Symposium
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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