| SymposiumPlatoSYMPOSIUMtranslatedby Benjamin JowettPersons of theDialogue :APOLLODORUS, who repeats to his Companion the dialoguewhich he had heard from ARISTODEMUS,and had already once narrated to GLAUCON ;PHAEDRUS ; PAUSANIAS ; ERYXIMACHUS ; ARISTOPHANES ;AGATHON ; SOCRATES ; ALCIBIADES ; A troop of revellers.Scene : The House ofAgathonConcerning thethings about which you ask to be informed I believe that I am not ill-preparedwith an answer. For the day before yesterday I was coming from my own home atPhalerum to the city, and one of my acquaintance, who had caught a sight of mefrom behind, hind, out playfully in the distance, said : Apollodorus, O thouPhalerian man, halt ! So I did as I was bid ; and then he said, I waslooking for you, Apollodorus, only just now, that I might ask you about thespeeches in praise of love, which were delivered by Socrates, Alcibiades, andothers, at Agathon’s supper. Phoenix, the son of Philip, told another personwho told me of them ; his narrative was very indistinct, but he said thatyou knew, and I wish that you would give me an account of them. Who, if notyou, should be the reporter of the words of your friend ? And first tellme, he said, were you present at this meeting ?Your informant,Glaucon, I said, must have been very indistinct indeed, if you imagine that theoccasion was recent ; or that I could have been of the party.Why, yes, hereplied, I thought so.Impossible : Isaid. Are you ignorant that for many years Agathon has not resided atAthens ; and not three have elapsed since I became acquainted withSocrates, and have made it my daily business to know all that he says and does.There was a time when I was running about the world, fancying myself to be wellemployed, but I was really a most wretched thing, no better than you are now. Ithought that I ought to do anything rather than be a philosopher.Well, he said,jesting apart, tell me when the meeting occurred.In our boyhood, Ireplied, when Agathon won the prize with his first tragedy, on the day afterthat on which he and his chorus offered the sacrifice of victory.Then it must havebeen a long while ago, he said ; and who told you — did Socrates ?No indeed, Ireplied, but the same person who told Phoenix ; — he was a little fellow,who never wore any shoes Aristodemus, of the deme of Cydathenaeum. He had beenat Agathon’s feast ; and I think that in those days there was no one whowas a more devoted admirer of Socrates. Moreover, I have asked Socrates aboutthe truth of some parts of his narrative, and he confirmed them. Then, said Glaucon,let us have the tale over again ; is not the road to Athens just made forconversation ?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 the profit.But when I hear another strain, especially that of you rich men and traders,such conversation displeases me ; and I pity you who are my companions,because you think that you are doing something when in reality you are doingnothing. And I dare say that you pity me in return, whom you regard as anunhappy creature, and very probably you are right. But I certainly know of youwhat you only think of me — there is the difference.Companion. I see,Apollodorus, that you are just the same — always speaking evil of yourself, andof others ; and I do believe that you pity all mankind, with the exceptionof Socrates, yourself first of all, true in this to your old name, which,however deserved I know how you acquired, of Apollodorus the madman ; foryou are always raging against yourself and everybody but Socrates.Apollodorus. Yes, friend, andthe reason why I am said to be mad, and out of my wits, is just because I havethese notions of myself and you ; no other evidence is required.Com. No more of that,Apollodorus ; but let me renew my request that you would repeat theconversation.Apoll. Well, the tale oflove was on this wise : — But perhaps I had better begin at the beginning,and endeavour to give you the exact words of Aristodemus :He said that he metSocrates fresh from the bath and sandalled ; and as the sight of thesandals was unusual, he asked him whither he was going that he had beenconverted into such a beau :— To a banquet atAgathon’s, he replied, whose invitation to his sacrifice of victory I refusedyesterday, fearing a crowd, but promising that I would come to-dayinstead ; and so I have put on my finery, because he is such a fine man.What say you to going with me unasked ?I will do as youbid me, I replied.Follow then, hesaid, and let us demolish the proverb :To the feasts of inferior men thegood unbidden go ;instead of whichour proverb will run :To the feasts of the good the goodunbidden go ;and this alterationmay be supported by the authority of Homer himself, who not only demolishes butliterally outrages the proverb. For, after picturing Agamemnon as the mostvaliant of men, he makes Menelaus, who is but a fainthearted warrior, come unbiddento the banquet of Agamemnon, who is feasting and offering sacrifices, not thebetter to the worse, but the worse to the better.I rather fear,Socrates, said Aristodemus, lest this may still be my case ; and that,like Menelaus in Homer, I shall be the inferior person, whoTo the leasts of the wise unbiddengoes.But I shall saythat I was bidden of you, and then you will have to make an excuse.Two going together,he replied, in Homeric fashion, one or other of them may invent an excuse bythe way.This was the styleof their conversation as they went along. Socrates dropped behind in a fit ofabstraction, and desired Aristodemus, who was waiting, to go on before him.When he reached the house of Agathon he found the doors wide open, and acomical thing happened. A servant coming out met him, and led him at once intothe banqueting-hall in which the guests were reclining, for the banquet wasabout 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 putit off, and make one of us, as I was looking for you yesterday and meant tohave asked you, if I could have found you. But what have you done withSocrates ?I turned round, butSocrates was nowhere to be seen ; and I had to explain that he had beenwith me a moment before, and that I came by his invitation to the supper.You were quiteright in coming, said Agathon ; but where is he himself ?He was behind mejust now, as I entered, he said, and I cannot think what has become of him.Go and look forhim, boy, said Agathon, and bring him in ; and do you, Aristodemus,meanwhile take the place by Eryximachus.The servant thenassisted him to wash, and he lay down, and presently another servant came inand reported that our friend Socrates had retired into the portico of theneighbouring house. “There he is fixed,” said he, “and when I call to him hewill not stir.”How strange, saidAgathon ; then you must call him again, and keep calling him.Let him alone, saidmy informant ; he has a way of stopping anywhere and losing himselfwithout any reason. I believe that he will soon appear ; do not thereforedisturb him.Well, if you thinkso, I will leave him, said Agathon. And then, turning to the servants, headded, “Let us have supper without waiting for him. Serve up whatever youplease, for there is no one to give you orders ; hitherto I have neverleft you to yourselves. But on this occasion imagine that you art our hosts,and that I and the company are your guests ; treat us well, and then weshall commend you.” After this, supper was served, but still no Socrates ;and during the meal Agathon several times expressed a wish to send for him, butAristodemus objected ; and at last when the feast was about half over —for the fit, as usual, was not of long duration — Socrates entered ;Agathon, who was reclining alone at the end of the table, begged that he wouldtake the place next to him ; that “I may touch you,” he said, “and havethe benefit of that wise thought which came into your mind in the portico, andis now in your possession ; for I am certain that you would not have comeaway until you had found what you sought.”How I wish, saidSocrates, taking his place as he was desired, that wisdom could be infused bytouch, out of the fuller the emptier man, as water runs through wool out of afuller cup into an emptier one ; if that were so, how greatly should Ivalue the privilege of reclining at your side ! For you would have filledme full with a stream of wisdom plenteous and fair ; whereas my own is ofa very mean and questionable sort, no better than a dream. But yours is brightand full of promise, and was manifested forth in all the splendour of youth theday before yesterday, in the presence of more than thirty thousand Hellenes.You are mocking,Socrates, said Agathon, and ere long you and I will have to determine who bearsoff the palm of wisdom — of this Dionysus shall be the judge ; but