his  
affections towards Socrates, unintelligible to us and perverted as they  
appear, affords an illustration of the power ascribed to the loves of man  
in the speech of Pausanias. He does not suppose his feelings to be  
peculiar to himself: there are several other persons in the company who  
have been equally in love with Socrates, and like himself have been  
deceived by him. The singular part of this confession is the combination  
of the most degrading passion with the desire of virtue and improvement.  
Such an union is not wholly untrue to human nature, which is capable of  
combining good and evil in a degree beyond what we can easily conceive. In  
imaginative persons, especially, the God and beast in man seem to part  
asunder more than is natural in a well-regulated mind. The Platonic  
Socrates (for of the real Socrates this may be doubted: compare his public  
rebuke of Critias for his shameful love of Euthydemus in Xenophon,  
Memorabilia) does not regard the greatest evil of Greek life as a thing not  
to be spoken of; but it has a ridiculous element (Plato's Symp.), and is a  
subject for irony, no less than for moral reprobation (compare Plato's  
Symp.). It is also used as a figure of speech which no one interpreted  
literally (compare Xen. Symp.). Nor does Plato feel any repugnance, such  
as would be felt in modern times, at bringing his great master and hero  
into connexion with nameless crimes. He is contented with representing him  
as a saint, who has won 'the Olympian victory' over the temptations of  
human nature. The fault of taste, which to us is so glaring and which was  
recognized by the Greeks of a later age (Athenaeus), was not perceived by  
Plato himself. We are still more surprised to find that the philosopher is  
incited to take the first step in his upward progress (Symp.) by the beauty  
of young men and boys, which was alone capable of inspiring the modern  
feeling of romance in the Greek mind. The passion of love took the  
spurious form of an enthusiasm for the ideal of beauty--a worship as of  
some godlike image of an Apollo or Antinous. But the love of youth when  
not depraved was a love of virtue and modesty as well as of beauty, the one  
being the expression of the other; and in certain Greek states, especially  
at Sparta and Thebes, the honourable attachment of a youth to an elder man  
was a part of his education. The 'army of lovers and their beloved who  
would be invincible if they could be united by such a tie' (Symp.), is not  
a mere fiction of Plato's, but seems actually to have existed at Thebes in  
the days of Epaminondas and Pelopidas, if we may believe writers cited  
anonymously by Plutarch, Pelop. Vit. It is observable that Plato never in  
the least degree excuses the depraved love of the body (compare Charm.;  
Rep.; Laws; Symp.; and once more Xenophon, Mem.), nor is there any Greek  
writer of mark who condones or approves such connexions. But owing partly  
to the puzzling nature of the subject these friendships are spoken of by  
Plato in a manner different from that customary among ourselves. To most  
of them we should hesitate to ascribe, any more than to the attachment of  
Achilles and Patroclus in Homer, an immoral or licentious character. There  
were many, doubtless, to whom the love of the fair mind was the noblest  
form of friendship (Rep.), and who deemed the friendship of man with man to  
be higher than the love of woman, because altogether separated from the  
bodily appetites. The existence of such attachments may be reasonably  
attributed to the inferiority and seclusion of woman, and the want of a  
real family or social life and parental influence in Hellenic cities; and  
they were encouraged by the practice of gymnastic exercises, by the  
meetings of political clubs, and by the tie of military companionship.  
They were also an educational institution: a young person was specially  
entrusted by his parents to some elder friend who was expected by them to  
train their son in manly exercises and in virtue. It is not likely that a  
Greek parent committed him to a lover, any more than we should to a  
schoolmaster, in the expectation that he would be corrupted by him, but  
rather in the hope that his morals would be better cared for than was  
possible in a great household of slaves.
  
It is difficult to adduce the authority of Plato either for or against such  
practices or customs, because it is not always easy to determine whether he  
is speaking of 'the heavenly and philosophical love, or of the coarse  
Polyhymnia:' and he often refers to this (e.g. in the Symposium) half in  
jest, yet 'with a certain degree of seriousness.'  We observe that they  
entered into one part of Greek literature, but not into another, and that  
the larger part is free from such associations. Indecency was an element  
of the ludicrous in the old Greek Comedy, as it has been in other ages and  
countries. But effeminate love was always condemned as well as ridiculed  
by the Comic poets; and in the New Comedy the allusions to such topics have  
disappeared. They seem to have been no longer tolerated by the greater  
refinement of the age. False sentiment is found in the Lyric and Elegiac  
poets; and in mythology 'the greatest of the Gods' (Rep.) is not exempt  
from evil imputations. But the morals of a nation are not to be judged of  
wholly by its literature. Hellas was not necessarily more corrupted in the  
days of the Persian and Peloponnesian wars, or of Plato and the Orators,  
than England in the time of Fielding and Smollett, or France in the  
nineteenth century. No one supposes certain French novels to be a  
representation of ordinary French life. And the greater part of Greek  
literature, beginning with Homer and including the tragedians,  
philosophers, and, with the exception of the Comic poets (whose business  
was to raise a laugh by whatever means), all the greater writers of Hellas  
who have been preserved to us, are free from the taint of indecency.
  
Some general considerations occur to our mind when we begin to reflect on  
this subject. (1) That good and evil are linked together in human nature,  
and have often existed side by side in the world and in man to an extent  
hardly credible. We cannot distinguish them, and are therefore unable to  
part them; as in the parable 'they grow together unto the harvest:'  it is  
only a rule of external decency by which society can divide them. Nor  
should we be right in inferring from the prevalence of any one vice or  
corruption that a state or individual was demoralized in their whole  
character. Not only has the corruption of the best been sometimes thought  
to be the worst, but it may be remarked that this very excess of evil has  
been the stimulus to good (compare Plato, Laws, where he says that in the  
most corrupt cities individuals are to be found beyond all praise). (2) It  
may be observed that evils which admit of degrees can seldom be rightly  
estimated, because under the same name actions of the most different  
degrees of culpability may be included. No charge is more easily set going  
than the imputation of secret wickedness (which cannot be either proved or  
disproved and often cannot be defined) when directed against a person of  
whom the world, or a section of it, is predisposed to think evil. And it  
is quite possible that the malignity of Greek scandal, aroused by some  
personal jealousy or party enmity, may have converted the innocent  
friendship of a great man for a noble youth into a connexion of another  
kind. Such accusations were brought against several of the leading men of  
Hellas, e.g. Cimon, Alcibiades, Critias, Demosthenes, Epaminondas: several  
of the Roman emperors were assailed by similar weapons which have been used  
even in our own day against statesmen of the highest character. (3) While  
we know that in this matter there is a great gulf fixed between Greek and  
Christian Ethics, yet, if we would do justice to the Greeks, we must also  
acknowledge that there was a greater outspokenness among them than among  
ourselves about the things which nature hides, and that the more frequent  
mention of such topics is not to be taken as the measure of the prevalence  
of offences, or as a proof of the general corruption of society. It is  
likely that every religion in the world has used words or practised rites  
in one age, which have become distasteful or repugnant to another. We  
cannot, though for different reasons, trust the representations either of  
Comedy or Satire; and still less of Christian Apologists. (4) We observe  
that at Thebes and Lacedemon the attachment of an elder friend to a beloved  
youth was often deemed to be a part of his education; and was encouraged by  
his parents--it was only shameful if it degenerated into licentiousness.  
Such we may believe to have been the tie which united Asophychus and  
Cephisodorus with the great Epaminondas in whose companionship they fell  
(Plutarch, Amat.; Athenaeus on the authority of Theopompus). (5) A small  
matter: there appears to be a difference of custom among the Greeks and  
among ourselves, as between ourselves and continental nations at the  
present time, in modes of salutation. We must not suspect evil in the  
hearty kiss or embrace of a male friend 'returning from the army at  
Potidaea' any more than in a similar salutation when practised by members  
of the same family. But those who make these admissions, and who regard,  
not without pity, the victims of such illusions in our own day, whose life  
has been blasted by them, may be none the less resolved that the natural  
and healthy instincts of mankind shall alone be tolerated (Greek); and that  
the lesson of manliness which we have inherited from our fathers shall not  
degenerate into sentimentalism or effeminacy. The possibility of an  
honourable connexion of this kind seems to have died out with Greek  
civilization. Among the Romans, and also among barbarians, such as the  
Celts and Persians, there is no trace of such attachments existing in any  
noble or virtuous form.
  
(Compare Hoeck's Creta and the admirable and exhaustive article of Meier in  
Ersch and Grueber's Cyclopedia on this subject; Plutarch, Amatores;  
Athenaeus; Lysias contra Simonem; Aesch. c. Timarchum.)  
  
The character of Alcibiades in the Symposium is hardly less remarkable than  
that of Socrates, and agrees with the picture given of him in the first of  
the two Dialogues which are called by his name, and also with the slight  
sketch of him in the Protagoras. He is the impersonation of lawlessness--  
'the lion's whelp, who ought not to be reared in the city,' yet not without  
a certain generosity which gained the hearts of men,--strangely fascinated  
by Socrates, and possessed of a genius which might have been either the  
destruction or salvation of Athens. The dramatic interest of the character  
is heightened by the recollection of his after history. He seems to have  
been present to the mind of Plato in the description of the democratic man  
of the Republic (compare also Alcibiades 1).
  
There is no criterion of the date of the Symposium, except that which is  
furnished by the allusion to the division of Arcadia after the destruction  
of Mantinea. This took place in the year B.C. 384, which is the forty-  
fourth year of Plato's life. The Symposium cannot therefore be regarded as  
a youthful work. As Mantinea was restored in the year 369, the composition  
of the Dialogue will probably fall between 384 and 369. Whether the  
recollection of the event is more likely to have been renewed at the  
destruction or restoration of the city, rather than at some intermediate  
period, is a consideration not worth raising.
  
The Symposium is connected with the Phaedrus both in style and subject;  
they are the only Dialogues of Plato in which the theme of love is  
discussed at length. In both of them philosophy is regarded as a sort of  
enthusiasm or madness; Socrates is himself 'a prophet new inspired' with  
Bacchanalian revelry, which, like his philosophy, he characteristically  
pretends to have derived not from himself but from others. The Phaedo also  
presents some points of comparison with the Symposium. For there, too,  
philosophy might be described as 'dying for love;' and there are not  
wanting many touches of humour and fancy, which remind us of the Symposium.
But while the Phaedo and Phaedrus look backwards and forwards to past and  
future states of existence, in the Symposium there is no break between this  
world and another; and we rise from one to the other by a regular series of  
steps or stages, proceeding from the particulars of sense to the universal  
of reason, and from one universal to many, which are finally reunited in a  
single science (compare Rep.). At first immortality means only the  
succession of existences; even knowledge comes and goes. Then follows, in  
the language of the mysteries, a higher and a higher degree of initiation;  
at last we arrive at the perfect vision of beauty, not relative or  
changing, but eternal and absolute; not bounded by this world, or in or out  
of this world, but an aspect of the divine, extending over all things, and  
having no limit of space or time: this is the highest knowledge of which  
the human mind is capable. Plato does not go on to ask whether the  
individual is absorbed in the sea of light and beauty or retains his  
personality. Enough for him to have attained the true beauty or good,  
without enquiring precisely into the relation in which human beings stood  
to it. That the soul has such a reach of thought, and is capable of  
partaking of the eternal nature, seems to imply that she too is eternal  
(compare Phaedrus). But Plato does not distinguish the eternal in man from  
the eternal in the world or in God. He is willing to rest in the  
contemplation of the idea, which to him is the cause of all things (Rep.),  
and has no strength to go further.
  
The Symposium of Xenophon, in which Socrates describes himself as a pander,  
and also discourses of the difference between sensual and sentimental love,  
likewise offers several interesting points of comparison. But the  
suspicion which hangs over other writings of Xenophon, and the numerous  
minute references to the Phaedrus and Symposium, as well as to some of the  
other writings of Plato, throw a doubt on the genuineness of the work. The  
Symposium of Xenophon, if written by him at all, would certainly show that  
he wrote against Plato, and was acquainted with his works. Of this  
hostility there is no trace in the Memorabilia. Such a rivalry is more  
characteristic of an imitator than of an original writer. The (so-called)  
Symposium of Xenophon may therefore have no more title to be regarded as  
genuine than the confessedly spurious Apology.
  
There are no means of determining the relative order in time of the  
Phaedrus, Symposium, Phaedo. The order which has been adopted in this  
translation rests on no other principle than the desire to bring together  
in a series the memorials of the life of Socrates.
  
  
SYMPOSIUM  
  
by  
  
Plato  
  
Translated by Benjamin Jowett  
  
  
PERSONS OF THE DIALOGUE:
Apollodorus, who repeats to his companion the dialogue which he had heard  
from Aristodemus, and had already once narrated to Glaucon.
Phaedrus, Pausanias, Eryximachus, Aristophanes, Agathon, Socrates,  
Alcibiades, A Troop of Revellers.
  
SCENE: The House of Agathon.
  
  
Concerning the things about which you ask to be informed I believe that I  
am not ill-prepared with an answer. For the day before yesterday I was  
coming from my own home at Phalerum to the city, and one of my  
acquaintance, who had caught a sight of me from behind, calling out  
playfully in the distance, said: Apollodorus, O thou Phalerian (Probably a  
play of words on (Greek), 'bald-headed.') man, halt! So I did as I was  
bid; and then he said, I was looking for you, Apollodorus, only just now,  
that I might ask you about the speeches in praise of love, which were  
delivered by Socrates, Alcibiades, and others, at Agathon's supper.  
Phoenix, the son of Philip, told another person who told me of them; his  
narrative was very indistinct, but he said that you knew, and I wish that  
you would give me an account of them. Who, if not you, should be the  
reporter of the words of your friend? And first tell me, he said, were you  
present at this meeting?
  
Your informant, Glaucon, I said, must have been very indistinct indeed, if  
you imagine that the occasion was recent; or that I could have been of the  
party.
  
Why, yes, he replied, I thought so.
  
