 |  |  |  |  |
| | | | |
Commentary: Quite a few comments have been posted aboutSymposium.
Download: A 116ktext-only version isavailable for download.
APOLLODORUS, who repeats to his companion the dialogue which he had heardfrom Aristodemus, and had already once narrated to Glaucon
PHAEDRUS
PAUSANIAS
ERYXIMACHUS
ARISTOPHANES
AGATHON
SOCRATES
ALCIBIADES
A TROOP OF REVELLERS
The House of Agathon.
Concerning the things about which you ask to be informed I believethat I am not ill-prepared with an answer. For the day before yesterdayI 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, hind, out playfully in the distance,said: Apollodorus, O thou Phalerian man, halt! So I did as I was bid; andthen he said, I was looking for you, Apollodorus, only just now, that Imight ask you about the speeches in praise of love, which were deliveredby Socrates, Alcibiades, and others, at Agathon's supper. Phoenix, theson of Philip, told another person who told me of them; his narrative wasvery indistinct, but he said that you knew, and I wish that you would giveme an account of them. Who, if not you, should be the reporter of the wordsof your friend? And first tell me, he said, were you present at thismeeting?
Your informant, Glaucon, I said, must have been very indistinctindeed, if you imagine that the occasion was recent; or that I could havebeen of the party.
Why, yes, he replied, I thought so.
Impossible: I said. Are you ignorant that for many yearsAgathon has not resided at Athens; and not three have elapsed since I becameacquainted with Socrates, and have made it my daily business to know allthat 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 thing,no better than you are now. I thought that I ought to do anything ratherthan be a philosopher.
Well, he said, jesting apart, tell me when the meetingoccurred.
In our boyhood, I replied, when Agathon won the prize with his firsttragedy, on the day after that on which he and his chorus offered the sacrificeof victory.
Then it must have been a long while ago, he said; and who toldyou-did Socrates?
No indeed, I replied, but the same person who told Phoenix;-hewas a little fellow, who never wore any shoes Aristodemus, of the demeof Cydathenaeum. He had been at Agathon's feast; and I think that in thosedays 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, andhe 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 anotherrehearsal of them if you like. For to speak or to hear others speak ofphilosophy always gives me the greatest pleasure, to say nothing of theprofit. But when I hear another strain, especially that of you rich menand traders, such conversation displeases me; and I pity you who are mycompanions, because you think that you are doing something when in realityyou are doing nothing. And I dare say that you pity me in return, whomyou regard as an unhappy creature, and very probably you are right. ButI certainly know of you what you only think of me-there is thedifference.
Companion. I see, Apollodorus, that you are just the same-alwaysspeaking evil of yourself, and of others; and I do believe that you pityall mankind, with the exception of Socrates, yourself first of all, truein this to your old name, which, however deserved I know how you acquired,of Apollodorus the madman; for you are always raging against yourself andeverybody but Socrates.
Apollodorus. Yes, friend, and the reason why I am said tobe mad, and out of my wits, is just because I have these notions of myselfand you; no other evidence is required.
Com. No more of that, Apollodorus; but let me renew my requestthat you would repeat the conversation.
Apoll. Well, the tale of love was on this wise:-But perhapsI had better begin at the beginning, and endeavour to give you the exactwords 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 wasgoing that he had been converted into such a beau:-
To a banquet at Agathon's, he replied, whose invitation to hissacrifice of victory I refused yesterday, fearing a crowd, but promisingthat I would come to-day instead; and so I have put on my finery, becausehe is such a fine man. What say you to going with meunasked?
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 ofwhich our proverb will run:-
To the feasts of the good the good unbidden go; and this alterationmay be supported by the authority of Homer himself, who not only demolishesbut literally outrages the proverb. For, after picturing Agamemnon as themost valiant of men, he makes Menelaus, who is but a fainthearted warrior,come unbidden to the banquet of Agamemnon, who is feasting and offeringsacrifices, not the better to the worse, but the worse to thebetter.
I rather fear, Socrates, said Aristodemus, lest this may stillbe my case; and that, like Menelaus in Homer, I shall be the inferior person,who
To the leasts of the wise unbidden goes. But I shall say that Iwas bidden of you, and then you will have to make anexcuse.
Two going together, he replied, in Homeric fashion, one or otherof them may invent an excuse by the way.
This was the style of their conversation as they went along. Socratesdropped behind in a fit of abstraction, and desired Aristodemus, who waswaiting, to go on before him. When he reached the house of Agathon he foundthe doors wide open, and a comical thing happened. A servant coming outmet him, and led him at once into the banqueting-hall in which the guestswere 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 waslooking for you yesterday and meant to have asked you, if I could havefound you. But what have you done with Socrates?
I turned round, but Socrates was nowhere to be seen; and I hadto explain that he had been with me a moment before, and that I came byhis invitation to the supper.
You were quite right in coming, said Agathon; but where is hehimself?
He was behind me just now, as I entered, he said, and I cannotthink what has become of him.
Go and look for him, boy, said Agathon, and bring him in; and doyou, Aristodemus, meanwhile take the place by Eryximachus.
The servant then assisted him to wash, and he lay down, and presentlyanother servant came in and reported that our friend Socrates had retiredinto 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 keepcalling him.
Let him alone, said my informant; he has a way of stopping anywhereand 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 waitingfor him. Serve up whatever you please, for there; is no one to give youorders; hitherto I have never left you to yourselves. But on this occasionimagine that you art 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 expresseda wish to send for him, but Aristodemus objected; and at last when thefeast was about half over-for the fit, as usual, was not of long duration-Socratesentered; Agathon, who was reclining alone at the end of the table, beggedthat 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 inthe portico, and is now in your possession; for I am certain that you wouldnot 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 the emptier man,as water runs through wool out of a fuller cup into an emptier one; ifthat were so, how greatly should I value the privilege of reclining atyour side! For you would have filled me full with a stream of wisdom plenteousand fair; whereas my own is of a very mean and questionable sort, no betterthan a dream. But yours is bright and full of promise, and was manifestedforth in all the splendour of youth the day before yesterday, in the presenceof more than thirty thousand Hellenes.
You are mocking, Socrates, said Agathon, and ere long you and Iwill have to determine who bears off the palm of wisdom-of this Dionysusshall be the judge; but at present you are better occupied withsupper.
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 thegod, and there had been the usual ceremonies, they were about to commencedrinking, when Pausanias said, And now, my friends, how can we drink withleast injury to ourselves? I can assure you that I feel severely the effectof yesterday's potations, and must have time to recover; and I suspectthat most of you are in the same predicament, for you were of the partyyesterday. Consider then: How can the drinking be madeeasiest?
I entirely agree, said Aristophanes, that we should, by all means,avoid hard drinking, for I was myself one of those who were yesterday drownedin 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 ableto drink hard?
I am not equal to it, said Agathon.
Then, the Eryximachus, the weak heads like myself, Aristodemus, Phaedrus,and others who never can drink, are fortunate in finding that the strongerones are not in a drinking mood. (I do not include Socrates, who is ableeither 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 forgivenfor saying, as a physician, that drinking deep is a bad practice, whichI 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'scarouse.
I always do what you advise, and especially what you prescribeas a physician, rejoined Phaedrus the Myrrhinusian, and the rest of thecompany, 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 theypleased.
