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+Symposium
+
+by Plato, translated by B. Jowett.
+
+January, 1999  [Etext #1600]
+
+*******The Project Gutenberg Etext of Symposium, by Plato*******
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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 their want.  For love is the desire of the whole, and
+the pursuit of the whole is called love.  There was a time when the two
+sexes were only one, but now God has halved them,--much as the
+Lacedaemonians have cut up the Arcadians,--and if they do not behave
+themselves he will divide them again, and they will hop about with half a
+nose and face in basso relievo.  Wherefore let us exhort all men to piety,
+that we may obtain the goods of which love is the author, and be reconciled
+to God, and find our own true loves, which rarely happens in this world. 
+And now I must beg you not to suppose that I am alluding to Pausanias and
+Agathon (compare Protag.), for my words refer to all mankind everywhere.
+
+Some raillery ensues first between Aristophanes and Eryximachus, and then
+between Agathon, who fears a few select friends more than any number of
+spectators at the theatre, and Socrates, who is disposed to begin an
+argument.  This is speedily repressed by Phaedrus, who reminds the
+disputants of their tribute to the god.  Agathon's speech follows:--
+
+He will speak of the god first and then of his gifts:  He is the fairest
+and blessedest and best of the gods, and also the youngest, having had no
+existence in the old days of Iapetus and Cronos when the gods were at war.
+The things that were done then were done of necessity and not of love.  For
+love is young and dwells in soft places,--not like Ate in Homer, walking on
+the skulls of men, but in their hearts and souls, which are soft enough. 
+He is all flexibility and grace, and his habitation is among the flowers,
+and he cannot do or suffer wrong; for all men serve and obey him of their
+own free will, and where there is love there is obedience, and where
+obedience, there is justice; for none can be wronged of his own free will. 
+And he is temperate as well as just, for he is the ruler of the desires,
+and if he rules them he must be temperate.  Also he is courageous, for he
+is the conqueror of the lord of war.  And he is wise too; for he is a poet,
+and the author of poesy in others.  He created the animals; he is the
+inventor of the arts; all the gods are his subjects; he is the fairest and
+best himself, and the cause of what is fairest and best in others; he makes
+men to be of one mind at a banquet, filling them with affection and
+emptying them of disaffection; the pilot, helper, defender, saviour of men,
+in whose footsteps let every man follow, chanting a strain of love.  Such
+is the discourse, half playful, half serious, which I dedicate to the god.
+
+The turn of Socrates comes next.  He begins by remarking satirically that
+he has not understood the terms of the original agreement, for he fancied
+that they meant to speak the true praises of love, but now he finds that
+they only say what is good of him, whether true or false.  He begs to be
+absolved from speaking falsely, but he is willing to speak the truth, and
+proposes to begin by questioning Agathon.  The result of his questions may
+be summed up as follows:--
+
+Love is of something, and that which love desires is not that which love is
+or has; for no man desires that which he is or has.  And love is of the
+beautiful, and therefore has not the beautiful.  And the beautiful is the
+good, and therefore, in wanting and desiring the beautiful, love also wants
+and desires the good.  Socrates professes to have asked the same questions
+and to have obtained the same answers from Diotima, a wise woman of
+Mantinea, who, like Agathon, had spoken first of love and then of his
+works.  Socrates, like Agathon, had told her that Love is a mighty god and
+also fair, and she had shown him in return that Love was neither, but in a
+mean between fair and foul, good and evil, and not a god at all, but only a
+great demon or intermediate power (compare the speech of Eryximachus) who
+conveys to the gods the prayers of men, and to men the commands of the
+gods.
+
+Socrates asks:  Who are his father and mother?  To this Diotima replies
+that he is the son of Plenty and Poverty, and partakes of the nature of
+both, and is full and starved by turns.  Like his mother he is poor and
+squalid, lying on mats at doors (compare the speech of Pausanias); like his
+father he is bold and strong, and full of arts and resources.  Further, he
+is in a mean between ignorance and knowledge:--in this he resembles the
+philosopher who is also in a mean between the wise and the ignorant.  Such
+is the nature of Love, who is not to be confused with the beloved.
+
+But Love desires the beautiful; and then arises the question, What does he
+desire of the beautiful?  He desires, of course, the possession of the
+beautiful;--but what is given by that?  For the beautiful let us substitute
+the good, and we have no difficulty in seeing the possession of the good to
+be happiness, and Love to be the desire of happiness, although the meaning
+of the word has been too often confined to one kind of love.  And Love
+desires not only the good, but the everlasting possession of the good.  Why
+then is there all this flutter and excitement about love?  Because all men
+and women at a certain age are desirous of bringing to the birth.  And love
+is not of beauty only, but of birth in beauty; this is the principle of
+immortality in a mortal creature.  When beauty approaches, then the
+conceiving power is benign and diffuse; when foulness, she is averted and
+morose.
+
+But why again does this extend not only to men but also to animals? 
+Because they too have an instinct of immortality.  Even in the same
+individual there is a perpetual succession as well of the parts of the
+material body as of the thoughts and desires of the mind; nay, even
+knowledge comes and goes.  There is no sameness of existence, but the new
+mortality is always taking the place of the old.  This is the reason why
+parents love their children--for the sake of immortality; and this is why
+men love the immortality of fame.  For the creative soul creates not
+children, but conceptions of wisdom and virtue, such as poets and other
+creators have invented.  And the noblest creations of all are those of
+legislators, in honour of whom temples have been raised.  Who would not
+sooner have these children of the mind than the ordinary human ones? 
+(Compare Bacon's Essays, 8:--'Certainly the best works and of greatest
+merit for the public have proceeded from the unmarried or childless men;
+which both in affection and means have married and endowed the public.')
+
+I will now initiate you, she said, into the greater mysteries; for he who
+would proceed in due course should love first one fair form, and then many,
+and learn the connexion of them; and from beautiful bodies he should
+proceed to beautiful minds, and the beauty of laws and institutions, until
+he perceives that all beauty is of one kindred; and from institutions he
+should go on to the sciences, until at last the vision is revealed to him
+of a single science of universal beauty, and then he will behold the
+everlasting nature which is the cause of all, and will be near the end. In
+the contemplation of that supreme being of love he will be purified of
+earthly leaven, and will behold beauty, not with the bodily eye, but with
+the eye of the mind, and will bring forth true creations of virtue and
+wisdom, and be the friend of God and heir of immortality.
+
+Such, Phaedrus, is the tale which I heard from the stranger of Mantinea,
+and which you may call the encomium of love, or what you please.
+
+The company applaud the speech of Socrates, and Aristophanes is about to
+say something, when suddenly a band of revellers breaks into the court, and
+the voice of Alcibiades is heard asking for Agathon.  He is led in drunk,
+and welcomed by Agathon, whom he has come to crown with a garland.  He is
+placed on a couch at his side, but suddenly, on recognizing Socrates, he
+starts up, and a sort of conflict is carried on between them, which Agathon
+is requested to appease.  Alcibiades then insists that they shall drink,
+and has a large wine-cooler filled, which he first empties himself, and
+then fills again and passes on to Socrates.  He is informed of the nature
+of the entertainment; and is ready to join, if only in the character of a
+drunken and disappointed lover he may be allowed to sing the praises of
+Socrates:--
+
+He begins by comparing Socrates first to the busts of Silenus, which have
+images of the gods inside them; and, secondly, to Marsyas the flute-player.
+For Socrates produces the same effect with the voice which Marsyas did with
+the flute.  He is the great speaker and enchanter who ravishes the souls of
+men; the convincer of hearts too, as he has convinced Alcibiades, and made
+him ashamed of his mean and miserable life.  Socrates at one time seemed
+about to fall in love with him; and he thought that he would thereby gain a
+wonderful opportunity of receiving lessons of wisdom.  He narrates the
+failure of his design.  He has suffered agonies from him, and is at his
+wit's end.  He then proceeds to mention some other particulars of the life
+of Socrates; how they were at Potidaea together, where Socrates showed his
+superior powers of enduring cold and fatigue; how on one occasion he had
+stood for an entire day and night absorbed in reflection amid the wonder of
+the spectators; how on another occasion he had saved Alcibiades' life; how
+at the battle of Delium, after the defeat, he might be seen stalking about
+like a pelican, rolling his eyes as Aristophanes had described him in the
+Clouds.  He is the most wonderful of human beings, and absolutely unlike
+anyone but a satyr.  Like the satyr in his language too; for he uses the
+commonest words as the outward mask of the divinest truths.
+
+When Alcibiades has done speaking, a dispute begins between him and Agathon
+and Socrates.  Socrates piques Alcibiades by a pretended affection for
+Agathon.  Presently a band of revellers appears, who introduce disorder
+into the feast; the sober part of the company, Eryximachus, Phaedrus, and
+others, withdraw; and Aristodemus, the follower of Socrates, sleeps during
+the whole of a long winter's night.  When he wakes at cockcrow the
+revellers are nearly all asleep.  Only Socrates, Aristophanes, and Agathon
+hold out; they are drinking from a large goblet, which they pass round, and
+Socrates is explaining to the two others, who are half-asleep, that the
+genius of tragedy is the same as that of comedy, and that the writer of
+tragedy ought to be a writer of comedy also.  And first Aristophanes drops,
+and then, as the day is dawning, Agathon.  Socrates, having laid them to
+rest, takes a bath and goes to his daily avocations until the evening. 
+Aristodemus follows.
+
+...
+
+If it be true that there are more things in the Symposium of Plato than any
+commentator has dreamed of, it is also true that many things have been
+imagined which are not really to be found there.  Some writings hardly
+admit of a more distinct interpretation than a musical composition; and
+every reader may form his own accompaniment of thought or feeling to the
+strain which he hears.  The Symposium of Plato is a work of this character,
+and can with difficulty be rendered in any words but the writer's own. 
+There are so many half-lights and cross-lights, so much of the colour of
+mythology, and of the manner of sophistry adhering--rhetoric and poetry,
+the playful and the serious, are so subtly intermingled in it, and vestiges
+of old philosophy so curiously blend with germs of future knowledge, that
+agreement among interpreters is not to be expected.  The expression 'poema
+magis putandum quam comicorum poetarum,' which has been applied to all the
+writings of Plato, is especially applicable to the Symposium.
+
+The power of love is represented in the Symposium as running through all
+nature and all being:  at one end descending to animals and plants, and
+attaining to the highest vision of truth at the other.  In an age when man
+was seeking for an expression of the world around him, the conception of
+love greatly affected him.  One of the first distinctions of language and
+of mythology was that of gender; and at a later period the ancient
+physicist, anticipating modern science, saw, or thought that he saw, a sex
+in plants; there were elective affinities among the elements, marriages of
+earth and heaven.  (Aesch. Frag. Dan.)  Love became a mythic personage whom
+philosophy, borrowing from poetry, converted into an efficient cause of
+creation.  The traces of the existence of love, as of number and figure,
+were everywhere discerned; and in the Pythagorean list of opposites male
+and female were ranged side by side with odd and even, finite and infinite.
+
+But Plato seems also to be aware that there is a mystery of love in man as
+well as in nature, extending beyond the mere immediate relation of the
+sexes.  He is conscious that the highest and noblest things in the world
+are not easily severed from the sensual desires, or may even be regarded as
+a spiritualized form of them.  We may observe that Socrates himself is not
+represented as originally unimpassioned, but as one who has overcome his
+passions; the secret of his power over others partly lies in his passionate
+but self-controlled nature.  In the Phaedrus and Symposium love is not
+merely the feeling usually so called, but the mystical contemplation of the
+beautiful and the good.  The same passion which may wallow in the mire is
+capable of rising to the loftiest heights--of penetrating the inmost secret
+of philosophy.  The highest love is the love not of a person, but of the
+highest and purest abstraction.  This abstraction is the far-off heaven on
+which the eye of the mind is fixed in fond amazement.  The unity of truth,
+the consistency of the warring elements of the world, the enthusiasm for
+knowledge when first beaming upon mankind, the relativity of ideas to the
+human mind, and of the human mind to ideas, the faith in the invisible, the
+adoration of the eternal nature, are all included, consciously or
+unconsciously, in Plato's doctrine of love.
+
+The successive speeches in praise of love are characteristic of the
+speakers, and contribute in various degrees to the final result; they are
+all designed to prepare the way for Socrates, who gathers up the threads
+anew, and skims the highest points of each of them.  But they are not to be
+regarded as the stages of an idea, rising above one another to a climax. 
+They are fanciful, partly facetious performances, 'yet also having a
+certain measure of seriousness,' which the successive speakers dedicate to
+the god.  All of them are rhetorical and poetical rather than dialectical,
+but glimpses of truth appear in them.  When Eryximachus says that the
+principles of music are simple in themselves, but confused in their
+application, he touches lightly upon a difficulty which has troubled the
+moderns as well as the ancients in music, and may be extended to the other
+applied sciences.  That confusion begins in the concrete, was the natural
+feeling of a mind dwelling in the world of ideas.  When Pausanias remarks
+that personal attachments are inimical to despots.  The experience of Greek
+history confirms the truth of his remark.  When Aristophanes declares that
+love is the desire of the whole, he expresses a feeling not unlike that of
+the German philosopher, who says that 'philosophy is home sickness.'  When
+Agathon says that no man 'can be wronged of his own free will,' he is
+alluding playfully to a serious problem of Greek philosophy (compare Arist.
+Nic. Ethics).  So naturally does Plato mingle jest and earnest, truth and
+opinion in the same work.
+
+The characters--of Phaedrus, who has been the cause of more philosophical
+discussions than any other man, with the exception of Simmias the Theban
+(Phaedrus); of Aristophanes, who disguises under comic imagery a serious
+purpose; of Agathon, who in later life is satirized by Aristophanes in the
+Thesmophoriazusae, for his effeminate manners and the feeble rhythms of his
+verse; of Alcibiades, who is the same strange contrast of great powers and
+great vices, which meets us in history--are drawn to the life; and we may
+suppose the less-known characters of Pausanias and Eryximachus to be also
+true to the traditional recollection of them (compare Phaedr., Protag.; and
+compare Sympos. with Phaedr.).  We may also remark that Aristodemus is
+called 'the little' in Xenophon's Memorabilia (compare Symp.).
+
+The speeches have been said to follow each other in pairs:  Phaedrus and
+Pausanias being the ethical, Eryximachus and Aristophanes the physical
+speakers, while in Agathon and Socrates poetry and philosophy blend
+together.  The speech of Phaedrus is also described as the mythological,
+that of Pausanias as the political, that of Eryximachus as the scientific,
+that of Aristophanes as the artistic (!), that of Socrates as the
+philosophical.  But these and similar distinctions are not found in Plato;
+--they are the points of view of his critics, and seem to impede rather
+than to assist us in understanding him.
+
+When the turn of Socrates comes round he cannot be allowed to disturb the
+arrangement made at first.  With the leave of Phaedrus he asks a few
+questions, and then he throws his argument into the form of a speech
+(compare Gorg., Protag.).  But his speech is really the narrative of a
+dialogue between himself and Diotima.  And as at a banquet good manners
+would not allow him to win a victory either over his host or any of the
+guests, the superiority which he gains over Agathon is ingeniously
+represented as having been already gained over himself by her.  The
+artifice has the further advantage of maintaining his accustomed profession
+of ignorance (compare Menex.).  Even his knowledge of the mysteries of
+love, to which he lays claim here and elsewhere (Lys.), is given by
+Diotima.
+
+The speeches are attested to us by the very best authority.  The madman
+Apollodorus, who for three years past has made a daily study of the actions
+of Socrates--to whom the world is summed up in the words 'Great is
+Socrates'--he has heard them from another 'madman,' Aristodemus, who was
+the 'shadow' of Socrates in days of old, like him going about barefooted,
+and who had been present at the time.  'Would you desire better witness?' 