Impossible: I said. Are you ignorant that for many years Agathon has not  
resided at Athens; and not three have elapsed since I became acquainted  
with Socrates, and have made it my daily business to know all that he says  
and does. There was a time when I was running about the world, fancying  
myself to be well employed, but I was really a most wretched being, no  
better than you are now. I thought that I ought to do anything rather than  
be a philosopher.
  
Well, he said, jesting apart, tell me when the meeting occurred.
  
In our boyhood, I replied, when Agathon won the prize with his first  
tragedy, on the day after that on which he and his chorus offered the  
sacrifice of victory.
  
Then it must have been a long while ago, he said; and who told you--did  
Socrates?
  
No indeed, I replied, but the same person who told Phoenix;--he was a  
little fellow, who never wore any shoes, Aristodemus, of the deme of  
Cydathenaeum. He had been at Agathon's feast; and I think that in those  
days there was no one who was a more devoted admirer of Socrates.  
Moreover, I have asked Socrates about the truth of some parts of his  
narrative, and he confirmed them. Then, said Glaucon, let us have the tale  
over again; is not the road to Athens just made for conversation? And so  
we walked, and talked of the discourses on love; and therefore, as I said  
at first, I am not ill-prepared to comply with your request, and will have  
another rehearsal of them if you like. For to speak or to hear others  
speak of philosophy always gives me the greatest pleasure, to say nothing  
of the profit. But when I hear another strain, especially that of you rich  
men and traders, such conversation displeases me; and I pity you who are my  
companions, because you think that you are doing something when in reality  
you are doing nothing. And I dare say that you pity me in return, whom you  
regard as an unhappy creature, and very probably you are right. But I  
certainly know of you what you only think of me--there is the difference.
  
COMPANION: I see, Apollodorus, that you are just the same--always speaking  
evil of yourself, and of others; and I do believe that you pity all  
mankind, with the exception of Socrates, yourself first of all, true in  
this to your old name, which, however deserved, I know not how you  
acquired, of Apollodorus the madman; for you are always raging against  
yourself and everybody but Socrates.
  
APOLLODORUS: Yes, friend, and the reason why I am said to be mad, and out  
of my wits, is just because I have these notions of myself and you; no  
other evidence is required.
  
COMPANION: No more of that, Apollodorus; but let me renew my request that  
you would repeat the conversation.
  
APOLLODORUS: Well, the tale of love was on this wise:--But perhaps I had  
better begin at the beginning, and endeavour to give you the exact words of  
Aristodemus:
  
He said that he met Socrates fresh from the bath and sandalled; and as the  
sight of the sandals was unusual, he asked him whither he was going that he  
had been converted into such a beau:--  
  
To a banquet at Agathon's, he replied, whose invitation to his sacrifice of  
victory I refused yesterday, fearing a crowd, but promising that I would  
come to-day instead; and so I have put on my finery, because he is such a  
fine man. What say you to going with me unasked?
  
I will do as you bid me, I replied.
  
Follow then, he said, and let us demolish the proverb:--  
  
'To the feasts of inferior men the good unbidden go;'  
  
instead of which our proverb will run:--  
  
'To the feasts of the good the good unbidden go;'  
  
and this alteration may be supported by the authority of Homer himself, who  
not only demolishes but literally outrages the proverb. For, after  
picturing Agamemnon as the most valiant of men, he makes Menelaus, who is  
but a fainthearted warrior, come unbidden (Iliad) to the banquet of  
Agamemnon, who is feasting and offering sacrifices, not the better to the  
worse, but the worse to the better.
  
I rather fear, Socrates, said Aristodemus, lest this may still be my case;  
and that, like Menelaus in Homer, I shall be the inferior person, who  
  
'To the feasts of the wise unbidden goes.'  
  
But I shall say that I was bidden of you, and then you will have to make an  
excuse.
  
'Two going together,'  
  
he replied, in Homeric fashion, one or other of them may invent an excuse  
by the way (Iliad).
  
This was the style of their conversation as they went along. Socrates  
dropped behind in a fit of abstraction, and desired Aristodemus, who was  
waiting, to go on before him. When he reached the house of Agathon he  
found the doors wide open, and a comical thing happened. A servant coming  
out met him, and led him at once into the banqueting-hall in which the  
guests were reclining, for the banquet was about to begin. Welcome,  
Aristodemus, said Agathon, as soon as he appeared--you are just in time to  
sup with us; if you come on any other matter put it off, and make one of  
us, as I was looking for you yesterday and meant to have asked you, if I  
could have found you. But what have you done with Socrates?
  
I turned round, but Socrates was nowhere to be seen; and I had to explain  
that he had been with me a moment before, and that I came by his invitation  
to the supper.
  
You were quite right in coming, said Agathon; but where is he himself?
  
He was behind me just now, as I entered, he said, and I cannot think what  
has become of him.
  
Go and look for him, boy, said Agathon, and bring him in; and do you,  
Aristodemus, meanwhile take the place by Eryximachus.
  
The servant then assisted him to wash, and he lay down, and presently  
another servant came in and reported that our friend Socrates had retired  
into the portico of the neighbouring house. 'There he is fixed,' said he,  
'and when I call to him he will not stir.'  
  
How strange, said Agathon; then you must call him again, and keep calling  
him.
  
Let him alone, said my informant; he has a way of stopping anywhere and  
losing himself without any reason. I believe that he will soon appear; do  
not therefore disturb him.
  
Well, if you think so, I will leave him, said Agathon. And then, turning  
to the servants, he added, 'Let us have supper without waiting for him.  
Serve up whatever you please, for there is no one to give you orders;  
hitherto I have never left you to yourselves. But on this occasion imagine  
that you are our hosts, and that I and the company are your guests; treat  
us well, and then we shall commend you.'  After this, supper was served,  
but still no Socrates; and during the meal Agathon several times expressed  
a wish to send for him, but Aristodemus objected; and at last when the  
feast was about half over--for the fit, as usual, was not of long duration  
--Socrates entered. Agathon, who was reclining alone at the end of the  
table, begged that he would take the place next to him; that 'I may touch  
you,' he said, 'and have the benefit of that wise thought which came into  
your mind in the portico, and is now in your possession; for I am certain  
that you would not have come away until you had found what you sought.'  
  
How I wish, said Socrates, taking his place as he was desired, that wisdom  
could be infused by touch, out of the fuller into the emptier man, as water  
runs through wool out of a fuller cup into an emptier one; if that were so,  
how greatly should I value the privilege of reclining at your side! For  
you would have filled me full with a stream of wisdom plenteous and fair;  
whereas my own is of a very mean and questionable sort, no better than a  
dream. But yours is bright and full of promise, and was manifested forth  
in all the splendour of youth the day before yesterday, in the presence of  
more than thirty thousand Hellenes.
  
You are mocking, Socrates, said Agathon, and ere long you and I will have  
to determine who bears off the palm of wisdom--of this Dionysus shall be  
the judge; but at present you are better occupied with supper.
  
Socrates took his place on the couch, and supped with the rest; and then  
libations were offered, and after a hymn had been sung to the god, and  
there had been the usual ceremonies, they were about to commence drinking,  
when Pausanias said, And now, my friends, how can we drink with least  
injury to ourselves? I can assure you that I feel severely the effect of  
yesterday's potations, and must have time to recover; and I suspect that  
most of you are in the same predicament, for you were of the party  
yesterday. Consider then: How can the drinking be made easiest?
  
I entirely agree, said Aristophanes, that we should, by all means, avoid  
hard drinking, for I was myself one of those who were yesterday drowned in  
drink.
  
I think that you are right, said Eryximachus, the son of Acumenus; but I  
should still like to hear one other person speak: Is Agathon able to drink  
hard?
  
I am not equal to it, said Agathon.
  
Then, said Eryximachus, the weak heads like myself, Aristodemus, Phaedrus,  
and others who never can drink, are fortunate in finding that the stronger  
ones are not in a drinking mood. (I do not include Socrates, who is able  
either to drink or to abstain, and will not mind, whichever we do.)  Well,  
as of none of the company seem disposed to drink much, I may be forgiven  
for saying, as a physician, that drinking deep is a bad practice, which I  
never follow, if I can help, and certainly do not recommend to another,  
least of all to any one who still feels the effects of yesterday's carouse.
  
I always do what you advise, and especially what you prescribe as a  
physician, rejoined Phaedrus the Myrrhinusian, and the rest of the company,  
if they are wise, will do the same.
  
It was agreed that drinking was not to be the order of the day, but that  
they were all to drink only so much as they pleased.
  
Then, said Eryximachus, as you are all agreed that drinking is to be  
voluntary, and that there is to be no compulsion, I move, in the next  
place, that the flute-girl, who has just made her appearance, be told to go  
away and play to herself, or, if she likes, to the women who are within  
(compare Prot.). To-day let us have conversation instead; and, if you will  
allow me, I will tell you what sort of conversation. This proposal having  
been accepted, Eryximachus proceeded as follows:--  
  
I will begin, he said, after the manner of Melanippe in Euripides,   
  
'Not mine the word'  
  
which I am about to speak, but that of Phaedrus. For often he says to me  
in an indignant tone:--'What a strange thing it is, Eryximachus, that,  
whereas other gods have poems and hymns made in their honour, the great and  
glorious god, Love, has no encomiast among all the poets who are so many.  
There are the worthy sophists too--the excellent Prodicus for example, who  
have descanted in prose on the virtues of Heracles and other heroes; and,  
what is still more extraordinary, I have met with a philosophical work in  
which the utility of salt has been made the theme of an eloquent discourse;  
and many other like things have had a like honour bestowed upon them. And  
only to think that there should have been an eager interest created about  
them, and yet that to this day no one has ever dared worthily to hymn  
Love's praises! So entirely has this great deity been neglected.'  Now in  
this Phaedrus seems to me to be quite right, and therefore I want to offer  
him a contribution; also I think that at the present moment we who are here  
assembled cannot do better than honour the god Love. If you agree with me,  
there will be no lack of conversation; for I mean to propose that each of  
us in turn, going from left to right, shall make a speech in honour of  
Love. Let him give us the best which he can; and Phaedrus, because he is  
sitting first on the left hand, and because he is the father of the  
thought, shall begin.
  
No one will vote against you, Eryximachus, said Socrates. How can I oppose  
your motion, who profess to understand nothing but matters of love; nor, I  
presume, will Agathon and Pausanias; and there can be no doubt of  
Aristophanes, whose whole concern is with Dionysus and Aphrodite; nor will  
any one disagree of those whom I see around me. The proposal, as I am  
aware, may seem rather hard upon us whose place is last; but we shall be  
contented if we hear some good speeches first. Let Phaedrus begin the  
praise of Love, and good luck to him. All the company expressed their  
assent, and desired him to do as Socrates bade him.
  
Aristodemus did not recollect all that was said, nor do I recollect all  
that he related to me; but I will tell you what I thought most worthy of  
remembrance, and what the chief speakers said.
  
Phaedrus began by affirming that Love is a mighty god, and wonderful among  
gods and men, but especially wonderful in his birth. For he is the eldest  
of the gods, which is an honour to him; and a proof of his claim to this  
honour is, that of his parents there is no memorial; neither poet nor  
prose-writer has ever affirmed that he had any. As Hesiod says:--  
  
'First Chaos came, and then broad-bosomed Earth,  
The everlasting seat of all that is,  
And Love.'  
  
In other words, after Chaos, the Earth and Love, these two, came into  
being. Also Parmenides sings of Generation:
  
'First in the train of gods, he fashioned Love.'  
  
And Acusilaus agrees with Hesiod. Thus numerous are the witnesses who  
acknowledge Love to be the eldest of the gods. And not only is he the  
eldest, he is also the source of the greatest benefits to us. For I know  
not any greater blessing to a young man who is beginning life than a  
virtuous lover, or to the lover than a beloved youth. For the principle  
which ought to be the guide of men who would nobly live--that principle, I  
say, neither kindred, nor honour, nor wealth, nor any other motive is able  
to implant so well as love. Of what am I speaking? Of the sense of honour  
and dishonour, without which neither states nor individuals ever do any  
good or great work. And I say that a lover who is detected in doing any  
dishonourable act, or submitting through cowardice when any dishonour is  
done to him by another, will be more pained at being detected by his  
beloved than at being seen by his father, or by his companions, or by any  
one else. The beloved too, when he is found in any disgraceful situation,  
has the same feeling about his lover. And if there were only some way of  
contriving that a state or an army should be made up of lovers and their  
loves (compare Rep.), they would be the very best governors of their own  
city, abstaining from all dishonour, and emulating one another in honour;  
and when fighting at each other's side, although a mere handful, they would  
overcome the world. For what lover would not choose rather to be seen by  
all mankind than by his beloved, either when abandoning his post or  
throwing away his arms? He would be ready to die a thousand deaths rather  
than endure this. Or who would desert his beloved or fail him in the hour  
of danger? The veriest coward would become an inspired hero, equal to the  
bravest, at such a time; Love would inspire him. That courage which, as  
Homer says, the god breathes into the souls of some heroes, Love of his own  
nature infuses into the lover.
  
Love will make men dare to die for their beloved--love alone; and women as  
well as men. Of this, Alcestis, the daughter of Pelias, is a monument to  
all Hellas; for she was willing to lay down her life on behalf of her  
husband, when no one else would, although he had a father and mother; but  
the tenderness of her love so far exceeded theirs, that she made them seem  
to be strangers in blood to their own son, and in name only related to him;  
and so noble did this action of hers appear to the gods, as well as to men,  
that among the many who have done virtuously she is one of the very few to  
whom, in admiration of her noble action, they have granted the privilege of  
returning alive to earth; such exceeding honour is paid by the gods to the  
devotion and virtue of love. But Orpheus, the son of Oeagrus, the harper,  
they sent empty away, and presented to him an apparition only of her whom  
he sought, but herself they would not give up, because he showed no spirit;  
he was only a harp-player, and did not dare like Alcestis to die for love,  
but was contriving how he might enter Hades alive; moreover, they  
afterwards caused him to suffer death at the hands of women, as the  
punishment of his cowardliness. Very different was the reward of the true  
love of Achilles towards his lover Patroclus--his lover and not his love  
(the notion that Patroclus was the beloved one is a foolish error into  
which Aeschylus has fallen, for Achilles was surely the fairer of the two,  
fairer also than all the other heroes; and, as Homer informs us, he was  
still beardless, and younger far). And greatly as the gods honour the  
virtue of love, still the return of love on the part of the beloved to the  
lover is more admired and valued and rewarded by them, for the lover is  
more divine; because he is inspired by God. Now Achilles was quite aware,  
for he had been told by his mother, that he might avoid death and return  
home, and live to a good old age, if he abstained from slaying Hector.  
Nevertheless he gave his life to revenge his friend, and dared to die, not  
only in his defence, but after he was dead. Wherefore the gods honoured  
him even above Alcestis, and sent him to the Islands of the Blest. These  
are my reasons for affirming that Love is the eldest and noblest and  
mightiest of the gods; and the chiefest author and giver of virtue in life,  
and of happiness after death.
  