Then, said Eryximachus, as you are all agreed that drinking isto be voluntary, and that there is to be no compulsion, I move, in thenext place, that the flute-girl, who has just made her appearance, be toldto go away and play to herself, or, if she likes, to the women who arewithin. To-day let us have conversation instead; and, if you will allowme, I will tell you what sort of conversation. This proposal having beenaccepted, Eryximachus proceeded as follows:-
I will begin, he said, after the manner of Melanippe inEuripides,
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 itis, Eryximachus, that, whereas other gods have poems and hymns made intheir honour, the great and glorious god, Love, has no encomiast amongall the poets who are so many. There are the worthy sophists too-the excellentProdicus for example, who have descanted in prose on the virtues of Heraclesand other heroes; and, what is still more extraordinary, I have met witha philosophical work in which the utility of salt has been made the themeof an eloquent discourse; and many other like things have had a like honourbestowed upon them. And only to think that there should have been an eagerinterest created about them, and yet that to this day no one has ever daredworthily to hymn Love's praises! So entirely has this great deity beenneglected." Now in this Phaedrus seems to me to be quite right, and thereforeI want to offer him a contribution; also I think that at the present momentwe who are here assembled cannot do better than honour the. god Love. Ifyou agree with me, there will be no lack of conversation; for I mean topropose that each of us in turn, going from left to right, shall make aspeech 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 fatherof the thought, shall begin.
No one will vote against you, Eryximachus, said Socrates. How canI oppose your motion, who profess to understand nothing but matters oflove; nor, I presume, will Agathon and Pausanias; and there can be no doubtof Aristophanes, whose whole concern is with Dionysus and Aphrodite; norwill any one disagree of those whom I, see around me. The proposal, asI am aware, may seem rather hard upon us whose place is last; but we shallbe contented if we hear some good speeches first. Let Phaedrus begin thepraise 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 recollectall that he related to me; but I will tell you what I thought most worthyof remembrance, and what the chief speakers said.
Phaedrus began by affirming that love is a mighty god, and wonderfulamong gods and men, but especially wonderful in his birth. For he is theeldest of the gods, which is an honour to him; and a proof of his claimto this honour is, that of his parents there is no memorial; neither poetnor prose-writer has ever affirmed that he had any. As Hesiodsays:
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 agreeswith Hesiod. Thus numerous are the witnesses who acknowledge Love to bethe eldest of the gods. And not only is he the eldest, he is also the sourceof the greatest benefits to us. For I know not any greater blessing toa young man who is beginning life than a virtuous lover or to the loverthan a beloved youth. For the principle which ought to be the guide ofmen who would nobly live at principle, I say, neither kindred, nor honour,nor wealth, nor any other motive is able to implant so well as love. Ofwhat am I speaking? Of the sense of honour and dishonour, without whichneither states nor individuals ever do any good or great work. And I saythat a lover who is detected in doing any dishonourable act, or submittingthrough cowardice when any dishonour is done to him by another, will bemore pained at being detected by his beloved than at being seen by hisfather, or by his companions, or by any one else. The beloved too, whenhe is found in any disgraceful situation, has the same feeling about hislover. And if there were only some way of contriving that a state or anarmy should be made up of lovers and their loves, they would be the verybest governors of their own city, abstaining from all dishonour, and emulatingone another in honour; and when fighting at each other's side, althougha mere handful, they would overcome the world. For what lover would notchoose rather to be seen by all mankind than by his beloved, either whenabandoning his post or throwing away his arms? He would be ready to diea thousand deaths rather than endure this. Or who would desert his belovedor fail him in the hour of danger? The veriest coward would become an inspiredhero, equal to the bravest, at such a time; Love would inspire him. Thatcourage 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; andwomen as well as men. Of this, Alcestis, the daughter of Pelias, is a monumentto all Hellas; for she was willing to lay down her life on behalf of herhusband, when no one else would, although he had a father and mother; butthe tenderness of her love so far exceeded theirs, that she made them seemto be strangers in blood to their own son, and in name only related tohim; and so noble did this action of hers appear to the gods, as well asto men, that among the many who have done virtuously she is one of thevery few to whom, in admiration of her noble action, they have grantedthe privilege of returning alive to earth; such exceeding honour is paidby the gods to the devotion and virtue of love. But Orpheus, the son ofOeagrus, the harper, they sent empty away, and presented to him an apparitiononly of her whom he sought, but herself they would not give up, becausehe showed no spirit; he was only a harp-player, and did not-dare like Alcestisto 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 thepunishment of his cowardliness. Very different was the reward of the truelove of Achilles towards his lover Patroclus-his lover and not his love(the notion that Patroclus was the beloved one is a foolish error intowhich 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 wasstill beardless, and younger far). And greatly as the gods honour the virtueof love, still the return of love on the part of the beloved to the loveris more admired and valued and rewarded by them, for the lover is moredivine; because he is inspired by God. Now Achilles was quite aware, forhe 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. Neverthelesshe gave his life to revenge his friend, and dared to die, not only in hisdefence, but after he was dead Wherefore the gods honoured him even aboveAlcestis, and sent him to the Islands of the Blest. These are my reasonsfor affirming that Love is the eldest and noblest and mightiest of thegods; and the chiefest author and giver of virtue in life, and of happinessafter death.
This, or something like this, was the speech of Phaedrus; and someother speeches followed which Aristodemus did not remember; the next whichhe repeated was that of Pausanias. Phaedrus, he said, the argument hasnot been set before us, I think, quite in the right form;-we should notbe called upon to praise Love in such an indiscriminate manner. If therewere only one Love, then what you said would be well enough; but sincethere are more Loves than one,-should have begun by determining which ofthem was to be the theme of our praises. I will amend this defect; andfirst of all I would tell you which Love is deserving of praise, and thentry to hymn the praiseworthy one in a manner worthy of him. For we allknow that Love is inseparable from Aphrodite, and if there were only oneAphrodite there would be only one Love; but as there are two goddessesthere must be two Loves.
And am I not right in asserting that there are two goddesses? Theelder one, having no mother, who is called the heavenly Aphrodite-she isthe daughter of Uranus; the younger, who is the daughter of Zeus and Dione-herwe call common; and the Love who is her fellow-worker is rightly namedcommon, as the other love is called heavenly. All the gods ought to havepraise given to them, but not without distinction of their natures; andtherefore I must try to distinguish the characters of the two Loves. Nowactions vary according to the manner of their performance. Take, for example,that which we are now doing, drinking, singing and talking these actionsare not in themselves either good or evil, but they turn out in this orthat way according to the mode of performing them; and when well done theyare good, and when wrongly done they are evil; and in like manner not everylove, 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, andis apt to be of women as well as of youths, and is of the body rather thanof the soul-the most foolish beings are the objects of this love whichdesires only to gain an end, but never thinks of accomplishing the endnobly, and therefore does good and evil quite indiscriminately. The goddesswho is his mother is far younger than the other, and she was born of theunion of the male and female, and partakes of both.
But the offspring of the heavenly Aphrodite is derived from a motherin whose birth the female has no part,-she is from the male only; thisis that love which is of youths, and the goddess being older, there isnothing of wantonness in her. Those who are inspired by this love turnto the male, and delight in him who is the more valiant and intelligentnature; any one may recognise the pure enthusiasts in the very characterof their attachments. For they love not boys, but intelligent, beings whosereason is beginning to be developed, much about the time at which theirbeards 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 companywith them, not to take them in their inexperience, and deceive them, andplay the fool with them, or run away from one to another of them. But thelove of young boys should be forbidden by law, because their future isuncertain; they may turn out good or bad, either in body or soul, and muchnoble enthusiasm may be thrown away upon them; in this matter the goodare a law to themselves, and the coarser sort of lovers ought to be restrainedby force; as we restrain or attempt to restrain them from fixing theiraffections on women of free birth. These are the persons who bring a reproachon love; and some have been led to deny the lawfulness of such attachmentsbecause they see the impropriety and evil of them; for surely nothing thatis 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 andBoeotia, 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 youngor old, has anything to say to their discredit; the reason being, as Isuppose, that they are men of few words in those parts, and therefore thelovers do not like the trouble of pleading their suit. In Ionia and otherplaces, and generally in countries which are subject to the barbarians,the custom is held to be dishonourable; loves of youths share the evilrepute in which philosophy and gymnastics are held because they are inimicalto tyranny; for the interests of rulers require that their subjects shouldbe poor in spirit and that there should be no strong bond of friendshipor society among them, which love, above all other motives, is likely toinspire, as our Athenian tyrants-learned by experience; for the love ofAristogeiton and the constancy of Harmodius had strength which undid theirpower. And, therefore, the ill-repute into which these attachments havefallen is to be ascribed to the evil condition of those who make them tobe ill-reputed; that is to say, to the self-seeking of the governors andthe cowardice of the governed; on the other hand, the indiscriminate honourwhich is given to them in some countries is attributable to the lazinessof those who hold this opinion of them. In our own country a far betterprinciple prevails, but, as I was saying, the explanation of it is ratherperplexing. For, observe that open loves are held to be more honourablethan secret ones, and that the love of the noblest and highest, even iftheir persons are less beautiful than others, is especiallyhonourable.
