ΣΥΜΠΟΣΙΟΝ
W.R.M. Lamb (Loeb, 1925)
Plato · W.R.M. Lamb (Loeb, 1925)
Narrator: APOLLODORUS, a constant companion of Socrates; ARISTODEMUS, a follower of Socrates (the actual eyewitness whose account Apollodorus relays)
Also present: COMPANIONS, FLUTE-PLAYER, REVELLERS
Scene: the house of Agathon in Athens, celebrating the victory for his first tragedy
At a banquet, each guest gives a speech in praise of Love. The summit is Socrates's account of what he learned from the priestess Diotima: that Love is a great daimon, neither god nor mortal, a longing for the beautiful and the good. Rightly guided, the lover ascends a ladder — from one beautiful body, to all bodies, to beautiful souls, laws, and knowledge, and at last to Beauty itself, the Form of the Beautiful.
The dialogue ends with the drunken Alcibiades' tribute to Socrates, likening him to a Silenus-figure, plain without but full of divine images within.
From the Plato Scroll Encyclopedia · open this entry in the reader
Ap: I believe I have got the story you inquire of pretty well by heart. The day before yesterday I chanced to be going up to town from my house in Phalerum, when one of my acquaintance caught sight of me from behind, some way off, and called in a bantering tone Hullo, Phalerian! I say, Apollodorus, wait a moment. So I stopped and waited. Then, Apollodorus, he said, do you know, I have just been looking for you, as I want to hear all about the banquet that brought together Agathon and Socrates and Alcibiades and the rest of that party, and what were the speeches they delivered upon love. For somebody else was relating to me the account he had from Phoenix, son of Philip, and he mentioned that you knew it too. But he could not tell it at all clearly so you must give me the whole story, for you are the most proper reporter of your dear friend’s discourses. But first tell me this, he went on; were you at that party yourself, or not? To which my answer was: You have had anything but a clear account from your informant, if you suppose the party you are asking about to have been such a recent affair that I could be included. So I did suppose, he said. How so, Glaucon? said I. You must know it is many a year that Agathon has been away from home and country, and not yet three years that I have been consorting with Socrates and making it my daily care to know whatever he says or does.
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The Athenian who turned Socratic conversation into a written philosophy and founded the Academy.
Plato was born around 428 BCE into a wealthy and politically prominent Athenian family; through his mother Perictione the family traced kinship to the lawgiver Solon, and his relatives Critias and Charmides were among the oligarchs of the Thirty. A late tradition says his given name was Aristocles and that 'Plato' — from the word for 'broad' — was a nickname. He grew up during the long agony of the Peloponnesian War and came of age amid the violence and disillusion that followed Athens' defeat.
Plato · W.R.M. Lamb (Loeb, 1925). Each edition has its page, the reader and a plain-text file:
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