This, or something like this, was the speech of Phaedrus; and some other  
speeches followed which Aristodemus did not remember; the next which he  
repeated was that of Pausanias. Phaedrus, he said, the argument has not  
been set before us, I think, quite in the right form;--we should not be  
called upon to praise Love in such an indiscriminate manner. If there were  
only one Love, then what you said would be well enough; but since there are  
more Loves than one,--should have begun by determining which of them was to  
be the theme of our praises. I will amend this defect; and first of all I  
will tell you which Love is deserving of praise, and then try to hymn the  
praiseworthy one in a manner worthy of him. For we all know that Love is  
inseparable from Aphrodite, and if there were only one Aphrodite there  
would be only one Love; but as there are two goddesses there must be two  
Loves. And am I not right in asserting that there are two goddesses? The  
elder one, having no mother, who is called the heavenly Aphrodite--she is  
the daughter of Uranus; the younger, who is the daughter of Zeus and Dione  
--her we call common; and the Love who is her fellow-worker is rightly  
named common, as the other love is called heavenly. All the gods ought to  
have praise given to them, but not without distinction of their natures;  
and therefore I must try to distinguish the characters of the two Loves.  
Now actions vary according to the manner of their performance. Take, for  
example, that which we are now doing, drinking, singing and talking--these  
actions are not in themselves either good or evil, but they turn out in  
this or that way according to the mode of performing them; and when well  
done they are good, and when wrongly done they are evil; and in like manner  
not every love, but only that which has a noble purpose, is noble and  
worthy of praise. The Love who is the offspring of the common Aphrodite is  
essentially common, and has no discrimination, being such as the meaner  
sort of men feel, and is apt to be of women as well as of youths, and is of  
the body rather than of the soul--the most foolish beings are the objects  
of this love which desires only to gain an end, but never thinks of  
accomplishing the end nobly, and therefore does good and evil quite  
indiscriminately. The goddess who is his mother is far younger than the  
other, and she was born of the union of the male and female, and partakes  
of both. But the offspring of the heavenly Aphrodite is derived from a  
mother in whose birth the female has no part,--she is from the male only;  
this is that love which is of youths, and the goddess being older, there is  
nothing of wantonness in her. Those who are inspired by this love turn to  
the male, and delight in him who is the more valiant and intelligent  
nature; any one may recognise the pure enthusiasts in the very character of  
their attachments. For they love not boys, but intelligent beings whose  
reason is beginning to be developed, much about the time at which their  
beards begin to grow. And in choosing young men to be their companions,  
they mean to be faithful to them, and pass their whole life in company with  
them, not to take them in their inexperience, and deceive them, and play  
the fool with them, or run away from one to another of them. But the love  
of young boys should be forbidden by law, because their future is  
uncertain; they may turn out good or bad, either in body or soul, and much  
noble enthusiasm may be thrown away upon them; in this matter the good are  
a law to themselves, and the coarser sort of lovers ought to be restrained  
by force; as we restrain or attempt to restrain them from fixing their  
affections on women of free birth. These are the persons who bring a  
reproach on love; and some have been led to deny the lawfulness of such  
attachments because they see the impropriety and evil of them; for surely  
nothing that is decorously and lawfully done can justly be censured. Now  
here and in Lacedaemon the rules about love are perplexing, but in most  
cities they are simple and easily intelligible; in Elis and Boeotia, and in  
countries having no gifts of eloquence, they are very straightforward; the  
law is simply in favour of these connexions, and no one, whether young or  
old, has anything to say to their discredit; the reason being, as I  
suppose, that they are men of few words in those parts, and therefore the  
lovers do not like the trouble of pleading their suit. In Ionia and other  
places, and generally in countries which are subject to the barbarians, the  
custom is held to be dishonourable; loves of youths share the evil repute  
in which philosophy and gymnastics are held, because they are inimical to  
tyranny; for the interests of rulers require that their subjects should be  
poor in spirit (compare Arist. Politics), and that there should be no  
strong bond of friendship or society among them, which love, above all  
other motives, is likely to inspire, as our Athenian tyrants learned by  
experience; for the love of Aristogeiton and the constancy of Harmodius had  
a strength which undid their power. And, therefore, the ill-repute into  
which these attachments have fallen is to be ascribed to the evil condition  
of those who make them to be ill-reputed; that is to say, to the self-  
seeking of the governors and the cowardice of the governed; on the other  
hand, the indiscriminate honour which is given to them in some countries is  
attributable to the laziness of those who hold this opinion of them. In  
our own country a far better principle prevails, but, as I was saying, the  
explanation of it is rather perplexing. For, observe that open loves are  
held to be more honourable than secret ones, and that the love of the  
noblest and highest, even if their persons are less beautiful than others,  
is especially honourable. Consider, too, how great is the encouragement  
which all the world gives to the lover; neither is he supposed to be doing  
anything dishonourable; but if he succeeds he is praised, and if he fail he  
is blamed. And in the pursuit of his love the custom of mankind allows him  
to do many strange things, which philosophy would bitterly censure if they  
were done from any motive of interest, or wish for office or power. He may  
pray, and entreat, and supplicate, and swear, and lie on a mat at the door,  
and endure a slavery worse than that of any slave--in any other case  
friends and enemies would be equally ready to prevent him, but now there is  
no friend who will be ashamed of him and admonish him, and no enemy will  
charge him with meanness or flattery; the actions of a lover have a grace  
which ennobles them; and custom has decided that they are highly  
commendable and that there no loss of character in them; and, what is  
strangest of all, he only may swear and forswear himself (so men say), and  
the gods will forgive his transgression, for there is no such thing as a  
lover's oath. Such is the entire liberty which gods and men have allowed  
the lover, according to the custom which prevails in our part of the world.  
From this point of view a man fairly argues that in Athens to love and to  
be loved is held to be a very honourable thing. But when parents forbid  
their sons to talk with their lovers, and place them under a tutor's care,  
who is appointed to see to these things, and their companions and equals  
cast in their teeth anything of the sort which they may observe, and their  
elders refuse to silence the reprovers and do not rebuke them--any one who  
reflects on all this will, on the contrary, think that we hold these  
practices to be most disgraceful. But, as I was saying at first, the truth  
as I imagine is, that whether such practices are honourable or whether they  
are dishonourable is not a simple question; they are honourable to him who  
follows them honourably, dishonourable to him who follows them  
dishonourably. There is dishonour in yielding to the evil, or in an evil  
manner; but there is honour in yielding to the good, or in an honourable  
manner. Evil is the vulgar lover who loves the body rather than the soul,  
inasmuch as he is not even stable, because he loves a thing which is in  
itself unstable, and therefore when the bloom of youth which he was  
desiring is over, he takes wing and flies away, in spite of all his words  
and promises; whereas the love of the noble disposition is life-long, for  
it becomes one with the everlasting. The custom of our country would have  
both of them proven well and truly, and would have us yield to the one sort  
of lover and avoid the other, and therefore encourages some to pursue, and  
others to fly; testing both the lover and beloved in contests and trials,  
until they show to which of the two classes they respectively belong. And  
this is the reason why, in the first place, a hasty attachment is held to  
be dishonourable, because time is the true test of this as of most other  
things; and secondly there is a dishonour in being overcome by the love of  
money, or of wealth, or of political power, whether a man is frightened  
into surrender by the loss of them, or, having experienced the benefits of  
money and political corruption, is unable to rise above the seductions of  
them. For none of these things are of a permanent or lasting nature; not  
to mention that no generous friendship ever sprang from them. There  
remains, then, only one way of honourable attachment which custom allows in  
the beloved, and this is the way of virtue; for as we admitted that any  
service which the lover does to him is not to be accounted flattery or a  
dishonour to himself, so the beloved has one way only of voluntary service  
which is not dishonourable, and this is virtuous service.
  
For we have a custom, and according to our custom any one who does service  
to another under the idea that he will be improved by him either in wisdom,  
or in some other particular of virtue--such a voluntary service, I say, is  
not to be regarded as a dishonour, and is not open to the charge of  
flattery. And these two customs, one the love of youth, and the other the  
practice of philosophy and virtue in general, ought to meet in one, and  
then the beloved may honourably indulge the lover. For when the lover and  
beloved come together, having each of them a law, and the lover thinks that  
he is right in doing any service which he can to his gracious loving one;  
and the other that he is right in showing any kindness which he can to him  
who is making him wise and good; the one capable of communicating wisdom  
and virtue, the other seeking to acquire them with a view to education and  
wisdom, when the two laws of love are fulfilled and meet in one--then, and  
then only, may the beloved yield with honour to the lover. Nor when love  
is of this disinterested sort is there any disgrace in being deceived, but  
in every other case there is equal disgrace in being or not being deceived.  
For he who is gracious to his lover under the impression that he is rich,  
and is disappointed of his gains because he turns out to be poor, is  
disgraced all the same: for he has done his best to show that he would  
give himself up to any one's 'uses base' for the sake of money; but this is  
not honourable. And on the same principle he who gives himself to a lover  
because he is a good man, and in the hope that he will be improved by his  
company, shows himself to be virtuous, even though the object of his  
affection turn out to be a villain, and to have no virtue; and if he is  
deceived he has committed a noble error. For he has proved that for his  
part he will do anything for anybody with a view to virtue and improvement,  
than which there can be nothing nobler. Thus noble in every case is the  
acceptance of another for the sake of virtue. This is that love which is  
the love of the heavenly godess, and is heavenly, and of great price to  
individuals and cities, making the lover and the beloved alike eager in the  
work of their own improvement. But all other loves are the offspring of  
the other, who is the common goddess. To you, Phaedrus, I offer this my  
contribution in praise of love, which is as good as I could make extempore.
  
Pausanias came to a pause--this is the balanced way in which I have been  
taught by the wise to speak; and Aristodemus said that the turn of  
Aristophanes was next, but either he had eaten too much, or from some other  
cause he had the hiccough, and was obliged to change turns with Eryximachus  
the physician, who was reclining on the couch below him. Eryximachus, he  
said, you ought either to stop my hiccough, or to speak in my turn until I  
have left off.
  
I will do both, said Eryximachus: I will speak in your turn, and do you  
speak in mine; and while I am speaking let me recommend you to hold your  
breath, and if after you have done so for some time the hiccough is no  
better, then gargle with a little water; and if it still continues, tickle  
your nose with something and sneeze; and if you sneeze once or twice, even  
the most violent hiccough is sure to go. I will do as you prescribe, said  
Aristophanes, and now get on.
  
Eryximachus spoke as follows: Seeing that Pausanias made a fair beginning,  
and but a lame ending, I must endeavour to supply his deficiency. I think  
that he has rightly distinguished two kinds of love. But my art further  
informs me that the double love is not merely an affection of the soul of  
man towards the fair, or towards anything, but is to be found in the bodies  
of all animals and in productions of the earth, and I may say in all that  
is; such is the conclusion which I seem to have gathered from my own art of  
medicine, whence I learn how great and wonderful and universal is the deity  
of love, whose empire extends over all things, divine as well as human.  
And from medicine I will begin that I may do honour to my art. There are  
in the human body these two kinds of love, which are confessedly different  
and unlike, and being unlike, they have loves and desires which are unlike;  
and the desire of the healthy is one, and the desire of the diseased is  
another; and as Pausanias was just now saying that to indulge good men is  
honourable, and bad men dishonourable:--so too in the body the good and  
healthy elements are to be indulged, and the bad elements and the elements  
of disease are not to be indulged, but discouraged. And this is what the  
physician has to do, and in this the art of medicine consists: for  
medicine may be regarded generally as the knowledge of the loves and  
desires of the body, and how to satisfy them or not; and the best physician  
is he who is able to separate fair love from foul, or to convert one into  
the other; and he who knows how to eradicate and how to implant love,  
whichever is required, and can reconcile the most hostile elements in the  
constitution and make them loving friends, is a skilful practitioner. Now  
the most hostile are the most opposite, such as hot and cold, bitter and  
sweet, moist and dry, and the like. And my ancestor, Asclepius, knowing  
how to implant friendship and accord in these elements, was the creator of  
our art, as our friends the poets here tell us, and I believe them; and not  
only medicine in every branch but the arts of gymnastic and husbandry are  
under his dominion. Any one who pays the least attention to the subject  
will also perceive that in music there is the same reconciliation of  
opposites; and I suppose that this must have been the meaning of  
Heracleitus, although his words are not accurate; for he says that The One  
is united by disunion, like the harmony of the bow and the lyre. Now there  
is an absurdity saying that harmony is discord or is composed of elements  
which are still in a state of discord. But what he probably meant was,  
that harmony is composed of differing notes of higher or lower pitch which  
disagreed once, but are now reconciled by the art of music; for if the  
higher and lower notes still disagreed, there could be no harmony,--clearly  
not. For harmony is a symphony, and symphony is an agreement; but an  
agreement of disagreements while they disagree there cannot be; you cannot  
harmonize that which disagrees. In like manner rhythm is compounded of  
elements short and long, once differing and now in accord; which  
accordance, as in the former instance, medicine, so in all these other  
cases, music implants, making love and unison to grow up among them; and  
thus music, too, is concerned with the principles of love in their  
application to harmony and rhythm. Again, in the essential nature of  
harmony and rhythm there is no difficulty in discerning love which has not  
yet become double. But when you want to use them in actual life, either in  
the composition of songs or in the correct performance of airs or metres  
composed already, which latter is called education, then the difficulty  
begins, and the good artist is needed. Then the old tale has to be  
repeated of fair and heavenly love--the love of Urania the fair and  
heavenly muse, and of the duty of accepting the temperate, and those who  
are as yet intemperate only that they may become temperate, and of  
preserving their love; and again, of the vulgar Polyhymnia, who must be  
used with circumspection that the pleasure be enjoyed, but may not generate  
licentiousness; just as in my own art it is a great matter so to regulate  
the desires of the epicure that he may gratify his tastes without the  
attendant evil of disease. Whence I infer that in music, in medicine, in  
all other things human as well as divine, both loves ought to be noted as  
far as may be, for they are both present.
  