Consider, too, how great is the encouragement which all the worldgives 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 thepursuit of his love the custom of mankind allows him to do many strangethings, which philosophy would bitterly censure if they were done fromany 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 slaveryworse than that of any slave-in any other case friends and enemies wouldbe equally ready to prevent him, but now there is no friend who will beashamed of him and admonish him, and no enemy will charge him with meannessor flattery; the actions of a lover have a grace which ennobles them; andcustom has decided that they are highly commendable and that there no lossof character in them; and, what is strangest of all, he only may swearand 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 libertywhich gods and men have allowed the lover, according to the custom whichprevails in our part of the world. From this point of view a man fairlyargues in Athens to love and to be loved is held to be a very honourablething. But when parents forbid their sons to talk with their lovers, andplace 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 sortwhich they may observe, and their elders refuse to silence the reproversand 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 wassaying at first, the truth as I imagine is, that whether such practicesare honourable or whether they are dishonourable is not a simple question;they are honourable to him who follows them honourably, dishonourable tohim who follows them dishonourably. There is dishonour in yielding to theevil, 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 initself unstable, and therefore when the bloom of youth which he was desiringis 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 becomesone with the everlasting. The custom of our country would have both ofthem proven well and truly, and would have us yield to the one sort oflover and avoid the other, and therefore encourages some to pursue, andothers to fly; testing both the lover and beloved in contests and trials,until they show to which of the two classes they respectively belong. Andthis is the reason why, in the first place, a hasty attachment is heldto be dishonourable, because time is the true test of this as of most otherthings; and secondly there is a dishonour in being overcome by the loveof money, or of wealth, or of political power, whether a man is frightenedinto surrender by the loss of them, or, having experienced the benefitsof money and political corruption, is unable to rise above the seductionsof them. For none of these things are of a permanent or lasting nature;not to mention that no generous friendship ever sprang from them. Thereremains, then, only one way of honourable attachment which custom allowsin the beloved, and this is the way of virtue; for as we admitted thatany service which the lover does to him is not to be accounted flatteryor a dishonour to himself, so the beloved has one way only of voluntaryservice which is not dishonourable, and this is virtuousservice.
For we have a custom, and according to our custom any one who doesservice to another under the idea that he will be improved by him eitherin 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 chargeof flattery. And these two customs, one the love of youth, and the otherthe practice of philosophy and virtue in general, ought to meet in one,and then the beloved may honourably indulge the lover. For when the loverand beloved come together, having each of them a law, and the lover thinksthat he is right in doing any service which he can to his gracious lovingone; and the other that he is right in showing any kindness which he canto him who is making him wise and good; the one capable of communicatingwisdom and virtue, the other seeking to acquire them with a view to educationand 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 whenlove 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 disgracedall the same: for he has done his best to show that he would give himselfup 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 isa good man, and in the hope that he will be improved by his company, showshimself to be virtuous, even though the object of his affection turn outto be a villain, and to have no virtue; and if he is deceived he has committeda noble error. For he has proved that for his part he will do anythingfor anybody with a view to virtue and improvement, than which there canbe nothing nobler. Thus noble in every case is the acceptance of anotherfor the sake of virtue. This is that love which is the love of the heavenlygodess, 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, whichis as good as I could make extempore.
Pausanias came to a pause-this is the balanced way in which I havebeen taught by the wise to speak; and Aristodemus said that the turn ofAristophanes was next, but either he had eaten too much, or from some othercause he had the hiccough, and was obliged to change turns with Eryximachusthe physician, who was reclining on the couch below him. Eryximachus, hesaid, you ought either to stop my hiccough, or to speak in my turn untilI have left off.
I will do both, said Eryximachus: I will speak in your turn, anddo you speak in mine; and while I am speaking let me recommend you to holdyour breath, and if after you have done so for some time the hiccough isno 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 fairbeginning, 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 artfurther informs me that the double love is not merely an affection of thesoul of man towards the fair, or towards anything, but is to be found inthe bodies of all animals and in productions of the earth, and I may sayin all that is; such is the conclusion which I seem to have gathered frommy own art of medicine, whence I learn how great and wonderful and universalis the deity of love, whose empire extends over all things, divine as wellas human. And from medicine I would begin that I may do honour to my art.There are in the human body these two kinds of love, which are confessedlydifferent and unlike, and being unlike, they have loves and desires whichare unlike; and the desire of the healthy is one, and the desire of thediseased is another; and as Pausanias was just now saying that to indulgegood men is honourable, and bad men dishonourable:-so too in the body thegood and healthy elements are to be indulged, and the bad elements andthe elements of disease are not to be indulged, but discouraged. And thisis 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 anddesires of the body, and how to satisfy them or not; and the best physicianis he who is able to separate fair love from foul, or to convert one intothe other; and he who knows how to eradicate and how to implant love, whicheveris required, and can reconcile the most hostile elements in the constitutionand make them loving friends, is skilful practitioner. Now the: most hostileare the most opposite, such as hot and cold, bitter and sweet, moist anddry, and the like. And my ancestor, Asclepius, knowing how-to implant friendshipand accord in these elements, was the creator of our art, as our friendsthe poets here tell us, and I believe them; and not only medicine in everybranch but the arts of gymnastic and husbandry are under hisdominion.
Any one who pays the least attention to the subject will also perceivethat in music there is the same reconciliation of opposites; and I supposethat this must have been the meaning, of Heracleitus, although, his wordsare not accurate, for he says that is united by disunion, like the harmony-ofbow and the lyre. Now there is an absurdity saying that harmony is discordor is composed of elements which are still in a state of discord. But whathe probably meant was, that, harmony is composed of differing notes ofhigher or lower pitch which disagreed once, but are now reconciled by theart of music; for if the higher and lower notes still disagreed, therecould be there could be no harmony-clearly not. For harmony is a symphony,and symphony is an agreement; but an agreement of disagreements while theydisagree there cannot be; you cannot harmonize that which disagrees. Inlike manner rhythm is compounded of elements short and long, once differingand now-in accord; which accordance, as in the former instance, medicine,so in all these other cases, music implants, making love and unison togrow up among them; and thus music, too, is concerned with the principlesof love in their application to harmony and rhythm. Again, in the essentialnature of harmony and rhythm there is no difficulty in discerning lovewhich has not yet become double. But when you want to use them in actuallife, either in the composition of songs or in the correct performanceof airs or metres composed already, which latter is called education, thenthe difficulty begins, and the good artist is needed. Then the old talehas to be repeated of fair and heavenly love -the love of Urania the fairand heavenly muse, and of the duty of accepting the temperate, and thosewho are as yet intemperate only that they may become temperate, and ofpreserving their love; and again, of the vulgar Polyhymnia, who must beused with circumspection that the pleasure be enjoyed, but may not generatelicentiousness; just as in my own art it is a great matter so to regulatethe desires of the epicure that he may gratify his tastes without the attendantevil of disease. Whence I infer that in music, in medicine, in all otherthings human as which as divine, both loves ought to be noted as far asmay 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 noharm; whereas the wanton love, getting the upper hand and affecting theseasons of the year, is very destructive and injurious, being the sourceof pestilence, and bringing many other kinds of diseases on animals andplants; for hoar-frost and hail and blight spring from the excesses anddisorders of these elements of love, which to know in relation to the revolutionsof the heavenly bodies and the seasons of the year is termed astronomy.Furthermore all sacrifices and the whole province of divination, whichis the art of communion between gods and men-these, I say, are concernedwith the preservation of the good and the cure of the evil love. For allmanner of impiety is likely to ensue if, instead of accepting and honouringand reverencing the harmonious love in all his actions, a man honours theother love, whether in his feelings towards gods or parents, towards theliving or the dead. Wherefore the business of divination is to see to theseloves and to heal them, and divination is the peacemaker of gods and men,working by a knowledge of the religious or irreligious tendencies whichexist in human loves. Such is the great and mighty, or rather omnipotentforce of love in general. And the love, more especially, which is concernedwith 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 ofall our happiness and harmony, and makes us friends with the gods who areabove us, and with one another. I dare say that I too have omitted severalthings 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 lineof commendation; for I perceive that you are rid of thehiccough.