atpresent you are better occupied with supper.Socrates took hisplace on the couch, and supped with the rest ; and then libations wereoffered, and after a hymn had been sung to the god, and there had been theusual ceremonies, they were about to commence drinking, when Pausanias said,And now, my friends, how can we drink with least injury to ourselves ? Ican assure you that I feel severely the effect of yesterday’s potations, andmust have time to recover ; and I suspect that most of you are in the samepredicament, for you were of the party yesterday. Consider then : How canthe drinking be made easiest ?I entirely agree,said Aristophanes, that we should, by all means, avoid hard drinking, for I wasmyself one of those who were yesterday drowned in drink.I think that youare right, said Eryximachus, the son of Acumenus ; but I should still liketo hear one other person speak : Is Agathon able to drink hard ?I am not equal toit, said Agathon.Then, theEryximachus, the weak heads like myself, Aristodemus, Phaedrus, and others whonever can drink, are fortunate in finding that the stronger ones are not in adrinking mood. (I do not include Socrates, who is able either to drink or toabstain, and will not mind, whichever we do.) Well, as of none of the companyseem disposed to drink much, I may be forgiven for saying, as a physician, thatdrinking deep is a bad practice, which I never follow, if I can help, andcertainly do not recommend to another, least of all to any one who still feelsthe effects of yesterday’s carouse.I always do whatyou advise, and especially what you prescribe as a physician, rejoined Phaedrusthe Myrrhinusian, and the rest of the company, if they are wise, will do thesame.It was agreed thatdrinking was not to be the order of the day, but that they were all to drinkonly so much as they pleased.Then, said Eryximachus,as you are all agreed that drinking is to be voluntary, and that there is to beno compulsion, I move, in the next place, that the flute-girl, who has justmade her appearance, be told to go away and play to herself, or, if she likes,to the women who are within. To-day let us have conversation instead ;and, if you will allow me, I will tell you what sort of conversation. Thisproposal having been accepted, Eryximachus proceeded as follows : — I willbegin, he said, after the manner of Melanippe in Euripides,Not mine the word which I am aboutto speak,but that ofPhaedrus. For often he says to me in an indignant tone : “What a strangething it is, Eryximachus, that, whereas other gods have poems and hymns made intheir honour, the great and glorious god, Love, has no encomiast among all thepoets 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 theme of aneloquent 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 therefore Iwant 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. If youagree 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 a speechin honour of Love. Let him give us the best which he can ; and Phaedrus,because he is sitting first on the left hand, and because he is the father ofthe thought, shall begin.No one will voteagainst you, Eryximachus, said Socrates. How can I oppose your motion, whoprofess to understand nothing but matters of love ; nor, I presume, willAgathon and Pausanias ; and there can be no doubt of Aristophanes, whosewhole concern is with Dionysus and Aphrodite ; nor will any one disagreeof those whom I, see around me. The proposal, as I am aware, may seem ratherhard upon us whose place is last ; but we shall be contented if we hearsome good speeches first. Let Phaedrus begin the praise of Love, and good luckto him.All the companyexpressed their assent, and desired him to do as Socrates bade him.Aristodemus did notrecollect all that was said, nor do I recollect all that he related to me ;but I will tell you what I thought most worthy of remembrance, and what thechief speakers said.Phaedrus began byaffirming that love is a mighty god, and wonderful among gods and men, butespecially wonderful in his birth. For he is the eldest of the gods, which isan honour to him ; and a proof of his claim to this honour is, that of hisparents there is no memorial ; neither poet nor prose-writer has everaffirmed that he had any. As Hesiod says :First Chaos came, and then broad-bosomed Earth,The everlasting seat of all that is,And Love.In other words,after Chaos, the Earth and Love, these two, came into being. Also Parmenidessings of Generation :First in the train of gods, hefashioned Love.And Acusilausagrees with 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 source ofthe greatest benefits to us. For I know not any greater blessing to a young manwho is beginning life than a virtuous lover or to the lover than a belovedyouth. For the principle which ought to be the guide of men who would noblylive at principle, I say, neither kindred, nor honour, nor wealth, nor anyother motive is able to implant so well as love. Of what am I speaking ?Of the sense of honour and dishonour, without which neither states norindividuals ever do any good or great work. And I say that a lover who isdetected in doing any dishonourable act, or submitting through cowardice whenany dishonour is done to him by another, will be more pained at being detectedby his beloved than at being seen by his father, or by his companions, or byany one else. The beloved too, when he is found in any disgraceful situation,has the same feeling about his lover. And if there were only some way ofcontriving that a state or an army should be made up of lovers and their loves,they would be the very best governors of their own city, abstaining from alldishonour, and emulating one another in honour ; and when fighting at eachother’s side, although a mere handful, they would overcome the world. For whatlover would not choose rather to be seen by all mankind than by his beloved,either when abandoning his post or throwing away his arms ? He would beready to die a thousand deaths rather than endure this. Or who would desert hisbeloved or fail him in the hour of danger ? The veriest coward wouldbecome an inspired hero, equal to the bravest, at such a time ; Love wouldinspire him. That courage which, as Homer says, the god breathes into the soulsof some heroes, Love of his own nature infuses into the lover.Love will make mendare to die for their beloved-love alone ; and women as well as men. Ofthis, Alcestis, the daughter of Pelias, is a monument to all Hellas ; forshe was willing to lay down her life on behalf of her husband, when no one elsewould, although he had a father and mother ; but the tenderness of herlove so far exceeded theirs, that she made them seem to be strangers in bloodto their own son, and in name only related to him ; and so noble did thisaction of hers appear to the gods, as well as to men, that among the many whohave done virtuously she is one of the very few to whom, in admiration of hernoble action, they have granted the privilege of returning alive to earth ;such exceeding honour is paid by the gods to the devotion and virtue of love.But Orpheus, the son of Oeagrus, the harper, they sent empty away, andpresented to him an apparition only of her whom he sought, but herself theywould not give up, because he showed no spirit ; he was only aharp-player, and did not dare like Alcestis to die for love, but was contrivinghow he might enter hades alive ; moreover, they afterwards caused him tosuffer death at the hands of women, as the punishment of his cowardliness. Verydifferent was the reward of the true love of Achilles towards his loverPatroclus — his lover and not his love (the notion that Patroclus was thebeloved one is a foolish error into which Aeschylus has fallen, for Achilleswas surely the fairer of the two, fairer also than all the other heroes ;and, as Homer informs us, he was still beardless, and younger far). And greatlyas the gods honour the virtue of love, still the return of love on the part ofthe beloved to the lover is more admired and valued and rewarded by them, forthe lover is more divine ; because he is inspired by God. Now Achilles wasquite aware, for he had been told by his mother, that he might avoid death andreturn home, and live to a good old age, if he abstained from slaying Hector.Nevertheless he gave his life to revenge his friend, and dared to die, not onlyin his defence, but after he was dead Wherefore the gods honoured him evenabove Alcestis, 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 ofhappiness after death.This, or somethinglike this, was the speech of Phaedrus ; and some other speeches followedwhich Aristodemus did not remember ; the next which he repeated was thatof Pausanias.Phaedrus, he said,the argument has not been set before us, I