+The extraordinary narrative of Alcibiades is ingeniously represented as
+admitted by Socrates, whose silence when he is invited to contradict gives
+consent to the narrator.  We may observe, by the way, (1) how the very
+appearance of Aristodemus by himself is a sufficient indication to Agathon
+that Socrates has been left behind; also, (2) how the courtesy of Agathon
+anticipates the excuse which Socrates was to have made on Aristodemus'
+behalf for coming uninvited; (3) how the story of the fit or trance of
+Socrates is confirmed by the mention which Alcibiades makes of a similar
+fit of abstraction occurring when he was serving with the army at Potidaea;
+like (4) the drinking powers of Socrates and his love of the fair, which
+receive a similar attestation in the concluding scene; or the attachment of
+Aristodemus, who is not forgotten when Socrates takes his departure.  (5)
+We may notice the manner in which Socrates himself regards the first five
+speeches, not as true, but as fanciful and exaggerated encomiums of the god
+Love; (6) the satirical character of them, shown especially in the appeals
+to mythology, in the reasons which are given by Zeus for reconstructing the
+frame of man, or by the Boeotians and Eleans for encouraging male loves;
+(7) the ruling passion of Socrates for dialectics, who will argue with
+Agathon instead of making a speech, and will only speak at all upon the
+condition that he is allowed to speak the truth.  We may note also the
+touch of Socratic irony, (8) which admits of a wide application and reveals
+a deep insight into the world:--that in speaking of holy things and persons
+there is a general understanding that you should praise them, not that you
+should speak the truth about them--this is the sort of praise which
+Socrates is unable to give.  Lastly, (9) we may remark that the banquet is
+a real banquet after all, at which love is the theme of discourse, and huge
+quantities of wine are drunk.
+
+The discourse of Phaedrus is half-mythical, half-ethical; and he himself,
+true to the character which is given him in the Dialogue bearing his name,
+is half-sophist, half-enthusiast.  He is the critic of poetry also, who
+compares Homer and Aeschylus in the insipid and irrational manner of the
+schools of the day, characteristically reasoning about the probability of
+matters which do not admit of reasoning.  He starts from a noble text: 
+'That without the sense of honour and dishonour neither states nor
+individuals ever do any good or great work.'  But he soon passes on to more
+common-place topics.  The antiquity of love, the blessing of having a
+lover, the incentive which love offers to daring deeds, the examples of
+Alcestis and Achilles, are the chief themes of his discourse.  The love of
+women is regarded by him as almost on an equality with that of men; and he
+makes the singular remark that the gods favour the return of love which is
+made by the beloved more than the original sentiment, because the lover is
+of a nobler and diviner nature.
+
+There is something of a sophistical ring in the speech of Phaedrus, which
+recalls the first speech in imitation of Lysias, occurring in the Dialogue
+called the Phaedrus.  This is still more marked in the speech of Pausanias
+which follows; and which is at once hyperlogical in form and also extremely
+confused and pedantic.  Plato is attacking the logical feebleness of the
+sophists and rhetoricians, through their pupils, not forgetting by the way
+to satirize the monotonous and unmeaning rhythms which Prodicus and others
+were introducing into Attic prose (compare Protag.).  Of course, he is
+'playing both sides of the game,' as in the Gorgias and Phaedrus; but it is
+not necessary in order to understand him that we should discuss the
+fairness of his mode of proceeding.  The love of Pausanias for Agathon has
+already been touched upon in the Protagoras, and is alluded to by
+Aristophanes.  Hence he is naturally the upholder of male loves, which,
+like all the other affections or actions of men, he regards as varying
+according to the manner of their performance.  Like the sophists and like
+Plato himself, though in a different sense, he begins his discussion by an
+appeal to mythology, and distinguishes between the elder and younger love. 
+The value which he attributes to such loves as motives to virtue and
+philosophy is at variance with modern and Christian notions, but is in
+accordance with Hellenic sentiment.  The opinion of Christendom has not
+altogether condemned passionate friendships between persons of the same
+sex, but has certainly not encouraged them, because though innocent in
+themselves in a few temperaments they are liable to degenerate into fearful
+evil.  Pausanias is very earnest in the defence of such loves; and he
+speaks of them as generally approved among Hellenes and disapproved by
+barbarians.  His speech is 'more words than matter,' and might have been
+composed by a pupil of Lysias or of Prodicus, although there is no hint
+given that Plato is specially referring to them.  As Eryximachus says, 'he
+makes a fair beginning, but a lame ending.'
+
+Plato transposes the two next speeches, as in the Republic he would
+transpose the virtues and the mathematical sciences.  This is done partly
+to avoid monotony, partly for the sake of making Aristophanes 'the cause of
+wit in others,' and also in order to bring the comic and tragic poet into
+juxtaposition, as if by accident.  A suitable 'expectation' of Aristophanes
+is raised by the ludicrous circumstance of his having the hiccough, which
+is appropriately cured by his substitute, the physician Eryximachus.  To
+Eryximachus Love is the good physician; he sees everything as an
+intelligent physicist, and, like many professors of his art in modern
+times, attempts to reduce the moral to the physical; or recognises one law
+of love which pervades them both.  There are loves and strifes of the body
+as well as of the mind.  Like Hippocrates the Asclepiad, he is a disciple
+of Heracleitus, whose conception of the harmony of opposites he explains in
+a new way as the harmony after discord; to his common sense, as to that of
+many moderns as well as ancients, the identity of contradictories is an
+absurdity.  His notion of love may be summed up as the harmony of man with
+himself in soul as well as body, and of all things in heaven and earth with
+one another.
+
+Aristophanes is ready to laugh and make laugh before he opens his mouth,
+just as Socrates, true to his character, is ready to argue before he begins
+to speak.  He expresses the very genius of the old comedy, its coarse and
+forcible imagery, and the licence of its language in speaking about the
+gods.  He has no sophistical notions about love, which is brought back by
+him to its common-sense meaning of love between intelligent beings.  His
+account of the origin of the sexes has the greatest (comic) probability and
+verisimilitude.  Nothing in Aristophanes is more truly Aristophanic than
+the description of the human monster whirling round on four arms and four
+legs, eight in all, with incredible rapidity.  Yet there is a mixture of
+earnestness in this jest; three serious principles seem to be insinuated:--
+first, that man cannot exist in isolation; he must be reunited if he is to
+be perfected:  secondly, that love is the mediator and reconciler of poor,
+divided human nature:  thirdly, that the loves of this world are an
+indistinct anticipation of an ideal union which is not yet realized.
+
+The speech of Agathon is conceived in a higher strain, and receives the
+real, if half-ironical, approval of Socrates.  It is the speech of the
+tragic poet and a sort of poem, like tragedy, moving among the gods of
+Olympus, and not among the elder or Orphic deities.  In the idea of the
+antiquity of love he cannot agree; love is not of the olden time, but
+present and youthful ever.  The speech may be compared with that speech of
+Socrates in the Phaedrus in which he describes himself as talking
+dithyrambs.  It is at once a preparation for Socrates and a foil to him. 
+The rhetoric of Agathon elevates the soul to 'sunlit heights,' but at the
+same time contrasts with the natural and necessary eloquence of Socrates. 
+Agathon contributes the distinction between love and the works of love, and
+also hints incidentally that love is always of beauty, which Socrates
+afterwards raises into a principle.  While the consciousness of discord is
+stronger in the comic poet Aristophanes, Agathon, the tragic poet, has a
+deeper sense of harmony and reconciliation, and speaks of Love as the
+creator and artist.
+
+All the earlier speeches embody common opinions coloured with a tinge of
+philosophy.  They furnish the material out of which Socrates proceeds to
+form his discourse, starting, as in other places, from mythology and the
+opinions of men.  From Phaedrus he takes the thought that love is stronger
+than death; from Pausanias, that the true love is akin to intellect and
+political activity; from Eryximachus, that love is a universal phenomenon
+and the great power of nature; from Aristophanes, that love is the child of
+want, and is not merely the love of the congenial or of the whole, but (as
+he adds) of the good; from Agathon, that love is of beauty, not however of
+beauty only, but of birth in beauty.  As it would be out of character for
+Socrates to make a lengthened harangue, the speech takes the form of a
+dialogue between Socrates and a mysterious woman of foreign extraction. 
+She elicits the final truth from one who knows nothing, and who, speaking
+by the lips of another, and himself a despiser of rhetoric, is proved also
+to be the most consummate of rhetoricians (compare Menexenus).
+
+The last of the six discourses begins with a short argument which
+overthrows not only Agathon but all the preceding speakers by the help of a
+distinction which has escaped them.  Extravagant praises have been ascribed
+to Love as the author of every good; no sort of encomium was too high for
+him, whether deserved and true or not.  But Socrates has no talent for
+speaking anything but the truth, and if he is to speak the truth of Love he
+must honestly confess that he is not a good at all:  for love is of the
+good, and no man can desire that which he has.  This piece of dialectics is
+ascribed to Diotima, who has already urged upon Socrates the argument which
+he urges against Agathon.  That the distinction is a fallacy is obvious; it
+is almost acknowledged to be so by Socrates himself.  For he who has beauty
+or good may desire more of them; and he who has beauty or good in himself
+may desire beauty and good in others.  The fallacy seems to arise out of a
+confusion between the abstract ideas of good and beauty, which do not admit
+of degrees, and their partial realization in individuals.
+
+But Diotima, the prophetess of Mantineia, whose sacred and superhuman
+character raises her above the ordinary proprieties of women, has taught
+Socrates far more than this about the art and mystery of love.  She has
+taught him that love is another aspect of philosophy.  The same want in the
+human soul which is satisfied in the vulgar by the procreation of children,
+may become the highest aspiration of intellectual desire.  As the Christian
+might speak of hungering and thirsting after righteousness; or of divine
+loves under the figure of human (compare Eph. 'This is a great mystery, but
+I speak concerning Christ and the church'); as the mediaeval saint might
+speak of the 'fruitio Dei;' as Dante saw all things contained in his love
+of Beatrice, so Plato would have us absorb all other loves and desires in
+the love of knowledge.  Here is the beginning of Neoplatonism, or rather,
+perhaps, a proof (of which there are many) that the so-called mysticism of
+the East was not strange to the Greek of the fifth century before Christ. 
+The first tumult of the affections was not wholly subdued; there were
+longings of a creature 
+
+Moving about in worlds not realized,
+
+which no art could satisfy.  To most men reason and passion appear to be
+antagonistic both in idea and fact.  The union of the greatest
+comprehension of knowledge and the burning intensity of love is a
+contradiction in nature, which may have existed in a far-off primeval age
+in the mind of some Hebrew prophet or other Eastern sage, but has now
+become an imagination only.  Yet this 'passion of the reason' is the theme
+of the Symposium of Plato.  And as there is no impossibility in supposing
+that 'one king, or son of a king, may be a philosopher,' so also there is a
+probability that there may be some few--perhaps one or two in a whole
+generation--in whom the light of truth may not lack the warmth of desire. 
+And if there be such natures, no one will be disposed to deny that 'from
+them flow most of the benefits of individuals and states;' and even from
+imperfect combinations of the two elements in teachers or statesmen great
+good may often arise.
+
+Yet there is a higher region in which love is not only felt, but satisfied,
+in the perfect beauty of eternal knowledge, beginning with the beauty of
+earthly things, and at last reaching a beauty in which all existence is
+seen to be harmonious and one.  The limited affection is enlarged, and
+enabled to behold the ideal of all things.  And here the highest summit
+which is reached in the Symposium is seen also to be the highest summit
+which is attained in the Republic, but approached from another side; and
+there is 'a way upwards and downwards,' which is the same and not the same
+in both.  The ideal beauty of the one is the ideal good of the other;
+regarded not with the eye of knowledge, but of faith and desire; and they
+are respectively the source of beauty and the source of good in all other
+things.  And by the steps of a 'ladder reaching to heaven' we pass from
+images of visible beauty (Greek), and from the hypotheses of the
+Mathematical sciences, which are not yet based upon the idea of good,
+through the concrete to the abstract, and, by different paths arriving,
+behold the vision of the eternal (compare Symp. (Greek) Republic (Greek)
+also Phaedrus).  Under one aspect 'the idea is love'; under another,
+'truth.'  In both the lover of wisdom is the 'spectator of all time and of
+all existence.'  This is a 'mystery' in which Plato also obscurely
+intimates the union of the spiritual and fleshly, the interpenetration of
+the moral and intellectual faculties.
+
+The divine image of beauty which resides within Socrates has been revealed;
+the Silenus, or outward man, has now to be exhibited.  The description of
+Socrates follows immediately after the speech of Socrates; one is the
+complement of the other.  At the height of divine inspiration, when the
+force of nature can no further go, by way of contrast to this extreme
+idealism, Alcibiades, accompanied by a troop of revellers and a flute-girl,
+staggers in, and being drunk is able to tell of things which he would have
+been ashamed to make known if he had been sober.  The state of his
+affections towards Socrates, unintelligible to us and perverted as they
+appear, affords an illustration of the power ascribed to the loves of man
+in the speech of Pausanias.  He does not suppose his feelings to be
+peculiar to himself:  there are several other persons in the company who
+have been equally in love with Socrates, and like himself have been
+deceived by him.  The singular part of this confession is the combination
+of the most degrading passion with the desire of virtue and improvement. 
+Such an union is not wholly untrue to human nature, which is capable of
+combining good and evil in a degree beyond what we can easily conceive.  In
+imaginative persons, especially, the God and beast in man seem to part
+asunder more than is natural in a well-regulated mind.  The Platonic
+Socrates (for of the real Socrates this may be doubted:  compare his public
+rebuke of Critias for his shameful love of Euthydemus in Xenophon,
+Memorabilia) does not regard the greatest evil of Greek life as a thing not
+to be spoken of; but it has a ridiculous element (Plato's Symp.), and is a
+subject for irony, no less than for moral reprobation (compare Plato's
+Symp.).  It is also used as a figure of speech which no one interpreted
+literally (compare Xen. Symp.).  Nor does Plato feel any repugnance, such
+as would be felt in modern times, at bringing his great master and hero
+into connexion with nameless crimes.  He is contented with representing him
+as a saint, who has won 'the Olympian victory' over the temptations of
+human nature.  The fault of taste, which to us is so glaring and which was
+recognized by the Greeks of a later age (Athenaeus), was not perceived by
+Plato himself.  We are still more surprised to find that the philosopher is
+incited to take the first step in his upward progress (Symp.) by the beauty
+of young men and boys, which was alone capable of inspiring the modern
+feeling of romance in the Greek mind.  The passion of love took the
+spurious form of an enthusiasm for the ideal of beauty--a worship as of
+some godlike image of an Apollo or Antinous.  But the love of youth when
+not depraved was a love of virtue and modesty as well as of beauty, the one
+being the expression of the other; and in certain Greek states, especially
+at Sparta and Thebes, the honourable attachment of a youth to an elder man
+was a part of his education.  The 'army of lovers and their beloved who
+would be invincible if they could be united by such a tie' (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 written by him at all, would certainly show that
+he wrote against Plato, and was acquainted with his works.  Of this
+hostility there is no trace in the Memorabilia.  Such a rivalry is more
+characteristic of an imitator than of an original writer.  The (so-called)
+Symposium of Xenophon may therefore have no more title to be regarded as
+genuine than the confessedly spurious Apology.
+
+There are no means of determining the relative order in time of the
+Phaedrus, Symposium, 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.
+
+
+SYMPOSIUM
+
+by
+
+Plato
+
+Translated by Benjamin Jowett
+
+
+PERSONS OF THE DIALOGUE:
+Apollodorus, who repeats to his companion the dialogue which he had heard
+from Aristodemus, and had already once narrated to Glaucon.
+Phaedrus, Pausanias, Eryximachus, Aristophanes, Agathon, Socrates,
+Alcibiades, A Troop of Revellers.
+
+SCENE:  The House of Agathon.
+
+
+Concerning the things about which you ask to be informed I believe that I
+am not ill-prepared with an answer.  For the day before yesterday I was
+coming from my own home at Phalerum to the city, and one of my
+acquaintance, who had caught a sight of me from behind, calling out
+playfully in the distance, said:  Apollodorus, O thou Phalerian (Probably a
+play of words on (Greek), 'bald-headed.') man, halt!  So I did as I was
+bid; and then he said, I was looking for you, Apollodorus, only just now,
+that I might ask you about the speeches in praise of love, which were
+delivered by Socrates, Alcibiades, and others, at Agathon's supper. 
+Phoenix, the son of Philip, told another person who told me of them; his
+narrative was very indistinct, but he said that you knew, and I wish that
+you would give me an account of them.  Who, if not you, should be the
+reporter of the words of your friend?  And first tell me, he said, were you
+present at this meeting?
+
+Your informant, Glaucon, I said, must have been very indistinct indeed, if
+you imagine that the occasion was recent; or that I could have been of the
+party.
+
+Why, yes, he replied, I thought so.
+
+Impossible:  I said.  Are you ignorant that for many years Agathon has not
+resided at Athens; and not three have elapsed since I became acquainted
+with Socrates, and have made it my daily business to know all that he says
+and does.  There was a time when I was running about the world, fancying
+myself to be well employed, but I was really a most wretched being, no
+better than you are now.  I thought that I ought to do anything rather than
+be a philosopher.
+
+Well, he said, jesting apart, tell me when the meeting occurred.