Yes, said Aristophanes, who followed, the hiccough is gone; not,however, until I applied the sneezing; and I wonder whether the harmonyof the body has a love of such noises and ticklings, for I no sooner appliedthe sneezing than I was cured.
Eryximachus said: Beware, friend Aristophanes, although you aregoing to speak, you are making fun of me; and I shall have to watch andsee whether I cannot have a laugh at your expense, when you might speakin 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 Iam about to make, instead of others laughing with me, which is to the mannerborn of our muse and would be all the better, I shall only be laughed atby 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 calledto account, I may be induced to let you off.
Aristophanes professed to open another vein of discourse; he hada mind to praise Love in another way, unlike that either of Pausanias orEryximachus. 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 understoodhim they would surely have built noble temples and altars, and offeredsolemn sacrifices in his honour; but this is not done, and most certainlyought to be done: since of all the gods he is the best friend of men, thehelper and the healer of the ills which are the great impediment to thehappiness of the race. I will try to describe his power to you, and youshall teach the rest of the world what I am teaching you. In the firstplace, let me treat of the nature of man and what has happened to it; forthe original human nature was not like the present, but different. Thesexes were not two as they are now, but originally three in number; therewas man, woman, and the union of the two, having a name corresponding tothis double nature, which had once a real existence, but is now lost, andthe word "Androgynous" is only preserved as a term of reproach. In thesecond place, the primeval man was round, his back and sides forming acircle; and he had four hands and four feet, one head with two faces, lookingopposite ways, set on a round neck and precisely alike; also four ears,two privy members, and the remainder to correspond. He could walk uprightas men now do, backwards or forwards as he pleased, and he could also rollover 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 theair; this was when he wanted to run fast. Now the sexes were three, andsuch as I have described them; because the sun, moon, and earth are three;-andthe man was originally the child of the sun, the woman of the earth, andthe man-woman of the moon, which is made up of sun and earth, and theywere all round and moved round and round: like their parents. Terriblewas 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 Otysand Ephialtes who, as Homer says, dared to scale heaven, and would havelaid hands upon the gods. Doubt reigned in the celestial councils. Shouldthey kill them and annihilate the race with thunderbolts, as they had donethe giants, then there would be an end of the sacrifices and worship whichmen offered to them; but, on the other hand, the gods could not suffertheir 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 improvetheir manners; men shall continue to exist, but I will cut them in twoand then they will be diminished in strength and increased in numbers;this will have the advantage of making them more profitable to us. Theyshall walk upright on two legs, and if they continue insolent and willnot be quiet, I will split them again and they shall hop about on a singleleg." He spoke and cut men in two, like a sorb-apple which is halved forpickling, or as you might divide an egg with a hair; and as he cut themone after another, he bade Apollo give the face and the half of the necka 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 healtheir wounds and compose their forms. So he gave a turn to the face andpulled the skin from the sides all over that which in our language is calledthe belly, like the purses which draw in, and he made one mouth at thecentre, 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 ashoemaker might smooth leather upon a last; he left a few, however, inthe 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 mutualembraces, longing to grow into one, they were on the point of dying fromhunger 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 soughtanother mate, man or woman as we call them, being the sections of entiremen or women, and clung to that. They were being destroyed, when Zeus inpity of them invented a new plan: he turned the parts of generation roundto the front, for this had not been always their position and they sowedthe seed no longer as hitherto like grasshoppers in the ground, but inone another; and after the transposition the male generated in the femalein 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 thedesire of one another which is implanted in us, reuniting our originalnature, making one of two, and healing the state ofman.
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 Androgynousare lovers of women; adulterers are generally of this breed, and also adulterouswomen who lust after men: the women who are a section of the woman do notcare for men, but have female attachments; the female companions are ofthis sort. But they who are a section of the male follow the male, andwhile they are young, being slices of the original man, they hang aboutmen 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 areshameless, but this is not true; for they do not act thus from any wantof 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 becomeour statesmen, and these only, which is a great proof of the truth of whatI am saving. When they reach manhood they are loves of youth, and are notnaturally inclined to marry or beget children,-if at all, they do so onlyin obedience to the law; but they are satisfied if they may be allowedto live with one another unwedded; and such a nature is prone to love andready to return love, always embracing that which is akin to him. And whenone of them meets with his other half, the actual half of himself, whetherhe be a lover of youth or a lover of another sort, the pair are lost inan amazement of love and friendship and intimacy, and would not be outof the other's sight, as I may say, even for a moment: these are the peoplewho pass their whole lives together; yet they could not explain what theydesire of one another. For the intense yearning which each of them hastowards 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 cannottell, and of which she has only a dark and doubtful presentiment. SupposeHephaestus, 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?" theywould be unable to explain. And suppose further, that when he saw theirperplexity he said: "Do you desire to be wholly one; always day and nightto be in one another's company? for if this is what you desire, I am readyto melt you into one and let you grow together, so that being two you shallbecome one, and while you live a common life as if you were a single man,and after your death in the world below still be one departed soul insteadof two-I ask whether this is what you lovingly desire, and whether youare satisfied to attain this?"-there is not a man of them who when he heardthe proposal would deny or would not acknowledge that this meeting andmelting into one another, this becoming one instead of two, was the veryexpression of his ancient need. And the reason is that human nature wasoriginally one and we were a whole, and the desire and pursuit of the wholeis called love. There was a time, I say, when we were one, but now becauseof the wickedness of mankind God has dispersed us, as the Arcadians weredispersed into villages by the Lacedaemonians. And if we are not obedientto the gods, there is a danger that we shall be split up again and go aboutin basso-relievo, like the profile figures having only half a nose whichare sculptured on monuments, and that we shall be liketallies.
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; andlet no one oppose him-he is the enemy of the gods who oppose him. For ifwe are friends of the God and at peace with him we shall find our own trueloves, which rarely happens in this world at present. I am serious, andtherefore I must beg Eryximachus not to make fun or to find any allusionin what I am saying to Pausanias and Agathon, who, as I suspect, are bothof 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 onereturning to his primeval nature had his original true love, then our racewould be happy. And if this would be best of all, the best in the nextdegree and under present circumstances must be the nearest approach tosuch 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 praisethe god Love, who is our greatest benefactor, both leading us in this lifeback to our own nature, and giving us high hopes for the future, for hepromises 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 discourseof love, which, although different to yours, I must beg you to leave unassailedby the shafts of your ridicule, in order that each may have his turn; each,or rather either, for Agathon and Socrates are the only onesleft.
Indeed, I am not going to attack you, said Eryximachus, for I thoughtyour speech charming, and did I not know that Agathon and Socrates aremasters in the art of love, I should be really afraid that they would havenothing 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 youwere as I am now, or rather as I shall be when Agathon has spoken, youwould, indeed, be in a great strait.
You want to cast a spell over me, Socrates, said Agathon, in thehope that I may be disconcerted at the expectation raised among the audiencethat I shall speak well.
