Platos Symposium
(Compare Hoeck’s Creta and the admirable There is no criterion of the date of the Sympo-and exhaustive article of Meier in Ersch and sium, except that which is furnished by the allu-Grueber’s Cyclopedia on this subject; Plutarch, sion to the division of Arcadia after the destruc-Amatores; Athenaeus; Lysias contra Simonem; tion of Mantinea. This took place in the year B.C.
Aesch. c. Timarchum.)
384, which is the forty-fourth year of Plato’s life.
The character of Alcibiades in the Symposium is The Symposium cannot therefore be regarded hardly less remarkable than that of Socrates, and as a youthful work. As Mantinea was restored in agrees with the picture given of him in the first of the year 369, the composition of the Dialogue the two Dialogues which are called by his name, will probably fall between 384 and 369. Whether and also with the slight sketch of him in the the recollection of the event is more likely to have Protagoras. He is the impersonation of lawlessness—
been renewed at the destruction or restoration
‘the lion’s whelp, who ought not to be reared in of the city, rather than at some intermediate the city,’ yet not without a certain generosity period, is a consideration not worth raising.
which gained the hearts of men,—strangely fasci-The Symposium is connected with the nated by Socrates, and possessed of a genius which Phaedrus both in style and subject; they are the might have been either the destruction or salva-only Dialogues of Plato in which the theme of tion of Athens. The dramatic interest of the char-love is discussed at length. In both of them phi-acter is heightened by the recollection of his after losophy is regarded as a sort of enthusiasm or history. He seems to have been present to the mind madness; Socrates is himself ‘a prophet new of Plato in the description of the democratic man inspired’ with Bacchanalian revelry, which, like of the Republic (compare also Alcibiades 1).
his philosophy, he characteristically pretends to 31
Platos Symposium
have derived not from himself but from others.
this world, or in or out of this world, but an as-The Phaedo also presents some points of compect of the divine, extending over all things, and parison with the Symposium. For there, too, phi-having no limit of space or time: this is the high-losophy might be described as ‘dying for love;’
est knowledge of which the human mind is ca-and there are not wanting many touches of pable. Plato does not go on to ask whether the humour and fancy, which remind us of the Sym-individual is absorbed in the sea of light and posium. But while the Phaedo and Phaedrus look beauty or retains his personality. Enough for him backwards and forwards to past and future states to have attained the true beauty or good, with-of existence, in the Symposium there is no break out enquiring precisely into the relation in which between this world and another; and we rise human beings stood to it. That the soul has such from one to the other by a regular series of steps a reach of thought, and is capable of partaking or stages, proceeding from the particulars of of the eternal nature, seems to imply that she sense to the universal of reason, and from one too is eternal (compare Phaedrus). But Plato does universal to many, which are finally reunited in not distinguish the eternal in man from the eter-a single science (compare Rep.). At first immor-nal in the world or in God. He is willing to rest in tality means only the succession of existences; the contemplation of the idea, which to him is even knowledge comes and goes. Then follows, the cause of all things (Rep.), and has no strength in the language of the mysteries, a higher and a to go further.
higher degree of initiation; at last we arrive at The Symposium of Xenophon, in which the perfect vision of beauty, not relative or chang-Socrates describes himself as a pander, and also ing, but eternal and absolute; not bounded by discourses of the difference between sensual and 32
Platos Symposium
sentimental love, likewise offers several interest-SYMPOSIUM
ing points of comparison. But the suspicion which hangs over other writings of Xenophon, and the by
numerous minute references to the Phaedrus and Symposium, as well as to some of the other writ-Plato
ings of Plato, throw a doubt on the genuineness of the work. The Symposium of Xenophon, if Translated by Benjamin Jowett written by him at all, would certainly show that PERSONS OF THE DIALOGUE:
he wrote against Plato, and was acquainted with his works. Of this hostility there is no trace in Apollodorus, who repeats to his companion the the Memorabilia. Such a rivalry is more charac-dialogue which he had heard from Aristodemus, and had already once narrated to Glaucon.
teristic of an imitator than of an original writer.
The (so-called) Symposium of Xenophon may Phaedrus, Pausanias, Eryximachus, Aristophanes, therefore have no more title to be regarded as Agathon, Socrates,
genuine than the confessedly spurious Apology.
Alcibiades, A Troop of Revellers.
There are no means of determining the relative order in time of the Phaedrus, Symposium, SCENE: The House of Agathon.
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.