The players
Agathon: a playwright whose house is the setting of Plato’s Symposium
Alcibiades [all-si-BI-a-deez]: a drunken playboy general (and would-be lover of Socrates)
Aristodemus [air-is-to-DEE-mus]: a young lover of Socrates
Aristophanes [air-is-STOF-an-ees]: a comedic playwright known for mocking Socrates in The Clouds
Diotima [di-o-TEE-ma]: fictional character who teaches Socrates the nature of love
Eryximachus [er-ik-SIM-i-kus]: a doctor known for his overly technical style of conversation
Narrator: the teller of the tale
Pausanias [pow-SEEN-ee-us]: a longtime lover of Agathon and practitioner of the Sophistic arts.
Phaedrus [FEE-drus]: an aristocrat
Servant: a worker in Agathon’s house
Socrates: a philosopher renowned for his sharp wit and search for truth
Narrator: You know, a lot of folks imagine that philosophers just sit around thinking abstract thoughts and scribbling incomprehensible musings. Sure, they may get together for meetings called “symposia” to discuss their ideas, but those gatherings must be pretty boring, right? Well, they're not! In fact, most philosophers are pretty much like most of us. They even go to parties and drink with their friends. In fact, back in classical-era Athens, a “symposium” was really just a fancy name for a drinking party. And sometimes those symposia become the stuff of legend. That’s how this story begins, with a legendary party.
Well, technically it begins with a question about that party when a fellow named Apollodorus is asked to tell the tale of the famous symposium when Socrates, Alcibiades, and their friends debated the nature of love. Now, this party happened years ago, back when Apollodorus was a kid; he wasn’t there (and he doesn’t actually appear in the interesting part of this dialogue). But Apollodorus heard the story from someone who was there – and that guy’s name was Aristodemus. So, we begin on a dusty street in Athens when Aristodemus bumps into Socrates.
Well, technically it begins with a question about that party when a fellow named Apollodorus is asked to tell the tale of the famous symposium when Socrates, Alcibiades, and their friends debated the nature of love. Now, this party happened years ago, back when Apollodorus was a kid; he wasn’t there (and he doesn’t actually appear in the interesting part of this dialogue). But Apollodorus heard the story from someone who was there – and that guy’s name was Aristodemus. So, we begin on a dusty street in Athens when Aristodemus bumps into Socrates.
Aristodemus: Dude. Did you – did you just bathe?
Socrates: I know, right? And I’m wearing my fancy sandals too.
Aristodemus: What for?
Socrates: For a party, dude! You see Agathon the Playwright just won an award for one of his tragedies. I skipped yesterday’s festivities, but I couldn’t miss out on tonight’s party. Wanna come?
Aristodemus: Well, I’m no philosopher, not like you guys at least. But I’m happy to come as your guest.
Narrator: Socrates and Aristodemus walk together toward the party – but Socrates, being Socrates, loses himself in thought and falls behind, leaving for Aristodemus to enter the house of Agathon alone.
Agathon: Aristodemus! You made it! I tried to send you an invite, but your email kept bouncing. No matter, you’re here and you’re staying! Now, I know you’re always sniffing around Socrates’s tunic, so I figure you’d know: where is the old fellow?
Servant: He’s on the neighbor’s porch, sir. Just staring into space.
Agathon: Well bring him here!
Aristodemus: No, don’t do that. Just let him be. He’ll wander in eventually.
Agathon: Um, OK. In the meantime, “servant,” why don’t you lay out the party platters? Pretend it’s your house and we’re your guests.
Servant [in droll sarcasm]: Oh, like a game. How fun for us.
Agathon: I know, right? Yet, it’d be a lot more fun if Socrates were here.
Socrates: Did someone say my name?
Everyone [other than Socrates]: Socrates!
Agathon: Late as usual but here at last. Come, sit by me and share some of your wisdom.
Socrates: Oh, I have no wisdom to share. It is I who would be fortunate to borrow some of your fame. Congrats on the prize, by the way.
Agathon: Ah, the beloved Socratic sarcasm. You’ll never regret that sharp tongue of yours, I’m sure.
 |
| Andy at Theatre of Dionysus |
Eryximachus: Well now that we’re all here, and presuming that we don’t want to get sloshed like we did last night – I’m looking at you, Agathon – I say we dedicate this evening to a discussion about a surprisingly neglected topic: Eros, the god of love. Like, we’ll each take turns, summarizing our thoughts about the topic. And since it was Phaedrus who gave me this idea, he can speak first.