think, quite in the rightform ; — we should not be called upon to praise Love in such anindiscriminate manner. If there were only one Love, then what you said would bewell enough ; but since there are more Loves than one, — should have begunby determining which of them was to be the theme of our praises. I will amendthis defect ; and first of all I would tell you which Love is deserving ofpraise, and then try to hymn the praiseworthy one in a manner worthy of him.For we all know that Love is inseparable from Aphrodite, and if there were onlyone Aphrodite there would be only one Love ; but as there are twogoddesses there must be two Loves.And am I not rightin asserting that there are two goddesses ? The elder one, having nomother, who is called the heavenly Aphrodite — she is the daughter ofUranus ; the younger, who is the daughter of Zeus and Dione — her we callcommon ; and the Love who is her fellow-worker is rightly named common, asthe other love is called heavenly. All the gods ought to have praise given tothem, but not without distinction of their natures ; and therefore I musttry to distinguish the characters of the two Loves. Now actions vary accordingto the manner of their performance. Take, for example, that which we are nowdoing, drinking, singing and talking these actions are not in themselves eithergood or evil, but they turn out in this or that way according to the mode ofperforming them ; and when well done they are good, and when wrongly donethey are evil ; and in like manner not every love, but only that which hasa noble purpose, is noble and worthy of praise. The Love who is the offspringof the common Aphrodite is essentially common, and has no discrimination, beingsuch as the meaner sort of men feel, and is apt to be of women as well as ofyouths, and is of the body rather than of the soul — the most foolish beingsare the objects of this love which desires only to gain an end, but neverthinks of accomplishing the end nobly, and therefore does good and evil quiteindiscriminately. The goddess who is his mother is far younger than the other,and she was born of the union of the male and female, and partakes of both.But the offspringof the heavenly Aphrodite is derived from a mother in whose birth the femalehas no part, — she is from the male only ; this is that love which is ofyouths, and the goddess being older, there is nothing of wantonness in her.Those who are inspired by this love turn to the male, and delight in him who isthe more valiant and intelligent nature ; any one may recognise the pureenthusiasts in the very character of their attachments. For they love not boys,but intelligent, beings whose reason is beginning to be developed, much aboutthe time at which their beards begin to grow. And in choosing young men to betheir companions, they mean to be faithful to them, and pass their whole lifein company with them, not to take them in their inexperience, and deceive them,and play the fool with them, or run away from one to another of them. But 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, andmuch noble enthusiasm may be thrown away upon them ; in this matter thegood are a law to themselves, and the coarser sort of lovers ought to berestrained by force ; as we restrain or attempt to restrain them fromfixing their affections on women of free birth. These are the persons who bringa reproach on love ; and some have been led to deny the lawfulness of suchattachments because they see the impropriety and evil of them ; for surelynothing that is decorously and lawfully done can justly be censured.Now here and inLacedaemon the rules about love are perplexing, but in most cities they aresimple and easily intelligible ; in Elis and Boeotia, and in countrieshaving no gifts of eloquence, they are very straightforward ; the law issimply in favour of these connexions, and no one, whether young or old, hasanything to say to their discredit ; the reason being, as I suppose, thatthey are men of few words in those parts, and therefore the lovers do not likethe trouble of pleading their suit. In Ionia and other places, and generally incountries which are subject to the barbarians, the custom is held to bedishonourable ; loves of youths share the evil repute in which philosophyand gymnastics are held because they are inimical to tyranny ; for theinterests of rulers require that their subjects should be poor in spirit andthat there should be no strong bond of friendship or society among them, whichlove, above all other motives, is likely to inspire, as our Athenian tyrantslearned by experience ; for the love of Aristogeiton and the constancy ofHarmodius had strength which undid their power. And, therefore, the ill-reputeinto which these attachments have fallen is to be ascribed to the evilcondition of those who make them to be ill-reputed ; that is to say, tothe self-seeking of the governors and the cowardice of the governed ; onthe other hand, the indiscriminate honour which is given to them in somecountries is attributable to the laziness of those who hold this opinion of them.In our own country a far better principle prevails, but, as I was saying, theexplanation of it is rather perplexing. For, observe that open loves are heldto be more honourable than secret ones, and that the love of the noblest andhighest, even if their persons are less beautiful than others, is especiallyhonourable.Consider, too, howgreat is the encouragement which all the world gives to the lover ;neither is he supposed to be doing anything dishonourable ; but if hesucceeds he is praised, and if he fail he is blamed. And in the pursuit of hislove the custom of mankind allows him to do many strange things, whichphilosophy would bitterly censure if they were done from any motive ofinterest, or wish for office or power. He may pray, and entreat, and supplicate,and swear, and lie on a mat at the door, and endure a slavery worse than thatof any slave — in any other case friends and enemies would be equally ready toprevent him, but now there is no friend who will be ashamed of him and admonishhim, and no enemy will charge him with meanness or flattery ; the actionsof a lover have a grace which ennobles them ; and custom has decided thatthey are highly commendable and that there no loss of character in them ;and, what is strangest of all, he only may swear and forswear himself (so mensay), and the gods will forgive his transgression, for there is no such thingas a lover’s oath. Such is the entire liberty which gods and men have allowedthe lover, according to the custom which prevails in our part of the world.From this point of view a man fairly argues in Athens to love and to be lovedis held to be a very honourable thing. But when parents forbid their sons totalk with their lovers, and place them under a tutor’s care, who is appointedto see to these things, and their companions and equals cast in their teethanything of the sort which they may observe, and their elders refuse to silencethe reprovers and do not rebuke them — any one who reflects on all this will,on the contrary, think that we hold these practices to be most disgraceful.But, as I was saying at first, the truth as I imagine is, that whether suchpractices are honourable or whether they are dishonourable is not a simplequestion ; they are honourable to him who follows them honourably,dishonourable to him who follows them dishonourably. There is dishonour inyielding to the evil, or in an evil manner ; but there is honour inyielding to the good, or in an honourable manner.Evil is the vulgarlover who loves the body rather than the soul, inasmuch as he is not evenstable, because he loves a thing which is in itself unstable, and thereforewhen the bloom of youth which he was desiring is over, he takes wing and fliesaway, in spite of all his words and promises ; whereas the love of thenoble disposition is life-long, for it becomes one with the everlasting. Thecustom of our country would have both of them proven well and truly, and wouldhave us yield to the one sort of lover and avoid the other, and thereforeencourages some to pursue, and others to fly ; testing both the lover andbeloved in contests and trials, until they show to which of the two classesthey respectively belong. And this is the reason why, in the first place, ahasty attachment is held to be dishonourable, because time is the true test ofthis as of most other things ; and secondly there is a dishonour in beingovercome by the love of money, or of wealth, or of political power, whether aman is frightened into surrender by the loss of them, or, having experiencedthe benefits of money and political corruption, is unable to rise above theseductions of them. For none of these things are of a