+
+In our boyhood, I replied, when Agathon won the prize with his first
+tragedy, on the day after that on which he and his chorus offered the
+sacrifice of victory.
+
+Then it must have been a long while ago, he said; and who told you--did
+Socrates?
+
+No indeed, I replied, but the same person who told Phoenix;--he was a
+little fellow, who never wore any shoes, Aristodemus, of the deme of
+Cydathenaeum.  He had been at Agathon's feast; and I think that in those
+days there was no one who was a more devoted admirer of Socrates. 
+Moreover, I have asked Socrates about the truth of some parts of his
+narrative, and he confirmed them.  Then, said Glaucon, let us have the tale
+over again; is not the road to Athens just made for conversation?  And so
+we walked, and talked of the discourses on love; and therefore, as I said
+at first, I am not ill-prepared to comply with your request, and will have
+another rehearsal of them if you like.  For to speak or to hear others
+speak of philosophy always gives me the greatest pleasure, to say nothing
+of the profit.  But when I hear another strain, especially that of you rich
+men and traders, such conversation displeases me; and I pity you who are my
+companions, because you think that you are doing something when in reality
+you are doing nothing.  And I dare say that you pity me in return, whom you
+regard as an unhappy creature, and very probably you are right.  But I
+certainly know of you what you only think of me--there is the difference.
+
+COMPANION:  I see, Apollodorus, that you are just the same--always speaking
+evil of yourself, and of others; and I do believe that you pity all
+mankind, with the exception of Socrates, yourself first of all, true in
+this to your old name, which, however deserved, I know not how you
+acquired, of Apollodorus the madman; for you are always raging against
+yourself and everybody but Socrates.
+
+APOLLODORUS:  Yes, friend, and the reason why I am said to be mad, and out
+of my wits, is just because I have these notions of myself and you; no
+other evidence is required.
+
+COMPANION:  No more of that, Apollodorus; but let me renew my request that
+you would repeat the conversation.
+
+APOLLODORUS:  Well, the tale of love was on this wise:--But perhaps I had
+better begin at the beginning, and endeavour to give you the exact words of
+Aristodemus:
+
+He said that he met Socrates fresh from the bath and sandalled; and as the
+sight of the sandals was unusual, he asked him whither he was going that he
+had been converted into such a beau:--
+
+To a banquet at Agathon's, he replied, whose invitation to his sacrifice of
+victory I refused yesterday, fearing a crowd, but promising that I would
+come to-day instead; and so I have put on my finery, because he is such a
+fine man.  What say you to going with me unasked?
+
+I will do as you bid me, I replied.
+
+Follow then, he said, and let us demolish the proverb:--
+
+'To the feasts of inferior men the good unbidden go;'
+
+instead of which our proverb will run:--
+
+'To the feasts of the good the good unbidden go;'
+
+and this alteration may be supported by the authority of Homer himself, who
+not only demolishes but literally outrages the proverb.  For, after
+picturing Agamemnon as the most valiant of men, he makes Menelaus, who is
+but a fainthearted warrior, come unbidden (Iliad) to the banquet of
+Agamemnon, who is feasting and offering sacrifices, not the better to the
+worse, but the worse to the better.
+
+I rather fear, Socrates, said Aristodemus, lest this may still be my case;
+and that, like Menelaus in Homer, I shall be the inferior person, who
+
+'To the feasts of the wise unbidden goes.'
+
+But I shall say that I was bidden of you, and then you will have to make an
+excuse.
+
+'Two going together,'
+
+he replied, in Homeric fashion, one or other of them may invent an excuse
+by the way (Iliad).
+
+This was the style of their conversation as they went along.  Socrates
+dropped behind in a fit of abstraction, and desired Aristodemus, who was
+waiting, to go on before him.  When he reached the house of Agathon he
+found the doors wide open, and a comical thing happened.  A servant coming
+out met him, and led him at once into the banqueting-hall in which the
+guests were reclining, for the banquet was about to begin.  Welcome,
+Aristodemus, said Agathon, as soon as he appeared--you are just in time to
+sup with us; if you come on any other matter put it off, and make one of
+us, as I was looking for you yesterday and meant to have asked you, if I
+could have found you.  But what have you done with Socrates?
+
+I turned round, but Socrates was nowhere to be seen; and I had to explain
+that he had been with me a moment before, and that I came by his invitation
+to the supper.
+
+You were quite right in coming, said Agathon; but where is he himself?
+
+He was behind me just now, as I entered, he said, and I cannot think what
+has become of him.
+
+Go and look for him, boy, said Agathon, and bring him in; and do you,
+Aristodemus, meanwhile take the place by Eryximachus.
+
+The servant then assisted him to wash, and he lay down, and presently
+another servant came in and reported that our friend Socrates had retired
+into the portico of the neighbouring house.  'There he is fixed,' said he,
+'and when I call to him he will not stir.'
+
+How strange, said Agathon; then you must call him again, and keep calling
+him.
+
+Let him alone, said my informant; he has a way of stopping anywhere and
+losing himself without any reason.  I believe that he will soon appear; do
+not therefore disturb him.
+
+Well, if you think so, I will leave him, said Agathon.  And then, turning
+to the servants, he added, 'Let us have supper without waiting for him. 
+Serve up whatever you please, for there is no one to give you orders;
+hitherto I have never left you to yourselves.  But on this occasion imagine
+that you are our hosts, and that I and the company are your guests; treat
+us well, and then we shall commend you.'  After this, supper was served,
+but still no Socrates; and during the meal Agathon several times expressed
+a wish to send for him, but Aristodemus objected; and at last when the
+feast was about half over--for the fit, as usual, was not of long duration
+--Socrates entered.  Agathon, who was reclining alone at the end of the
+table, begged that he would take the place next to him; that 'I may touch
+you,' he said, 'and have the benefit of that wise thought which came into
+your mind in the portico, and is now in your possession; for I am certain
+that you would not have come away until you had found what you sought.'
+
+How I wish, said Socrates, taking his place as he was desired, that wisdom
+could be infused by touch, out of the fuller into the emptier man, as water
+runs through wool out of a fuller cup into an emptier one; if that were so,
+how greatly should I value the privilege of reclining at your side!  For
+you would have filled me full with a stream of wisdom plenteous and fair;
+whereas my own is of a very mean and questionable sort, no better than a
+dream.  But yours is bright and full of promise, and was manifested forth
+in all the splendour of youth the day before yesterday, in the presence of
+more than thirty thousand Hellenes.
+
+You are mocking, Socrates, said Agathon, and ere long you and I will have
+to determine who bears off the palm of wisdom--of this Dionysus shall be
+the judge; but at present you are better occupied with supper.
+
+Socrates took his place on the couch, and supped with the rest; and then
+libations were offered, and after a hymn had been sung to the god, and
+there had been the usual ceremonies, they were about to commence drinking,
+when Pausanias said, And now, my friends, how can we drink with least
+injury to ourselves?  I can assure you that I feel severely the effect of
+yesterday's potations, and must have time to recover; and I suspect that
+most of you are in the same predicament, for you were of the party
+yesterday.  Consider then:  How can the drinking be made easiest?
+
+I entirely agree, said Aristophanes, that we should, by all means, avoid
+hard drinking, for I was myself one of those who were yesterday drowned in
+drink.
+
+I think that you are right, said Eryximachus, the son of Acumenus; but I
+should still like to hear one other person speak:  Is Agathon able to drink
+hard?
+
+I am not equal to it, said Agathon.
+
+Then, said Eryximachus, the weak heads like myself, Aristodemus, Phaedrus,
+and others who never can drink, are fortunate in finding that the stronger
+ones are not in a drinking mood.  (I do not include Socrates, who is able
+either to drink or to abstain, and will not mind, whichever we do.)  Well,
+as of none of the company seem disposed to drink much, I may be forgiven
+for saying, as a physician, that drinking deep is a bad practice, which I
+never follow, if I can help, and certainly do not recommend to another,
+least of all to any one who still feels the effects of yesterday's carouse.
+
+I always do what you advise, and especially what you prescribe as a
+physician, rejoined Phaedrus the Myrrhinusian, and the rest of the company,
+if they are wise, will do the same.
+
+It was agreed that drinking was not to be the order of the day, but that
+they were all to drink only so much as they pleased.
+
+Then, said Eryximachus, as you are all agreed that drinking is to be
+voluntary, and that there is to be no compulsion, I move, in the next
+place, that the flute-girl, who has just made her appearance, be told to go
+away and play to herself, or, if she likes, to the women who are within
+(compare Prot.).  To-day let us have conversation instead; and, if you will
+allow me, I will tell you what sort of conversation.  This proposal having
+been accepted, Eryximachus proceeded as follows:--
+
+I will begin, he said, after the manner of Melanippe in Euripides, 
+
+'Not mine the word'
+
+which I am about to speak, but that of Phaedrus.  For often he says to me
+in an indignant tone:--'What a strange thing it is, Eryximachus, that,
+whereas other gods have poems and hymns made in their honour, the great and
+glorious god, Love, has no encomiast among all the poets who are so many. 
+There are the worthy sophists too--the excellent Prodicus for example, who
+have descanted in prose on the virtues of Heracles and other heroes; and,
+what is still more extraordinary, I have met with a philosophical work in
+which the utility of salt has been made the theme of an eloquent discourse;
+and many other like things have had a like honour bestowed upon them.  And
+only to think that there should have been an eager interest created about
+them, and yet that to this day no one has ever dared worthily to hymn
+Love's praises!  So entirely has this great deity been neglected.'  Now in
+this Phaedrus seems to me to be quite right, and therefore I want to offer
+him a contribution; also I think that at the present moment we who are here
+assembled cannot do better than honour the god Love.  If you agree with me,
+there will be no lack of conversation; for I mean to propose that each of
+us in turn, going from left to right, shall make a speech in honour of
+Love.  Let him give us the best which he can; and Phaedrus, because he is
+sitting first on the left hand, and because he is the father of the
+thought, shall begin.
+
+No one will vote against you, Eryximachus, said Socrates.  How can I oppose
+your motion, who profess to understand nothing but matters of love; nor, I
+presume, will Agathon and Pausanias; and there can be no doubt of
+Aristophanes, whose whole concern is with Dionysus and Aphrodite; nor will
+any one disagree of those whom I see around me.  The proposal, as I am
+aware, may seem rather hard upon us whose place is last; but we shall be
+contented if we hear some good speeches first.  Let Phaedrus begin the
+praise of Love, and good luck to him.  All the company expressed their
+assent, and desired him to do as Socrates bade him.
+
+Aristodemus did not recollect all that was said, nor do I recollect all
+that he related to me; but I will tell you what I thought most worthy of
+remembrance, and what the chief speakers said.
+
+Phaedrus began by affirming that Love is a mighty god, and wonderful among
+gods and men, but especially wonderful in his birth.  For he is the eldest
+of the gods, which is an honour to him; and a proof of his claim to this
+honour is, that of his parents there is no memorial; neither poet nor
+prose-writer has ever affirmed that he had any.  As Hesiod says:--
+
+'First Chaos came, and then broad-bosomed Earth,
+The everlasting seat of all that is,
+And Love.'
+
+In other words, after Chaos, the Earth and Love, these two, came into
+being.  Also Parmenides sings of Generation:
+
+'First in the train of gods, he fashioned Love.'
+
+And Acusilaus agrees with Hesiod.  Thus numerous are the witnesses who
+acknowledge Love to be the eldest of the gods.  And not only is he the
+eldest, he is also the source of the greatest benefits to us.  For I know
+not any greater blessing to a young man who is beginning life than a
+virtuous lover, or to the lover than a beloved youth.  For the principle
+which ought to be the guide of men who would nobly live--that principle, I
+say, neither kindred, nor honour, nor wealth, nor any other motive is able
+to implant so well as love.  Of what am I speaking?  Of the sense of honour
+and dishonour, without which neither states nor individuals ever do any
+good or great work.  And I say that a lover who is detected in doing any
+dishonourable act, or submitting through cowardice when any dishonour is
+done to him by another, will be more pained at being detected by his
+beloved than at being seen by his father, or by his companions, or by any
+one else.  The beloved too, when he is found in any disgraceful situation,
+has the same feeling about his lover.  And if there were only some way of
+contriving that a state or an army should be made up of lovers and their
+loves (compare Rep.), they would be the very best governors of their own
+city, abstaining from all dishonour, and emulating one another in honour;
+and when fighting at each other's side, although a mere handful, they would
+overcome the world.  For what lover would not choose rather to be seen by
+all mankind than by his beloved, either when abandoning his post or
+throwing away his arms?  He would be ready to die a thousand deaths rather
+than endure this.  Or who would desert his beloved or fail him in the hour
+of danger?  The veriest coward would become an inspired hero, equal to the
+bravest, at such a time; Love would inspire him.  That courage which, as
+Homer says, the god breathes into the souls of some heroes, Love of his own
+nature infuses into the lover.
+
+Love will make men dare to die for their beloved--love alone; and women as
+well as men.  Of this, Alcestis, the daughter of Pelias, is a monument to
+all Hellas; for she was willing to lay down her life on behalf of her
+husband, when no one else would, although he had a father and mother; but
+the tenderness of her love so far exceeded theirs, that she made them seem
+to be strangers in blood to their own son, and in name only related to him;
+and so noble did this action of hers appear to the gods, as well as to men,
+that among the many who have done virtuously she is one of the very few to
+whom, in admiration of her noble action, they have granted the privilege of
+returning alive to earth; such exceeding honour is paid by the gods to the
+devotion and virtue of love.  But Orpheus, the son of Oeagrus, the harper,
+they sent empty away, and presented to him an apparition only of her whom
+he sought, but herself they would not give up, because he showed no spirit;
+he was only a harp-player, and did not dare like Alcestis to die for love,
+but was contriving how he might enter Hades alive; moreover, they
+afterwards caused him to suffer death at the hands of women, as the
+punishment of his cowardliness.  Very different was the reward of the true
+love of Achilles towards his lover Patroclus--his lover and not his love
+(the notion that Patroclus was the beloved one is a foolish error into
+which Aeschylus has fallen, for Achilles was surely the fairer of the two,
+fairer also than all the other heroes; and, as Homer informs us, he was
+still beardless, and younger far).  And greatly as the gods honour the
+virtue of love, still the return of love on the part of the beloved to the
+lover is more admired and valued and rewarded by them, for the lover is
+more divine; because he is inspired by God.  Now Achilles was quite aware,
+for he had been told by his mother, that he might avoid death and return
+home, and live to a good old age, if he abstained from slaying Hector. 
+Nevertheless he gave his life to revenge his friend, and dared to die, not
+only in his defence, but after he was dead.  Wherefore the gods honoured
+him even above Alcestis, and sent him to the Islands of the Blest.  These
+are my reasons for affirming that Love is the eldest and noblest and
+mightiest of the gods; and the chiefest author and giver of virtue in life,
+and of happiness after death.
+
+This, or something like this, was the speech of Phaedrus; and some other
+speeches followed which Aristodemus did not remember; the next which he
+repeated was that of Pausanias.  Phaedrus, he said, the argument has not
+been set before us, I think, quite in the right form;--we should not be
+called upon to praise Love in such an indiscriminate manner.  If there were
+only one Love, then what you said would be well enough; but since there are
+more Loves than one,--should have begun by determining which of them was to
+be the theme of our praises.  I will amend this defect; and first of all I
+will tell you which Love is deserving of praise, and then try to hymn the
+praiseworthy one in a manner worthy of him.  For we all know that Love is
+inseparable from Aphrodite, and if there were only one Aphrodite there
+would be only one Love; but as there are two goddesses there must be two
+Loves.  And am I not right in asserting that there are two goddesses?  The
+elder one, having no mother, who is called the heavenly Aphrodite--she is
+the daughter of Uranus; the younger, who is the daughter of Zeus and Dione
+--her we call common; and the Love who is her fellow-worker is rightly
+named common, as the other love is called heavenly.  All the gods ought to
+have praise given to them, but not without distinction of their natures;
+and therefore I must try to distinguish the characters of the two Loves. 