The course of the seasons is also full of both these principles; and when,  
as I was saying, the elements of hot and cold, moist and dry, attain the  
harmonious love of one another and blend in temperance and harmony, they  
bring to men, animals, and plants health and plenty, and do them no harm;  
whereas the wanton love, getting the upper hand and affecting the seasons  
of the year, is very destructive and injurious, being the source of  
pestilence, and bringing many other kinds of diseases on animals and  
plants; for hoar-frost and hail and blight spring from the excesses and  
disorders of these elements of love, which to know in relation to the  
revolutions of the heavenly bodies and the seasons of the year is termed  
astronomy. Furthermore all sacrifices and the whole province of  
divination, which is the art of communion between gods and men--these, I  
say, are concerned only with the preservation of the good and the cure of  
the evil love. For all manner of impiety is likely to ensue if, instead of  
accepting and honouring and reverencing the harmonious love in all his  
actions, a man honours the other love, whether in his feelings towards gods  
or parents, towards the living or the dead. Wherefore the business of  
divination is to see to these loves and to heal them, and divination is the  
peacemaker of gods and men, working by a knowledge of the religious or  
irreligious tendencies which exist in human loves. Such is the great and  
mighty, or rather omnipotent force of love in general. And the love, more  
especially, which is concerned with the good, and which is perfected in  
company with temperance and justice, whether among gods or men, has the  
greatest power, and is the source of all our happiness and harmony, and  
makes us friends with the gods who are above us, and with one another. I  
dare say that I too have omitted several things which might be said in  
praise of Love, but this was not intentional, and you, Aristophanes, may  
now supply the omission or take some other line of commendation; for I  
perceive that you are rid of the hiccough.
  
Yes, said Aristophanes, who followed, the hiccough is gone; not, however,  
until I applied the sneezing; and I wonder whether the harmony of the body  
has a love of such noises and ticklings, for I no sooner applied the  
sneezing than I was cured.
  
Eryximachus said: Beware, friend Aristophanes, although you are going to  
speak, you are making fun of me; and I shall have to watch and see whether  
I cannot have a laugh at your expense, when you might speak in peace.
  
You are right, said Aristophanes, laughing. I will unsay my words; but do  
you please not to watch me, as I fear that in the speech which I am about  
to make, instead of others laughing with me, which is to the manner born of  
our muse and would be all the better, I shall only be laughed at by them.
  
Do you expect to shoot your bolt and escape, Aristophanes? Well, perhaps  
if you are very careful and bear in mind that you will be called to  
account, I may be induced to let you off.
  
Aristophanes professed to open another vein of discourse; he had a mind to  
praise Love in another way, unlike that either of Pausanias or Eryximachus.  
Mankind, he said, judging by their neglect of him, have never, as I think,  
at all understood the power of Love. For if they had understood him they  
would surely have built noble temples and altars, and offered solemn  
sacrifices in his honour; but this is not done, and most certainly ought to  
be done: since of all the gods he is the best friend of men, the helper  
and the healer of the ills which are the great impediment to the happiness  
of the race. I will try to describe his power to you, and you shall teach  
the rest of the world what I am teaching you. In the first place, let me  
treat of the nature of man and what has happened to it; for the original  
human nature was not like the present, but different. The sexes were not  
two as they are now, but originally three in number; there was man, woman,  
and the union of the two, having a name corresponding to this double  
nature, which had once a real existence, but is now lost, and the word  
'Androgynous' is only preserved as a term of reproach. In the second  
place, the primeval man was round, his back and sides forming a circle; and  
he had four hands and four feet, one head with two faces, looking opposite  
ways, set on a round neck and precisely alike; also four ears, two privy  
members, and the remainder to correspond. He could walk upright as men now  
do, backwards or forwards as he pleased, and he could also roll over and  
over at a great pace, turning on his four hands and four feet, eight in  
all, like tumblers going over and over with their legs in the air; this was  
when he wanted to run fast. Now the sexes were three, and such as I have  
described them; because the sun, moon, and earth are three; and the man was  
originally the child of the sun, the woman of the earth, and the man-woman  
of the moon, which is made up of sun and earth, and they were all round and  
moved round and round like their parents. Terrible was their might and  
strength, and the thoughts of their hearts were great, and they made an  
attack upon the gods; of them is told the tale of Otys and Ephialtes who,  
as Homer says, dared to scale heaven, and would have laid hands upon the  
gods. Doubt reigned in the celestial councils. Should they kill them and  
annihilate the race with thunderbolts, as they had done the giants, then  
there would be an end of the sacrifices and worship which men offered to  
them; but, on the other hand, the gods could not suffer their insolence to  
be unrestrained. At last, after a good deal of reflection, Zeus discovered  
a way. He said: 'Methinks I have a plan which will humble their pride and  
improve their manners; men shall continue to exist, but I will cut them in  
two and then they will be diminished in strength and increased in numbers;  
this will have the advantage of making them more profitable to us. They  
shall walk upright on two legs, and if they continue insolent and will not  
be quiet, I will split them again and they shall hop about on a single  
leg.'  He spoke and cut men in two, like a sorb-apple which is halved for  
pickling, or as you might divide an egg with a hair; and as he cut them one  
after another, he bade Apollo give the face and the half of the neck a turn  
in order that the man might contemplate the section of himself: he would  
thus learn a lesson of humility. Apollo was also bidden to heal their  
wounds and compose their forms. So he gave a turn to the face and pulled  
the skin from the sides all over that which in our language is called the  
belly, like the purses which draw in, and he made one mouth at the centre,  
which he fastened in a knot (the same which is called the navel); he also  
moulded the breast and took out most of the wrinkles, much as a shoemaker  
might smooth leather upon a last; he left a few, however, in the region of  
the belly and navel, as a memorial of the primeval state. After the  
division the two parts of man, each desiring his other half, came together,  
and throwing their arms about one another, entwined in mutual embraces,  
longing to grow into one, they were on the point of dying from hunger and  
self-neglect, because they did not like to do anything apart; and when one  
of the halves died and the other survived, the survivor sought another  
mate, man or woman as we call them,--being the sections of entire men or  
women,--and clung to that. They were being destroyed, when Zeus in pity of  
them invented a new plan: he turned the parts of generation round to the  
front, for this had not been always their position, and they sowed the seed  
no longer as hitherto like grasshoppers in the ground, but in one another;  
and after the transposition the male generated in the female in order that  
by the mutual embraces of man and woman they might breed, and the race  
might continue; or if man came to man they might be satisfied, and rest,  
and go their ways to the business of life: so ancient is the desire of one  
another which is implanted in us, reuniting our original nature, making one  
of two, and healing the state of man. Each of us when separated, having  
one side only, like a flat fish, is but the indenture of a man, and he is  
always looking for his other half. Men who are a section of that double  
nature which was once called Androgynous are lovers of women; adulterers  
are generally of this breed, and also adulterous women who lust after men:  
the women who are a section of the woman do not care for men, but have  
female attachments; the female companions are of this sort. But they who  
are a section of the male follow the male, and while they are young, being  
slices of the original man, they hang about men and embrace them, and they  
are themselves the best of boys and youths, because they have the most  
manly nature. Some indeed assert that they are shameless, but this is not  
true; for they do not act thus from any want of shame, but because they are  
valiant and manly, and have a manly countenance, and they embrace that  
which is like them. And these when they grow up become our statesmen, and  
these only, which is a great proof of the truth of what I am saving. When  
they reach manhood they are lovers of youth, and are not naturally inclined  
to marry or beget children,--if at all, they do so only in obedience to the  
law; but they are satisfied if they may be allowed to live with one another  
unwedded; and such a nature is prone to love and ready to return love,  
always embracing that which is akin to him. And when one of them meets  
with his other half, the actual half of himself, whether he be a lover of  
youth or a lover of another sort, the pair are lost in an amazement of love  
and friendship and intimacy, and one will not be out of the other's sight,  
as I may say, even for a moment: these are the people who pass their whole  
lives together; yet they could not explain what they desire of one another.  
For the intense yearning which each of them has towards the other does not  
appear to be the desire of lover's intercourse, but of something else which  
the soul of either evidently desires and cannot tell, and of which she has  
only a dark and doubtful presentiment. Suppose Hephaestus, with his  
instruments, to come to the pair who are lying side by side and to say to  
them, 'What do you people want of one another?' they would be unable to  
explain. And suppose further, that when he saw their perplexity he said:  
'Do you desire to be wholly one; always day and night to be in one  
another's company? for if this is what you desire, I am ready to melt you  
into one and let you grow together, so that being two you shall become one,  
and while you live live a common life as if you were a single man, and  
after your death in the world below still be one departed soul instead of  
two--I ask whether this is what you lovingly desire, and whether you are  
satisfied to attain this?'--there is not a man of them who when he heard  
the proposal would deny or would not acknowledge that this meeting and  
melting into one another, this becoming one instead of two, was the very  
expression of his ancient need (compare Arist. Pol.). And the reason is  
that human nature was originally one and we were a whole, and the desire  
and pursuit of the whole is called love. There was a time, I say, when we  
were one, but now because of the wickedness of mankind God has dispersed  
us, as the Arcadians were dispersed into villages by the Lacedaemonians  
(compare Arist. Pol.). And if we are not obedient to the gods, there is a  
danger that we shall be split up again and go about in basso-relievo, like  
the profile figures having only half a nose which are sculptured on  
monuments, and that we shall be like tallies. Wherefore let us exhort all  
men to piety, that we may avoid evil, and obtain the good, of which Love is  
to us the lord and minister; and let no one oppose him--he is the enemy of  
the gods who opposes him. For if we are friends of the God and at peace  
with him we shall find our own true loves, which rarely happens in this  
world at present. I am serious, and therefore I must beg Eryximachus not  
to make fun or to find any allusion in what I am saying to Pausanias and  
Agathon, who, as I suspect, are both of the manly nature, and belong to the  
class which I have been describing. But my words have a wider application  
--they include men and women everywhere; and I believe that if our loves  
were perfectly accomplished, and each one returning to his primeval nature  
had his original true love, then our race would be happy. And if this  
would be best of all, the best in the next degree and under present  
circumstances must be the nearest approach to such an union; and that will  
be the attainment of a congenial love. Wherefore, if we would praise him  
who has given to us the benefit, we must praise the god Love, who is our  
greatest benefactor, both leading us in this life back to our own nature,  
and giving us high hopes for the future, for he promises that if we are  
pious, he will restore us to our original state, and heal us and make us  
happy and blessed. This, Eryximachus, is my discourse of love, which,  
although different to yours, I must beg you to leave unassailed by the  
shafts of your ridicule, in order that each may have his turn; each, or  
rather either, for Agathon and Socrates are the only ones left.
  
Indeed, I am not going to attack you, said Eryximachus, for I thought your  
speech charming, and did I not know that Agathon and Socrates are masters  
in the art of love, I should be really afraid that they would have nothing  
to say, after the world of things which have been said already. But, for  
all that, I am not without hopes.
  
Socrates said: You played your part well, Eryximachus; but if you were as  
I am now, or rather as I shall be when Agathon has spoken, you would,  
indeed, be in a great strait.
  
You want to cast a spell over me, Socrates, said Agathon, in the hope that  
I may be disconcerted at the expectation raised among the audience that I  
shall speak well.
  
I should be strangely forgetful, Agathon replied Socrates, of the courage  
and magnanimity which you showed when your own compositions were about to  
be exhibited, and you came upon the stage with the actors and faced the  
vast theatre altogether undismayed, if I thought that your nerves could be  
fluttered at a small party of friends.
  
Do you think, Socrates, said Agathon, that my head is so full of the  
theatre as not to know how much more formidable to a man of sense a few  
good judges are than many fools?
  
Nay, replied Socrates, I should be very wrong in attributing to you,  
Agathon, that or any other want of refinement. And I am quite aware that  
if you happened to meet with any whom you thought wise, you would care for  
their opinion much more than for that of the many. But then we, having  
been a part of the foolish many in the theatre, cannot be regarded as the  
select wise; though I know that if you chanced to be in the presence, not  
of one of ourselves, but of some really wise man, you would be ashamed of  
disgracing yourself before him--would you not?
  
Yes, said Agathon.
  
But before the many you would not be ashamed, if you thought that you were  
doing something disgraceful in their presence?
  
Here Phaedrus interrupted them, saying: not answer him, my dear Agathon;  
for if he can only get a partner with whom he can talk, especially a good-  
looking one, he will no longer care about the completion of our plan. Now  
I love to hear him talk; but just at present I must not forget the encomium  
on Love which I ought to receive from him and from every one. When you and  
he have paid your tribute to the god, then you may talk.
  