permanent or lastingnature ; not to mention that no generous friendship ever sprang from them.There remains, 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 flattery or adishonour to himself, so the beloved has one way only of voluntary servicewhich is not dishonourable, and this is virtuous service.For we have acustom, and according to our custom any one who does service to another underthe idea that he will be improved by him either in wisdom, or, in some otherparticular of virtue — such a voluntary service, I say, is not to be regardedas a dishonour, and is not open to the charge of flattery. And these twocustoms, one the love of youth, and the other the practice of philosophy andvirtue in general, ought to meet in one, and then the beloved may honourablyindulge the lover. For when the lover and beloved come together, having each ofthem a law, and the lover thinks that he is right in doing any service which hecan to his gracious loving one ; and the other that he is right in showingany kindness which he can to him who is making him wise and good ; the onecapable of communicating wisdom and virtue, the other seeking to acquire themwith a view to education and wisdom, when the two laws of love are fulfilledand meet in one — then, and then only, may the beloved yield with honour to thelover. Nor when love is of this disinterested sort is there any disgrace inbeing deceived, but in every other case there is equal disgrace in being or notbeing deceived. For he who is gracious to his lover under the impression thathe is rich, and is disappointed of his gains because he turns out to be poor,is disgraced all the same : for he has done his best to show that he wouldgive himself up to any one’s “uses base” for the sake of money ; but thisis not honourable. And on the same principle he who gives himself to a loverbecause he is a good man, and in the hope that he will be improved by hiscompany, shows himself to be virtuous, even though the object of his affectionturn out to be a villain, and to have no virtue ; and if he is deceived hehas committed a noble error. For he has proved that for his part he will doanything for anybody with a view to virtue and improvement, than which therecan be 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, makingthe lover and the beloved alike eager in the work of their own improvement. Butall other loves are the offspring of the other, who is the common goddess. Toyou, Phaedrus, I offer this my contribution in praise of love, which is as goodas I could make extempore.Pausanias came to apause — this is the balanced way in which I have been taught by the wise tospeak ; and Aristodemus said that the turn of Aristophanes was next, buteither he had eaten too much, or from some other cause he had the hiccough, andwas obliged to change turns with Eryximachus the physician, who was recliningon the couch below him. Eryximachus, he said, you ought either to stop myhiccough, or to speak in my turn until I have left off.I will do both,said Eryximachus : I will speak in your turn, and do you speak inmine ; and while I am speaking let me recommend you to hold your breath,and if after you have done so for some time the hiccough is no better, thengargle with a little water ; and if it still continues, tickle your nosewith something and sneeze ; and if you sneeze once or twice, even the mostviolent hiccough is sure to go. I will do as you prescribe, said Aristophanes,and now get on.Eryximachus spokeas follows : Seeing that Pausanias made a fair beginning, and but a lameending, I must endeavour to supply his deficiency. I think that he has rightlydistinguished two kinds of love. But my art further informs me that the doublelove is not merely an affection of the soul of man towards the fair, or towardsanything, but is to be found in the bodies of all animals and in productions ofthe earth, and I may say in all that is ; such is the conclusion which Iseem to have gathered from my own art of medicine, whence I learn how great andwonderful and universal is the deity of love, whose empire extends over allthings, divine as well as human. And from medicine I would begin that I may dohonour to my art. There are in the human body these two kinds of love, whichare confessedly different and unlike, and being unlike, they have loves anddesires which are unlike ; and the desire of the healthy is one, and thedesire of the diseased is another ; and as Pausanias was just now sayingthat to indulge good men is honourable, and bad men dishonourable : — sotoo in the body the good and healthy elements are to be indulged, and the badelements and the elements of disease are not to be indulged, but discouraged.And this is what the physician has to do, and in this the art of medicineconsists : for medicine may be regarded generally as the knowledge of theloves and desires of the body, and how to satisfy them or not ; and thebest physician is he who is able to separate fair love from foul, or to convertone into the other ; and he who knows how to eradicate and how to implantlove, whichever is required, and can reconcile the most hostile elements in theconstitution and make them loving friends, is skilful practitioner. Nowthe : most hostile are the most opposite, such as hot and cold, bitter andsweet, moist and dry, and the like. And my ancestor, Asclepius, knowing how toimplant friendship and accord in these elements, was the creator of our art, asour friends the poets here tell us, and I believe them ; and not onlymedicine in every branch but the arts of gymnastic and husbandry are under hisdominion.Any one who paysthe least attention to the subject will also perceive that in music there isthe same reconciliation of opposites ; and I suppose that this must havebeen the meaning of Heracleitus, although his words are not accurate, for hesays that is united by disunion, like the harmony of bow and the lyre. Nowthere is an absurdity saying that harmony is discord or is composed of elementswhich are still in a state of discord. But what he probably meant was, that,harmony is composed of differing notes of higher or lower pitch which disagreedonce, but are now reconciled by the art of music ; for if the higher andlower notes still disagreed, there could be there could be no harmony — clearlynot. For harmony is a symphony, and symphony is an agreement ; but anagreement of disagreements while they disagree there cannot be ; youcannot harmonize that which disagrees. In like manner rhythm is compounded ofelements short and long, once differing and now in accord ; whichaccordance, as in the former instance, medicine, so in all these other cases,music implants, making love and unison to grow up among them ; and thusmusic, too, is concerned with the principles of love in their application toharmony and rhythm. Again, in the essential nature of harmony and rhythm thereis no difficulty in discerning love which has not yet become double. But whenyou want to use them in actual life, either in the composition of songs or inthe correct performance of airs or metres composed already, which latter iscalled education, then the difficulty begins, and the good artist is needed.Then the old tale has to be repeated of fair and heavenly love — the love ofUrania the fair and heavenly muse, and of the duty of accepting the temperate,and those who are as yet intemperate only that they may become temperate, andof preserving their love ; and again, of the vulgar Polyhymnia, who mustbe used 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 other thingshuman as which as divine, both loves ought to be noted as far as may be, forthey are both present.The course of theseasons 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 oneanother and blend in temperance and harmony, they bring to men, animals, andplants health and plenty, and do them no harm ; whereas the wanton love,getting the upper hand and affecting the seasons of the year, is verydestructive and injurious, being the source of pestilence, and bringing manyother kinds of diseases on animals and plants ; for hoar-frost and hailand blight spring from the excesses and disorders of these elements of love,which to know in relation to the revolutions of the heavenly bodies and theseasons of the year is termed astronomy. Furthermore all sacrifices and the wholeprovince of divination, which is the art of communion between gods and men —these, I say, are concerned with the preservation of the good and the cure ofthe evil love. For all manner of impiety is likely to ensue if, instead ofaccepting and honouring and reverencing the harmonious love in all his actions,a man honours the other love, whether in his feelings towards gods or parents,towards the living or the