Phaedrus [Clears his throat]: OK, let’s begin with the most obvious truth. Eros is old. Like, really old. And his love is what binds us together into society. For when an old man loves a young man, he acts heroically, lest he loses that love. And a young man naturally wants to impress his elder. Oh, if only we could create an army of soldiers bound together by their love for each other! This even applies to women – though we know what we’re talking about here, just us guys. Like, remember Achilles and Patroclus? Yeah, an army of lovers like those two could conquer the world. Let me add, though, that Achilles was younger than Patroclus. So his sacrifice was especially gallant! Anyway, that’s how love works: it inspires heroism, which unites men into something greater than themselves.
In fact, look at some of the other cities of Greece, where they fail to distinguish between noble love for young men and ignoble love for little boys. A disgrace. Almost as bad as those tyrants of Persia – or here in Athens, not too long ago – that tried to banish all sorts of personal attachment. No, love is good and necessary, so long as we strive for heavenly love. When we do, we are allowed to debase ourselves in ways that would never be tolerable if our motives weren't pure – so long as our goal is not the transitory flesh but rather the immortal soul. In this higher case, when an older man takes a younger man for his lover, he seeks first to improve his charge, just as his lover hopes to improve himself. These lovers, whose attractions to each other are shaped by virtue, not lust, are the foundations of a just city.
Eryximachus: Well, it’s Aristophanes’s turn. But he’s got the hiccups. So I’ll speak in his place. Now, we can all agree that Pausanias started well with his distinction between two types of love. Problem is, he failed to finish his analysis. His problem is a failure to approach the question as I can, as a physician. In my line of work, we are not concerned so much with actions or motives but with balance to the body. It’s like when that ancient philosopher Heraclitus described harmony as the balance of high notes and low notes. We doctors seek that sort of harmony in the body, which we call “temperance.” That’s why, for example, we counsel our patients not to eat too much or too little but instead to enjoy a balanced diet. That balance is the result of heavenly love, a pious love. Earthly love, in contrast, leads to chaos. So there’s your answer. And now Aristophanes, now that your hiccups appear to have resolved themselves – no doubt thanks to my verbal ministrations – you may say whatever you wish.
Aristophanes: Don’t mind if I do, and not a minute too soon, since you all have missed the point. You speak about human institutions, but you know nothing of human nature. Now you’ll surely dismiss me as a jokester, but I’m telling the truth when I explain how love really works. Originally our race was composed of not two sexes but three: men, women, and people we might term “androgynous.” All of us were shaped differently than we are now; we were circular, composed of two halves, each with its own set of arms and legs. “Males” had two sets of male sex organs, “females” had two sets of female sex organs, and androgynous people had both male and female sex organs. It sounds strange, but we got along OK. In fact, when we turned cartwheels, we could run pretty fast! But the gods, being gods, meddled with us and split each of us in two. The results were, as you could imagine, pretty bloody and uncomfortable. So Apollo stitched us up and Zeus moved our private parts to our fronts so that we could have sex as we do now.
Even so, we constantly sense that awful divide, the feeling of being split from our other halves. So androgynous people, once both men and women, seek after their kind, with men searching for women and women searching for men. Those who were originally all men, though, search for other men. And those where were all women – well, they search for other women. While the androgynous types are less virtuous than pure men and pure women, their form of sex really comes in handy for reproduction. Still, the best of us, our leaders, prefer the company of their own – even when they engage in heterosexual intercourse for practical or social reasons. In any case, “love” is the desire to return to our original state, to be joined once more with those who have been parted from us. And so far as we revere Eros and the other gods, we might yet enjoy that happy day.
Eryximachus: That was… interesting. I’m sure Agathon and Socrates can’t wait to follow your act.
Socrates: Hardly. In fact, I’m afraid to follow Agathon. His speech will surely be amazing.
Agathon: I see what you’re up to, Socrates: Raising the stakes so that I’ll get flustered.
Socrates: But you’ve stood on stage before huge popular audiences!
Agathon: Which you think I’ll confuse with this smaller, more refined group?
Socrates: Well, perhaps we should define our terms, maybe by comparing and contrasting “popular” and “refined.”
Phaedrus: Oh no you don’t, Socrates. We’re not going down that rabbit hole. Just deliver your speech, Agathon.
Agathon: OK, fair enough. Of course, inspired by Socrates, we should define our terms – which means some clarification for Phaedrus: Eros is not old. Actually, he’s the youngest of the gods, which means that any actions that have been attributed to Love before he arrived on the scene were actually caused by Necessity. Moreover, Eros is delicate and flexible, not hard and consistent. That way, he can dwell in our hearts, so long as they are soft and yielding. And finally, love being the epitome of beauty, is only drawn to beauty, never to ugliness.
From this, we may assert that Eros possesses all four cardinal virtues. He is, first of all, just. He does not force his way but rather bends to those who bend to him. He is also moderate, in that he possesses more power than any lower forms of pleasure and therefore governs them. He is the height of courage, in that no one can boast bravery that does not have love. Finally, he epitomizes wisdom, for with the power of love, anyone, no matter how uncultured, may become a poet. He is, in short, “the most beautiful and...” – with all due respect to Eryximachus who understandably reveres his own profession – “the best.”