Very good, Phaedrus, said Agathon; I see no reason why I should not proceed  
with my speech, as I shall have many other opportunities of conversing with  
Socrates. Let me say first how I ought to speak, and then speak:--  
  
The previous speakers, instead of praising the god Love, or unfolding his  
nature, appear to have congratulated mankind on the benefits which he  
confers upon them. But I would rather praise the god first, and then speak  
of his gifts; this is always the right way of praising everything. May I  
say without impiety or offence, that of all the blessed gods he is the most  
blessed because he is the fairest and best? And he is the fairest: for,  
in the first place, he is the youngest, and of his youth he is himself the  
witness, fleeing out of the way of age, who is swift enough, swifter truly  
than most of us like:--Love hates him and will not come near him; but youth  
and love live and move together--like to like, as the proverb says. Many  
things were said by Phaedrus about Love in which I agree with him; but I  
cannot agree that he is older than Iapetus and Kronos:--not so; I maintain  
him to be the youngest of the gods, and youthful ever. The ancient doings  
among the gods of which Hesiod and Parmenides spoke, if the tradition of  
them be true, were done of Necessity and not of Love; had Love been in  
those days, there would have been no chaining or mutilation of the gods, or  
other violence, but peace and sweetness, as there is now in heaven, since  
the rule of Love began. Love is young and also tender; he ought to have a  
poet like Homer to describe his tenderness, as Homer says of Ate, that she  
is a goddess and tender:--  
  
'Her feet are tender, for she sets her steps,  
Not on the ground but on the heads of men:'  
  
herein is an excellent proof of her tenderness,--that she walks not upon  
the hard but upon the soft. Let us adduce a similar proof of the  
tenderness of Love; for he walks not upon the earth, nor yet upon the  
skulls of men, which are not so very soft, but in the hearts and souls of  
both gods and men, which are of all things the softest: in them he walks  
and dwells and makes his home. Not in every soul without exception, for  
where there is hardness he departs, where there is softness there he  
dwells; and nestling always with his feet and in all manner of ways in the  
softest of soft places, how can he be other than the softest of all things?  
Of a truth he is the tenderest as well as the youngest, and also he is of  
flexile form; for if he were hard and without flexure he could not enfold  
all things, or wind his way into and out of every soul of man undiscovered.  
And a proof of his flexibility and symmetry of form is his grace, which is  
universally admitted to be in an especial manner the attribute of Love;  
ungrace and love are always at war with one another. The fairness of his  
complexion is revealed by his habitation among the flowers; for he dwells  
not amid bloomless or fading beauties, whether of body or soul or aught  
else, but in the place of flowers and scents, there he sits and abides.  
Concerning the beauty of the god I have said enough; and yet there remains  
much more which I might say. Of his virtue I have now to speak: his  
greatest glory is that he can neither do nor suffer wrong to or from any  
god or any man; for he suffers not by force if he suffers; force comes not  
near him, neither when he acts does he act by force. For all men in all  
things serve him of their own free will, and where there is voluntary  
agreement, there, as the laws which are the lords of the city say, is  
justice. And not only is he just but exceedingly temperate, for Temperance  
is the acknowledged ruler of the pleasures and desires, and no pleasure  
ever masters Love; he is their master and they are his servants; and if he  
conquers them he must be temperate indeed. As to courage, even the God of  
War is no match for him; he is the captive and Love is the lord, for love,  
the love of Aphrodite, masters him, as the tale runs; and the master is  
stronger than the servant. And if he conquers the bravest of all others,  
he must be himself the bravest. Of his courage and justice and temperance  
I have spoken, but I have yet to speak of his wisdom; and according to the  
measure of my ability I must try to do my best. In the first place he is a  
poet (and here, like Eryximachus, I magnify my art), and he is also the  
source of poesy in others, which he could not be if he were not himself a  
poet. And at the touch of him every one becomes a poet, even though he had  
no music in him before (A fragment of the Sthenoaoea of Euripides.); this  
also is a proof that Love is a good poet and accomplished in all the fine  
arts; for no one can give to another that which he has not himself, or  
teach that of which he has no knowledge. Who will deny that the creation  
of the animals is his doing? Are they not all the works of his wisdom,  
born and begotten of him? And as to the artists, do we not know that he  
only of them whom love inspires has the light of fame?--he whom Love  
touches not walks in darkness. The arts of medicine and archery and  
divination were discovered by Apollo, under the guidance of love and  
desire; so that he too is a disciple of Love. Also the melody of the  
Muses, the metallurgy of Hephaestus, the weaving of Athene, the empire of  
Zeus over gods and men, are all due to Love, who was the inventor of them.  
And so Love set in order the empire of the gods--the love of beauty, as is  
evident, for with deformity Love has no concern. In the days of old, as I  
began by saying, dreadful deeds were done among the gods, for they were  
ruled by Necessity; but now since the birth of Love, and from the Love of  
the beautiful, has sprung every good in heaven and earth. Therefore,  
Phaedrus, I say of Love that he is the fairest and best in himself, and the  
cause of what is fairest and best in all other things. And there comes  
into my mind a line of poetry in which he is said to be the god who  
  
'Gives peace on earth and calms the stormy deep,  
Who stills the winds and bids the sufferer sleep.'  
  
This is he who empties men of disaffection and fills them with affection,  
who makes them to meet together at banquets such as these: in sacrifices,  
feasts, dances, he is our lord--who sends courtesy and sends away  
discourtesy, who gives kindness ever and never gives unkindness; the friend  
of the good, the wonder of the wise, the amazement of the gods; desired by  
those who have no part in him, and precious to those who have the better  
part in him; parent of delicacy, luxury, desire, fondness, softness, grace;  
regardful of the good, regardless of the evil: in every word, work, wish,  
fear--saviour, pilot, comrade, helper; glory of gods and men, leader best  
and brightest: in whose footsteps let every man follow, sweetly singing in  
his honour and joining in that sweet strain with which love charms the  
souls of gods and men. Such is the speech, Phaedrus, half-playful, yet  
having a certain measure of seriousness, which, according to my ability, I  
dedicate to the god.
  
When Agathon had done speaking, Aristodemus said that there was a general  
cheer; the young man was thought to have spoken in a manner worthy of  
himself, and of the god. And Socrates, looking at Eryximachus, said: Tell  
me, son of Acumenus, was there not reason in my fears? and was I not a true  
prophet when I said that Agathon would make a wonderful oration, and that I  
should be in a strait?
  
The part of the prophecy which concerns Agathon, replied Eryximachus,  
appears to me to be true; but not the other part--that you will be in a  
strait.
  
Why, my dear friend, said Socrates, must not I or any one be in a strait  
who has to speak after he has heard such a rich and varied discourse? I am  
especially struck with the beauty of the concluding words--who could listen  
to them without amazement? When I reflected on the immeasurable  
inferiority of my own powers, I was ready to run away for shame, if there  
had been a possibility of escape. For I was reminded of Gorgias, and at  
the end of his speech I fancied that Agathon was shaking at me the  
Gorginian or Gorgonian head of the great master of rhetoric, which was  
simply to turn me and my speech into stone, as Homer says (Odyssey), and  
strike me dumb. And then I perceived how foolish I had been in consenting  
to take my turn with you in praising love, and saying that I too was a  
master of the art, when I really had no conception how anything ought to be  
praised. For in my simplicity I imagined that the topics of praise should  
be true, and that this being presupposed, out of the true the speaker was  
to choose the best and set them forth in the best manner. And I felt quite  
proud, thinking that I knew the nature of true praise, and should speak  
well. Whereas I now see that the intention was to attribute to Love every  
species of greatness and glory, whether really belonging to him or not,  
without regard to truth or falsehood--that was no matter; for the original  
proposal seems to have been not that each of you should really praise Love,  
but only that you should appear to praise him. And so you attribute to  
Love every imaginable form of praise which can be gathered anywhere; and  
you say that 'he is all this,' and 'the cause of all that,' making him  
appear the fairest and best of all to those who know him not, for you  
cannot impose upon those who know him. And a noble and solemn hymn of  
praise have you rehearsed. But as I misunderstood the nature of the praise  
when I said that I would take my turn, I must beg to be absolved from the  
promise which I made in ignorance, and which (as Euripides would say  
(Eurip. Hyppolytus)) was a promise of the lips and not of the mind.  
Farewell then to such a strain: for I do not praise in that way; no,  
indeed, I cannot. But if you like to hear the truth about love, I am ready  
to speak in my own manner, though I will not make myself ridiculous by  
entering into any rivalry with you. Say then, Phaedrus, whether you would  
like to have the truth about love, spoken in any words and in any order  
which may happen to come into my mind at the time. Will that be agreeable  
to you?
  
Aristodemus said that Phaedrus and the company bid him speak in any manner  
which he thought best. Then, he added, let me have your permission first  
to ask Agathon a few more questions, in order that I may take his  
admissions as the premisses of my discourse.
  
I grant the permission, said Phaedrus: put your questions. Socrates then  
proceeded as follows:--  
  
In the magnificent oration which you have just uttered, I think that you  
were right, my dear Agathon, in proposing to speak of the nature of Love  
first and afterwards of his works--that is a way of beginning which I very  
much approve. And as you have spoken so eloquently of his nature, may I  
ask you further, Whether love is the love of something or of nothing? And  
here I must explain myself: I do not want you to say that love is the love  
of a father or the love of a mother--that would be ridiculous; but to  
answer as you would, if I asked is a father a father of something? to which  
you would find no difficulty in replying, of a son or daughter: and the  
answer would be right.
  
Very true, said Agathon.
  
And you would say the same of a mother?
  
He assented.
  
Yet let me ask you one more question in order to illustrate my meaning: Is  
not a brother to be regarded essentially as a brother of something?
  
Certainly, he replied.
  
That is, of a brother or sister?
  
Yes, he said.
  
And now, said Socrates, I will ask about Love:--Is Love of something or of  
nothing?
  
Of something, surely, he replied.
  
Keep in mind what this is, and tell me what I want to know--whether Love  
desires that of which love is.
  
Yes, surely.
  
And does he possess, or does he not possess, that which he loves and  
desires?
  
Probably not, I should say.
  
Nay, replied Socrates, I would have you consider whether 'necessarily' is  
not rather the word. The inference that he who desires something is in  
want of something, and that he who desires nothing is in want of nothing,  
is in my judgment, Agathon, absolutely and necessarily true. What do you  
think?
  
I agree with you, said Agathon.
  
Very good. Would he who is great, desire to be great, or he who is strong,  
desire to be strong?
  
That would be inconsistent with our previous admissions.
  
True. For he who is anything cannot want to be that which he is?
  
Very true.
  
And yet, added Socrates, if a man being strong desired to be strong, or  
being swift desired to be swift, or being healthy desired to be healthy, in  
that case he might be thought to desire something which he already has or  
is. I give the example in order that we may avoid misconception. For the  
possessors of these qualities, Agathon, must be supposed to have their  
respective advantages at the time, whether they choose or not; and who can  
desire that which he has? Therefore, when a person says, I am well and  
wish to be well, or I am rich and wish to be rich, and I desire simply to  
have what I have--to him we shall reply: 'You, my friend, having wealth  
and health and strength, want to have the continuance of them; for at this  
moment, whether you choose or no, you have them. And when you say, I  
desire that which I have and nothing else, is not your meaning that you  
want to have what you now have in the future?'  He must agree with us--must  
he not?
  
He must, replied Agathon.
  
Then, said Socrates, he desires that what he has at present may be  
preserved to him in the future, which is equivalent to saying that he  
desires something which is non-existent to him, and which as yet he has not  
got:
  
Very true, he said.
  
Then he and every one who desires, desires that which he has not already,  
and which is future and not present, and which he has not, and is not, and  
of which he is in want;--these are the sort of things which love and desire  
seek?
  
Very true, he said.
  
Then now, said Socrates, let us recapitulate the argument. First, is not  
love of something, and of something too which is wanting to a man?
  
Yes, he replied.
  
Remember further what you said in your speech, or if you do not remember I  
will remind you: you said that the love of the beautiful set in order the  
empire of the gods, for that of deformed things there is no love--did you  
not say something of that kind?
  
Yes, said Agathon.
  
Yes, my friend, and the remark was a just one. And if this is true, Love  
is the love of beauty and not of deformity?
  
He assented.
  
And the admission has been already made that Love is of something which a  
man wants and has not?
  
True, he said.
  
Then Love wants and has not beauty?
  
Certainly, he replied.
  
And would you call that beautiful which wants and does not possess beauty?
  
Certainly not.
  
Then would you still say that love is beautiful?
  
Agathon replied: I fear that I did not understand what I was saying.
  
You made a very good speech, Agathon, replied Socrates; but there is yet  
one small question which I would fain ask:--Is not the good also the  
beautiful?
  
Yes.
  
Then in wanting the beautiful, love wants also the good?
  
I cannot refute you, Socrates, said Agathon:--Let us assume that what you  
say is true.
  
Say rather, beloved Agathon, that you cannot refute the truth; for Socrates  
is easily refuted.
  
And now, taking my leave of you, I would rehearse a tale of love which I  
heard from Diotima of Mantineia (compare 1 Alcibiades), a woman wise in  
this and in many other kinds of knowledge, who in the days of old, when the  
Athenians offered sacrifice before the coming of the plague, delayed the  
disease ten years. She was my instructress in the art of love, and I shall  
repeat to you what she said to me, beginning with the admissions made by  
Agathon, which are nearly if not quite the same which I made to the wise  
woman when she questioned me: I think that this will be the easiest way,  
and I shall take both parts myself as well as I can (compare Gorgias). As  
you, Agathon, suggested (supra), I must speak first of the being and nature  
of Love, and then of his works. First I said to her in nearly the same  
words which he used to me, that Love was a mighty god, and likewise fair;  
and she proved to me as I proved to him that, by my own showing, Love was  
neither fair nor good. 'What do you mean, Diotima,' I said, 'is love then  
evil and foul?'  'Hush,' she cried; 'must that be foul which is not fair?'   
'Certainly,' I said. 'And is that which is not wise, ignorant? do you not  
see that there is a mean between wisdom and ignorance?'  'And what may that  
be?' I said. 'Right opinion,' she replied; 'which, as you know, being  
incapable of giving a reason, is not knowledge (for how can knowledge be  
devoid of reason? nor again, ignorance, for neither can ignorance attain  
the truth), but is clearly something which is a mean between ignorance and  
wisdom.'  'Quite true,' I replied. 'Do not then insist,' she said, 'that  
what is not fair is of necessity foul, or what is not good evil; or infer  
that because love is not fair and good he is therefore foul and evil; for  
he is in a mean between them.'  'Well,' I said, 'Love is surely admitted by  
all to be a great god.'  'By those who know or by those who do not know?'   
'By all.'  'And how, Socrates,' she said with a smile, 'can Love be  
acknowledged to be a great god by those who say that he is not a god at  
all?'  'And who are they?' I said. 'You and I are two of them,' she  
replied. 'How can that be?' I said. 'It is quite intelligible,' she  
replied; 'for you yourself would acknowledge that the gods are happy and  
fair--of course you would--would you dare to say that any god was not?'   
'Certainly not,' I replied. 'And you mean by the happy, those who are the  
possessors of things good or fair?'  'Yes.'  'And you admitted that Love,  
because he was in want, desires those good and fair things of which he is  
in want?'  'Yes, I did.'  'But how can he be a god who has no portion in  
what is either good or fair?'  'Impossible.'  'Then you see that you also  
deny the divinity of Love.'  
  