I should be strangely forgetful, Agathon replied Socrates, of thecourage and magnanimity which you showed when your own compositions wereabout to be exhibited, and you came upon the stage with the actors andfaced the vast theatre altogether undismayed, if I thought that your nervescould be fluttered at a small party of friends.
Do you think, Socrates, said Agathon, that my head is so full ofthe theatre as not to know how much more formidable to a man of sense afew good judges are than many fools?
Nay, replied Socrates, I should be very wrong in attributing toyou, Agathon, that or any other want of refinement. And I am quite awarethat if you happened to meet with any whom you thought wise, you wouldcare 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 regardedas 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 ashamedof disgracing yourself before him-would you not?
Yes, said Agathon.
But before the many you would not be ashamed, if you thought that youwere doing something disgraceful in their presence?
Here Phaedrus interrupted them, saying: not answer him, my dearAgathon; for if he can only get a partner with whom he can talk, especiallya good-looking one, he will no longer care about the completion of ourplan. Now I love to hear him talk; but just at present I must not forgetthe 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 maytalk.
Very good, Phaedrus, said Agathon; I see no reason why I shouldnot proceed with my speech, as I shall have many other opportunities ofconversing with Socrates. Let me say first how I ought to speak, and thenspeak:-
The previous speakers, instead of praising the god Love, or unfoldinghis nature, appear to have congratulated mankind on the benefits whichhe confers upon them. But I would rather praise the god first, and thenspeak 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 isthe 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 himselfthe witness, fleeing out of the way of age, who is swift enough, swiftertruly 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 proverbsays. Many things were said by Phaedrus about Love in which I agree withhim; 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 ancientdoings among the gods of which Hesiod and Parmenides spoke, if the traditionof them be true, were done of Necessity and not Love; had Love been inthose 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 Homerto describe his tenderness, as Homer says of Ate, that she is a goddessand tender:
Her feet are tender, for she sets her steps,
Not on the ground but on the heads of men: herein is an excellent proofof 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 notupon the earth, nor yet upon skulls of men, which are not so very soft,but in the hearts and souls of both god, and men, which are of all thingsthe softest: in them he walks and dwells and makes his home. Not in everysoul without exception, for Where there is hardness he departs, where thereis softness there he dwells; and nestling always with his feet and in allmanner of ways in the softest of soft places, how can he be other thanthe softest of all things? Of a truth he is the tenderest as well as theyoungest, and also he is of flexile form; for if he were hard and withoutflexure he could not enfold all things, or wind his way into and out ofevery soul of man undiscovered. And a proof of his flexibility and symmetryof form is his grace, which is universally admitted to be in an especialmanner the attribute of Love; ungrace and love are always at war with oneanother. The fairness of his complexion is revealed by his habitation amongthe flowers; for he dwells not amid bloomless or fading beauties, whetherof 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 saidenough; and yet there remains much more which I might say. Of his virtueI have now to speak: his greatest glory is that he can neither do nor sufferwrong to or from any god or any man; for he suffers not by force if hesuffers; force comes not near him, neither when he acts does he act byforce. For all men in all things serve him of their own free will, andwhere there is voluntary agreement, there, as the laws which are the lordsof 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 hisservants; 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 isthe 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 bravestof all others, he must be himself the bravest.
Of his courage and justice and temperance I have spoken, but Ihave yet to speak of his wisdom-and according to the measure of my abilityI must try to do my best. In the first place he is a poet (and here, likeEryximachus, 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 ofhim every one becomes a poet, even though he had no music in him before;this also is a proof that Love is a good poet and accomplished in all thefine 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 creationof the animals is his doing? Are they not all the works his wisdom, bornand begotten of him? And as to the artists, do we not know that he onlyof them whom love inspires has the light of fame?-he whom Love touchesriot walks in darkness. The arts of medicine and archery and divinationwere discovered by Apollo, under the guidance of love and desire; so thathe too is a disciple of Love. Also the melody of the Muses, the metallurgyof Hephaestus, the weaving of Athene, the empire of Zeus over gods andmen, are all due to Love, who was the inventor of them. And so Love setin order the empire of the gods-the love of beauty, as is evident, forwith 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, hassprung every good in heaven and earth. Therefore, Phaedrus, I say of Lovethat he is the fairest and best in himself, and the cause of what is fairestand best in all other things. And there comes into my mind a line of poetryin 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 emptiesmen of disaffection and fills them with affection, who makes them to meettogether at banquets such as these: in sacrifices, feasts, dances, he isour lord-who sends courtesy and sends away discourtesy, who gives kindnessever and never gives unkindness; the friend of the good, the wonder ofthe wise, the amazement of the gods; desired by those who have no partin him, and precious to those who have the better part in him; parent ofdelicacy, 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 whosefootsteps let every man follow, sweetly singing in his honour and joiningin that sweet strain with which love charms the souls of gods and men.Such is the speech, Phaedrus, half-playful, yet having a certain measureof seriousness, which, according to my ability, I dedicate to thegod.
When Agathon had done speaking, Aristodemus said that there wasa general cheer; the young man was thought to have spoken in a manner worthyof 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 nota 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 astrait.
Why, my dear friend, said Socrates, must not I or any one be ina 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 couldlisten to them without amazement? When I reflected on the immeasurableinferiority of my own powers, I was ready to run away for shame, if therehad been a possibility of escape. For I was reminded of Gorgias, and atthe end of his speech I fancied that Agathon was shaking at me the Gorginianor Gorgonian head of the great master of rhetoric, which was simply toturn me and my speech, into stone, as Homer says, and strike me dumb. Andthen I perceived how foolish I had been in consenting to take my turn withyou in praising love, and saying that I too was a master of the art, whenI really had no conception how anything ought to be praised. For in mysimplicity I imagined that the topics of praise should be true, and thatthis being presupposed, out of the true the speaker was to choose the bestand set them forth in the best manner. And I felt quite proud, thinkingthat I knew the nature of true praise, and should speak well. Whereas Inow see that the intention was to attribute to Love every species of greatnessand glory, whether really belonging to him not, without regard to truthor falsehood-that was no matter; for the original, proposal seems to havebeen not that each of you should really praise Love, but only that youshould appear to praise him. And so you attribute to Love every imaginableform of praise which can be gathered anywhere; and you say that "he isall this," and "the cause of all that," making him appear the fairest andbest of all to those who know him not, for you cannot impose upon thosewho 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 wouldtake my turn, I must beg to be absolved from the promise which I made inignorance, and which (as Euripides would say) was a promise of the lipsand not of the mind. Farewell then to such a strain: for I do not praisein that way; no, indeed, I cannot. But if you like to here the truth aboutlove, I am ready to speak in my own manner, though I will not make myselfridiculous by entering into any rivalry with you. Say then, Phaedrus, whetheryou would like, to have the truth about love, spoken in any words and inany order which may happen to come into my mind at the time. Will thatbe agreeable to you?
Aristodemus said that Phaedrus and the company bid him speak inany manner which he thought best. Then, he added, let me have your permissionfirst to ask Agathon a few more questions, in order that I may take hisadmissions as the premisses of my discourse.
I grant the permission, said Phaedrus: put your questions. Socratesthen proceeded as follows:-
In the magnificent oration which you have just uttered, I thinkthat you were right, my dear Agathon, in proposing to speak of the natureof Love first and afterwards of his works-that is a way of beginning whichI 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 thelove of a father or the love of a mother-that would be ridiculous; butto answer as you would, if I asked is a father a father of something? towhich you would find no difficulty in replying, of a son or daughter: andthe 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 ofsomething?
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 somethingor of nothing?
Of something, surely, he replied.
Keep in mind what this is, and tell me what I want to know-whetherLove desires that of which love is.
Yes, surely.
And does he possess, or does he not possess, that which he loves anddesires?
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 isin 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 youthink?
I agree with you, said Agathon.
