greek · wisdom

Symposium — The Banquet

c. 385–370 BCE · Classical Greece (4th century BCE) · Athens, Greece

The Setting of the Banquet

1Apollodorus: Concerning the things about which you ask to be informed, I believe that I am not ill-prepared with an answer.
2For the day before yesterday I was coming from my own home at Phalerum to the city,
3and one of my acquaintance, who had caught a sight of me from behind, calling out playfully in the distance, said:
4Apollodorus, O thou Phalerian man, halt!
5So I did as I was bid; and then he said,
6I was looking for you, Apollodorus, only just now, that I might ask you about the speeches in praise of love,
7which were delivered by Socrates, Alcibiades, and others, at Agathon's supper.
8Phaenix, the son of Philip, told another person who told me of them;
9his narrative was very indistinct, but he said that you knew, and I wish that you would give me an account of them.

Aristophanes' Myth of the Origin of Love

10Now the sexes were three, and such as I have described them;
11because the sun, moon, and earth are three;
12and the man was originally the child of the sun, the woman of the earth,
13and the man-woman of the moon.
14Terrible was their might and strength, and the thoughts of their hearts were great,
15and they made an attack upon the gods; of them is told the tale of Otys and Ephialtes,
16who, as Homer says, dared to scale heaven, and would have laid hands upon the gods.
17Doubtful thoughts troubled the gods, who did not know what to do with them.
18At length, after a good deal of reflection, Zeus discovered a way.
19He said: "Methinks I have a plan which will humble their pride and improve their manners.
20Men shall continue to exist, but I will cut them in two,
21and then they will be diminished in strength and increased in numbers."
22After the division the two parts of man, each desiring his other half, came together;
23and throwing their arms about one another, entwined in mutual embraces,
24longing to grow into one, they were on the point of dying from hunger and self-neglect,
25because they did not like to do anything apart.
26Each of us when separated is but the indenture of a man,
27having one side only, like a flat fish, and always looking for his other half.
28And when one of them meets with his other half, the actual half of himself,
29the pair are lost in an amazement of love and friendship and intimacy,
30and one will not be out of the other's sight, as I may say, even for a moment.

Socrates Recounts Diotima's Teaching

31"Love is a great spirit," she said, "and, like all spirits, he is intermediate between the divine and the mortal."
32"And what is his power?" I said.
33"He interprets, she replied, between gods and men, conveying and taking across to the gods the prayers and sacrifices of men,
34and to men the commands and replies of the gods; he is the mediator who spans the chasm which divides them,
35and therefore in him all is bound together, and through him the arts of the prophet and the priest,
36their sacrifices and mysteries and charms, and all prophecy and incantation, find their way."
37"For God mingles not with man; but through Love all the intercourse and converse of god with man,
38whether awake or asleep, is carried on."

The Ladder of Love

39"This, my dear Socrates," said the stranger of Mantineia,
40"is that life above all others which man should live,
41in the contemplation of beauty absolute;
42a beauty which if you once beheld, you would see not to be after the measure of gold and garments and fair boys and youths,
43whose presence now entrances you.
44"For he who has been instructed thus far in the things of love,
45and who has learned to see the beautiful in due order and succession,
46when he comes toward the end will suddenly perceive a nature of wondrous beauty—
47and this, Socrates, is that final cause of all our former toils.
48"In the first place, always existing and neither coming to be nor perishing,
49neither waxing nor waning;
50secondly, not fair in one point of view and foul in another,
51or at one time or in one relation or at one place fair, at another time or in another relation or at another place foul;
52but beauty absolute, separate, simple, and everlasting."

Alcibiades' Encomium of Socrates

53Alcibiades: And now, my boys, I shall praise Socrates in a figure which will appear to him to be a caricature.
54I say that he is exactly like the busts of Silenus, which are set up in the statuaries' shops,
55holding pipes and flutes in their mouths; and they are made to open in the middle,
56and have images of gods inside them.
57I say also that he is like Marsyas the satyr.
58You yourself will not deny, Socrates, that your face is like that of a satyr.
59Aye, and there is a resemblance in other points too. For example, you are a bully,
60as I can prove by witnesses, if you will not confess.
61But if you open him, and you look within, you will find that he is the only man in the world
62whose words have a soul.
63Suffice it to say that when Socrates and I lay together under the same covering,
64I rose in the morning having no more slept with Socrates,
65within the meaning of the word, than if I had been sleeping with my father or an elder brother.
66What do you suppose must have been my feelings, thinking that I had been despised,
67yet also admiring his temperance and nature? For never did I meet a man with whom I could not fall out.
68But Socrates has never fallen out with me nor I with him.

notes

Plato's Symposium (Symposion — "The Drinking Party") is set at a banquet held in 416 BCE at the house of the tragedian Agathon, to celebrate his first victory at the Lenaia festival. Each of the guests in turn delivers a speech in praise of Eros (Love). The dialogue is one of Plato's supreme literary achievements — perhaps the greatest short work of Western prose ever composed. The three speeches presented above in excerpt are its most celebrated: Aristophanes' myth of the divided beings (the origin of the modern notion of the "other half" or "soulmate"); Socrates' report of the teaching he received from Diotima of Mantinea, culminating in the Ladder of Love that ascends from the beauty of a single body to the vision of Beauty itself; and Alcibiades' drunken, brilliant, and desolating tribute to Socrates — arriving late, garlanded, and refusing to praise Love at all, only Socrates. The Symposium and the Phaedrus together set the terms in which Western culture has thought about eros for two and a half thousand years. Translation: Benjamin Jowett, "The Dialogues of Plato," Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1871. Public domain.

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