dead. Wherefore the business of divination is to seeto these loves and to heal them, and divination is the peacemaker of gods andmen, working by a knowledge of the religious or irreligious tendencies whichexist in human loves. Such is the great and mighty, or rather omnipotent forceof love in general. And the love, more especially, which is concerned with thegood, and which is perfected in company with temperance and justice, whetheramong gods or men, has the greatest power, and is the source of all ourhappiness and harmony, and makes us friends with the gods who are above us, andwith one another. I dare say that I too have omitted several things which mightbe said in praise of Love, but this was not intentional, and you, Aristophanes,may now supply the omission or take some other line of commendation ; forI perceive that you are rid of the hiccough.Yes, saidAristophanes, who followed, the hiccough is gone ; not, however, until Iapplied the sneezing ; and I wonder whether the harmony of the body has alove of such noises and ticklings, for I no sooner applied the sneezing than Iwas cured.Eryximachussaid : Beware, friend Aristophanes, although you are going to speak, youare making fun of me ; and I shall have to watch and see whether I cannothave a laugh at your expense, when you might speak in peace.You are right, saidAristophanes, laughing. I will unsay my words ; but do you please not towatch me, as I fear that in the speech which I am about to make, instead ofothers laughing with me, which is to the manner born of our muse and would beall the better, I shall only be laughed at by them.Do you expect toshoot your bolt and escape, Aristophanes ? Well, perhaps if you are verycareful and bear in mind that you will be called to account, I may be inducedto let you off.Aristophanesprofessed to open another vein of discourse ; he had a mind to praise Lovein another way, unlike that either of Pausanias or Eryximachus. Mankind ;he said, judging by their neglect of him, have never, as I think, at allunderstood the power of Love. For if they had understood him they would surelyhave built noble temples and altars, and offered solemn sacrifices in hishonour ; but this is not done, and most certainly ought to be done :since of all the gods he is the best friend of men, the helper and the healerof the ills which are the great impediment to the happiness of the race. I willtry to describe his power to you, and you shall teach the rest of the worldwhat I am teaching you. In the first place, let me treat of the nature of manand what has happened to it ; for the original human nature was not likethe present, but different. The sexes were not two as they are now, butoriginally three in number ; there was man, woman, and the union of thetwo, having a name corresponding to this double nature, which had once a realexistence, but is now lost, and the word “Androgynous” is only preserved as aterm of reproach. In the second place, the primeval man was round, his back andsides forming a circle ; and he had four hands and four feet, one headwith two faces, looking opposite ways, set on a round neck and preciselyalike ; also four ears, two privy members, and the remainder tocorrespond. He could walk upright as men now do, backwards or forwards as hepleased, and he could also roll over and over at a great pace, turning on hisfour hands and four feet, eight in all, like tumblers going over and over withtheir legs in the air ; this was when he wanted to run fast. Now the sexeswere three, and such as I have described them ; because the sun, moon, andearth are three ; — and the man was originally the child of the sun, thewoman of the earth, and the man-woman of the moon, which is made up of sun andearth, and they were all round and moved round and round : like theirparents. Terrible was their might and strength, and the thoughts of theirhearts were great, and they made an attack upon the gods ; of them is toldthe tale of Otys and Ephialtes who, as Homer says, dared to scale heaven, andwould have laid hands upon the gods. Doubt reigned in the celestial councils.Should they kill them and annihilate the race with thunderbolts, as they haddone the 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 agood deal of reflection, Zeus discovered a way. He said : “Methinks I havea plan which will humble their pride and improve their manners ; men shallcontinue to exist, but I will cut them in two and then they will be diminishedin strength and increased in numbers ; this will have the advantage ofmaking them more profitable to us. They shall walk upright on two legs, and ifthey continue insolent and will not be quiet, I will split them again and theyshall hop about on a single leg.” He spoke and cut men in two, like asorb-apple which is halved for pickling, or as you might divide an egg with ahair ; and as he cut them one after another, he bade Apollo give the faceand the half of the neck a turn in order that the man might contemplate thesection of himself : he would thus learn a lesson of humility. Apollo wasalso bidden to heal their wounds and compose their forms. So he gave a turn tothe face and pulled the skin from the sides all over that which in our languageis called the belly, like the purses which draw in, and he made one mouth atthe centre, which he fastened in a knot (the same which is called thenavel) ; he also moulded the breast and took out most of the wrinkles,much as a shoemaker might smooth leather upon a last ; he left a few,however, in the region of the belly and navel, as a memorial of the primevalstate. 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 from hungerand self-neglect, because they did not like to do anything apart ; andwhen one of the halves died and the other survived, the survivor sought anothermate, man or woman as we call them, being the sections of entire men or women,and clung to that. They were being destroyed, when Zeus in pity of theminvented a new plan : he turned the parts of generation round to thefront, for this had not been always their position and they sowed the seed nolonger as hitherto like grasshoppers in the ground, but in one another ;and after the transposition the male generated in the female in order that bythe 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 tothe business of life : so ancient is the desire of one another which isimplanted in us, reuniting our original nature, making one of two, and healingthe state of man.Each of us whenseparated, having one side only, like a flat fish, is but the indenture of aman, and he is always looking for his other half. Men who are a section of thatdouble nature which was once called Androgynous are lovers of women ;adulterers are generally of this breed, and also adulterous women who lustafter men : the women who are a section of the woman do not care for men,but have female attachments ; the female companions are of this sort. Butthey who are a section of the male follow the male, and while they are young,being slices of the original man, they hang about men and embrace them, andthey are themselves the best of boys and youths, because they have the mostmanly nature. Some indeed assert that they are shameless, but this is not true ;for they do not act thus from any want of shame, but because they are valiantand manly, and have a manly countenance, and they embrace that which is likethem. And these when they grow up become our statesmen, and these only, whichis a great proof of the truth of what I am saving. When they reach manhood theyare loves of youth, and are not naturally inclined to marry or beget children,— if at all, they do so only in obedience to the law ; but they aresatisfied if they may be allowed to live with one another unwedded ; andsuch a nature is prone to love and ready to return love, always embracing thatwhich is akin to him. And when one of them meets with his other half, theactual half of himself, whether he be a lover of youth or a lover of another sort,the pair are lost in an amazement of love and friendship and intimacy, andwould not be out of the other’s sight, as I may say, even for a moment :these are the people who pass their whole lives together ; yet they couldnot explain what they desire of one another. For the intense yearning whicheach of them has towards the other does not appear to be the desire of lover’sintercourse, but of something else which the soul of either evidently desiresand cannot tell, and of which she has only a dark and doubtful presentiment.Suppose Hephaestus, with his instruments, to come to the pair who are lyingside, by side and to say to them, “What do you people want of oneanother ?” they would be unable to explain. And suppose further, that whenhe saw their perplexity