Very good. Would he who is great, desire to be great, or he who isstrong, desire to be strong?
That would be inconsistent with our previousadmissions.
True. For he who is anything cannot want to be that whichhe 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 hasor is. I give the example in order that we may avoid misconception. Forthe possessors of these qualities, Agathon, must be supposed to have theirrespective advantages at the time, whether they choose or not; and whocan desire that which he has? Therefore when a person says, I am well andwish to be well, or I am rich and wish to be rich, and I desire simplyto have what I have-to him we shall reply: "You, my friend, having wealthand health and strength, want to have the continuance of them; for at thismoment, whether you choose or no, you have them. And when you say, I desirethat which I have and nothing else, is not your meaning that you want tohave what you now have in the future? "He must agree with us-must henot?
He must, replied Agathon.
Then, said Socrates, he desires that what he has at present may bepreserved to him in the future, which is equivalent to saying that he desiressomething which is non-existent to him, and which as yet he has notgot.
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 anddesire seek?
Very true, he said.
Then now, said Socrates, let us recapitulate the argument. First, isnot love of something, and of something too which is wanting to aman?
Yes, he replied.
Remember further what you said in your speech, or if you do not rememberI will remind you: you said that the love of the beautiful set in orderthe empire of the gods, for that of deformed things there is no love-didyou 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 whicha 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 possessbeauty?
Certainly not.
Then would you still say that love is beautiful?
Agathon replied: I fear that I did not understand what I wassaying.
You made a very good speech, Agathon, replied Socrates; but there isyet one small question which I would fain ask:-Is not the good also thebeautiful?
Yes.
Then in wanting the beautiful, love wants also thegood?
I cannot refute you, Socrates, said Agathon:-Let us assume that whatyou 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 lovewhich I heard from Diotima of Mantineia, a woman wise in this and in manyother kinds of knowledge, who in the days of old, when the Athenians offeredsacrifice 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 whatshe said to me, beginning with the admissions made by Agathon, which arenearly if not quite the same which I made to the wise woman when she questionedme-I think that this will be the easiest way, and I shall take both partsmyself as well as I can. As you, Agathon, suggested, I must speak firstof the being and nature of Love, and then of his works. First I said toher in nearly the same words which he used to me, that Love was a mightygod, and likewise fair and she proved to me as I proved to him that, bymy 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 befoul which is not fair?" "Certainly," I said. "And is that which is notwise, ignorant? do you not see that there is a mean between wisdom andignorance?" "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 neithercan ignorance attain the truth), but is clearly something which is a meanbetween 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 goodevil; or infer that because love is not fair and good he is therefore fouland evil; for he is in a mean between them." "Well," I said, "Love is surelyadmitted by all to be a great god." "By those who know or by those whodo not know?" "By all." "And how, Socrates," she said with a smile, "canLove be acknowledged to be a great god by those who say that he is nota 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," shereplied; "for you yourself would acknowledge that the gods are happy andfair of course you would-would to say that any god was not?" "Certainlynot," I replied. "And you mean by the happy, those who are the possessorsof things good or fair?" "Yes." "And you admitted that Love, because hewas 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 eithergood or fair?" "Impossible." "Then you see that you also deny the divinityof 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 amean 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, "betweengods and men, conveying and taking across to the gods the prayers and sacrificesof men, and to men the commands and replies of the gods; he is the mediatorwho spans the chasm which divides them, and therefore in him all is boundtogether, and through him the arts of the prophet and the priest, theirsacrifices and mysteries and charms, and all, prophecy and incantation,find their way. For God mingles not with man; but through Love. all theintercourse, and converse of god with man, whether awake or asleep, iscarried on. The wisdom which understands this is spiritual; all other wisdom,such as that of arts and handicrafts, is mean and vulgar. Now these spiritsor intermediate powers are many and diverse, and one of them is Love. "Andwho," 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 Aphroditethere was a feast of the gods, at which the god Poros or Plenty, who isthe son of Metis or Discretion, was one of the guests. When the feast wasover, Penia or Poverty, as the manner is on such occasions, came aboutthe doors to beg. Now Plenty who was the worse for nectar (there was nowine in those days), went into the garden of Zeus and fell into a heavysleep, and Poverty considering her own straitened circumstances, plottedto have a child by him, and accordingly she lay down at his side and conceivedlove, who partly because he is naturally a lover of the beautiful, andbecause Aphrodite is herself beautiful, and also because he was born onher birthday, is her follower and attendant. And as his parentage is, soalso are his fortunes. In the first place he is always poor, and anythingbut 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 helies 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 hisfather too, whom he also partly resembles, he is always plotting againstthe fair and good; he is bold, enterprising, strong, a mighty hunter, alwaysweaving some intrigue or other, keen in the pursuit of wisdom, fertilein resources; a philosopher at all times, terrible as an enchanter, sorcerer,sophist. He is by nature neither mortal nor immortal, but alive and flourishingat one moment when he is in plenty, and dead at another moment, and againalive by reason of his father's nature. But that which is always flowingin 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 truthof 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 thefoolish?" "A child may answer that question," she replied; "they are thosewho are in a mean between the two; Love is one of them. For wisdom is amost beautiful thing, and Love is of the beautiful; and therefore Loveis also a philosopher: or lover of wisdom, and being a lover of wisdomis in a mean between the wise and the ignorant. And of this too his birthis the cause; for his father is wealthy and wise, and his mother poor andfoolish. Such, my dear Socrates, is the nature of the spirit Love. Theerror in your conception of him was very natural, and as I imagine fromwhat you say, has arisen out of a confusion of love and the beloved, whichmade you think that love was all beautiful. For the beloved is the trulybeautiful, and delicate, and perfect, and blessed; but the principle oflove is of another nature, and is such as I have described."
I said, "O thou stranger woman, thou sayest well; but, assumingLove 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 havealready spoken; and you acknowledge that love is of the beautiful. Butsome one will say: Of the beautiful in what, Socrates and Diotima?-or ratherlet me put the question more dearly, 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 thepossession of beauty?" "To what you have asked," I replied, "I have noanswer ready." "Then," she said, "Let me put the word 'good' in the placeof the beautiful, and repeat the question once more: If he who loves good,what is itthen that he loves? "Thepossession of the good," I said. "And what does he gain who possessesthe good?" "Happiness," I replied; "there is less difficulty in answeringthat question." "Yes," she said, "the happy are made happy by theacquisition of good things. Nor is there any need to ask why a mandesires happiness; the answer is already final." "You are right."I said. "And is this wish and this desire common to all? and do allmen 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 somethem? whereas you say that all men are always loving the same things.""I myself wonder," I said,-why this is." "There is nothing to wonderat," she replied; "the reason is that one part of love is separatedoff and receives the name of the whole, but the other parts have othernames." "Give an illustration," I said. She answered me as follows:"There is poetry, which, as you know, is complex; and manifold. Allcreation or passage of non-being into being is poetry or making, andthe processes of all art are creative; and the masters of arts areall poets or makers." "Very true." "Still," she said, "you know thatthey are not called poets, but have other names; only that portionof the art which is separated off from the rest, and is concernedwith music and metre, is termed poetry, and they who possess poetryin 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 desireof good and happiness is only the great and subtle power of love;but they who are drawn towards him by any other path, whether thepath of money-making or gymnastics or philosophy, are not called lovers-the name of the whole is appropriated to those whose affection takesone form only-they alone are said to love, or to be lovers." "I daresay," I replied, "that you are right." "Yes," she added, "and youhear people say that lovers are seeking for their other half; butI say that they are seeking neither for the half of themselves, norfor the whole, unless the half or the whole be also a good. And theywill cut off their own hands and feet and cast them away, if theyare evil; for they love not what is their own, unless perchance therebe some one who calls what belongs to him the good, and what belongsto 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 thegood? "Yes, that must be added." "And not only the possession, butthe everlasting possession of the good?" "That must be added too.""Then love," she said, "may be described generally as the love ofthe everlasting possession of the good?" "That is most true."