+Now actions vary according to the manner of their performance.  Take, for
+example, that which we are now doing, drinking, singing and talking--these
+actions are not in themselves either good or evil, but they turn out in
+this or that way according to the mode of performing them; and when well
+done they are good, and when wrongly done they are evil; and in like manner
+not every love, but only that which has a noble purpose, is noble and
+worthy of praise.  The Love who is the offspring of the common Aphrodite is
+essentially common, and has no discrimination, being such as the meaner
+sort of men feel, and is apt to be of women as well as of youths, and is of
+the body rather than of the soul--the most foolish beings are the objects
+of this love which desires only to gain an end, but never thinks of
+accomplishing the end nobly, and therefore does good and evil quite
+indiscriminately.  The goddess who is his mother is far younger than the
+other, and she was born of the union of the male and female, and partakes
+of both.  But the offspring of the heavenly Aphrodite is derived from a
+mother in whose birth the female has no part,--she is from the male only;
+this is that love which is of youths, and the goddess being older, there is
+nothing of wantonness in her.  Those who are inspired by this love turn to
+the male, and delight in him who is the more valiant and intelligent
+nature; any one may recognise the pure enthusiasts in the very character of
+their attachments.  For they love not boys, but intelligent beings whose
+reason is beginning to be developed, much about the time at which their
+beards begin to grow.  And in choosing young men to be their companions,
+they mean to be faithful to them, and pass their whole life in company with
+them, not to take them in their inexperience, and deceive them, and play
+the fool with them, or run away from one to another of them.  But the love
+of young boys should be forbidden by law, because their future is
+uncertain; they may turn out good or bad, either in body or soul, and much
+noble enthusiasm may be thrown away upon them; in this matter the good are
+a law to themselves, and the coarser sort of lovers ought to be restrained
+by force; as we restrain or attempt to restrain them from fixing their
+affections on women of free birth.  These are the persons who bring a
+reproach on love; and some have been led to deny the lawfulness of such
+attachments because they see the impropriety and evil of them; for surely
+nothing that is decorously and lawfully done can justly be censured.  Now
+here and in Lacedaemon the rules about love are perplexing, but in most
+cities they are simple and easily intelligible; in Elis and Boeotia, and in
+countries having no gifts of eloquence, they are very straightforward; the
+law is simply in favour of these connexions, and no one, whether young or
+old, has anything to say to their discredit; the reason being, as I
+suppose, that they are men of few words in those parts, and therefore the
+lovers do not like the trouble of pleading their suit.  In Ionia and other
+places, and generally in countries which are subject to the barbarians, the
+custom is held to be dishonourable; loves of youths share the evil repute
+in which philosophy and gymnastics are held, because they are inimical to
+tyranny; for the interests of rulers require that their subjects should be
+poor in spirit (compare Arist. Politics), and that there should be no
+strong bond of friendship or society among them, which love, above all
+other motives, is likely to inspire, as our Athenian tyrants learned by
+experience; for the love of Aristogeiton and the constancy of Harmodius had
+a strength which undid their power.  And, therefore, the ill-repute into
+which these attachments have fallen is to be ascribed to the evil condition
+of those who make them to be ill-reputed; that is to say, to the self-
+seeking of the governors and the cowardice of the governed; on the other
+hand, the indiscriminate honour which is given to them in some countries is
+attributable to the laziness of those who hold this opinion of them.  In
+our own country a far better principle prevails, but, as I was saying, the
+explanation of it is rather perplexing.  For, observe that open loves are
+held to be more honourable than secret ones, and that the love of the
+noblest and highest, even if their persons are less beautiful than others,
+is especially honourable.  Consider, too, how great is the encouragement
+which all the world gives to the lover; neither is he supposed to be doing
+anything dishonourable; but if he succeeds he is praised, and if he fail he
+is blamed.  And in the pursuit of his love the custom of mankind allows him
+to do many strange things, which philosophy would bitterly censure if they
+were done from any motive of interest, or wish for office or power.  He may
+pray, and entreat, and supplicate, and swear, and lie on a mat at the door,
+and endure a slavery worse than that of any slave--in any other case
+friends and enemies would be equally ready to prevent him, but now there is
+no friend who will be ashamed of him and admonish him, and no enemy will
+charge him with meanness or flattery; the actions of a lover have a grace
+which ennobles them; and custom has decided that they are highly
+commendable and that there no loss of character in them; and, what is
+strangest of all, he only may swear and forswear himself (so men say), and
+the gods will forgive his transgression, for there is no such thing as a
+lover's oath.  Such is the entire liberty which gods and men have allowed
+the lover, according to the custom which prevails in our part of the world. 
+From this point of view a man fairly argues that in Athens to love and to
+be loved is held to be a very honourable thing.  But when parents forbid
+their sons to talk with their lovers, and place them under a tutor's care,
+who is appointed to see to these things, and their companions and equals
+cast in their teeth anything of the sort which they may observe, and their
+elders refuse to silence the reprovers and do not rebuke them--any one who
+reflects on all this will, on the contrary, think that we hold these
+practices to be most disgraceful.  But, as I was saying at first, the truth
+as I imagine is, that whether such practices are honourable or whether they
+are dishonourable is not a simple question; they are honourable to him who
+follows them honourably, dishonourable to him who follows them
+dishonourably.  There is dishonour in yielding to the evil, or in an evil
+manner; but there is honour in yielding to the good, or in an honourable
+manner.  Evil is the vulgar lover who loves the body rather than the soul,
+inasmuch as he is not even stable, because he loves a thing which is in
+itself unstable, and therefore when the bloom of youth which he was
+desiring is over, he takes wing and flies away, in spite of all his words
+and promises; whereas the love of the noble disposition is life-long, for
+it becomes one with the everlasting.  The custom of our country would have
+both of them proven well and truly, and would have us yield to the one sort
+of lover and avoid the other, and therefore encourages some to pursue, and
+others to fly; testing both the lover and beloved in contests and trials,
+until they show to which of the two classes they respectively belong.  And
+this is the reason why, in the first place, a hasty attachment is held to
+be dishonourable, because time is the true test of this as of most other
+things; and secondly there is a dishonour in being overcome by the love of
+money, or of wealth, or of political power, whether a man is frightened
+into surrender by the loss of them, or, having experienced the benefits of
+money and political corruption, is unable to rise above the seductions of
+them.  For none of these things are of a permanent or lasting nature; not
+to mention that no generous friendship ever sprang from them.  There
+remains, then, only one way of honourable attachment which custom allows in
+the beloved, and this is the way of virtue; for as we admitted that any
+service which the lover does to him is not to be accounted flattery or a
+dishonour to himself, so the beloved has one way only of voluntary service
+which is not dishonourable, and this is virtuous service.
+
+For we have a custom, and according to our custom any one who does service
+to another under the idea that he will be improved by him either in wisdom,
+or in some other particular of virtue--such a voluntary service, I say, is
+not to be regarded as a dishonour, and is not open to the charge of
+flattery.  And these two customs, one the love of youth, and the other the
+practice of philosophy and virtue in general, ought to meet in one, and
+then the beloved may honourably indulge the lover.  For when the lover and
+beloved come together, having each of them a law, and the lover thinks that
+he is right in doing any service which he can to his gracious loving one;
+and the other that he is right in showing any kindness which he can to him
+who is making him wise and good; the one capable of communicating wisdom
+and virtue, the other seeking to acquire them with a view to education and
+wisdom, when the two laws of love are fulfilled and meet in one--then, and
+then only, may the beloved yield with honour to the lover.  Nor when love
+is of this disinterested sort is there any disgrace in being deceived, but
+in every other case there is equal disgrace in being or not being deceived. 
+For he who is gracious to his lover under the impression that he is rich,
+and is disappointed of his gains because he turns out to be poor, is
+disgraced all the same:  for he has done his best to show that he would
+give himself up to any one's 'uses base' for the sake of money; but this is
+not honourable.  And on the same principle he who gives himself to a lover
+because he is a good man, and in the hope that he will be improved by his
+company, shows himself to be virtuous, even though the object of his
+affection turn out to be a villain, and to have no virtue; and if he is
+deceived he has committed a noble error.  For he has proved that for his
+part he will do anything for anybody with a view to virtue and improvement,
+than which there can be nothing nobler.  Thus noble in every case is the
+acceptance of another for the sake of virtue.  This is that love which is
+the love of the heavenly godess, and is heavenly, and of great price to
+individuals and cities, making the lover and the beloved alike eager in the
+work of their own improvement.  But all other loves are the offspring of
+the other, who is the common goddess.  To you, Phaedrus, I offer this my
+contribution in praise of love, which is as good as I could make extempore.
+
+Pausanias came to a pause--this is the balanced way in which I have been
+taught by the wise to speak; and Aristodemus said that the turn of
+Aristophanes was next, but either he had eaten too much, or from some other
+cause he had the hiccough, and was obliged to change turns with Eryximachus
+the physician, who was reclining on the couch below him.  Eryximachus, he
+said, you ought either to stop my hiccough, or to speak in my turn until I
+have left off.
+
+I will do both, said Eryximachus:  I will speak in your turn, and do you
+speak in mine; and while I am speaking let me recommend you to hold your
+breath, and if after you have done so for some time the hiccough is no
+better, then gargle with a little water; and if it still continues, tickle
+your nose with something and sneeze; and if you sneeze once or twice, even
+the most violent hiccough is sure to go.  I will do as you prescribe, said
+Aristophanes, and now get on.
+
+Eryximachus spoke as follows:  Seeing that Pausanias made a fair beginning,
+and but a lame ending, I must endeavour to supply his deficiency.  I think
+that he has rightly distinguished two kinds of love.  But my art further
+informs me that the double love is not merely an affection of the soul of
+man towards the fair, or towards anything, but is to be found in the bodies
+of all animals and in productions of the earth, and I may say in all that
+is; such is the conclusion which I seem to have gathered from my own art of
+medicine, whence I learn how great and wonderful and universal is the deity
+of love, whose empire extends over all things, divine as well as human. 
+And from medicine I will begin that I may do honour to my art.  There are
+in the human body these two kinds of love, which are confessedly different
+and unlike, and being unlike, they have loves and desires which are unlike;
+and the desire of the healthy is one, and the desire of the diseased is
+another; and as Pausanias was just now saying that to indulge good men is
+honourable, and bad men dishonourable:--so too in the body the good and
+healthy elements are to be indulged, and the bad elements and the elements
+of disease are not to be indulged, but discouraged.  And this is what the
+physician has to do, and in this the art of medicine consists:  for
+medicine may be regarded generally as the knowledge of the loves and
+desires of the body, and how to satisfy them or not; and the best physician
+is he who is able to separate fair love from foul, or to convert one into
+the other; and he who knows how to eradicate and how to implant love,
+whichever is required, and can reconcile the most hostile elements in the
+constitution and make them loving friends, is a skilful practitioner.  Now
+the most hostile are the most opposite, such as hot and cold, bitter and
+sweet, moist and dry, and the like.  And my ancestor, Asclepius, knowing
+how to implant friendship and accord in these elements, was the creator of
+our art, as our friends the poets here tell us, and I believe them; and not
+only medicine in every branch but the arts of gymnastic and husbandry are
+under his dominion.  Any one who pays the least attention to the subject
+will also perceive that in music there is the same reconciliation of
+opposites; and I suppose that this must have been the meaning of
+Heracleitus, although his words are not accurate; for he says that The One
+is united by disunion, like the harmony of the bow and the lyre.  Now there
+is an absurdity saying that harmony is discord or is composed of elements
+which are still in a state of discord.  But what he probably meant was,
+that harmony is composed of differing notes of higher or lower pitch which
+disagreed once, but are now reconciled by the art of music; for if the
+higher and lower notes still disagreed, there could be no harmony,--clearly
+not.  For harmony is a symphony, and symphony is an agreement; but an
+agreement of disagreements while they disagree there cannot be; you cannot
+harmonize that which disagrees.  In like manner rhythm is compounded of
+elements short and long, once differing and now in accord; which
+accordance, as in the former instance, medicine, so in all these other
+cases, music implants, making love and unison to grow up among them; and
+thus music, too, is concerned with the principles of love in their
+application to harmony and rhythm.  Again, in the essential nature of
+harmony and rhythm there is no difficulty in discerning love which has not
+yet become double.  But when you want to use them in actual life, either in
+the composition of songs or in the correct performance of airs or metres
+composed already, which latter is called education, then the difficulty
+begins, and the good artist is needed.  Then the old tale has to be
+repeated of fair and heavenly love--the love of Urania the fair and
+heavenly muse, and of the duty of accepting the temperate, and those who
+are as yet intemperate only that they may become temperate, and of
+preserving their love; and again, of the vulgar Polyhymnia, who must be
+used with circumspection that the pleasure be enjoyed, but may not generate
+licentiousness; just as in my own art it is a great matter so to regulate
+the desires of the epicure that he may gratify his tastes without the
+attendant evil of disease.  Whence I infer that in music, in medicine, in
+all other things human as well as divine, both loves ought to be noted as
+far as may be, for they are both present.
+
+The course of the seasons is also full of both these principles; and when,
+as I was saying, the elements of hot and cold, moist and dry, attain the
+harmonious love of one another and blend in temperance and harmony, they
+bring to men, animals, and plants health and plenty, and do them no harm;
+whereas the wanton love, getting the upper hand and affecting the seasons
+of the year, is very destructive and injurious, being the source of
+pestilence, and bringing many other kinds of diseases on animals and
+plants; for hoar-frost and hail and blight spring from the excesses and
+disorders of these elements of love, which to know in relation to the
+revolutions of the heavenly bodies and the seasons of the year is termed
+astronomy.  Furthermore all sacrifices and the whole province of
+divination, which is the art of communion between gods and men--these, I
+say, are concerned only with the preservation of the good and the cure of
+the evil love.  For all manner of impiety is likely to ensue if, instead of
+accepting and honouring and reverencing the harmonious love in all his
+actions, a man honours the other love, whether in his feelings towards gods
+or parents, towards the living or the dead.  Wherefore the business of
+divination is to see to these loves and to heal them, and divination is the
+peacemaker of gods and men, working by a knowledge of the religious or
+irreligious tendencies which exist in human loves.  Such is the great and
+mighty, or rather omnipotent force of love in general.  And the love, more
+especially, which is concerned with the good, and which is perfected in
+company with temperance and justice, whether among gods or men, has the
+greatest power, and is the source of all our happiness and harmony, and
+makes us friends with the gods who are above us, and with one another.  I
+dare say that I too have omitted several things which might be said in
+praise of Love, but this was not intentional, and you, Aristophanes, may
+now supply the omission or take some other line of commendation; for I
+perceive that you are rid of the hiccough.
+
+Yes, said Aristophanes, who followed, the hiccough is gone; not, however,
+until I applied the sneezing; and I wonder whether the harmony of the body
+has a love of such noises and ticklings, for I no sooner applied the
+sneezing than I was cured.
+
+Eryximachus said:  Beware, friend Aristophanes, although you are going to
+speak, you are making fun of me; and I shall have to watch and see whether
+I cannot have a laugh at your expense, when you might speak in peace.
+
+You are right, said Aristophanes, laughing.  I will unsay my words; but do
+you please not to watch me, as I fear that in the speech which I am about
+to make, instead of others laughing with me, which is to the manner born of
+our muse and would be all the better, I shall only be laughed at by them.
+
+Do you expect to shoot your bolt and escape, Aristophanes?  Well, perhaps
+if you are very careful and bear in mind that you will be called to
+account, I may be induced to let you off.
+
+Aristophanes professed to open another vein of discourse; he had a mind to
+praise Love in another way, unlike that either of Pausanias or Eryximachus. 