he said : “Do you desire to be wholly one ;always day and night to be in one another’s company ? for if this is whatyou desire, I am ready to melt you into one and let you grow together, so thatbeing two you shall become one, and while you live a common life as if you werea single man, and after your death in the world below still be one departedsoul instead of two — I ask whether this is what you lovingly desire, andwhether you are satisfied to attain this ?” — there is not a man of themwho when he heard the proposal would deny or would not acknowledge that thismeeting and melting into one another, this becoming one instead of two, was thevery expression 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 whole iscalled love. There was a time, I say, when we were one, but now because of thewickedness of mankind God has dispersed us, as the Arcadians were dispersedinto villages by the Lacedaemonians. And if we are not obedient to the gods,there is a danger that we shall be split up again and go about inbasso-relievo, like the profile figures having only half a nose which aresculptured on monuments, and that we shall be like tallies.Wherefore let usexhort all men to piety, that we may avoid evil, and obtain the good, of whichLove is to us the lord and minister ; and let no one oppose him — he isthe enemy of the gods who oppose him. For if we are friends of the God and atpeace with him we shall find our own true loves, which rarely happens in thisworld at present. I am serious, and therefore I must beg Eryximachus not tomake fun or to find any allusion in what I am saying to Pausanias and Agathon,who, as I suspect, are both of the manly nature, and belong to the class whichI have been describing. But my words have a wider application — they includemen and women everywhere ; and I believe that if our loves were perfectlyaccomplished, and each one returning to his primeval nature had his original truelove, then our race would be happy. And if this would be best of all, the bestin the next degree and under present circumstances must be the nearest approachto such an union ; and that will be the attainment of a congenial love.Wherefore, if we would praise him who has given to us the benefit, we mustpraise the god Love, who is our greatest benefactor, both leading us in thislife back 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, andheal us and make us happy and blessed. This, Eryximachus, is my discourse oflove, which, although different to yours, I must beg you to leave unassailed bythe shafts of your ridicule, in order that each may have his turn ; each,or rather either, for Agathon and Socrates are the only ones left.Indeed, I am notgoing to attack you, said Eryximachus, for I thought your speech charming, anddid I not know that Agathon and Socrates are masters in the art of love, Ishould be really afraid that they would have nothing to say, after the world ofthings which have been said already. But, for all that, I am not without hopes.Socratessaid : You played your part well, Eryximachus ; but if you were as Iam now, or rather as I shall be when Agathon has spoken, you would, indeed, bein a great strait.You want to cast aspell over me, Socrates, said Agathon, in the hope that I may be disconcertedat the expectation raised among the audience that I shall speak well.I should bestrangely forgetful, Agathon, replied Socrates, of the courage and magnanimitywhich you showed when your own compositions were about to be exhibited, and youcame upon the stage with the actors and faced the vast theatre altogetherundismayed, if I thought that your nerves could be fluttered at a small partyof friends.Do you think,Socrates, said Agathon, that my head is so full of the theatre as not to knowhow much more formidable to a man of sense a few good judges are than manyfools ?Nay, repliedSocrates, I should be very wrong in attributing to you, Agathon, that or anyother want of refinement. And I am quite aware that if you happened to meetwith any whom you thought wise, you would care for their opinion much more thanfor that of the many. But then we, having been a part of the foolish many inthe theatre, cannot be regarded as the select wise ; though I know that ifyou chanced to be in the presence, not of one of ourselves, but of some reallywise man, you would be ashamed of disgracing yourself before him — would younot ?Yes, said Agathon.But before the manyyou would not be ashamed, if you thought that you were doing somethingdisgraceful in their presence ?Here Phaedrusinterrupted them, saying : not answer him, my dear Agathon ; for ifhe can only get a partner with whom he can talk, especially a good-looking one,he will no longer care about the completion of our plan. Now I love to hear himtalk ; but just at present I must not forget the encomium on Love which Iought to receive from him and from every one. When you and he have paid yourtribute to the god, then you may talk.Very good,Phaedrus, said Agathon ; I see no reason why I should not proceed with myspeech, as I shall have many other opportunities of conversing with Socrates.Let me say first how I ought to speak, and then speak :— The previousspeakers, instead of praising the god Love, or unfolding his nature, appear tohave congratulated mankind on the benefits which he confers upon them. But Iwould rather praise the god first, and then speak of his gifts ; this isalways the right way of praising everything. May I say without impiety oroffence, that of all the blessed gods he is the most blessed because he is thefairest and best ? And he is the fairest : for, in the first place,he is the youngest, and of his youth he is himself the witness, fleeing out ofthe way of age, who is swift enough, swifter truly than most of us like :— Love hates him and will not come near him ; but youth and love live andmove together — like to like, as the proverb says. Many things were said byPhaedrus about Love in which I agree with him ; but I cannot agree that heis older than Iapetus and Kronos : — not so ; I maintain him to bethe youngest of the gods, and youthful ever. The ancient doings among the godsof which Hesiod and Parmenides spoke, if the tradition of them be true, weredone of Necessity and not Love ; had Love been in those days, there wouldhave been no chaining or mutilation of the gods, or other violence, but peaceand sweetness, as there is now in heaven, since the rule of Love began.Love is young andalso tender ; he ought to have a poet like Homer to describe histenderness, as Homer says of Ate, that she is a goddess and tender :Her feet are tender, for she sets her steps,Not on the ground but on the headsof men :herein is anexcellent proof of her tenderness — that she walks not upon the hard but uponthe soft. Let us adduce a similar proof of the tenderness of Love ; for hewalks not upon the earth, nor yet upon skulls of men, which are not so verysoft, 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 there issoftness 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 than thesoftest 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 of everysoul of man undiscovered. And a proof of his flexibility and symmetry of formis his grace, which is universally admitted to be in an especial manner theattribute of Love ; ungrace and love are always at war with one another.The fairness of his complexion is revealed by his habitation among theflowers ; for he dwells not amid bloomless or fading beauties, whether ofbody or soul or aught else, but in the place of flowers and scents, there hesits and abides. Concerning the beauty of the god I have said enough ; andyet there remains much more which I might say. Of his virtue I have now tospeak : his greatest glory is that he can neither do nor suffer wrong toor 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, and wherethere is voluntary agreement, there, as the laws which are the lords of thecity say, is justice. And not only is he just but exceedingly temperate, forTemperance is the acknowledged ruler of the pleasures and desires, and nopleasure ever masters Love ; he is their master and they are hisservants ; and if he conquers them he must be temperate indeed. As tocourage, even the God of War is no match for him ; he is the captive andLove is the lord, for love, the love of Aphrodite, masters him, as the taleruns ; and the master is stronger than the servant. And if he conquers thebravest of all others, he must be himself the bravest.Of his courage andjustice and temperance I have spoken, but I have yet to speak of his wisdom —and according to the measure of my ability I must try to do my best. In thefirst place he is a poet (and here, like Eryximachus, I magnify my art), and heis also the source