"Then if this be the nature of love, can you tell me further," shesaid, "what is the manner of the pursuit? what are they doing whoshow all this eagerness and heat which is called love? and what isthe object which they have in view? Answer me." "Nay, Diotima," Ireplied, "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 inview is birth in beauty, whether of body or, soul." "I do not understandyou," I said; "the oracle requires an explanation." "I will make mymeaning dearer," she replied. "I mean to say, that all men are bringingto the birth in their bodies and in their souls. There is a certainage at which human nature is desirous of procreation-procreation whichmust be in beauty and not in deformity; and this procreation is theunion of man and woman, and is a divine thing; for conception andgeneration are an immortal principle in the mortal creature, and inthe inharmonious they can never be. But the deformed is always inharmoniouswith the divine, and the beautiful harmonious. Beauty, then, is thedestiny 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 shefrowns and contracts and has a sense of pain, and turns away, andshrivels up, and not without a pang refrains from conception. Andthis is the reason why, when the hour of conception arrives, and theteeming nature is full, there is such a flutter and ecstasy aboutbeauty whose approach is the alleviation of the pain of travail. Forlove, Socrates, is not, as you imagine, the love of the beautifulonly." "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 eternityand immortality," she replied; "and if, as has been already admitted,love is of the everlasting possession of the good, all men will necessarilydesire immortality together with good: Wherefore love is of immortality."
All this she taught me at various times when she spoke of love. AndI remember her once saying to me, "What is the cause, Socrates, oflove, and the attendant desire? See you not how all animals, birds,as well as beasts, in their desire of procreation, are in agony whenthey take the infection of love, which begins with the desire of union;whereto is added the care of offspring, on whose behalf the weakestare ready to battle against the strongest even to the uttermost, andto die for them, and will, let themselves be tormented with hungeror suffer anything in order to maintain their young. Man may be supposedto act thus from reason; but why should animals have these passionatefeelings? 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 theart 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 Iam conscious that I want a teacher; tell me then the cause of thisand of the other mysteries of love." "Marvel not," she said, "if youbelieve that love is of the immortal, as we have several times acknowledged;for here again, and on the same principle too, the mortal nature isseeking as far as is possible to be everlasting and immortal: andthis is only to be attained by generation, because generation alwaysleaves behind a new existence in the place of the old. Nay even inthe life, of the same individual there is succession and not absoluteunity: a man is called the same, and yet in the short interval whichelapses between youth and age, and in which every animal is said tohave life and identity, he is undergoing a perpetual process of lossand reparation-hair, flesh, bones, blood, and the whole body are alwayschanging. 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 andgoing; and equally true of knowledge, and what is still more surprisingto 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 themindividually experiences a like change. For what is implied in theword 'recollection,' but the departure of knowledge, which is everbeing forgotten, and is renewed and preserved by recollection, andappears to be the same although in reality new, according to thatlaw of succession by which all mortal things are preserved, not absolutelythe same, but by substitution, the old worn-out mortality leavinganother new and similar existence behind unlike the divine, whichis always the same and not another? And in this way, Socrates, themortal body, or mortal anything, partakes of immortality; but theimmortal in another way. Marvel not then at the love which all menhave of their offspring; for that universal love and interest is forthe sake of immortality."
I was astonished at her words, and said: "Is this really true, O thouwise Diotima?" And she answered with all the authority of an accomplishedsophist: "Of that, Socrates, you may be assured;-think only of theambition of men, and you will wonder at the senselessness of theirways, unless you consider how they are stirred by the love of an immortalityof fame. They are ready to run all risks greater far than they wouldhave for their children, and to spend money and undergo any sort oftoil, and even to die, for the sake of leaving behind them a namewhich shall be eternal. Do you imagine that Alcestis would have diedto save Admetus, or Achilles to avenge Patroclus, or your own Codrusin order to preserve the kingdom for his sons, if they had not imaginedthat the memory of their virtues, which still survives among us, wouldbe 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 gloriousfame of immortal virtue; for they desire the immortal.
"Those who are pregnant in the body only, betake themselves to womenand beget children-this is the character of their love; their offspring,as they hope, will preserve their memory and giving them the blessednessand immortality which they desire in the future. But souls which arepregnant-for there certainly are men who are more creative in theirsouls than in their bodies conceive that which is proper for the soulto conceive or contain. And what are these conceptions?-wisdom andvirtue in general. And such creators are poets and all artists whoare deserving of the name inventor. But the greatest and fairest sortof wisdom by far is that which is concerned with the ordering of statesand families, and which is called temperance and justice. And he whoin youth has the seed of these implanted in him and is himself inspired,when he comes to maturity desires to beget and generate. He wandersabout seeking beauty that he may beget offspring-for in deformityhe will beget nothing-and naturally embraces the beautiful ratherthan the deformed body; above all when he finds fair and noble andwell-nurtured soul, he embraces the two in one person, and to suchan one he is full of speech about virtue and the nature and pursuitsof a good man; and he tries to educate him; and at the touch of thebeautiful which is ever present to his memory, even when absent, hebrings forth that which he had conceived long before, and in companywith him tends that which he brings forth; and they are married bya far nearer tie and have a closer friendship than those who begetmortal children, for the children who are their common offspring arefairer and more immortal. Who, when he thinks of Homer and Hesiodand other great poets, would not rather have their children than ordinaryhuman ones? Who would not emulate them in the creation of childrensuch as theirs, which have preserved their memory and given them everlastingglory? Or who would not have such children as Lycurgus left behindhim to be the saviours, not only of Lacedaemon, but of Hellas, asone may say? There is Solon, too, who is the revered father of Athenianlaws; and many others there are in many other places, both among hellenesand barbarians, who have given to the world many noble works, andhave been the parents of virtue of every kind; and many temples havebeen 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 hismortal 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 crownof these, and to which, if you pursue them in a right spirit, theywill lead, I know not whether you will be able to attain. But I willdo my utmost to inform you, and do you follow if you can. For he whowould proceed aright in this matter should begin in youth to visitbeautiful 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 isakin to the beauty of another; and then if beauty of form in generalis his pursuit, how foolish would he be not to recognize that thebeauty in every form is and the same! And when he perceives this hewill abate his violent love of the one, which he will despise anddeem 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 ismore honourable than the beauty of the outward form. So that if avirtuous soul have but a little comeliness, he will be content tolove and tend him, and will search out and bring to the birth thoughtswhich may improve the young, until he is compelled to contemplateand see the beauty of institutions and laws, and to understand thatthe beauty of them all is of one family, and that personal beautyis a trifle; and after laws and institutions he will go on to thesciences, that he may see their beauty, being not like a servant inlove with the beauty of one youth or man or institution, himself aslave mean and narrow-minded, but drawing towards and contemplatingthe vast sea of beauty, he will create many fair and noble thoughtsand notions in boundless love of wisdom; until on that shore he growsand waxes strong, and at last the vision is revealed to him of a singlescience, which is the science of beauty everywhere. To this I willproceed; please to give me your very best attention:
"He who has been instructed thus far in the things of love, and whohas learned to see the beautiful in due order and succession, whenhe comes toward the end will suddenly perceive a nature of wondrousbeauty (and this, Socrates, is the final cause of all our former toils)-anature which in the first place is everlasting, not growing and decaying,or waxing and waning; secondly, not fair in one point of view andfoul in another, or at one time or in one relation or at one placefair, 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 faceor hands or any other part of the bodily frame, or in any form ofspeech 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; butbeauty absolute, separate, simple, and everlasting, which withoutdiminution and without increase, or any change, is imparted to theever-growing and perishing beauties of all other things. He who fromthese ascending under the influence of true love, begins to perceivethat 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 thebeauties 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 fromtwo to all fair forms, and from fair forms to fair practices, andfrom fair practices to fair notions, until from fair notions he arrivesat the notion of absolute beauty, and at last knows what the essenceof beauty is. This, my dear Socrates," said the stranger of Mantineia,"is that life above all others which man should live, in the contemplationof beauty absolute; a beauty which if you once beheld, you would seenot to be after the measure of gold, and garments, and fair boys andyouths, whose presence now entrances you; and you and many a one wouldbe content to live seeing them only and conversing with them withoutmeat or drink, if that were possible-you only want to look at themand to be with them. But what if man had eyes to see the true beauty-thedivine beauty, I mean, pure and dear and unalloyed, not clogged withthe pollutions of mortality and all the colours and vanities of humanlife-thither looking, and holding converse with the true beauty simpleand divine? Remember how in that communion only, beholding beautywith the eye of the mind, he will be enabled to bring forth, not imagesof beauty, but realities (for he has hold not of an image but of areality), and bringing forth and nourishing true virtue to becomethe friend of God and be immortal, if mortal man may. Would that bean ignoble life?"