Socrates: See? I told you Agathon would astound us with his verbal gymnastics. And me, simply trying to answer the question, “what is love,” how can I hope to compare to those who can weave such delights with their clever words, no matter how true or false they may be? So, as you’d imagine, I prefer another tack. Rather than present yet another speech, let me ask Agathon some questions.
Phaedrus: Oh, here we go.
Socrates: OK, Agathon, let’s begin: Is Love a love of something?
Agathon: Well… yeah.
Socrates: Right. And is that love of something a need for that thing?
Agathon: I… I guess so.
Socrates: All right, let’s put it another way. [Asking in a professorial tone] Does the god of love possess the thing that it desires?
Agathon: Um, no.
Socrates: Right. When we possess a thing, we don’t desire it now. Instead, we desire its continued possession in the future, which, by definition, we do not have. But do you see the conundrum you’ve created for yourself?
Agathon: I’m sure you’ll tell me.
Socrates: Presently. You see, if the god of love loves beauty, he does not possess it.
Agathon: Uh huh…
Socrates: Then by your definition, the god of love can hardly be beautiful.
Agathon: OK.
Socrates: And what about good things? Are they not, by definition, beautiful?
Agathon: I see where you’re going here. So, yes, of course, they are.
Socrates: Then by our entirely correct and unbreakable chain of reasoning, your god of love can neither possess the beautiful or the good.
Agathon [Huffs in frustration]: Once more I am ensnared by your logic.
Socrates: It’s not my logic that traps you, my dear Agathon; it’s the truth. Me, I’m as weak as a kitten.
Agathon: Uh huh.
Socrates: Don’t feel so bad. Once I was as clueless as you until I met a woman named Diotima who taught me the truth about love. You see, I offered an argument just like yours to her, and she trapped me the same way I trapped you.
Narrator: At this point, Socrates offers his own dialogue, a conversation between himself and Diotima who, as it turns out, was likely a dream rather than an actual person.
Socrates: OK, Diotima. If Love is neither beautiful nor good, does it follow that Love is ugly and bad?
Diotima: Why are you such an absolutist? Can’t Love be somewhere in between?
Socrates: I suppose so.
Diotima: From this reasoning, we might further propose that Love is neither god nor man, that he is also somewhere in between.
Socrates: What, what?
Diotima: Your words, dude. You said that to love something is to desire it. And to desire something is not to possess it. Yet you’d hardly argue that gods fail to possess beautiful and good things, which must mean that Love is not a god.
Socrates: So, he’s a duck?
Diotima [patiently, not rising to Socrates’s frustration]: No, you silly goose. I’m just saying that Love is something between god and mortal; he’s a spirit through which gods and men commune. He’s a mediator.
Socrates: So, who are his parents?
Diotima: The parents of Love are Resourcefulness and Need, always searching for the beautiful and the good but never quite finding it. And that’s how Love works with people; he represents the mortal desire for something that cannot be possessed. See, that’s where folks who wax eloquently about “soul mates” have it entirely wrong. Lovers, real lovers, do not desire some other person; they desire something greater.
Socrates: So far, so good.
Diotima: All right, moving on: Do we desire this greater thing forever? Or do we desire greatness for only a short time?
Socrates: Nope. We want it forever.
Diotima: And that brings us to reproduction.
Socrates: Now we’re talking!
Diotima: Don’t be silly. I mean the concept of reproduction.
Socrates: Oh.
Diotima: Remember, I’m a figment of your imagination.
Socrates: Yeah, but –
Diotima: – A dream lover.
Socrates: Yeah.
Diotima: Now stay with me. We cannot actually possess what we desire – the beautiful and the good – or else we would be gods. But with reproduction –
Socrates: – We approach immortality!
Diotima: Exactly. Of course, there are different kinds of reproduction.
Socrates [with some frustration]: Of course there are.
Diotima [cheerfully]: Yes. There are those who seek to reproduce other people. And that’s a lovely thing. But the higher form of reproduction – the best form of sex – comes from trying to reproduce virtue, to bring it to life within another person.
Socrates: Um…
Diotima: To help, you might think of the varying types of love as steps on a ladder. On the first step, we are attracted to individual bodies whose appearances of beauty beguile us. But then we climb upward to seek after the form of beauty that is common to us all, despite its varied appearances. That’s the second step. Then we climb further upward, drawn not to bodies but to souls. That’s the third step. At this point, we care about someone’s virtues, not his looks.