+Mankind, he said, judging by their neglect of him, have never, as I think,
+at all understood the power of Love.  For if they had understood him they
+would surely have built noble temples and altars, and offered solemn
+sacrifices in his honour; but this is not done, and most certainly ought to
+be done:  since of all the gods he is the best friend of men, the helper
+and the healer of the ills which are the great impediment to the happiness
+of the race.  I will try to describe his power to you, and you shall teach
+the rest of the world what I am teaching you.  In the first place, let me
+treat of the nature of man and what has happened to it; for the original
+human nature was not like the present, but different.  The sexes were not
+two as they are now, but originally three in number; there was man, woman,
+and the union of the two, having a name corresponding to this double
+nature, which had once a real existence, but is now lost, and the word
+'Androgynous' is only preserved as a term of reproach.  In the second
+place, the primeval man was round, his back and sides forming a circle; and
+he had four hands and four feet, one head with two faces, looking opposite
+ways, set on a round neck and precisely alike; also four ears, two privy
+members, and the remainder to correspond.  He could walk upright as men now
+do, backwards or forwards as he pleased, and he could also roll over and
+over at a great pace, turning on his four hands and four feet, eight in
+all, like tumblers going over and over with their legs in the air; this was
+when he wanted to run fast.  Now the sexes were three, and such as I have
+described them; because the sun, moon, and earth are three; and the man was
+originally the child of the sun, the woman of the earth, and the man-woman
+of the moon, which is made up of sun and earth, and they were all round and
+moved round and round like their parents.  Terrible was their might and
+strength, and the thoughts of their hearts were great, and they made an
+attack upon the gods; of them is told the tale of Otys and Ephialtes who,
+as Homer says, dared to scale heaven, and would have laid hands upon the
+gods.  Doubt reigned in the celestial councils.  Should they kill them and
+annihilate the race with thunderbolts, as they had done the giants, then
+there would be an end of the sacrifices and worship which men offered to
+them; but, on the other hand, the gods could not suffer their insolence to
+be unrestrained.  At last, after a good deal of reflection, Zeus discovered
+a way.  He said:  'Methinks I have a plan which will humble their pride and
+improve their manners; men shall continue to exist, but I will cut them in
+two and then they will be diminished in strength and increased in numbers;
+this will have the advantage of making them more profitable to us.  They
+shall walk upright on two legs, and if they continue insolent and will not
+be quiet, I will split them again and they shall hop about on a single
+leg.'  He spoke and cut men in two, like a sorb-apple which is halved for
+pickling, or as you might divide an egg with a hair; and as he cut them one
+after another, he bade Apollo give the face and the half of the neck a turn
+in order that the man might contemplate the section of himself:  he would
+thus learn a lesson of humility.  Apollo was also bidden to heal their
+wounds and compose their forms.  So he gave a turn to the face and pulled
+the skin from the sides all over that which in our language is called the
+belly, like the purses which draw in, and he made one mouth at the centre,
+which he fastened in a knot (the same which is called the navel); he also
+moulded the breast and took out most of the wrinkles, much as a shoemaker
+might smooth leather upon a last; he left a few, however, in the region of
+the belly and navel, as a memorial of the primeval state.  After the
+division the two parts of man, each desiring his other half, came together,
+and throwing their arms about one another, entwined in mutual embraces,
+longing to grow into one, they were on the point of dying from hunger and
+self-neglect, because they did not like to do anything apart; and when one
+of the halves died and the other survived, the survivor sought another
+mate, man or woman as we call them,--being the sections of entire men or
+women,--and clung to that.  They were being destroyed, when Zeus in pity of
+them invented a new plan:  he turned the parts of generation round to the
+front, for this had not been always their position, and they sowed the seed
+no longer as hitherto like grasshoppers in the ground, but in one another;
+and after the transposition the male generated in the female in order that
+by the mutual embraces of man and woman they might breed, and the race
+might continue; or if man came to man they might be satisfied, and rest,
+and go their ways to the business of life:  so ancient is the desire of one
+another which is implanted in us, reuniting our original nature, making one
+of two, and healing the state of man.  Each of us when separated, having
+one side only, like a flat fish, is but the indenture of a man, and he is
+always looking for his other half.  Men who are a section of that double
+nature which was once called Androgynous are lovers of women; adulterers
+are generally of this breed, and also adulterous women who lust after men: 
+the women who are a section of the woman do not care for men, but have
+female attachments; the female companions are of this sort.  But they who
+are a section of the male follow the male, and while they are young, being
+slices of the original man, they hang about men and embrace them, and they
+are themselves the best of boys and youths, because they have the most
+manly nature.  Some indeed assert that they are shameless, but this is not
+true; for they do not act thus from any want of shame, but because they are
+valiant and manly, and have a manly countenance, and they embrace that
+which is like them.  And these when they grow up become our statesmen, and
+these only, which is a great proof of the truth of what I am saving.  When
+they reach manhood they are lovers of youth, and are not naturally inclined
+to marry or beget children,--if at all, they do so only in obedience to the
+law; but they are satisfied if they may be allowed to live with one another
+unwedded; and such a nature is prone to love and ready to return love,
+always embracing that which is akin to him.  And when one of them meets
+with his other half, the actual half of himself, whether he be a lover of
+youth or a lover of another sort, the pair are lost in an amazement of love
+and friendship and intimacy, and one will not be out of the other's sight,
+as I may say, even for a moment:  these are the people who pass their whole
+lives together; yet they could not explain what they desire of one another. 
+For the intense yearning which each of them has towards the other does not
+appear to be the desire of lover's intercourse, but of something else which
+the soul of either evidently desires and cannot tell, and of which she has
+only a dark and doubtful presentiment.  Suppose Hephaestus, with his
+instruments, to come to the pair who are lying side by side and to say to
+them, 'What do you people want of one another?' they would be unable to
+explain.  And suppose further, that when he saw their perplexity he said: 
+'Do you desire to be wholly one; always day and night to be in one
+another's company? for if this is what you desire, I am ready to melt you
+into one and let you grow together, so that being two you shall become one,
+and while you live live a common life as if you were a single man, and
+after your death in the world below still be one departed soul instead of
+two--I ask whether this is what you lovingly desire, and whether you are
+satisfied to attain this?'--there is not a man of them who when he heard
+the proposal would deny or would not acknowledge that this meeting and
+melting into one another, this becoming one instead of two, was the very
+expression of his ancient need (compare Arist. Pol.).  And the reason is
+that human nature was originally one and we were a whole, and the desire
+and pursuit of the whole is called love.  There was a time, I say, when we
+were one, but now because of the wickedness of mankind God has dispersed
+us, as the Arcadians were dispersed into villages by the Lacedaemonians
+(compare Arist. Pol.).  And if we are not obedient to the gods, there is a
+danger that we shall be split up again and go about in basso-relievo, like
+the profile figures having only half a nose which are sculptured on
+monuments, and that we shall be like tallies.  Wherefore let us exhort all
+men to piety, that we may avoid evil, and obtain the good, of which Love is
+to us the lord and minister; and let no one oppose him--he is the enemy of
+the gods who opposes him.  For if we are friends of the God and at peace
+with him we shall find our own true loves, which rarely happens in this
+world at present.  I am serious, and therefore I must beg Eryximachus not
+to make fun or to find any allusion in what I am saying to Pausanias and
+Agathon, who, as I suspect, are both of the manly nature, and belong to the
+class which I have been describing.  But my words have a wider application
+--they include men and women everywhere; and I believe that if our loves
+were perfectly accomplished, and each one returning to his primeval nature
+had his original true love, then our race would be happy.  And if this
+would be best of all, the best in the next degree and under present
+circumstances must be the nearest approach to such an union; and that will
+be the attainment of a congenial love.  Wherefore, if we would praise him
+who has given to us the benefit, we must praise the god Love, who is our
+greatest benefactor, both leading us in this life back to our own nature,
+and giving us high hopes for the future, for he promises that if we are
+pious, he will restore us to our original state, and heal us and make us
+happy and blessed.  This, Eryximachus, is my discourse of love, which,
+although different to yours, I must beg you to leave unassailed by the
+shafts of your ridicule, in order that each may have his turn; each, or
+rather either, for Agathon and Socrates are the only ones left.
+
+Indeed, I am not going to attack you, said Eryximachus, for I thought your
+speech charming, and did I not know that Agathon and Socrates are masters
+in the art of love, I should be really afraid that they would have nothing
+to say, after the world of things which have been said already.  But, for
+all that, I am not without hopes.
+
+Socrates said:  You played your part well, Eryximachus; but if you were as
+I am now, or rather as I shall be when Agathon has spoken, you would,
+indeed, be in a great strait.
+
+You want to cast a spell over me, Socrates, said Agathon, in the hope that
+I may be disconcerted at the expectation raised among the audience that I
+shall speak well.
+
+I should be strangely forgetful, Agathon replied Socrates, of the courage
+and magnanimity which you showed when your own compositions were about to
+be exhibited, and you came upon the stage with the actors and faced the
+vast theatre altogether undismayed, if I thought that your nerves could be
+fluttered at a small party of friends.
+
+Do you think, Socrates, said Agathon, that my head is so full of the
+theatre as not to know how much more formidable to a man of sense a few
+good judges are than many fools?
+
+Nay, replied Socrates, I should be very wrong in attributing to you,
+Agathon, that or any other want of refinement.  And I am quite aware that
+if you happened to meet with any whom you thought wise, you would care for
+their opinion much more than for that of the many.  But then we, having
+been a part of the foolish many in the theatre, cannot be regarded as the
+select wise; though I know that if you chanced to be in the presence, not
+of one of ourselves, but of some really wise man, you would be ashamed of
+disgracing yourself before him--would you not?
+
+Yes, said Agathon.
+
+But before the many you would not be ashamed, if you thought that you were
+doing something disgraceful in their presence?
+
+Here Phaedrus interrupted them, saying:  not answer him, my dear Agathon;
+for if he can only get a partner with whom he can talk, especially a good-
+looking one, he will no longer care about the completion of our plan.  Now
+I love to hear him talk; but just at present I must not forget the encomium
+on Love which I ought to receive from him and from every one.  When you and
+he have paid your tribute to the god, then you may talk.
+
+Very good, Phaedrus, said Agathon; I see no reason why I should not proceed
+with my speech, as I shall have many other opportunities of conversing with
+Socrates.  Let me say first how I ought to speak, and then speak:--
+
+The previous speakers, instead of praising the god Love, or unfolding his
+nature, appear to have congratulated mankind on the benefits which he
+confers upon them.  But I would rather praise the god first, and then speak
+of his gifts; this is always the right way of praising everything.  May I
+say without impiety or offence, that of all the blessed gods he is the most
+blessed because he is the fairest and best?  And he is the fairest:  for,
+in the first place, he is the youngest, and of his youth he is himself the
+witness, fleeing out of the way of age, who is swift enough, swifter truly
+than most of us like:--Love hates him and will not come near him; but youth
+and love live and move together--like to like, as the proverb says.  Many
+things were said by Phaedrus about Love in which I agree with him; but I
+cannot agree that he is older than Iapetus and Kronos:--not so; I maintain
+him to be the youngest of the gods, and youthful ever.  The ancient doings
+among the gods of which Hesiod and Parmenides spoke, if the tradition of
+them be true, were done of Necessity and not of Love; had Love been in
+those days, there would have been no chaining or mutilation of the gods, or
+other violence, but peace and sweetness, as there is now in heaven, since
+the rule of Love began.  Love is young and also tender; he ought to have a
+poet like Homer to describe his tenderness, as Homer says of Ate, that she
+is a goddess and tender:--
+
+'Her feet are tender, for she sets her steps,
+Not on the ground but on the heads of men:'
+
+herein is an excellent proof of her tenderness,--that she walks not upon
+the hard but upon the soft.  Let us adduce a similar proof of the
+tenderness of Love; for he walks not upon the earth, nor yet upon the
+skulls of men, which are not so very soft, but in the hearts and souls of
+both gods and men, which are of all things the softest:  in them he walks
+and dwells and makes his home.  Not in every soul without exception, for
+where there is hardness he departs, where there is softness there he
+dwells; and nestling always with his feet and in all manner of ways in the
+softest of soft places, how can he be other than the softest of all things? 
+Of a truth he is the tenderest as well as the youngest, and also he is of
+flexile form; for if he were hard and without flexure he could not enfold
+all things, or wind his way into and out of every soul of man undiscovered. 
+And a proof of his flexibility and symmetry of form is his grace, which is
+universally admitted to be in an especial manner the attribute of Love;
+ungrace and love are always at war with one another.  The fairness of his
+complexion is revealed by his habitation among the flowers; for he dwells
+not amid bloomless or fading beauties, whether of body or soul or aught
+else, but in the place of flowers and scents, there he sits and abides. 
+Concerning the beauty of the god I have said enough; and yet there remains
+much more which I might say.  Of his virtue I have now to speak:  his
+greatest glory is that he can neither do nor suffer wrong to or from any
+god or any man; for he suffers not by force if he suffers; force comes not
+near him, neither when he acts does he act by force.  For all men in all
+things serve him of their own free will, and where there is voluntary
+agreement, there, as the laws which are the lords of the city say, is
+justice.  And not only is he just but exceedingly temperate, for Temperance
+is the acknowledged ruler of the pleasures and desires, and no pleasure
+ever masters Love; he is their master and they are his servants; and if he
+conquers them he must be temperate indeed.  As to courage, even the God of
+War is no match for him; he is the captive and Love is the lord, for love,
+the love of Aphrodite, masters him, as the tale runs; and the master is
+stronger than the servant.  And if he conquers the bravest of all others,
+he must be himself the bravest.  Of his courage and justice and temperance
+I have spoken, but I have yet to speak of his wisdom; and according to the
+measure of my ability I must try to do my best.  In the first place he is a
+poet (and here, like Eryximachus, I magnify my art), and he is also the
+source of poesy in others, which he could not be if he were not himself a
+poet.  And at the touch of him every one becomes a poet, even though he had
+no music in him before (A fragment of the Sthenoaoea of Euripides.); this
+also is a proof that Love is a good poet and accomplished in all the fine
+arts; for no one can give to another that which he has not himself, or
+teach that of which he has no knowledge.  Who will deny that the creation
+of the animals is his doing?  Are they not all the works of his wisdom,
+born and begotten of him?  And as to the artists, do we not know that he
+only of them whom love inspires has the light of fame?--he whom Love
+touches not walks in darkness.  The arts of medicine and archery and
+divination were discovered by Apollo, under the guidance of love and
+desire; so that he too is a disciple of Love.  Also the melody of the
+Muses, the metallurgy of Hephaestus, the weaving of Athene, the empire of
+Zeus over gods and men, are all due to Love, who was the inventor of them. 
+And so Love set in order the empire of the gods--the love of beauty, as is
+evident, for with deformity Love has no concern.  In the days of old, as I
+began by saying, dreadful deeds were done among the gods, for they were
+ruled by Necessity; but now since the birth of Love, and from the Love of
+the beautiful, has sprung every good in heaven and earth.  Therefore,
+Phaedrus, I say of Love that he is the fairest and best in himself, and the
+cause of what is fairest and best in all other things.  And there comes
+into my mind a line of poetry in which he is said to be the god who
+
+'Gives peace on earth and calms the stormy deep,
+Who stills the winds and bids the sufferer sleep.'
+
+This is he who empties men of disaffection and fills them with affection,
+who makes them to meet together at banquets such as these:  in sacrifices,
+feasts, dances, he is our lord--who sends courtesy and sends away
+discourtesy, who gives kindness ever and never gives unkindness; the friend
+of the good, the wonder of the wise, the amazement of the gods; desired by
+those who have no part in him, and precious to those who have the better
+part in him; parent of delicacy, luxury, desire, fondness, softness, grace;
+regardful of the good, regardless of the evil:  in every word, work, wish,
+fear--saviour, pilot, comrade, helper; glory of gods and men, leader best
+and brightest:  in whose footsteps let every man follow, sweetly singing in
+his honour and joining in that sweet strain with which love charms the
+souls of gods and men.  Such is the speech, Phaedrus, half-playful, yet
+having a certain measure of seriousness, which, according to my ability, I
+dedicate to the god.
+
+When Agathon had done speaking, Aristodemus said that there was a general
+cheer; the young man was thought to have spoken in a manner worthy of
+himself, and of the god.  And Socrates, looking at Eryximachus, said:  Tell
+me, son of Acumenus, was there not reason in my fears? and was I not a true
+prophet when I said that Agathon would make a wonderful oration, and that I
+should be in a strait?
+
+The part of the prophecy which concerns Agathon, replied Eryximachus,
+appears to me to be true; but not the other part--that you will be in a
+strait.
+
+Why, my dear friend, said Socrates, must not I or any one be in a strait
+who has to speak after he has heard such a rich and varied discourse?  I am
+especially struck with the beauty of the concluding words--who could listen
+to them without amazement?  When I reflected on the immeasurable
+inferiority of my own powers, I was ready to run away for shame, if there
+had been a possibility of escape.  For I was reminded of Gorgias, and at
+the end of his speech I fancied that Agathon was shaking at me the
+Gorginian or Gorgonian head of the great master of rhetoric, which was
+simply to turn me and my speech into stone, as Homer says (Odyssey), and
+strike me dumb.  And then I perceived how foolish I had been in consenting
+to take my turn with you in praising love, and saying that I too was a
+master of the art, when I really had no conception how anything ought to be
+praised.  For in my simplicity I imagined that the topics of praise should
+be true, and that this being presupposed, out of the true the speaker was
+to choose the best and set them forth in the best manner.  And I felt quite
+proud, thinking that I knew the nature of true praise, and should speak
+well.  Whereas I now see that the intention was to attribute to Love every
+species of greatness and glory, whether really belonging to him or not,
+without regard to truth or falsehood--that was no matter; for the original
+proposal seems to have been not that each of you should really praise Love,
+but only that you should appear to praise him.  And so you attribute to
+Love every imaginable form of praise which can be gathered anywhere; and
+you say that 'he is all this,' and 'the cause of all that,' making him
+appear the fairest and best of all to those who know him not, for you
+cannot impose upon those who know him.  And a noble and solemn hymn of
+praise have you rehearsed.  But as I misunderstood the nature of the praise
+when I said that I would take my turn, I must beg to be absolved from the
+promise which I made in ignorance, and which (as Euripides would say
+(Eurip. Hyppolytus)) was a promise of the lips and not of the mind. 