Such, Phaedrus-and I speak not only to you, but to all of you-werethe words of Diotima; and I am persuaded of their truth. And beingpersuaded of them, I try to persuade others, that in the attainmentof this end human nature will not easily find a helper better thanlove: And therefore, also, I say that every man ought to honour himas I myself honour him, and walk in his ways, and exhort others todo the same, and praise the power and spirit of love according tothe measure of my ability now and ever.
The words which I have spoken, you, Phaedrus, may call an encomiumof love, or anything else which you please.
When Socrates had done speaking, the company applauded, and Aristophaneswas beginning to say something in answer to the allusion which Socrateshad made to his own speech, when suddenly there was a great knockingat the door of the house, as of revellers, and the sound of a flute-girlwas heard. Agathon told the attendants to go and see who were theintruders. "If they are friends of ours," he said, "invite them in,but if not, say that the drinking is over." A little while afterwardsthey heard the voice of Alcibiades resounding in the court; he wasin a great state of intoxication and kept roaring and shouting "Whereis Agathon? Lead me to Agathon," and at length, supported by the flute-girland some of his attendants, he found his way to them. "Hail, friends,"he said, appearing-at the door crown, with a massive garland of ivyand violets, his head flowing with ribands. "Will you have a verydrunken 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 tocome yesterday, and therefore I am here to-day, carrying on my headthese ribands, that taking them from my own head, I may crown thehead of this fairest and wisest of men, as I may be allowed to callhim. Will you laugh at me because I am drunk? Yet I know very wellthat I am speaking the truth, although you may laugh. But first tellme; if I come in shall we have the understanding of which I spoke?Will you drink with me or not?"
The company were vociferous in begging that he would take his placeamong them, and Agathon specially invited him. Thereupon he was ledin by the people who were with him; and as he was being led, intendingto crown Agathon, he took the ribands from his own head and held themin front of his eyes; he was thus prevented from seeing Socrates,who made way for him, and Alcibiades took the vacant place betweenAgathon and Socrates, and in taking the place he embraced Agathonand crowned him. Take off his sandals, said Agathon, and let him makea third on the same couch.
By all means; but who makes the third partner in our revels? saidAlcibiades, turning round and starting up as he caught sight of Socrates.By Heracles, he said, what is this? here is Socrates always lyingin wait for me, and always, as his way is, coming out at all sortsof unsuspected places: and now, what have you to say for yourself,and why are you lying here, where I perceive that you have contrivedto 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 matterto me. Since I became his admirer I have never been allowed to speakto any other fair one, or so much as to look at them. If I do, hegoes wild with envy and jealousy, and not only abuses me but can hardlykeep 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 attemptsviolence, protect me, as I am in bodily fear of his mad and passionateattempts.
There can never be reconciliation between you and me, said Alcibiades;but for the present I will defer your chastisement. And I must begyou, Agathoron, to give me back some of the ribands that I may crownthe marvellous head of this universal despot-I would not have himcomplain of me for crowning you, and neglecting him, who in conversationis the conqueror of all mankind; and this not only once, as you werethe day before yesterday, but always. Whereupon, taking some of theribands, he crowned Socrates, and again reclined.
Then he said: You seem, my friends, to be sober, which is a thingnot to be endured; you must drink-for that was the agreement underwhich I was admitted-and I elect myself master of the feast untilyou are well drunk. Let us have a large goblet, Agathon, or rather,he said, addressing the attendant, bring me that wine-cooler. Thewine-cooler which had caught his eye was a vessel holding more thantwo quarts-this he filled and emptied, and bade the attendant fillit again for Socrates. Observe, my friends, said Alcibiades, thatthis ingenious trick of mine will have no effect on Socrates, forhe 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 neitherconversation nor singing over our cups; but simply to drink as ifwe 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 shall prescribe andwe will obey. What do you want?
Well, said Eryximachus, before you appeared we had passed a resolutionthat 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 leftto right; and as all of us have spoken, and you have not spoken buthave well drunken, you ought to speak, and then impose upon Socratesany task which you please, and he on his right hand neighbour, andso 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-whatSocrates was just now saying; for I can assure you that the very reverseis 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 oneelse 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 laughat 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 anythingwhich is not true, you may interrupt me if you will, and say "thatis a lie," though my intention is to speak the truth. But you mustnot wonder if I speak any how as things come into my mind; for thefluent and orderly enumeration of all your singularities is not atask which is easy to a man in my condition.
And now, my boys, I shall praise Socrates in a figure which will appearto 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 thebusts of Silenus, which are set up in the statuaries, shops, holdingpipes and flutes in their mouths; and they are made to open in themiddle, and have images of gods inside them. I say also that hit islike Marsyas the satyr. You yourself will not deny, Socrates, thatyour face is like that of a satyr. Aye, and there is a resemblancein other points too. For example, you are a bully, as I can proveby witnesses, if you will not confess. And are you not a flute-player?That you are, and a performer far more wonderful than Marsyas. Heindeed with instruments used to charm the souls of men by the powersof his breath, and the players of his music do so still: for the melodiesof Olympus are derived from Marsyas who taught them, and these, whetherthey are played by a great master or by a miserable flute-girl, havea power which no others have; they alone possess the soul and revealthe wants of those who have need of gods and mysteries, because theyare divine. But you produce the same effect with your words only,and do not require the flute; that is the difference between you andhim. When we hear any other speaker, even very good one, he producesabsolutely no effect upon us, or not much, whereas the mere fragmentsof you and your words, even at second-hand, and however imperfectlyrepeated, amaze and possess the souls of every man, woman, and childwho comes within hearing of them. And if I were not, afraid that youwould think me hopelessly drunk, I would have sworn as well as spokento 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 othersare affected in the same manner. I have heard Pericles and other greatorators, and I thought that they spoke well, but I never had any similarfeeling; my soul was not stirred by them, nor was I angry at the thoughtof my own slavish state. But this Marsyas has often brought me tosuch pass, that I have felt as if I could hardly endure the life whichI am leading (this, Socrates, you will admit); and I am consciousthat if I did not shut my ears against him, and fly as from the voiceof the siren, my fate would be like that of others,-he would transfixme, and I should grow old sitting at his feet. For he makes me confessthat 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 Ihold my ears and tear myself away from him. And he is the only personwho 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 cannotanswer him or say that I ought not to do as he bids, but when I leavehis presence the love of popularity gets the better of me. And thereforeI run away and fly from him, and when I see him I am ashamed of whatI 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 wereto die: so that am at my wit's end.
And this is what I and many others have suffered, from the flute-playingof this satyr. Yet hear me once more while I show you how exact theimage is, and. how marvellous his power. For let me tell you; noneof you know him; but I will reveal him to you; having begun, I mustgo on. See you how fond he is of the fair? He is always with themand is always being smitten by them, and then again he knows nothingand is ignorant of all thing such is the appearance
[8]ページ先頭
©2009-2025 Movatter.jp