'What then is Love?' I asked; 'Is he mortal?'  'No.'  'What then?'  'As in  
the former instance, he is neither mortal nor immortal, but in a mean  
between the two.'  'What is he, Diotima?'  'He is a great spirit (daimon),  
and like all spirits he is intermediate between the divine and the mortal.'   
'And what,' I said, 'is his power?'  'He interprets,' she replied, 'between  
gods and men, conveying and taking across to the gods the prayers and  
sacrifices of men, and to men the commands and replies of the gods; he is  
the mediator who spans the chasm which divides them, and therefore in him  
all is bound together, and through him the arts of the prophet and the  
priest, their sacrifices and mysteries and charms, and all prophecy and  
incantation, find their way. For God mingles not with man; but through  
Love all the intercourse and converse of God with man, whether awake or  
asleep, is carried on. The wisdom which understands this is spiritual; all  
other wisdom, such as that of arts and handicrafts, is mean and vulgar.  
Now these spirits or intermediate powers are many and diverse, and one of  
them is Love.'  'And who,' I said, 'was his father, and who his mother?'   
'The tale,' she said, 'will take time; nevertheless I will tell you. On  
the birthday of Aphrodite there was a feast of the gods, at which the god  
Poros or Plenty, who is the son of Metis or Discretion, was one of the  
guests. When the feast was over, Penia or Poverty, as the manner is on  
such occasions, came about the doors to beg. Now Plenty who was the worse  
for nectar (there was no wine in those days), went into the garden of Zeus  
and fell into a heavy sleep, and Poverty considering her own straitened  
circumstances, plotted to have a child by him, and accordingly she lay down  
at his side and conceived Love, who partly because he is naturally a lover  
of the beautiful, and because Aphrodite is herself beautiful, and also  
because he was born on her birthday, is her follower and attendant. And as  
his parentage is, so also are his fortunes. In the first place he is  
always poor, and anything but tender and fair, as the many imagine him; and  
he is rough and squalid, and has no shoes, nor a house to dwell in; on the  
bare earth exposed he lies under the open heaven, in the streets, or at the  
doors of houses, taking his rest; and like his mother he is always in  
distress. Like his father too, whom he also partly resembles, he is always  
plotting against the fair and good; he is bold, enterprising, strong, a  
mighty hunter, always weaving some intrigue or other, keen in the pursuit  
of wisdom, fertile in resources; a philosopher at all times, terrible as an  
enchanter, sorcerer, sophist. He is by nature neither mortal nor immortal,  
but alive and flourishing at one moment when he is in plenty, and dead at  
another moment, and again alive by reason of his father's nature. But that  
which is always flowing in is always flowing out, and so he is never in  
want and never in wealth; and, further, he is in a mean between ignorance  
and knowledge. The truth of the matter is this: No god is a philosopher  
or seeker after wisdom, for he is wise already; nor does any man who is  
wise seek after wisdom. Neither do the ignorant seek after wisdom. For  
herein is the evil of ignorance, that he who is neither good nor wise is  
nevertheless satisfied with himself: he has no desire for that of which he  
feels no want.'  'But who then, Diotima,' I said, 'are the lovers of  
wisdom, if they are neither the wise nor the foolish?'  'A child may answer  
that question,' she replied; 'they are those who are in a mean between the  
two; Love is one of them. For wisdom is a most beautiful thing, and Love  
is of the beautiful; and therefore Love is also a philosopher or lover of  
wisdom, and being a lover of wisdom is in a mean between the wise and the  
ignorant. And of this too his birth is the cause; for his father is  
wealthy and wise, and his mother poor and foolish. Such, my dear Socrates,  
is the nature of the spirit Love. The error in your conception of him was  
very natural, and as I imagine from what you say, has arisen out of a  
confusion of love and the beloved, which made you think that love was all  
beautiful. For the beloved is the truly beautiful, and delicate, and  
perfect, and blessed; but the principle of love is of another nature, and  
is such as I have described.'  
  
I said, 'O thou stranger woman, thou sayest well; but, assuming Love to be  
such as you say, what is the use of him to men?'  'That, Socrates,' she  
replied, 'I will attempt to unfold: of his nature and birth I have already  
spoken; and you acknowledge that love is of the beautiful. But some one  
will say: Of the beautiful in what, Socrates and Diotima?--or rather let  
me put the question more clearly, and ask: When a man loves the beautiful,  
what does he desire?'  I answered her 'That the beautiful may be his.'   
'Still,' she said, 'the answer suggests a further question: What is given  
by the possession of beauty?'  'To what you have asked,' I replied, 'I have  
no answer ready.'  'Then,' she said, 'let me put the word "good" in the  
place of the beautiful, and repeat the question once more: If he who loves  
loves the good, what is it then that he loves?'  'The possession of the  
good,' I said. 'And what does he gain who possesses the good?'   
'Happiness,' I replied; 'there is less difficulty in answering that  
question.'  'Yes,' she said, 'the happy are made happy by the acquisition  
of good things. Nor is there any need to ask why a man desires happiness;  
the answer is already final.'  'You are right.' I said. 'And is this wish  
and this desire common to all? and do all men always desire their own good,  
or only some men?--what say you?'  'All men,' I replied; 'the desire is  
common to all.'  'Why, then,' she rejoined, 'are not all men, Socrates,  
said to love, but only some of them? whereas you say that all men are  
always loving the same things.'  'I myself wonder,' I said, 'why this is.'   
'There is nothing to wonder at,' she replied; 'the reason is that one part  
of love is separated off and receives the name of the whole, but the other  
parts have other names.'  'Give an illustration,' I said. She answered me  
as follows: 'There is poetry, which, as you know, is complex and manifold.  
All creation or passage of non-being into being is poetry or making, and  
the processes of all art are creative; and the masters of arts are all  
poets or makers.'  'Very true.'  'Still,' she said, 'you know that they are  
not called poets, but have other names; only that portion of the art which  
is separated off from the rest, and is concerned with music and metre, is  
termed poetry, and they who possess poetry in this sense of the word are  
called poets.'  'Very true,' I said. 'And the same holds of love. For you  
may say generally that all desire of good and happiness is only the great  
and subtle power of love; but they who are drawn towards him by any other  
path, whether the path of money-making or gymnastics or philosophy, are not  
called lovers--the name of the whole is appropriated to those whose  
affection takes one form only--they alone are said to love, or to be  
lovers.'  'I dare say,' I replied, 'that you are right.'  'Yes,' she added,  
'and you hear people say that lovers are seeking for their other half; but  
I say that they are seeking neither for the half of themselves, nor for the  
whole, unless the half or the whole be also a good. And they will cut off  
their own hands and feet and cast them away, if they are evil; for they  
love not what is their own, unless perchance there be some one who calls  
what belongs to him the good, and what belongs to another the evil. For  
there is nothing which men love but the good. Is there anything?'   
'Certainly, I should say, that there is nothing.'  'Then,' she said, 'the  
simple truth is, that men love the good.'  'Yes,' I said. 'To which must  
be added that they love the possession of the good?'  'Yes, that must be  
added.'  'And not only the possession, but the everlasting possession of  
the good?'  'That must be added too.'  'Then love,' she said, 'may be  
described generally as the love of the everlasting possession of the good?'   
'That is most true.'  
  
'Then if this be the nature of love, can you tell me further,' she said,  
'what is the manner of the pursuit? what are they doing who show all this  
eagerness and heat which is called love? and what is the object which they  
have in view? Answer me.'  'Nay, Diotima,' I replied, 'if I had known, I  
should not have wondered at your wisdom, neither should I have come to  
learn from you about this very matter.'  'Well,' she said, 'I will teach  
you:--The object which they have in view is birth in beauty, whether of  
body or soul.'  'I do not understand you,' I said; 'the oracle requires an  
explanation.'  'I will make my meaning clearer,' she replied. 'I mean to  
say, that all men are bringing to the birth in their bodies and in their  
souls. There is a certain age at which human nature is desirous of  
procreation--procreation which must be in beauty and not in deformity; and  
this procreation is the union of man and woman, and is a divine thing; for  
conception and generation are an immortal principle in the mortal creature,  
and in the inharmonious they can never be. But the deformed is always  
inharmonious with the divine, and the beautiful harmonious. Beauty, then,  
is the destiny or goddess of parturition who presides at birth, and  
therefore, when approaching beauty, the conceiving power is propitious, and  
diffusive, and benign, and begets and bears fruit: at the sight of  
ugliness she frowns and contracts and has a sense of pain, and turns away,  
and shrivels up, and not without a pang refrains from conception. And this  
is the reason why, when the hour of conception arrives, and the teeming  
nature is full, there is such a flutter and ecstasy about beauty whose  
approach is the alleviation of the pain of travail. For love, Socrates, is  
not, as you imagine, the love of the beautiful only.'  'What then?'  'The  
love of generation and of birth in beauty.'  'Yes,' I said. 'Yes, indeed,'  
she replied. 'But why of generation?'  'Because to the mortal creature,  
generation is a sort of eternity and immortality,' she replied; 'and if, as  
has been already admitted, love is of the everlasting possession of the  
good, all men will necessarily desire immortality together with good:  
Wherefore love is of immortality.'  
  
All this she taught me at various times when she spoke of love. And I  
remember her once saying to me, 'What is the cause, Socrates, of love, and  
the attendant desire? See you not how all animals, birds, as well as  
beasts, in their desire of procreation, are in agony when they take the  
infection of love, which begins with the desire of union; whereto is added  
the care of offspring, on whose behalf the weakest are ready to battle  
against the strongest even to the uttermost, and to die for them, and will  
let themselves be tormented with hunger or suffer anything in order to  
maintain their young. Man may be supposed to act thus from reason; but why  
should animals have these passionate feelings? Can you tell me why?'   
Again I replied that I did not know. She said to me: 'And do you expect  
ever to become a master in the art of love, if you do not know this?'  'But  
I have told you already, Diotima, that my ignorance is the reason why I  
come to you; for I am conscious that I want a teacher; tell me then the  
cause of this and of the other mysteries of love.'  'Marvel not,' she said,  
'if you believe that love is of the immortal, as we have several times  
acknowledged; for here again, and on the same principle too, the mortal  
nature is seeking as far as is possible to be everlasting and immortal:  
and this is only to be attained by generation, because generation always  
leaves behind a new existence in the place of the old. Nay even in the  
life of the same individual there is succession and not absolute unity: a  
man is called the same, and yet in the short interval which elapses between  
youth and age, and in which every animal is said to have life and identity,  
he is undergoing a perpetual process of loss and reparation--hair, flesh,  
bones, blood, and the whole body are always changing. Which is true not  
only of the body, but also of the soul, whose habits, tempers, opinions,  
desires, pleasures, pains, fears, never remain the same in any one of us,  
but are always coming and going; and equally true of knowledge, and what is  
still more surprising to us mortals, not only do the sciences in general  
spring up and decay, so that in respect of them we are never the same; but  
each of them individually experiences a like change. For what is implied  
in the word "recollection," but the departure of knowledge, which is ever  
being forgotten, and is renewed and preserved by recollection, and appears  
to be the same although in reality new, according to that law of succession  
by which all mortal things are preserved, not absolutely the same, but by  
substitution, the old worn-out mortality leaving another new and similar  
existence behind--unlike the divine, which is always the same and not  
another? And in this way, Socrates, the mortal body, or mortal anything,  
partakes of immortality; but the immortal in another way. Marvel not then  
at the love which all men have of their offspring; for that universal love  
and interest is for the sake of immortality.'  
  
I was astonished at her words, and said: 'Is this really true, O thou wise  
Diotima?'  And she answered with all the authority of an accomplished  
sophist: 'Of that, Socrates, you may be assured;--think only of the  
ambition of men, and you will wonder at the senselessness of their ways,  
unless you consider how they are stirred by the love of an immortality of  
fame. They are ready to run all risks greater far than they would have run  
for their children, and to spend money and undergo any sort of toil, and  
even to die, for the sake of leaving behind them a name which shall be  
eternal. Do you imagine that Alcestis would have died to save Admetus, or  
Achilles to avenge Patroclus, or your own Codrus in order to preserve the  
kingdom for his sons, if they had not imagined that the memory of their  
virtues, which still survives among us, would be immortal? Nay,' she said,  
'I am persuaded that all men do all things, and the better they are the  
more they do them, in hope of the glorious fame of immortal virtue; for  
they desire the immortal.
  