+Farewell then to such a strain:  for I do not praise in that way; no,
+indeed, I cannot.  But if you like to hear the truth about love, I am ready
+to speak in my own manner, though I will not make myself ridiculous by
+entering into any rivalry with you.  Say then, Phaedrus, whether you would
+like to have the truth about love, spoken in any words and in any order
+which may happen to come into my mind at the time.  Will that be agreeable
+to you?
+
+Aristodemus said that Phaedrus and the company bid him speak in any manner
+which he thought best.  Then, he added, let me have your permission first
+to ask Agathon a few more questions, in order that I may take his
+admissions as the premisses of my discourse.
+
+I grant the permission, said Phaedrus:  put your questions.  Socrates then
+proceeded as follows:--
+
+In the magnificent oration which you have just uttered, I think that you
+were right, my dear Agathon, in proposing to speak of the nature of Love
+first and afterwards of his works--that is a way of beginning which I very
+much approve.  And as you have spoken so eloquently of his nature, may I
+ask you further, Whether love is the love of something or of nothing?  And
+here I must explain myself:  I do not want you to say that love is the love
+of a father or the love of a mother--that would be ridiculous; but to
+answer as you would, if I asked is a father a father of something? to which
+you would find no difficulty in replying, of a son or daughter:  and the
+answer would be right.
+
+Very true, said Agathon.
+
+And you would say the same of a mother?
+
+He assented.
+
+Yet let me ask you one more question in order to illustrate my meaning:  Is
+not a brother to be regarded essentially as a brother of something?
+
+Certainly, he replied.
+
+That is, of a brother or sister?
+
+Yes, he said.
+
+And now, said Socrates, I will ask about Love:--Is Love of something or of
+nothing?
+
+Of something, surely, he replied.
+
+Keep in mind what this is, and tell me what I want to know--whether Love
+desires that of which love is.
+
+Yes, surely.
+
+And does he possess, or does he not possess, that which he loves and
+desires?
+
+Probably not, I should say.
+
+Nay, replied Socrates, I would have you consider whether 'necessarily' is
+not rather the word.  The inference that he who desires something is in
+want of something, and that he who desires nothing is in want of nothing,
+is in my judgment, Agathon, absolutely and necessarily true.  What do you
+think?
+
+I agree with you, said Agathon.
+
+Very good.  Would he who is great, desire to be great, or he who is strong,
+desire to be strong?
+
+That would be inconsistent with our previous admissions.
+
+True.  For he who is anything cannot want to be that which he is?
+
+Very true.
+
+And yet, added Socrates, if a man being strong desired to be strong, or
+being swift desired to be swift, or being healthy desired to be healthy, in
+that case he might be thought to desire something which he already has or
+is.  I give the example in order that we may avoid misconception.  For the
+possessors of these qualities, Agathon, must be supposed to have their
+respective advantages at the time, whether they choose or not; and who can
+desire that which he has?  Therefore, when a person says, I am well and
+wish to be well, or I am rich and wish to be rich, and I desire simply to
+have what I have--to him we shall reply:  'You, my friend, having wealth
+and health and strength, want to have the continuance of them; for at this
+moment, whether you choose or no, you have them.  And when you say, I
+desire that which I have and nothing else, is not your meaning that you
+want to have what you now have in the future?'  He must agree with us--must
+he not?
+
+He must, replied Agathon.
+
+Then, said Socrates, he desires that what he has at present may be
+preserved to him in the future, which is equivalent to saying that he
+desires something which is non-existent to him, and which as yet he has not
+got:
+
+Very true, he said.
+
+Then he and every one who desires, desires that which he has not already,
+and which is future and not present, and which he has not, and is not, and
+of which he is in want;--these are the sort of things which love and desire
+seek?
+
+Very true, he said.
+
+Then now, said Socrates, let us recapitulate the argument.  First, is not
+love of something, and of something too which is wanting to a man?
+
+Yes, he replied.
+
+Remember further what you said in your speech, or if you do not remember I
+will remind you:  you said that the love of the beautiful set in order the
+empire of the gods, for that of deformed things there is no love--did you
+not say something of that kind?
+
+Yes, said Agathon.
+
+Yes, my friend, and the remark was a just one.  And if this is true, Love
+is the love of beauty and not of deformity?
+
+He assented.
+
+And the admission has been already made that Love is of something which a
+man wants and has not?
+
+True, he said.
+
+Then Love wants and has not beauty?
+
+Certainly, he replied.
+
+And would you call that beautiful which wants and does not possess beauty?
+
+Certainly not.
+
+Then would you still say that love is beautiful?
+
+Agathon replied:  I fear that I did not understand what I was saying.
+
+You made a very good speech, Agathon, replied Socrates; but there is yet
+one small question which I would fain ask:--Is not the good also the
+beautiful?
+
+Yes.
+
+Then in wanting the beautiful, love wants also the good?
+
+I cannot refute you, Socrates, said Agathon:--Let us assume that what you
+say is true.
+
+Say rather, beloved Agathon, that you cannot refute the truth; for Socrates
+is easily refuted.
+
+And now, taking my leave of you, I would rehearse a tale of love which I
+heard from Diotima of Mantineia (compare 1 Alcibiades), a woman wise in
+this and in many other kinds of knowledge, who in the days of old, when the
+Athenians offered sacrifice before the coming of the plague, delayed the
+disease ten years.  She was my instructress in the art of love, and I shall
+repeat to you what she said to me, beginning with the admissions made by
+Agathon, which are nearly if not quite the same which I made to the wise
+woman when she questioned me:  I think that this will be the easiest way,
+and I shall take both parts myself as well as I can (compare Gorgias).  As
+you, Agathon, suggested (supra), I must speak first of the being and nature
+of Love, and then of his works.  First I said to her in nearly the same
+words which he used to me, that Love was a mighty god, and likewise fair;
+and she proved to me as I proved to him that, by my own showing, Love was
+neither fair nor good.  'What do you mean, Diotima,' I said, 'is love then
+evil and foul?'  'Hush,' she cried; 'must that be foul which is not fair?' 
+'Certainly,' I said.  'And is that which is not wise, ignorant? do you not
+see that there is a mean between wisdom and ignorance?'  'And what may that
+be?' I said.  'Right opinion,' she replied; 'which, as you know, being
+incapable of giving a reason, is not knowledge (for how can knowledge be
+devoid of reason? nor again, ignorance, for neither can ignorance attain
+the truth), but is clearly something which is a mean between ignorance and
+wisdom.'  'Quite true,' I replied.  'Do not then insist,' she said, 'that
+what is not fair is of necessity foul, or what is not good evil; or infer
+that because love is not fair and good he is therefore foul and evil; for
+he is in a mean between them.'  'Well,' I said, 'Love is surely admitted by
+all to be a great god.'  'By those who know or by those who do not know?' 
+'By all.'  'And how, Socrates,' she said with a smile, 'can Love be
+acknowledged to be a great god by those who say that he is not a god at
+all?'  'And who are they?' I said.  'You and I are two of them,' she
+replied.  'How can that be?' I said.  'It is quite intelligible,' she
+replied; 'for you yourself would acknowledge that the gods are happy and
+fair--of course you would--would you dare to say that any god was not?' 
+'Certainly not,' I replied.  'And you mean by the happy, those who are the
+possessors of things good or fair?'  'Yes.'  'And you admitted that Love,
+because he was in want, desires those good and fair things of which he is
+in want?'  'Yes, I did.'  'But how can he be a god who has no portion in
+what is either good or fair?'  'Impossible.'  'Then you see that you also
+deny the divinity of Love.'
+
+'What then is Love?' I asked; 'Is he mortal?'  'No.'  'What then?'  'As in
+the former instance, he is neither mortal nor immortal, but in a mean
+between the two.'  'What is he, Diotima?'  'He is a great spirit (daimon),
+and like all spirits he is intermediate between the divine and the mortal.' 
+'And what,' I said, 'is his power?'  'He interprets,' she replied, 'between
+gods and men, conveying and taking across to the gods the prayers and
+sacrifices of men, and to men the commands and replies of the gods; he is
+the mediator who spans the chasm which divides them, and therefore in him
+all is bound together, and through him the arts of the prophet and the
+priest, their sacrifices and mysteries and charms, and all prophecy and
+incantation, find their way.  For God mingles not with man; but through
+Love all the intercourse and converse of God with man, whether awake or
+asleep, is carried on.  The wisdom which understands this is spiritual; all
+other wisdom, such as that of arts and handicrafts, is mean and vulgar. 
+Now these spirits or intermediate powers are many and diverse, and one of
+them is Love.'  'And who,' I said, 'was his father, and who his mother?' 
+'The tale,' she said, 'will take time; nevertheless I will tell you.  On
+the birthday of Aphrodite there was a feast of the gods, at which the god
+Poros or Plenty, who is the son of Metis or Discretion, was one of the
+guests.  When the feast was over, Penia or Poverty, as the manner is on
+such occasions, came about the doors to beg.  Now Plenty who was the worse
+for nectar (there was no wine in those days), went into the garden of Zeus
+and fell into a heavy sleep, and Poverty considering her own straitened
+circumstances, plotted to have a child by him, and accordingly she lay down
+at his side and conceived Love, who partly because he is naturally a lover
+of the beautiful, and because Aphrodite is herself beautiful, and also
+because he was born on her birthday, is her follower and attendant.  And as
+his parentage is, so also are his fortunes.  In the first place he is
+always poor, and anything but tender and fair, as the many imagine him; and
+he is rough and squalid, and has no shoes, nor a house to dwell in; on the
+bare earth exposed he lies under the open heaven, in the streets, or at the
+doors of houses, taking his rest; and like his mother he is always in
+distress.  Like his father too, whom he also partly resembles, he is always
+plotting against the fair and good; he is bold, enterprising, strong, a
+mighty hunter, always weaving some intrigue or other, keen in the pursuit
+of wisdom, fertile in resources; a philosopher at all times, terrible as an
+enchanter, sorcerer, sophist.  He is by nature neither mortal nor immortal,
+but alive and flourishing at one moment when he is in plenty, and dead at
+another moment, and again alive by reason of his father's nature.  But that
+which is always flowing in is always flowing out, and so he is never in
+want and never in wealth; and, further, he is in a mean between ignorance
+and knowledge.  The truth of the matter is this:  No god is a philosopher
+or seeker after wisdom, for he is wise already; nor does any man who is
+wise seek after wisdom.  Neither do the ignorant seek after wisdom.  For
+herein is the evil of ignorance, that he who is neither good nor wise is
+nevertheless satisfied with himself:  he has no desire for that of which he
+feels no want.'  'But who then, Diotima,' I said, 'are the lovers of
+wisdom, if they are neither the wise nor the foolish?'  'A child may answer
+that question,' she replied; 'they are those who are in a mean between the
+two; Love is one of them.  For wisdom is a most beautiful thing, and Love
+is of the beautiful; and therefore Love is also a philosopher or lover of
+wisdom, and being a lover of wisdom is in a mean between the wise and the
+ignorant.  And of this too his birth is the cause; for his father is
+wealthy and wise, and his mother poor and foolish.  Such, my dear Socrates,
+is the nature of the spirit Love.  The error in your conception of him was
+very natural, and as I imagine from what you say, has arisen out of a
+confusion of love and the beloved, which made you think that love was all
+beautiful.  For the beloved is the truly beautiful, and delicate, and
+perfect, and blessed; but the principle of love is of another nature, and
+is such as I have described.'
+
+I said, 'O thou stranger woman, thou sayest well; but, assuming Love to be
+such as you say, what is the use of him to men?'  'That, Socrates,' she
+replied, 'I will attempt to unfold:  of his nature and birth I have already
+spoken; and you acknowledge that love is of the beautiful.  But some one
+will say:  Of the beautiful in what, Socrates and Diotima?--or rather let
+me put the question more clearly, and ask:  When a man loves the beautiful,
+what does he desire?'  I answered her 'That the beautiful may be his.' 
+'Still,' she said, 'the answer suggests a further question:  What is given
+by the possession of beauty?'  'To what you have asked,' I replied, 'I have
+no answer ready.'  'Then,' she said, 'let me put the word "good" in the
+place of the beautiful, and repeat the question once more:  If he who loves
+loves the good, what is it then that he loves?'  'The possession of the
+good,' I said.  'And what does he gain who possesses the good?' 
+'Happiness,' I replied; 'there is less difficulty in answering that
+question.'  'Yes,' she said, 'the happy are made happy by the acquisition
+of good things.  Nor is there any need to ask why a man desires happiness;
+the answer is already final.'  'You are right.' I said.  'And is this wish
+and this desire common to all? and do all men always desire their own good,
+or only some men?--what say you?'  'All men,' I replied; 'the desire is
+common to all.'  'Why, then,' she rejoined, 'are not all men, Socrates,
+said to love, but only some of them? whereas you say that all men are
+always loving the same things.'  'I myself wonder,' I said, 'why this is.' 
+'There is nothing to wonder at,' she replied; 'the reason is that one part
+of love is separated off and receives the name of the whole, but the other
+parts have other names.'  'Give an illustration,' I said.  She answered me
+as follows:  'There is poetry, which, as you know, is complex and manifold. 
+All creation or passage of non-being into being is poetry or making, and
+the processes of all art are creative; and the masters of arts are all
+poets or makers.'  'Very true.'  'Still,' she said, 'you know that they are
+not called poets, but have other names; only that portion of the art which
+is separated off from the rest, and is concerned with music and metre, is
+termed poetry, and they who possess poetry in this sense of the word are
+called poets.'  'Very true,' I said.  'And the same holds of love.  For you
+may say generally that all desire of good and happiness is only the great
+and subtle power of love; but they who are drawn towards him by any other
+path, whether the path of money-making or gymnastics or philosophy, are not
+called lovers--the name of the whole is appropriated to those whose
+affection takes one form only--they alone are said to love, or to be
+lovers.'  'I dare say,' I replied, 'that you are right.'  'Yes,' she added,
+'and you hear people say that lovers are seeking for their other half; but
+I say that they are seeking neither for the half of themselves, nor for the
+whole, unless the half or the whole be also a good.  And they will cut off
+their own hands and feet and cast them away, if they are evil; for they
+love not what is their own, unless perchance there be some one who calls
+what belongs to him the good, and what belongs to another the evil.  For
+there is nothing which men love but the good.  Is there anything?' 
+'Certainly, I should say, that there is nothing.'  'Then,' she said, 'the
+simple truth is, that men love the good.'  'Yes,' I said.  'To which must
+be added that they love the possession of the good?'  'Yes, that must be
+added.'  'And not only the possession, but the everlasting possession of
+the good?'  'That must be added too.'  'Then love,' she said, 'may be
+described generally as the love of the everlasting possession of the good?' 
+'That is most true.'
+
+'Then if this be the nature of love, can you tell me further,' she said,
+'what is the manner of the pursuit? what are they doing who show all this
+eagerness and heat which is called love? and what is the object which they
+have in view?  Answer me.'  'Nay, Diotima,' I replied, 'if I had known, I
+should not have wondered at your wisdom, neither should I have come to
+learn from you about this very matter.'  'Well,' she said, 'I will teach
+you:--The object which they have in view is birth in beauty, whether of
+body or soul.'  'I do not understand you,' I said; 'the oracle requires an
+explanation.'  'I will make my meaning clearer,' she replied.  'I mean to
+say, that all men are bringing to the birth in their bodies and in their
+souls.  There is a certain age at which human nature is desirous of
+procreation--procreation which must be in beauty and not in deformity; and
+this procreation is the union of man and woman, and is a divine thing; for
+conception and generation are an immortal principle in the mortal creature,
+and in the inharmonious they can never be.  But the deformed is always
+inharmonious with the divine, and the beautiful harmonious.  Beauty, then,
+is the destiny or goddess of parturition who presides at birth, and
+therefore, when approaching beauty, the conceiving power is propitious, and
+diffusive, and benign, and begets and bears fruit:  at the sight of
+ugliness she frowns and contracts and has a sense of pain, and turns away,
+and shrivels up, and not without a pang refrains from conception.  And this
+is the reason why, when the hour of conception arrives, and the teeming
+nature is full, there is such a flutter and ecstasy about beauty whose
+approach is the alleviation of the pain of travail.  For love, Socrates, is
+not, as you imagine, the love of the beautiful only.'  'What then?'  'The
+love of generation and of birth in beauty.'  'Yes,' I said.  'Yes, indeed,'
+she replied.  'But why of generation?'  'Because to the mortal creature,
+generation is a sort of eternity and immortality,' she replied; 'and if, as
+has been already admitted, love is of the everlasting possession of the
+good, all men will necessarily desire immortality together with good: 
+Wherefore love is of immortality.'