of poesy in others, which he could not be if he were nothimself a poet. And at the touch of him every one becomes a poet, even though hehad no music in him before ; this also is a proof that Love is a good poetand accomplished in all the fine arts ; for no one can give to anotherthat which he has not himself, or teach that of which he has no knowledge. Whowill deny that the creation of the animals is his doing ? Are they not allthe works his wisdom, born and begotten of him ? And as to the artists, dowe not know that he only of them whom love inspires has the light offame ? — he whom Love touches riot walks in darkness. The arts of medicineand archery and divination were discovered by Apollo, under the guidance oflove and desire ; so that he too is a disciple of Love. Also the melody ofthe Muses, the metallurgy of Hephaestus, the weaving of Athene, the empire ofZeus over gods and men, are all due to Love, who was the inventor of them. Andso Love set in order the empire of the gods — the love of beauty, as isevident, for with deformity Love has no concern. In the days of old, as I beganby saying, dreadful deeds were done among the gods, for they were ruled byNecessity ; but now since the birth of Love, and from the Love of thebeautiful, has sprung every good in heaven and earth. Therefore, Phaedrus, Isay of Love that he is the fairest and best in himself, and the cause of whatis fairest and best in all other things. And there comes into my mind a line ofpoetry in which he is said to be the god whoGives peace on earth and calms the stormy deep,Who stills the winds and bids thesufferer sleep.This is he whoempties men of disaffection and fills them with affection, who makes them tomeet together at banquets such as these : in sacrifices, feasts, dances,he is our lord — who sends courtesy and sends away discourtesy, who giveskindness ever and never gives unkindness ; the friend of the good, thewonder of the wise, the amazement of the gods ; desired by those who haveno part in him, and precious to those who have the better part in him ;parent of delicacy, luxury, desire, fondness, softness, grace ; regardfulof the good, regardless of the evil : in every word, work, wish,fear-saviour, pilot, comrade, helper ; glory of gods and men, leader bestand brightest : in whose footsteps let every man follow, sweetly singingin his honour and joining in that sweet strain with which love charms the soulsof gods and men. Such is the speech, Phaedrus, half-playful, yet having acertain measure of seriousness, which, according to my ability, I dedicate tothe god.When Agathon haddone speaking, Aristodemus said that there was a general cheer ; the youngman was thought to have spoken in a manner worthy of himself, and of the god.And Socrates, looking at Eryximachus, said : Tell me, son of Acumenus, wasthere not reason in my fears ? and was I not a true prophet when I saidthat Agathon would make a wonderful oration, and that I should be in astrait ?The part of theprophecy which concerns Agathon, replied Eryximachus, appears to me to betrue ; but, not the other part — that you will be in a strait.Why, my dearfriend, said Socrates, must not I or any one be in a strait who has to speakafter he has heard such a rich and varied discourse ? I am especiallystruck with the beauty of the concluding words — who could listen to themwithout amazement ? When I reflected on the immeasurable inferiority of myown powers, I was ready to run away for shame, if there had been a possibilityof escape. For I was reminded of Gorgias, and at the end of his speech Ifancied that Agathon was shaking at me the Gorginian or Gorgonian head of thegreat master of rhetoric, which was simply to turn me and my speech, intostone, as Homer says, and strike me dumb. And then I perceived how foolish Ihad been in consenting to take my turn with you in praising love, and sayingthat I too was a master of the art, when I really had no conception howanything ought to be praised. For in my simplicity I imagined that the topicsof praise should be true, and that this being presupposed, out of the true thespeaker was to choose the best and set them forth in the best manner. And Ifelt quite proud, thinking that I knew the nature of true praise, and shouldspeak well. Whereas I now see that the intention was to attribute to Love everyspecies of greatness and glory, whether really belonging to him not, withoutregard to truth or falsehood — that was no matter ; for the original,proposal seems to have been not that each of you should really praise Love, butonly that you should appear to praise him. And so you attribute to Love everyimaginable form of praise which can be gathered anywhere ; and you saythat “he is all this,” and “the cause of all that,” making him appear thefairest and best of all to those who know him not, for you cannot impose uponthose who know him. And a noble and solemn hymn of praise have you rehearsed.But as I misunderstood the nature of the praise when I said that I would takemy turn, I must beg to be absolved from the promise which I made in ignorance,and which (as Euripides would say) was a promise of the lips and not of themind. Farewell then to such a strain : for I do not praise in thatway ; no, indeed, I cannot. But if you like to here the truth about love,I am ready to speak in my own manner, though I will not make myself ridiculousby entering into any rivalry with you. Say then, Phaedrus, whether you wouldlike, to have the truth about love, spoken in any words and in any order whichmay happen to come into my mind at the time. Will that be agreeable toyou ?Aristodemus saidthat Phaedrus and the company bid him speak in any manner which he thoughtbest.Then, he added, letme have your permission first to ask Agathon a few more questions, in orderthat I may take his admissions as the premisses of my discourse.I grant thepermission, said Phaedrus : put your questions.Socrates thenproceeded as follows :— In themagnificent oration which you have just uttered, I think thatrest of the company ?Socrates turned toAgathon and said : I must ask you to protect me, Agathon ; for thepassion of this man has grown quite a serious matter to me. Since I became hisadmirer I have never been allowed to speak to any other fair one, or so much asto look at them. If I do, he goes wild with envy and jealousy, and not onlyabuses me but can hardly keep his hands off me, and at this moment he may do mesome harm. Please to see to this, and either reconcile me to him, or, if heattempts violence, protect me, as I am in bodily fear of his mad and passionateattempts.There can never bereconciliation between you and me, said Alcibiades ; but for the present Iwill defer your chastisement. And I must beg you, Agathoron, to give me backsome of the ribands that I may crown the marvellous head of this universaldespot — I would not have him complain of me for crowning you, and neglectinghim, who in conversation is the conqueror of all mankind ; and this notonly once, as you were the day before yesterday, but always. Whereupon, takingsome of the ribands, he crowned Socrates, and again reclined.Then he said :You seem, my friends, to be sober, which is a thing not to be endured ;you must drink — for that was the agreement under which I was admitted — and Ielect myself master of the feast until you are well drunk. Let us have a largegoblet, Agathon, or rather, he said, addressing the attendant, bring me that wine-cooler.The wine-cooler which had caught his eye was a vessel holding more than twoquarts — this he filled and emptied, and bade the attendant fill it again forSocrates. Observe, my friends, said Alcibiades, that this ingenious trick ofmine will have no effect on Socrates, for he can drink any quantity of wine andnot be at all nearer being drunk. Socrates drank the cup which the attendantfilled for him.Eryximachussaid : What is this Alcibiades ? Are we to have neither conversationnor singing over our cups ; but simply to drink as if we werethirsty ?Alcibiadesreplied : Hail, worthy son of a most wise and worthy sire !The same to you,said Eryximachus ; but what shall we do ?That I leave toyou, said Alcibiades.The wise physicianskilled our wounds to heal shall prescribe and we will obey. What do youwant ?Well, saidEryximachus, before you appeared we had passed a resolution that each one o rich, and I desire simply to have what I have — to him we shallreply : “You, my friend, having wealth and health and strength, want tohave the continuance of them ; for at this moment, whether you choose orno, you have them. And when you say, I desire that which I have and nothingelse, is not your meaning that you want to have what you now have in thefuture ?” He must agree with us — must he