'Those who are pregnant in the body only, betake themselves to women and  
beget children--this is the character of their love; their offspring, as  
they hope, will preserve their memory and giving them the blessedness and  
immortality which they desire in the future. But souls which are pregnant  
--for there certainly are men who are more creative in their souls than in  
their bodies--conceive that which is proper for the soul to conceive or  
contain. And what are these conceptions?--wisdom and virtue in general.  
And such creators are poets and all artists who are deserving of the name  
inventor. But the greatest and fairest sort of wisdom by far is that which  
is concerned with the ordering of states and families, and which is called  
temperance and justice. And he who in youth has the seed of these  
implanted in him and is himself inspired, when he comes to maturity desires  
to beget and generate. He wanders about seeking beauty that he may beget  
offspring--for in deformity he will beget nothing--and naturally embraces  
the beautiful rather than the deformed body; above all when he finds a fair  
and noble and well-nurtured soul, he embraces the two in one person, and to  
such an one he is full of speech about virtue and the nature and pursuits  
of a good man; and he tries to educate him; and at the touch of the  
beautiful which is ever present to his memory, even when absent, he brings  
forth that which he had conceived long before, and in company with him  
tends that which he brings forth; and they are married by a far nearer tie  
and have a closer friendship than those who beget mortal children, for the  
children who are their common offspring are fairer and more immortal. Who,  
when he thinks of Homer and Hesiod and other great poets, would not rather  
have their children than ordinary human ones? Who would not emulate them  
in the creation of children such as theirs, which have preserved their  
memory and given them everlasting glory? Or who would not have such  
children as Lycurgus left behind him to be the saviours, not only of  
Lacedaemon, but of Hellas, as one may say? There is Solon, too, who is the  
revered father of Athenian laws; and many others there are in many other  
places, both among Hellenes and barbarians, who have given to the world  
many noble works, and have been the parents of virtue of every kind; and  
many temples have been raised in their honour for the sake of children such  
as theirs; which were never raised in honour of any one, for the sake of  
his mortal children.
  
'These are the lesser mysteries of love, into which even you, Socrates, may  
enter; to the greater and more hidden ones which are the crown of these,  
and to which, if you pursue them in a right spirit, they will lead, I know  
not whether you will be able to attain. But I will do my utmost to inform  
you, and do you follow if you can. For he who would proceed aright in this  
matter should begin in youth to visit beautiful forms; and first, if he be  
guided by his instructor aright, to love one such form only--out of that he  
should create fair thoughts; and soon he will of himself perceive that the  
beauty of one form is akin to the beauty of another; and then if beauty of  
form in general is his pursuit, how foolish would he be not to recognize  
that the beauty in every form is and the same! And when he perceives this  
he will abate his violent love of the one, which he will despise and deem a  
small thing, and will become a lover of all beautiful forms; in the next  
stage he will consider that the beauty of the mind is more honourable than  
the beauty of the outward form. So that if a virtuous soul have but a  
little comeliness, he will be content to love and tend him, and will search  
out and bring to the birth thoughts which may improve the young, until he  
is compelled to contemplate and see the beauty of institutions and laws,  
and to understand that the beauty of them all is of one family, and that  
personal beauty is a trifle; and after laws and institutions he will go on  
to the sciences, that he may see their beauty, being not like a servant in  
love with the beauty of one youth or man or institution, himself a slave  
mean and narrow-minded, but drawing towards and contemplating the vast sea  
of beauty, he will create many fair and noble thoughts and notions in  
boundless love of wisdom; until on that shore he grows and waxes strong,  
and at last the vision is revealed to him of a single science, which is the  
science of beauty everywhere. To this I will proceed; please to give me  
your very best attention:
  
'He who has been instructed thus far in the things of love, and who has  
learned to see the beautiful in due order and succession, when he comes  
toward the end will suddenly perceive a nature of wondrous beauty (and  
this, Socrates, is the final cause of all our former toils)--a nature which  
in the first place is everlasting, not growing and decaying, or waxing and  
waning; secondly, not fair in one point of view and foul in another, or at  
one time or in one relation or at one place fair, at another time or in  
another relation or at another place foul, as if fair to some and foul to  
others, or in the likeness of a face or hands or any other part of the  
bodily frame, or in any form of speech or knowledge, or existing in any  
other being, as for example, in an animal, or in heaven, or in earth, or in  
any other place; but beauty absolute, separate, simple, and everlasting,  
which without diminution and without increase, or any change, is imparted  
to the ever-growing and perishing beauties of all other things. He who  
from these ascending under the influence of true love, begins to perceive  
that beauty, is not far from the end. And the true order of going, or  
being led by another, to the things of love, is to begin from the beauties  
of earth and mount upwards for the sake of that other beauty, using these  
as steps only, and from one going on to two, and from two to all fair  
forms, and from fair forms to fair practices, and from fair practices to  
fair notions, until from fair notions he arrives at the notion of absolute  
beauty, and at last knows what the essence of beauty is. This, my dear  
Socrates,' said the stranger of Mantineia, 'is that life above all others  
which man should live, in the contemplation of beauty absolute; a beauty  
which if you once beheld, you would see not to be after the measure of  
gold, and garments, and fair boys and youths, whose presence now entrances  
you; and you and many a one would be content to live seeing them only and  
conversing with them without meat or drink, if that were possible--you only  
want to look at them and to be with them. But what if man had eyes to see  
the true beauty--the divine beauty, I mean, pure and clear and unalloyed,  
not clogged with the pollutions of mortality and all the colours and  
vanities of human life--thither looking, and holding converse with the true  
beauty simple and divine? Remember how in that communion only, beholding  
beauty with the eye of the mind, he will be enabled to bring forth, not  
images of beauty, but realities (for he has hold not of an image but of a  
reality), and bringing forth and nourishing true virtue to become the  
friend of God and be immortal, if mortal man may. Would that be an ignoble  
life?'  
  
Such, Phaedrus--and I speak not only to you, but to all of you--were the  
words of Diotima; and I am persuaded of their truth. And being persuaded  
of them, I try to persuade others, that in the attainment of this end human  
nature will not easily find a helper better than love: And therefore,  
also, I say that every man ought to honour him as I myself honour him, and  
walk in his ways, and exhort others to do the same, and praise the power  
and spirit of love according to the measure of my ability now and ever.
  
The words which I have spoken, you, Phaedrus, may call an encomium of love,  
or anything else which you please.
  
When Socrates had done speaking, the company applauded, and Aristophanes  
was beginning to say something in answer to the allusion which Socrates had  
made to his own speech, when suddenly there was a great knocking at the  
door of the house, as of revellers, and the sound of a flute-girl was  
heard. Agathon told the attendants to go and see who were the intruders.  
'If they are friends of ours,' he said, 'invite them in, but if not, say  
that the drinking is over.'  A little while afterwards they heard the voice  
of Alcibiades resounding in the court; he was in a great state of  
intoxication, and kept roaring and shouting 'Where is Agathon? Lead me to  
Agathon,' and at length, supported by the flute-girl and some of his  
attendants, he found his way to them. 'Hail, friends,' he said, appearing  
at the door crowned with a massive garland of ivy and violets, his head  
flowing with ribands. 'Will you have a very drunken man as a companion of  
your revels? Or shall I crown Agathon, which was my intention in coming,  
and go away? For I was unable to come yesterday, and therefore I am here  
to-day, carrying on my head these ribands, that taking them from my own  
head, I may crown the head of this fairest and wisest of men, as I may be  
allowed to call him. Will you laugh at me because I am drunk? Yet I know  
very well that I am speaking the truth, although you may laugh. But first  
tell me; if I come in shall we have the understanding of which I spoke  
(supra Will you have a very drunken man? etc.)? Will you drink with me or  
not?'  
  
The company were vociferous in begging that he would take his place among  
them, and Agathon specially invited him. Thereupon he was led in by the  
people who were with him; and as he was being led, intending to crown  
Agathon, he took the ribands from his own head and held them in front of  
his eyes; he was thus prevented from seeing Socrates, who made way for him,  
and Alcibiades took the vacant place between Agathon and Socrates, and in  
taking the place he embraced Agathon and crowned him. Take off his  
sandals, said Agathon, and let him make a third on the same couch.
  
By all means; but who makes the third partner in our revels? said  
Alcibiades, turning round and starting up as he caught sight of Socrates.  
By Heracles, he said, what is this? here is Socrates always lying in wait  
for me, and always, as his way is, coming out at all sorts of unsuspected  
places: and now, what have you to say for yourself, and why are you lying  
here, where I perceive that you have contrived to find a place, not by a  
joker or lover of jokes, like Aristophanes, but by the fairest of the  
company?
  
Socrates turned to Agathon and said: I must ask you to protect me,  
Agathon; for the passion of this man has grown quite a serious matter to  
me. Since I became his admirer I have never been allowed to speak to any  
other fair one, or so much as to look at them. If I do, he goes wild with  
envy and jealousy, and not only abuses me but can hardly keep his hands off  
me, and at this moment he may do me some harm. Please to see to this, and  
either reconcile me to him, or, if he attempts violence, protect me, as I  
am in bodily fear of his mad and passionate attempts.
  
There can never be reconciliation between you and me, said Alcibiades; but  
for the present I will defer your chastisement. And I must beg you,  
Agathon, to give me back some of the ribands that I may crown the  
marvellous head of this universal despot--I would not have him complain of  
me for crowning you, and neglecting him, who in conversation is the  
conqueror of all mankind; and this not only once, as you were the day  
before yesterday, but always. Whereupon, taking some of the ribands, he  
crowned Socrates, and again reclined.
  
Then he said: You seem, my friends, to be sober, which is a thing not to  
be endured; you must drink--for that was the agreement under which I was  
admitted--and I elect myself master of the feast until you are well drunk.  
Let us have a large goblet, Agathon, or rather, he said, addressing the  
attendant, bring me that wine-cooler. The wine-cooler which had caught his  
eye was a vessel holding more than two quarts--this he filled and emptied,  
and bade the attendant fill it again for Socrates. Observe, my friends,  
said Alcibiades, that this ingenious trick of mine will have no effect on  
Socrates, for he can drink any quantity of wine and not be at all nearer  
being drunk. Socrates drank the cup which the attendant filled for him.
  
Eryximachus said: What is this, Alcibiades? Are we to have neither  
conversation nor singing over our cups; but simply to drink as if we were  
thirsty?
  
Alcibiades replied: Hail, worthy son of a most wise and worthy sire!
  
The same to you, said Eryximachus; but what shall we do?
  
That I leave to you, said Alcibiades.
  
'The wise physician skilled our wounds to heal (from Pope's Homer, Il.)'  
  
shall prescribe and we will obey. What do you want?
  
Well, said Eryximachus, before you appeared we had passed a resolution that  
each one of us in turn should make a speech in praise of love, and as good  
a one as he could: the turn was passed round from left to right; and as  
all of us have spoken, and you have not spoken but have well drunken, you  
ought to speak, and then impose upon Socrates any task which you please,  
and he on his right hand neighbour, and so on.
  
That is good, Eryximachus, said Alcibiades; and yet the comparison of a  
drunken man's speech with those of sober men is hardly fair; and I should  
like to know, sweet friend, whether you really believe what Socrates was  
just now saying; for I can assure you that the very reverse is the fact,  
and that if I praise any one but himself in his presence, whether God or  
man, he will hardly keep his hands off me.
  
For shame, said Socrates.
  
Hold your tongue, said Alcibiades, for by Poseidon, there is no one else  
whom I will praise when you are of the company.
  
Well then, said Eryximachus, if you like praise Socrates.
  
What do you think, Eryximachus? said Alcibiades: shall I attack him and  
inflict the punishment before you all?
  
What are you about? said Socrates; are you going to raise a laugh at my  
expense? Is that the meaning of your praise?
  
I am going to speak the truth, if you will permit me.
  
I not only permit, but exhort you to speak the truth.
  
Then I will begin at once, said Alcibiades, and if I say anything which is  
not true, you may interrupt me if you will, and say 'that is a lie,' though  
my intention is to speak the truth. But you must not wonder if I speak any  
how as things come into my mind; for the fluent and orderly enumeration of  
all your singularities is not a task which is easy to a man in my  
condition.
  
And now, my boys, I shall praise Socrates in a figure which will appear to  
him to be a caricature, and yet I speak, not to make fun of him, but only  
for the truth's sake. I say, that he is exactly like the busts of Silenus,  
which are set up in the statuaries' shops, holding pipes and flutes in  
their mouths; and they are made to open in the middle, and have images of  
gods inside them. I say also that he is like Marsyas the satyr. You  
yourself will not deny, Socrates, that your face is like that of a satyr.  
Aye, and there is a resemblance in other points too. For example, you are  
a bully, as I can prove by witnesses, if you will not confess. And are you  
not a flute-player? That you are, and a performer far more wonderful than  
Marsyas. He indeed with instruments used to charm the souls of men by the  
power of his breath, and the players of his music do so still: for the  
melodies of Olympus (compare Arist. Pol.) are derived from Marsyas who  
taught them, and these, whether they are played by a great master or by a  
miserable flute-girl, have a power which no others have; they alone possess  
the soul and reveal the wants of those who have need of gods and mysteries,  
because they are divine. But you produce the same effect with your words  
only, and do not require the flute: that is the difference between you and  
him. When we hear any other speaker, even a very good one, he produces  
absolutely no effect upon us, or not much, whereas the mere fragments of  
you and your words, even at second-hand, and however imperfectly repeated,  
amaze and possess the souls of every man, woman, and child who comes within  
hearing of them. And if I were not afraid that you would think me  
hopelessly drunk, I would have sworn as well as spoken to the influence  
which they have always had and still have over me. For my heart leaps  
within me more than that of any Corybantian reveller, and my eyes rain  
tears when I hear them. And I observe that many others are affected in the  
same manner. I have heard Pericles and other great orators, and I thought  
that they spoke well, but I never had any similar feeling; my soul was not  
stirred by them, nor was I angry at the thought of my own slavish state.  
But this Marsyas has often brought me to such a pass, that I have felt as  
if I could hardly endure the life which I am leading (this, Socrates, you  
will admit); and I am conscious that if I did not shut my ears against him,  
and fly as from the voice of the siren, my fate would be like that of  
others,--he would transfix me, and I should grow old sitting at his feet.  
For he makes me confess that I ought not to live as I do, neglecting the  
wants of my own soul, and busying myself with the concerns of the  
Athenians; therefore I hold my ears and tear myself away from him. And he  
is the only person who ever made me ashamed, which you might think not to  
be in my nature, and there is no one else who does the same. For I know  
that I cannot answer him or say that I ought not to do as he bids, but when  
I leave his presence the love of popularity gets the better of me. And  
therefore I run away and fly from him, and when I see him I am ashamed of  
what I have confessed to him. Many a time have I wished that he were dead,  
and yet I know that I should be much more sorry than glad, if he were to  
die: so that I am at my wit's end.
  