+
+All this she taught me at various times when she spoke of love.  And I
+remember her once saying to me, 'What is the cause, Socrates, of love, and
+the attendant desire?  See you not how all animals, birds, as well as
+beasts, in their desire of procreation, are in agony when they take the
+infection of love, which begins with the desire of union; whereto is added
+the care of offspring, on whose behalf the weakest are ready to battle
+against the strongest even to the uttermost, and to die for them, and will
+let themselves be tormented with hunger or suffer anything in order to
+maintain their young.  Man may be supposed to act thus from reason; but why
+should animals have these passionate feelings?  Can you tell me why?' 
+Again I replied that I did not know.  She said to me:  'And do you expect
+ever to become a master in the art of love, if you do not know this?'  'But
+I have told you already, Diotima, that my ignorance is the reason why I
+come to you; for I am conscious that I want a teacher; tell me then the
+cause of this and of the other mysteries of love.'  'Marvel not,' she said,
+'if you believe that love is of the immortal, as we have several times
+acknowledged; for here again, and on the same principle too, the mortal
+nature is seeking as far as is possible to be everlasting and immortal: 
+and this is only to be attained by generation, because generation always
+leaves behind a new existence in the place of the old.  Nay even in the
+life of the same individual there is succession and not absolute unity:  a
+man is called the same, and yet in the short interval which elapses between
+youth and age, and in which every animal is said to have life and identity,
+he is undergoing a perpetual process of loss and reparation--hair, flesh,
+bones, blood, and the whole body are always changing.  Which is true not
+only of the body, but also of the soul, whose habits, tempers, opinions,
+desires, pleasures, pains, fears, never remain the same in any one of us,
+but are always coming and going; and equally true of knowledge, and what is
+still more surprising to us mortals, not only do the sciences in general
+spring up and decay, so that in respect of them we are never the same; but
+each of them individually experiences a like change.  For what is implied
+in the word "recollection," but the departure of knowledge, which is ever
+being forgotten, and is renewed and preserved by recollection, and appears
+to be the same although in reality new, according to that law of succession
+by which all mortal things are preserved, not absolutely the same, but by
+substitution, the old worn-out mortality leaving another new and similar
+existence behind--unlike the divine, which is always the same and not
+another?  And in this way, Socrates, the mortal body, or mortal anything,
+partakes of immortality; but the immortal in another way.  Marvel not then
+at the love which all men have of their offspring; for that universal love
+and interest is for the sake of immortality.'
+
+I was astonished at her words, and said:  'Is this really true, O thou wise
+Diotima?'  And she answered with all the authority of an accomplished
+sophist:  'Of that, Socrates, you may be assured;--think only of the
+ambition of men, and you will wonder at the senselessness of their ways,
+unless you consider how they are stirred by the love of an immortality of
+fame.  They are ready to run all risks greater far than they would have run
+for their children, and to spend money and undergo any sort of toil, and
+even to die, for the sake of leaving behind them a name which shall be
+eternal.  Do you imagine that Alcestis would have died to save Admetus, or
+Achilles to avenge Patroclus, or your own Codrus in order to preserve the
+kingdom for his sons, if they had not imagined that the memory of their
+virtues, which still survives among us, would be immortal?  Nay,' she said,
+'I am persuaded that all men do all things, and the better they are the
+more they do them, in hope of the glorious fame of immortal virtue; for
+they desire the immortal.
+
+'Those who are pregnant in the body only, betake themselves to women and
+beget children--this is the character of their love; their offspring, as
+they hope, will preserve their memory and giving them the blessedness and
+immortality which they desire in the future.  But souls which are pregnant
+--for there certainly are men who are more creative in their souls than in
+their bodies--conceive that which is proper for the soul to conceive or
+contain.  And what are these conceptions?--wisdom and virtue in general. 
+And such creators are poets and all artists who are deserving of the name
+inventor.  But the greatest and fairest sort of wisdom by far is that which
+is concerned with the ordering of states and families, and which is called
+temperance and justice.  And he who in youth has the seed of these
+implanted in him and is himself inspired, when he comes to maturity desires
+to beget and generate.  He wanders about seeking beauty that he may beget
+offspring--for in deformity he will beget nothing--and naturally embraces
+the beautiful rather than the deformed body; above all when he finds a fair
+and noble and well-nurtured soul, he embraces the two in one person, and to
+such an one he is full of speech about virtue and the nature and pursuits
+of a good man; and he tries to educate him; and at the touch of the
+beautiful which is ever present to his memory, even when absent, he brings
+forth that which he had conceived long before, and in company with him
+tends that which he brings forth; and they are married by a far nearer tie
+and have a closer friendship than those who beget mortal children, for the
+children who are their common offspring are fairer and more immortal.  Who,
+when he thinks of Homer and Hesiod and other great poets, would not rather
+have their children than ordinary human ones?  Who would not emulate them
+in the creation of children such as theirs, which have preserved their
+memory and given them everlasting glory?  Or who would not have such
+children as Lycurgus left behind him to be the saviours, not only of
+Lacedaemon, but of Hellas, as one may say?  There is Solon, too, who is the
+revered father of Athenian laws; and many others there are in many other
+places, both among Hellenes and barbarians, who have given to the world
+many noble works, and have been the parents of virtue of every kind; and
+many temples have been raised in their honour for the sake of children such
+as theirs; which were never raised in honour of any one, for the sake of
+his mortal children.
+
+'These are the lesser mysteries of love, into which even you, Socrates, may
+enter; to the greater and more hidden ones which are the crown of these,
+and to which, if you pursue them in a right spirit, they will lead, I know
+not whether you will be able to attain.  But I will do my utmost to inform
+you, and do you follow if you can.  For he who would proceed aright in this
+matter should begin in youth to visit beautiful forms; and first, if he be
+guided by his instructor aright, to love one such form only--out of that he
+should create fair thoughts; and soon he will of himself perceive that the
+beauty of one form is akin to the beauty of another; and then if beauty of
+form in general is his pursuit, how foolish would he be not to recognize
+that the beauty in every form is and the same!  And when he perceives this
+he will abate his violent love of the one, which he will despise and deem a
+small thing, and will become a lover of all beautiful forms; in the next
+stage he will consider that the beauty of the mind is more honourable than
+the beauty of the outward form.  So that if a virtuous soul have but a
+little comeliness, he will be content to love and tend him, and will search
+out and bring to the birth thoughts which may improve the young, until he
+is compelled to contemplate and see the beauty of institutions and laws,
+and to understand that the beauty of them all is of one family, and that
+personal beauty is a trifle; and after laws and institutions he will go on
+to the sciences, that he may see their beauty, being not like a servant in
+love with the beauty of one youth or man or institution, himself a slave
+mean and narrow-minded, but drawing towards and contemplating the vast sea
+of beauty, he will create many fair and noble thoughts and notions in
+boundless love of wisdom; until on that shore he grows and waxes strong,
+and at last the vision is revealed to him of a single science, which is the
+science of beauty everywhere.  To this I will proceed; please to give me
+your very best attention:
+
+'He who has been instructed thus far in the things of love, and who has
+learned to see the beautiful in due order and succession, when he comes
+toward the end will suddenly perceive a nature of wondrous beauty (and
+this, Socrates, is the final cause of all our former toils)--a nature which
+in the first place is everlasting, not growing and decaying, or waxing and
+waning; secondly, not fair in one point of view and foul in another, or at
+one time or in one relation or at one place fair, at another time or in
+another relation or at another place foul, as if fair to some and foul to
+others, or in the likeness of a face or hands or any other part of the
+bodily frame, or in any form of speech or knowledge, or existing in any
+other being, as for example, in an animal, or in heaven, or in earth, or in
+any other place; but beauty absolute, separate, simple, and everlasting,
+which without diminution and without increase, or any change, is imparted
+to the ever-growing and perishing beauties of all other things.  He who
+from these ascending under the influence of true love, begins to perceive
+that beauty, is not far from the end.  And the true order of going, or
+being led by another, to the things of love, is to begin from the beauties
+of earth and mount upwards for the sake of that other beauty, using these
+as steps only, and from one going on to two, and from two to all fair
+forms, and from fair forms to fair practices, and from fair practices to
+fair notions, until from fair notions he arrives at the notion of absolute
+beauty, and at last knows what the essence of beauty is.  This, my dear
+Socrates,' said the stranger of Mantineia, 'is that life above all others
+which man should live, in the contemplation of beauty absolute; a beauty
+which if you once beheld, you would see not to be after the measure of
+gold, and garments, and fair boys and youths, whose presence now entrances
+you; and you and many a one would be content to live seeing them only and
+conversing with them without meat or drink, if that were possible--you only
+want to look at them and to be with them.  But what if man had eyes to see
+the true beauty--the divine beauty, I mean, pure and clear and unalloyed,
+not clogged with the pollutions of mortality and all the colours and
+vanities of human life--thither looking, and holding converse with the true
+beauty simple and divine?  Remember how in that communion only, beholding
+beauty with the eye of the mind, he will be enabled to bring forth, not
+images of beauty, but realities (for he has hold not of an image but of a
+reality), and bringing forth and nourishing true virtue to become the
+friend of God and be immortal, if mortal man may.  Would that be an ignoble
+life?'
+
+Such, Phaedrus--and I speak not only to you, but to all of you--were the
+words of Diotima; and I am persuaded of their truth.  And being persuaded
+of them, I try to persuade others, that in the attainment of this end human
+nature will not easily find a helper better than love:  And therefore,
+also, I say that every man ought to honour him as I myself honour him, and
+walk in his ways, and exhort others to do the same, and praise the power
+and spirit of love according to the measure of my ability now and ever.
+
+The words which I have spoken, you, Phaedrus, may call an encomium of love,
+or anything else which you please.
+
+When Socrates had done speaking, the company applauded, and Aristophanes
+was beginning to say something in answer to the allusion which Socrates had
+made to his own speech, when suddenly there was a great knocking at the
+door of the house, as of revellers, and the sound of a flute-girl was
+heard.  Agathon told the attendants to go and see who were the intruders. 
+'If they are friends of ours,' he said, 'invite them in, but if not, say
+that the drinking is over.'  A little while afterwards they heard the voice
+of Alcibiades resounding in the court; he was in a great state of
+intoxication, and kept roaring and shouting 'Where is Agathon?  Lead me to
+Agathon,' and at length, supported by the flute-girl and some of his
+attendants, he found his way to them.  'Hail, friends,' he said, appearing
+at the door crowned with a massive garland of ivy and violets, his head
+flowing with ribands.  'Will you have a very drunken man as a companion of
+your revels?  Or shall I crown Agathon, which was my intention in coming,
+and go away?  For I was unable to come yesterday, and therefore I am here
+to-day, carrying on my head these ribands, that taking them from my own
+head, I may crown the head of this fairest and wisest of men, as I may be
+allowed to call him.  Will you laugh at me because I am drunk?  Yet I know
+very well that I am speaking the truth, although you may laugh.  But first
+tell me; if I come in shall we have the understanding of which I spoke
+(supra Will you have a very drunken man? etc.)?  Will you drink with me or
+not?'
+
+The company were vociferous in begging that he would take his place among
+them, and Agathon specially invited him.  Thereupon he was led in by the
+people who were with him; and as he was being led, intending to crown
+Agathon, he took the ribands from his own head and held them in front of
+his eyes; he was thus prevented from seeing Socrates, who made way for him,
+and Alcibiades took the vacant place between Agathon and Socrates, and in
+taking the place he embraced Agathon and crowned him.  Take off his
+sandals, said Agathon, and let him make a third on the same couch.
+
+By all means; but who makes the third partner in our revels? said
+Alcibiades, turning round and starting up as he caught sight of Socrates. 
+By Heracles, he said, what is this? here is Socrates always lying in wait
+for me, and always, as his way is, coming out at all sorts of unsuspected
+places:  and now, what have you to say for yourself, and why are you lying
+here, where I perceive that you have contrived to find a place, not by a
+joker or lover of jokes, like Aristophanes, but by the fairest of the
+company?
+
+Socrates turned to Agathon and said:  I must ask you to protect me,
+Agathon; for the passion of this man has grown quite a serious matter to
+me.  Since I became his admirer I have never been allowed to speak to any
+other fair one, or so much as to look at them.  If I do, he goes wild with
+envy and jealousy, and not only abuses me but can hardly keep his hands off
+me, and at this moment he may do me some harm.  Please to see to this, and
+either reconcile me to him, or, if he attempts violence, protect me, as I
+am in bodily fear of his mad and passionate attempts.
+
+There can never be reconciliation between you and me, said Alcibiades; but
+for the present I will defer your chastisement.  And I must beg you,
+Agathon, to give me back some of the ribands that I may crown the
+marvellous head of this universal despot--I would not have him complain of
+me for crowning you, and neglecting him, who in conversation is the
+conqueror of all mankind; and this not only once, as you were the day
+before yesterday, but always.  Whereupon, taking some of the ribands, he
+crowned Socrates, and again reclined.
+
+Then he said:  You seem, my friends, to be sober, which is a thing not to
+be endured; you must drink--for that was the agreement under which I was
+admitted--and I elect myself master of the feast until you are well drunk. 
+Let us have a large goblet, Agathon, or rather, he said, addressing the
+attendant, bring me that wine-cooler.  The wine-cooler which had caught his
+eye was a vessel holding more than two quarts--this he filled and emptied,
+and bade the attendant fill it again for Socrates.  Observe, my friends,
+said Alcibiades, that this ingenious trick of mine will have no effect on
+Socrates, for he can drink any quantity of wine and not be at all nearer
+being drunk.  Socrates drank the cup which the attendant filled for him.
+
+Eryximachus said:  What is this, Alcibiades?  Are we to have neither
+conversation nor singing over our cups; but simply to drink as if we were
+thirsty?
+
+Alcibiades replied:  Hail, worthy son of a most wise and worthy sire!
+
+The same to you, said Eryximachus; but what shall we do?
+
+That I leave to you, said Alcibiades.
+
+'The wise physician skilled our wounds to heal (from Pope's Homer, Il.)'
+
+shall prescribe and we will obey.  What do you want?
+
+Well, said Eryximachus, before you appeared we had passed a resolution that
+each one of us in turn should make a speech in praise of love, and as good
+a one as he could:  the turn was passed round from left to right; and as
+all of us have spoken, and you have not spoken but have well drunken, you
+ought to speak, and then impose upon Socrates any task which you please,
+and he on his right hand neighbour, and so on.
+
+That is good, Eryximachus, said Alcibiades; and yet the comparison of a
+drunken man's speech with those of sober men is hardly fair; and I should
+like to know, sweet friend, whether you really believe what Socrates was
+just now saying; for I can assure you that the very reverse is the fact,
+and that if I praise any one but himself in his presence, whether God or
+man, he will hardly keep his hands off me.
+
+For shame, said Socrates.
+
+Hold your tongue, said Alcibiades, for by Poseidon, there is no one else
+whom I will praise when you are of the company.
+
+Well then, said Eryximachus, if you like praise Socrates.
+
+What do you think, Eryximachus? said Alcibiades:  shall I attack him and
+inflict the punishment before you all?
+
+What are you about? said Socrates; are you going to raise a laugh at my
+expense?  Is that the meaning of your praise?
+
+I am going to speak the truth, if you will permit me.
+
+I not only permit, but exhort you to speak the truth.
+
+Then I will begin at once, said Alcibiades, and if I say anything which is
+not true, you may interrupt me if you will, and say 'that is a lie,' though
+my intention is to speak the truth.  But you must not wonder if I speak any
+how as things come into my mind; for the fluent and orderly enumeration of
+all your singularities is not a task which is easy to a man in my
+condition.
+
+And now, my boys, I shall praise Socrates in a figure which will appear to
+him to be a caricature, and yet I speak, not to make fun of him, but only
+for the truth's sake.  I say, that he is exactly like the busts of Silenus,
+which are set up in the statuaries' shops, holding pipes and flutes in
+their mouths; and they are made to open in the middle, and have images of
+gods inside them.  I say also that he is like Marsyas the satyr.  You
+yourself will not deny, Socrates, that your face is like that of a satyr. 