But then we climb further still, less attracted to individual souls and more toward collective goods. The fourth step, then, leads us to the best public laws and customs – until we realize that even those are frail, human institutions. So we climb higher, seeking to understand the physical sciences, which transcend human practices. That’s the fifth step. Then we discover that our scientific observations, no matter how precise, limit us to material things; the truth does not fully reside there. So we climb the sixth step, where we search for the eternal reality revealed through philosophy. Only then we ascend to the seventh step, for philosophy is a lens; it is not the goal.
What we seek, ultimately, is “the good,” an endless, unchanging essence from which all forms and all things are born – and to which all people hope to return. That kind of coming and going, far more than human sex, is the key to eternal life.
Narrator: Having concluded his story, Socrates invites his friends to rejoin the conversation when, suddenly and with much cacophony, the playboy general Alcibiades and some of his drunken friends crash the party.
Alcibiades [hiccupping]: Good evening, gentlemen! [Hic!] As you can see [Hic!] I’m drunk.
Alcibiades [hiccupping]: Good evening, gentlemen! [Hic!] As you can see [Hic!] I’m drunk.
Agathon: And entirely welcome to our party. Have a seat next to Socrates!
Alcibiades: Socrates?!? What are you doing here?
Socrates: Now, Agathon, you’d better protect me from Alcibiades. Since I’ve admitted my love for him, he’s shown himself to be insanely jealous.
Alcibiades: Oh, I’ll fix you later. In the meantime [Hic!] I think I’ll fix myself a drink. In fact, let’s all have a drink! Not that our drinking will affect our dear Socrates. He can drink all night and never gets drunk.
Eryximachus: Well if you’re going to drink with us, you should join our conversation. We’ve been discussing the nature of love – and it’s your turn to enlighten us.
Alcibiades: Oh, I could never praise anybody in front of Socrates. For I would be subject to his jealousy!
Eryximachus: Well why don’t you offer a speech in praise of Socrates then?
Alcibiades: That’s a great idea!
Socrates: Now hold on there –
Alcibiades: Don’t worry, I’ll only tell the truth. And if I don’t, you can interrupt me. But have some patience because, as I mentioned before [Hic!] I’m a little drunk. OK. To begin, I’ll need to paint a picture. Socrates, you see, is a flute player who casts spells with his instrument.
That being said, Socrates, your instrument isn’t a thing; it’s your felicity with words that you use to make fools of us all. You are, shall I say, the greatest of all Sophists. And you use your power to remind me that, despite my civic power, I remain a bad man. So I struggle not to hear you; I’d rather be dead than hear another one of your speeches. [Sighs in resignation] Yet I cannot ignore them.
Oh, friends, I know Socrates better than any one of you. I know how he plays this game of being ignorant when in fact he’s the wisest among us. And, boy, doesn’t he know it? On the outside he’s like us, chasing after beautiful young men. But inside, he’s stone cold, yo. He couldn’t care less about physical beauty.
So there I am, easily the most beautiful man in Athens, hoping he’ll have his way with me. Not too long ago, I practically threw myself at him. But would Socrates play his flute for me? Goodness knows, I was more than willing to play his flute for him. And when I offered myself, all Socrates did was remind me of that part in the Iliad when Diomedes traded his bronze armor for Glaucus’s gold. Hades, I got into bed with him one night, ready to dive deep into the waters of his philosophy. But when I awoke the next morning, I was dry as a bone.
It’s just like when we fought in the war together when all the other soldiers and cavalry were panicking; Socrates always kept his cool. So in this sense, I both praise and blame Socrates. He offers himself to us, appears to open himself right up, when in fact, he remains closed up tight, demanding that you pursue him! So stay away from him, Agathon, lest you suffer the same fate as I.
Socrates: Oh, Alcibiades, you clever lynx. You claim to be drunk but you’re sober enough to make your point. And now you try to separate me from Agathon, to have me for yourself. Or perhaps you want Agathon –
Alcibiades: Or perhaps you both!
Narrator: The conversation drifted along these lines for a while until another drunken group joined the party. Eventually, most folks drifted off, leaving Socrates, Agathon, and Aristophanes talking throughout the night about the potential for one man to write both tragic and comic poetry. The next morning, Socrates departed – with Aristodemus following close enough to clutch his tunic – leaving his sleeping friends behind.
More Pseudo-Scripts
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[Images: Symposium drinking feast: Paestum [website] • Andy at Theatre of Dionysus: Photograph by Jenny Wood • Bertel Thorvaldsen (1823) Cupid Received by Anacreon, Winter: image from Wikipedia • Androgyne [Greek amphora detail]: image from Aquileana [blog] • Sokrates (ca. 250 CE) copy [on a separate herm] in Vatican Museums: Photograph by Andrew F. Wood • Christoffer Wilhelm Eckersberg (1816) Socrates and Alcibiades]
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