And this is what I and many others have suffered from the flute-playing of  
this satyr. Yet hear me once more while I show you how exact the image is,  
and how marvellous his power. For let me tell you; none of you know him;  
but I will reveal him to you; having begun, I must go on. See you how fond  
he is of the fair? He is always with them and is always being smitten by  
them, and then again he knows nothing and is ignorant of all things--such  
is the appearance which he puts on. Is he not like a Silenus in this? To  
be sure he is: his outer mask is the carved head of the Silenus; but, O my  
companions in drink, when he is opened, what temperance there is residing  
within! Know you that beauty and wealth and honour, at which the many  
wonder, are of no account with him, and are utterly despised by him: he  
regards not at all the persons who are gifted with them; mankind are  
nothing to him; all his life is spent in mocking and flouting at them. But  
when I opened him, and looked within at his serious purpose, I saw in him  
divine and golden images of such fascinating beauty that I was ready to do  
in a moment whatever Socrates commanded: they may have escaped the  
observation of others, but I saw them. Now I fancied that he was seriously  
enamoured of my beauty, and I thought that I should therefore have a grand  
opportunity of hearing him tell what he knew, for I had a wonderful opinion  
of the attractions of my youth. In the prosecution of this design, when I  
next went to him, I sent away the attendant who usually accompanied me (I  
will confess the whole truth, and beg you to listen; and if I speak  
falsely, do you, Socrates, expose the falsehood). Well, he and I were  
alone together, and I thought that when there was nobody with us, I should  
hear him speak the language which lovers use to their loves when they are  
by themselves, and I was delighted. Nothing of the sort; he conversed as  
usual, and spent the day with me and then went away. Afterwards I  
challenged him to the palaestra; and he wrestled and closed with me several  
times when there was no one present; I fancied that I might succeed in this  
manner. Not a bit; I made no way with him. Lastly, as I had failed  
hitherto, I thought that I must take stronger measures and attack him  
boldly, and, as I had begun, not give him up, but see how matters stood  
between him and me. So I invited him to sup with me, just as if he were a  
fair youth, and I a designing lover. He was not easily persuaded to come;  
he did, however, after a while accept the invitation, and when he came the  
first time, he wanted to go away at once as soon as supper was over, and I  
had not the face to detain him. The second time, still in pursuance of my  
design, after we had supped, I went on conversing far into the night, and  
when he wanted to go away, I pretended that the hour was late and that he  
had much better remain. So he lay down on the couch next to me, the same  
on which he had supped, and there was no one but ourselves sleeping in the  
apartment. All this may be told without shame to any one. But what  
follows I could hardly tell you if I were sober. Yet as the proverb says,  
'In vino veritas,' whether with boys, or without them (In allusion to two  
proverbs.); and therefore I must speak. Nor, again, should I be justified  
in concealing the lofty actions of Socrates when I come to praise him.  
Moreover I have felt the serpent's sting; and he who has suffered, as they  
say, is willing to tell his fellow-sufferers only, as they alone will be  
likely to understand him, and will not be extreme in judging of the sayings  
or doings which have been wrung from his agony. For I have been bitten by  
a more than viper's tooth; I have known in my soul, or in my heart, or in  
some other part, that worst of pangs, more violent in ingenuous youth than  
any serpent's tooth, the pang of philosophy, which will make a man say or  
do anything. And you whom I see around me, Phaedrus and Agathon and  
Eryximachus and Pausanias and Aristodemus and Aristophanes, all of you, and  
I need not say Socrates himself, have had experience of the same madness  
and passion in your longing after wisdom. Therefore listen and excuse my  
doings then and my sayings now. But let the attendants and other profane  
and unmannered persons close up the doors of their ears.
  
When the lamp was put out and the servants had gone away, I thought that I  
must be plain with him and have no more ambiguity. So I gave him a shake,  
and I said: 'Socrates, are you asleep?'  'No,' he said. 'Do you know what  
I am meditating? 'What are you meditating?' he said. 'I think,' I  
replied, 'that of all the lovers whom I have ever had you are the only one  
who is worthy of me, and you appear to be too modest to speak. Now I feel  
that I should be a fool to refuse you this or any other favour, and  
therefore I come to lay at your feet all that I have and all that my  
friends have, in the hope that you will assist me in the way of virtue,  
which I desire above all things, and in which I believe that you can help  
me better than any one else. And I should certainly have more reason to be  
ashamed of what wise men would say if I were to refuse a favour to such as  
you, than of what the world, who are mostly fools, would say of me if I  
granted it.'  To these words he replied in the ironical manner which is so  
characteristic of him:--'Alcibiades, my friend, you have indeed an elevated  
aim if what you say is true, and if there really is in me any power by  
which you may become better; truly you must see in me some rare beauty of a  
kind infinitely higher than any which I see in you. And therefore, if you  
mean to share with me and to exchange beauty for beauty, you will have  
greatly the advantage of me; you will gain true beauty in return for  
appearance--like Diomede, gold in exchange for brass. But look again,  
sweet friend, and see whether you are not deceived in me. The mind begins  
to grow critical when the bodily eye fails, and it will be a long time  
before you get old.'  Hearing this, I said: 'I have told you my purpose,  
which is quite serious, and do you consider what you think best for you and  
me.'  'That is good,' he said; 'at some other time then we will consider  
and act as seems best about this and about other matters.'  Whereupon, I  
fancied that he was smitten, and that the words which I had uttered like  
arrows had wounded him, and so without waiting to hear more I got up, and  
throwing my coat about him crept under his threadbare cloak, as the time of  
year was winter, and there I lay during the whole night having this  
wonderful monster in my arms. This again, Socrates, will not be denied by  
you. And yet, notwithstanding all, he was so superior to my solicitations,  
so contemptuous and derisive and disdainful of my beauty--which really, as  
I fancied, had some attractions--hear, O judges; for judges you shall be of  
the haughty virtue of Socrates--nothing more happened, but in the morning  
when I awoke (let all the gods and goddesses be my witnesses) I arose as  
from the couch of a father or an elder brother.
  
What do you suppose must have been my feelings, after this rejection, at  
the thought of my own dishonour? And yet I could not help wondering at his  
natural temperance and self-restraint and manliness. I never imagined that  
I could have met with a man such as he is in wisdom and endurance. And  
therefore I could not be angry with him or renounce his company, any more  
than I could hope to win him. For I well knew that if Ajax could not be  
wounded by steel, much less he by money; and my only chance of captivating  
him by my personal attractions had failed. So I was at my wit's end; no  
one was ever more hopelessly enslaved by another. All this happened before  
he and I went on the expedition to Potidaea; there we messed together, and  
I had the opportunity of observing his extraordinary power of sustaining  
fatigue. His endurance was simply marvellous when, being cut off from our  
supplies, we were compelled to go without food--on such occasions, which  
often happen in time of war, he was superior not only to me but to  
everybody; there was no one to be compared to him. Yet at a festival he  
was the only person who had any real powers of enjoyment; though not  
willing to drink, he could if compelled beat us all at that,--wonderful to  
relate! no human being had ever seen Socrates drunk; and his powers, if I  
am not mistaken, will be tested before long. His fortitude in enduring  
cold was also surprising. There was a severe frost, for the winter in that  
region is really tremendous, and everybody else either remained indoors, or  
if they went out had on an amazing quantity of clothes, and were well shod,  
and had their feet swathed in felt and fleeces: in the midst of this,  
Socrates with his bare feet on the ice and in his ordinary dress marched  
better than the other soldiers who had shoes, and they looked daggers at  
him because he seemed to despise them.
  
I have told you one tale, and now I must tell you another, which is worth  
hearing,  
  
'Of the doings and sufferings of the enduring man'  
  
while he was on the expedition. One morning he was thinking about  
something which he could not resolve; he would not give it up, but  
continued thinking from early dawn until noon--there he stood fixed in  
thought; and at noon attention was drawn to him, and the rumour ran through  
the wondering crowd that Socrates had been standing and thinking about  
something ever since the break of day. At last, in the evening after  
supper, some Ionians out of curiosity (I should explain that this was not  
in winter but in summer), brought out their mats and slept in the open air  
that they might watch him and see whether he would stand all night. There  
he stood until the following morning; and with the return of light he  
offered up a prayer to the sun, and went his way (compare supra). I will  
also tell, if you please--and indeed I am bound to tell--of his courage in  
battle; for who but he saved my life? Now this was the engagement in which  
I received the prize of valour: for I was wounded and he would not leave  
me, but he rescued me and my arms; and he ought to have received the prize  
of valour which the generals wanted to confer on me partly on account of my  
rank, and I told them so, (this, again, Socrates will not impeach or deny),  
but he was more eager than the generals that I and not he should have the  
prize. There was another occasion on which his behaviour was very  
remarkable--in the flight of the army after the battle of Delium, where he  
served among the heavy-armed,--I had a better opportunity of seeing him  
than at Potidaea, for I was myself on horseback, and therefore  
comparatively out of danger. He and Laches were retreating, for the troops  
were in flight, and I met them and told them not to be discouraged, and  
promised to remain with them; and there you might see him, Aristophanes, as  
you describe (Aristoph. Clouds), just as he is in the streets of Athens,  
stalking like a pelican, and rolling his eyes, calmly contemplating enemies  
as well as friends, and making very intelligible to anybody, even from a  
distance, that whoever attacked him would be likely to meet with a stout  
resistance; and in this way he and his companion escaped--for this is the  
sort of man who is never touched in war; those only are pursued who are  
running away headlong. I particularly observed how superior he was to  
Laches in presence of mind. Many are the marvels which I might narrate in  
praise of Socrates; most of his ways might perhaps be paralleled in another  
man, but his absolute unlikeness to any human being that is or ever has  
been is perfectly astonishing. You may imagine Brasidas and others to have  
been like Achilles; or you may imagine Nestor and Antenor to have been like  
Pericles; and the same may be said of other famous men, but of this strange  
being you will never be able to find any likeness, however remote, either  
among men who now are or who ever have been--other than that which I have  
already suggested of Silenus and the satyrs; and they represent in a figure  
not only himself, but his words. For, although I forgot to mention this to  
you before, his words are like the images of Silenus which open; they are  
ridiculous when you first hear them; he clothes himself in language that is  
like the skin of the wanton satyr--for his talk is of pack-asses and smiths  
and cobblers and curriers, and he is always repeating the same things in  
the same words (compare Gorg.), so that any ignorant or inexperienced  
person might feel disposed to laugh at him; but he who opens the bust and  
sees what is within will find that they are the only words which have a  
meaning in them, and also the most divine, abounding in fair images of  
virtue, and of the widest comprehension, or rather extending to the whole  
duty of a good and honourable man.
  
This, friends, is my praise of Socrates. I have added my blame of him for  
his ill-treatment of me; and he has ill-treated not only me, but Charmides  
the son of Glaucon, and Euthydemus the son of Diocles, and many others in  
the same way--beginning as their lover he has ended by making them pay  
their addresses to him. Wherefore I say to you, Agathon, 'Be not deceived  
by him; learn from me and take warning, and do not be a fool and learn by  
experience, as the proverb says.'  
  
When Alcibiades had finished, there was a laugh at his outspokenness; for  
he seemed to be still in love with Socrates. You are sober, Alcibiades,  
said Socrates, or you would never have gone so far about to hide the  
purpose of your satyr's praises, for all this long story is only an  
ingenious circumlocution, of which the point comes in by the way at the  
end; you want to get up a quarrel between me and Agathon, and your notion  
is that I ought to love you and nobody else, and that you and you only  
ought to love Agathon. But the plot of this Satyric or Silenic drama has  
been detected, and you must not allow him, Agathon, to set us at variance.
  
I believe you are right, said Agathon, and I am disposed to think that his  
intention in placing himself between you and me was only to divide us; but  
he shall gain nothing by that move; for I will go and lie on the couch next  
to you.
  
Yes, yes, replied Socrates, by all means come here and lie on the couch  
below me.
  
Alas, said Alcibiades, how I am fooled by this man; he is determined to get  
the better of me at every turn. I do beseech you, allow Agathon to lie  
between us.
  
Certainly not, said Socrates, as you praised me, and I in turn ought to  
praise my neighbour on the right, he will be out of order in praising me  
again when he ought rather to be praised by me, and I must entreat you to  
consent to this, and not be jealous, for I have a great desire to praise  
the youth.
  
Hurrah! cried Agathon, I will rise instantly, that I may be praised by  
Socrates.
  
The usual way, said Alcibiades; where Socrates is, no one else has any  
chance with the fair; and now how readily has he invented a specious reason  
for attracting Agathon to himself.
  
Agathon arose in order that he might take his place on the couch by  
Socrates, when suddenly a band of revellers entered, and spoiled the order  
of the banquet. Some one who was going out having left the door open, they  
had found their way in, and made themselves at home; great confusion  
ensued, and every one was compelled to drink large quantities of wine.  
Aristodemus said that Eryximachus, Phaedrus, and others went away--he  
himself fell asleep, and as the nights were long took a good rest: he was  
awakened towards daybreak by a crowing of cocks, and when he awoke, the  
others were either asleep, or had gone away; there remained only Socrates,  
Aristophanes, and Agathon, who were drinking out of a large goblet which  
they passed round, and Socrates was discoursing to them. Aristodemus was  
only half awake, and he did not hear the beginning of the discourse; the  
chief thing which he remembered was Socrates compelling the other two to  
acknowledge that the genius of comedy was the same with that of tragedy,  
and that the true artist in tragedy was an artist in comedy also. To this  
they were constrained to assent, being drowsy, and not quite following the  
argument. And first of all Aristophanes dropped off, then, when the day  
was already dawning, Agathon. Socrates, having laid them to sleep, rose to  
depart; Aristodemus, as his manner was, following him. At the Lyceum he  
took a bath, and passed the day as usual. In the evening he retired to  
rest at his own home.

          The End

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