+Aye, and there is a resemblance in other points too.  For example, you are
+a bully, as I can prove by witnesses, if you will not confess.  And are you
+not a flute-player?  That you are, and a performer far more wonderful than
+Marsyas.  He indeed with instruments used to charm the souls of men by the
+power of his breath, and the players of his music do so still:  for the
+melodies of Olympus (compare Arist. Pol.) are derived from Marsyas who
+taught them, and these, whether they are played by a great master or by a
+miserable flute-girl, have a power which no others have; they alone possess
+the soul and reveal the wants of those who have need of gods and mysteries,
+because they are divine.  But you produce the same effect with your words
+only, and do not require the flute:  that is the difference between you and
+him.  When we hear any other speaker, even a very good one, he produces
+absolutely no effect upon us, or not much, whereas the mere fragments of
+you and your words, even at second-hand, and however imperfectly repeated,
+amaze and possess the souls of every man, woman, and child who comes within
+hearing of them.  And if I were not afraid that you would think me
+hopelessly drunk, I would have sworn as well as spoken to the influence
+which they have always had and still have over me.  For my heart leaps
+within me more than that of any Corybantian reveller, and my eyes rain
+tears when I hear them.  And I observe that many others are affected in the
+same manner.  I have heard Pericles and other great orators, and I thought
+that they spoke well, but I never had any similar feeling; my soul was not
+stirred by them, nor was I angry at the thought of my own slavish state. 
+But this Marsyas has often brought me to such a pass, that I have felt as
+if I could hardly endure the life which I am leading (this, Socrates, you
+will admit); and I am conscious that if I did not shut my ears against him,
+and fly as from the voice of the siren, my fate would be like that of
+others,--he would transfix me, and I should grow old sitting at his feet. 
+For he makes me confess that I ought not to live as I do, neglecting the
+wants of my own soul, and busying myself with the concerns of the
+Athenians; therefore I hold my ears and tear myself away from him.  And he
+is the only person who ever made me ashamed, which you might think not to
+be in my nature, and there is no one else who does the same.  For I know
+that I cannot answer him or say that I ought not to do as he bids, but when
+I leave his presence the love of popularity gets the better of me.  And
+therefore I run away and fly from him, and when I see him I am ashamed of
+what I have confessed to him.  Many a time have I wished that he were dead,
+and yet I know that I should be much more sorry than glad, if he were to
+die:  so that I am at my wit's end.
+
+And this is what I and many others have suffered from the flute-playing of
+this satyr.  Yet hear me once more while I show you how exact the image is,
+and how marvellous his power.  For let me tell you; none of you know him;
+but I will reveal him to you; having begun, I must go on.  See you how fond
+he is of the fair?  He is always with them and is always being smitten by
+them, and then again he knows nothing and is ignorant of all things--such
+is the appearance which he puts on.  Is he not like a Silenus in this?  To
+be sure he is:  his outer mask is the carved head of the Silenus; but, O my
+companions in drink, when he is opened, what temperance there is residing
+within!  Know you that beauty and wealth and honour, at which the many
+wonder, are of no account with him, and are utterly despised by him:  he
+regards not at all the persons who are gifted with them; mankind are
+nothing to him; all his life is spent in mocking and flouting at them.  But
+when I opened him, and looked within at his serious purpose, I saw in him
+divine and golden images of such fascinating beauty that I was ready to do
+in a moment whatever Socrates commanded:  they may have escaped the
+observation of others, but I saw them.  Now I fancied that he was seriously
+enamoured of my beauty, and I thought that I should therefore have a grand
+opportunity of hearing him tell what he knew, for I had a wonderful opinion
+of the attractions of my youth.  In the prosecution of this design, when I
+next went to him, I sent away the attendant who usually accompanied me (I
+will confess the whole truth, and beg you to listen; and if I speak
+falsely, do you, Socrates, expose the falsehood).  Well, he and I were
+alone together, and I thought that when there was nobody with us, I should
+hear him speak the language which lovers use to their loves when they are
+by themselves, and I was delighted.  Nothing of the sort; he conversed as
+usual, and spent the day with me and then went away.  Afterwards I
+challenged him to the palaestra; and he wrestled and closed with me several
+times when there was no one present; I fancied that I might succeed in this
+manner.  Not a bit; I made no way with him.  Lastly, as I had failed
+hitherto, I thought that I must take stronger measures and attack him
+boldly, and, as I had begun, not give him up, but see how matters stood
+between him and me.  So I invited him to sup with me, just as if he were a
+fair youth, and I a designing lover.  He was not easily persuaded to come;
+he did, however, after a while accept the invitation, and when he came the
+first time, he wanted to go away at once as soon as supper was over, and I
+had not the face to detain him.  The second time, still in pursuance of my
+design, after we had supped, I went on conversing far into the night, and
+when he wanted to go away, I pretended that the hour was late and that he
+had much better remain.  So he lay down on the couch next to me, the same
+on which he had supped, and there was no one but ourselves sleeping in the
+apartment.  All this may be told without shame to any one.  But what
+follows I could hardly tell you if I were sober.  Yet as the proverb says,
+'In vino veritas,' whether with boys, or without them (In allusion to two
+proverbs.); and therefore I must speak.  Nor, again, should I be justified
+in concealing the lofty actions of Socrates when I come to praise him. 
+Moreover I have felt the serpent's sting; and he who has suffered, as they
+say, is willing to tell his fellow-sufferers only, as they alone will be
+likely to understand him, and will not be extreme in judging of the sayings
+or doings which have been wrung from his agony.  For I have been bitten by
+a more than viper's tooth; I have known in my soul, or in my heart, or in
+some other part, that worst of pangs, more violent in ingenuous youth than
+any serpent's tooth, the pang of philosophy, which will make a man say or
+do anything.  And you whom I see around me, Phaedrus and Agathon and
+Eryximachus and Pausanias and Aristodemus and Aristophanes, all of you, and
+I need not say Socrates himself, have had experience of the same madness
+and passion in your longing after wisdom.  Therefore listen and excuse my
+doings then and my sayings now.  But let the attendants and other profane
+and unmannered persons close up the doors of their ears.
+
+When the lamp was put out and the servants had gone away, I thought that I
+must be plain with him and have no more ambiguity.  So I gave him a shake,
+and I said:  'Socrates, are you asleep?'  'No,' he said.  'Do you know what
+I am meditating?  'What are you meditating?' he said.  'I think,' I
+replied, 'that of all the lovers whom I have ever had you are the only one
+who is worthy of me, and you appear to be too modest to speak.  Now I feel
+that I should be a fool to refuse you this or any other favour, and
+therefore I come to lay at your feet all that I have and all that my
+friends have, in the hope that you will assist me in the way of virtue,
+which I desire above all things, and in which I believe that you can help
+me better than any one else.  And I should certainly have more reason to be
+ashamed of what wise men would say if I were to refuse a favour to such as
+you, than of what the world, who are mostly fools, would say of me if I
+granted it.'  To these words he replied in the ironical manner which is so
+characteristic of him:--'Alcibiades, my friend, you have indeed an elevated
+aim if what you say is true, and if there really is in me any power by
+which you may become better; truly you must see in me some rare beauty of a
+kind infinitely higher than any which I see in you.  And therefore, if you
+mean to share with me and to exchange beauty for beauty, you will have
+greatly the advantage of me; you will gain true beauty in return for
+appearance--like Diomede, gold in exchange for brass.  But look again,
+sweet friend, and see whether you are not deceived in me.  The mind begins
+to grow critical when the bodily eye fails, and it will be a long time
+before you get old.'  Hearing this, I said:  'I have told you my purpose,
+which is quite serious, and do you consider what you think best for you and
+me.'  'That is good,' he said; 'at some other time then we will consider
+and act as seems best about this and about other matters.'  Whereupon, I
+fancied that he was smitten, and that the words which I had uttered like
+arrows had wounded him, and so without waiting to hear more I got up, and
+throwing my coat about him crept under his threadbare cloak, as the time of
+year was winter, and there I lay during the whole night having this
+wonderful monster in my arms.  This again, Socrates, will not be denied by
+you.  And yet, notwithstanding all, he was so superior to my solicitations,
+so contemptuous and derisive and disdainful of my beauty--which really, as
+I fancied, had some attractions--hear, O judges; for judges you shall be of
+the haughty virtue of Socrates--nothing more happened, but in the morning
+when I awoke (let all the gods and goddesses be my witnesses) I arose as
+from the couch of a father or an elder brother.
+
+What do you suppose must have been my feelings, after this rejection, at
+the thought of my own dishonour?  And yet I could not help wondering at his
+natural temperance and self-restraint and manliness.  I never imagined that
+I could have met with a man such as he is in wisdom and endurance.  And
+therefore I could not be angry with him or renounce his company, any more
+than I could hope to win him.  For I well knew that if Ajax could not be
+wounded by steel, much less he by money; and my only chance of captivating
+him by my personal attractions had failed.  So I was at my wit's end; no
+one was ever more hopelessly enslaved by another.  All this happened before
+he and I went on the expedition to Potidaea; there we messed together, and
+I had the opportunity of observing his extraordinary power of sustaining
+fatigue.  His endurance was simply marvellous when, being cut off from our
+supplies, we were compelled to go without food--on such occasions, which
+often happen in time of war, he was superior not only to me but to
+everybody; there was no one to be compared to him.  Yet at a festival he
+was the only person who had any real powers of enjoyment; though not
+willing to drink, he could if compelled beat us all at that,--wonderful to
+relate! no human being had ever seen Socrates drunk; and his powers, if I
+am not mistaken, will be tested before long.  His fortitude in enduring
+cold was also surprising.  There was a severe frost, for the winter in that
+region is really tremendous, and everybody else either remained indoors, or
+if they went out had on an amazing quantity of clothes, and were well shod,
+and had their feet swathed in felt and fleeces:  in the midst of this,
+Socrates with his bare feet on the ice and in his ordinary dress marched
+better than the other soldiers who had shoes, and they looked daggers at
+him because he seemed to despise them.
+
+I have told you one tale, and now I must tell you another, which is worth
+hearing,
+
+'Of the doings and sufferings of the enduring man'
+
+while he was on the expedition.  One morning he was thinking about
+something which he could not resolve; he would not give it up, but
+continued thinking from early dawn until noon--there he stood fixed in
+thought; and at noon attention was drawn to him, and the rumour ran through
+the wondering crowd that Socrates had been standing and thinking about
+something ever since the break of day.  At last, in the evening after
+supper, some Ionians out of curiosity (I should explain that this was not
+in winter but in summer), brought out their mats and slept in the open air
+that they might watch him and see whether he would stand all night.  There
+he stood until the following morning; and with the return of light he
+offered up a prayer to the sun, and went his way (compare supra).  I will
+also tell, if you please--and indeed I am bound to tell--of his courage in
+battle; for who but he saved my life?  Now this was the engagement in which
+I received the prize of valour:  for I was wounded and he would not leave
+me, but he rescued me and my arms; and he ought to have received the prize
+of valour which the generals wanted to confer on me partly on account of my
+rank, and I told them so, (this, again, Socrates will not impeach or deny),
+but he was more eager than the generals that I and not he should have the
+prize.  There was another occasion on which his behaviour was very
+remarkable--in the flight of the army after the battle of Delium, where he
+served among the heavy-armed,--I had a better opportunity of seeing him
+than at Potidaea, for I was myself on horseback, and therefore
+comparatively out of danger.  He and Laches were retreating, for the troops
+were in flight, and I met them and told them not to be discouraged, and
+promised to remain with them; and there you might see him, Aristophanes, as
+you describe (Aristoph. Clouds), just as he is in the streets of Athens,
+stalking like a pelican, and rolling his eyes, calmly contemplating enemies
+as well as friends, and making very intelligible to anybody, even from a
+distance, that whoever attacked him would be likely to meet with a stout
+resistance; and in this way he and his companion escaped--for this is the
+sort of man who is never touched in war; those only are pursued who are
+running away headlong.  I particularly observed how superior he was to
+Laches in presence of mind.  Many are the marvels which I might narrate in
+praise of Socrates; most of his ways might perhaps be paralleled in another
+man, but his absolute unlikeness to any human being that is or ever has
+been is perfectly astonishing.  You may imagine Brasidas and others to have
+been like Achilles; or you may imagine Nestor and Antenor to have been like
+Pericles; and the same may be said of other famous men, but of this strange
+being you will never be able to find any likeness, however remote, either
+among men who now are or who ever have been--other than that which I have
+already suggested of Silenus and the satyrs; and they represent in a figure
+not only himself, but his words.  For, although I forgot to mention this to
+you before, his words are like the images of Silenus which open; they are
+ridiculous when you first hear them; he clothes himself in language that is
+like the skin of the wanton satyr--for his talk is of pack-asses and smiths
+and cobblers and curriers, and he is always repeating the same things in
+the same words (compare Gorg.), so that any ignorant or inexperienced
+person might feel disposed to laugh at him; but he who opens the bust and
+sees what is within will find that they are the only words which have a
+meaning in them, and also the most divine, abounding in fair images of
+virtue, and of the widest comprehension, or rather extending to the whole
+duty of a good and honourable man.
+
+This, friends, is my praise of Socrates.  I have added my blame of him for
+his ill-treatment of me; and he has ill-treated not only me, but Charmides
+the son of Glaucon, and Euthydemus the son of Diocles, and many others in
+the same way--beginning as their lover he has ended by making them pay
+their addresses to him.  Wherefore I say to you, Agathon, 'Be not deceived
+by him; learn from me and take warning, and do not be a fool and learn by
+experience, as the proverb says.'
+
+When Alcibiades had finished, there was a laugh at his outspokenness; for
+he seemed to be still in love with Socrates.  You are sober, Alcibiades,
+said Socrates, or you would never have gone so far about to hide the
+purpose of your satyr's praises, for all this long story is only an
+ingenious circumlocution, of which the point comes in by the way at the
+end; you want to get up a quarrel between me and Agathon, and your notion
+is that I ought to love you and nobody else, and that you and you only
+ought to love Agathon.  But the plot of this Satyric or Silenic drama has
+been detected, and you must not allow him, Agathon, to set us at variance.
+
+I believe you are right, said Agathon, and I am disposed to think that his
+intention in placing himself between you and me was only to divide us; but
+he shall gain nothing by that move; for I will go and lie on the couch next
+to you.
+
+Yes, yes, replied Socrates, by all means come here and lie on the couch
+below me.
+
+Alas, said Alcibiades, how I am fooled by this man; he is determined to get
+the better of me at every turn.  I do beseech you, allow Agathon to lie
+between us.
+
+Certainly not, said Socrates, as you praised me, and I in turn ought to
+praise my neighbour on the right, he will be out of order in praising me
+again when he ought rather to be praised by me, and I must entreat you to
+consent to this, and not be jealous, for I have a great desire to praise
+the youth.
+
+Hurrah! cried Agathon, I will rise instantly, that I may be praised by
+Socrates.
+
+The usual way, said Alcibiades; where Socrates is, no one else has any
+chance with the fair; and now how readily has he invented a specious reason
+for attracting Agathon to himself.
+
+Agathon arose in order that he might take his place on the couch by
+Socrates, when suddenly a band of revellers entered, and spoiled the order
+of the banquet.  Some one who was going out having left the door open, they
+had found their way in, and made themselves at home; great confusion
+ensued, and every one was compelled to drink large quantities of wine. 
+Aristodemus said that Eryximachus, Phaedrus, and others went away--he
+himself fell asleep, and as the nights were long took a good rest:  he was
+awakened towards daybreak by a crowing of cocks, and when he awoke, the
+others were either asleep, or had gone away; there remained only Socrates,
+Aristophanes, and Agathon, who were drinking out of a large goblet which
+they passed round, and Socrates was discoursing to them.  Aristodemus was
+only half awake, and he did not hear the beginning of the discourse; the
+chief thing which he remembered was Socrates compelling the other two to
+acknowledge that the genius of comedy was the same with that of tragedy,
+and that the true artist in tragedy was an artist in comedy also.  To this
+they were constrained to assent, being drowsy, and not quite following the
+argument.  And first of all Aristophanes dropped off, then, when the day
+was already dawning, Agathon.  Socrates, having laid them to sleep, rose to
+depart; Aristodemus, as his manner was, following him.  At the Lyceum he
+took a bath, and passed the day as usual.  In the evening he retired to
+rest at his own home.
+
+
+
+
+
+End of this Project Gutenberg Etext of Symposium, by Plato
+
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