Symposium
(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