not ?He must, repliedAgathon.Then, saidSocrates, he desires that what he has at present may be preserved to him in thefuture, which is equivalent to saying that he desires something which isnon-existent to him, and which as yet he has not got.Very true, he said.Then he and everyone who desires, desires that which he has not already, and which is future andnot present, and which he has not, and is not, and of which he is inwant ; — these are the sort of things which love and desire seek ?Very true, he said.Then now, saidSocrates, let us recapitulate the argument. First, is not love of something,and of something too which is wanting to a man ?Yes, he replied.Remember furtherwhat you said in your speech, or if you do not remember I will remindyou : you said that the love of the beautiful set in order the empire ofthe gods, for that of deformed things there is no love — did you not saysomething of that kind ?Yes, said Agathon.Yes, my friend, andthe remark was a just one. And if this is true, Love is the love of beauty andnot of deformity ?He assented.And the admissionhas been already made that Love is of something which a man wants and hasnot ?True, he said.Then Love wants andhas not beauty ?Certainly, hereplied.And would you callthat beautiful which wants and does not possess beauty ?Certainly not.Then would youstill say that love is beautiful ?Agathonreplied : I fear that I did not understand what I was saying.You made a verygood speech, Agathon, replied Socrates ; but there is yet one smallquestion which I would fain ask : — Is not the good also thebeautiful ?Yes.Then in wanting thebeautiful, love wants also the good ?I cannot refuteyou, Socrates, said Agathon : — Let us assume that what you say is true.Say rather, belovedAgathon, that you cannot refute the truth ; for Socrates is easilyrefuted.And now, taking myleave of you, I would rehearse a tale of love which I heard from Diotima ofMantineia, a woman wise in this and in many other kinds of knowledge, who inthe days of old, when the Athenians offered sacrifice before the coming of theplague, delayed the disease ten years. She was my instructress in the art oflove, and I shall repeat to you what she said to me, beginning with theadmissions made by Agathon, which are nearly if not quite the same which I madeto the wise woman when she questioned me — I think that this will be theeasiest way, and I shall take both parts myself as well as I can. As you,Agathon, suggested, I must speak first of the being and nature of Love, andthen of his works. First I said to her in nearly the same words which he usedto me, that Love was a mighty god, and likewise fair and she proved to me as Iproved to him that, by my own showing, Love was neither fair nor good. “What doyou mean, Diotima,” I said, “is love then evil and foul ?” “Hush,” shecried ; “must that be foul which is not fair ?” “Certainly,” I said.“And is that which is not wise, ignorant ? do you not see that there is amean between wisdom and ignorance ?” “And what may that be ?” I said.“Right opinion,” she replied ; “which, as you know, being incapable ofgiving a reason, is not knowledge (for how can knowledge be devoid ofreason ? nor again, ignorance, for neither can ignorance attain thetruth), but is clearly something which is a mean between ignorance and wisdom.”“Quite true,” I replied. “Do not then insist,” she said, “that what is not fairis of necessity foul, or what is not good evil ; or infer that becauselove is not fair and good he is therefore foul and evil ; for he is in amean between them.” “Well,” I said, “Love is surely admitted by all to be agreat god.” “By those who know or by those who do not know ?” “By all.”“And how, Socrates,” she said with a smile, “can Love be acknowledged to be a greatgod by those who say that he is not a god at all ?” “And who arethey ?” I said. “You and I are two of them,” she replied. “How can thatbe ?” I said. “It is quite intelligible,” she replied ; “for youyourself would acknowledge that the gods are happy and fair of course you would— would to say that any god was not ?” “Certainly not,” I replied. “Andyou mean by the happy, those who are the possessors of things good orfair ?” “Yes.” “And you admitted that Love, because he was in want,desires those good and fair things of which he is in want ?” “Yes, I did.”“But how can he be a god who has no portion in what is either good orfair ?” “Impossible.” “Then you see that you also deny the divinity ofLove.”“What then isLove ?” I asked ; “Is he mortal ?” “No.” “What then ?” “Asin the former instance, he is neither mortal nor immortal, but in a meanbetween the two.” “What is he, Diotima ?” “He is a great spirit (daimon),and like all spirits he is intermediate between the divine and the mortal.”“And what,” I said, “is his power ?” “He interprets,” she replied,“between gods and men, conveying and taking across to the gods the prayers andsacrifices of men, and to men the commands and replies of the gods ; he isthe mediator who spans the chasm which divides them, and therefore in him allis bound together, and through him the arts of the prophet and the priest,their sacrifices and mysteries and charms, and all, prophecy and incantation,find their way. For God mingles not with man ; but through Love. all theintercourse, and converse of god with man, whether awake or asleep, is carriedon. The wisdom which understands this is spiritual ; all other wisdom,such as that of arts and handicrafts, is mean and vulgar. Now these spirits orintermediate powers are many and diverse, and one of them is Love. “And who,” Isaid, “was his father, and who his mother ?” “The tale,” she said, “willtake 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 is the sonof Metis or Discretion, was one of the guests. When the feast was over, Peniaor Poverty, as the manner is on such occasions, came about the doors to beg.Now Plenty who was the worse for nectar (there was no wine in those days), wentinto the garden of Zeus and fell into a heavy sleep, and Poverty consideringher own straitened circumstances, plotted to have a child by him, andaccordingly she lay down at his side and conceived love, who partly because heis naturally a lover of the beautiful, and because Aphrodite is herselfbeautiful, and also because he was born on her birthday, is her follower andattendant. And as his parentage is, so also are his fortunes. In the firstplace he is always poor, and anything but tender and fair, as the many imaginehim ; and he is rough and squalid, and has no shoes, nor a house to dwellin ; on the bare earth exposed he lies under the open heaven, in thestreets, or at the doors of houses, taking his rest ; and like his motherhe is always in distress. Like his father too, whom he also partly resembles,he is always plotting against the fair and good ; he is bold,enterprising, strong, a mighty hunter, always weaving some intrigue or other,keen in the pursuit of wisdom, fertile in resources ; a philosopher at alltimes, terrible as an enchanter, sorcerer, sophist. He is by nature neithermortal nor immortal, but alive and flourishing at one moment when he is inplenty, and dead at another moment, and again alive by reason of his father’snature. But that which is always flowing in is always flowing out, and so he isnever in want and never in wealth ; and, further, he is in a mean betweenignorance and knowledge. The truth of the matter is this : No god is aphilosopher. or seeker after wisdom, for he is wise already ; nor does anyman 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 isnevertheless satisfied with himself : he has no desire for that of whichhe feels no want.” “But — who then, Diotima,” I said, “are the lovers ofwisdom, if they are neither the wise nor the foolish ?” “A child mayanswer that question,” she replied ; “they are those who are in a meanbetween the two ; Love is one of them. For wisdom is a most beautifulthing, and Love is of the beautiful ; and therefore Love is also aphilosopher : or lover of wisdom, and being a lover of wisdom is in a meanbetween the wise and the ignorant. And of this too his birth is the cause ;for his father is wealthy and wise, and his mother poor and foolish. Such, mydear Socrates, is the nature of the spirit Love. The error in your conceptionof him was very natural, and as I imagine from what you say, has arisen out ofa confusion of love and the beloved, which made you think that love was allbeautiful. For the beloved is the truly beautiful, and delicate, and perfect,and blessed ; but the principle of love is of another nature, and is suchas I have described.”I said, “O thoustranger woman, thou sayest well ; but, assuming Love to be such as yousay, what is the use of him to men ?” “That, Socrates,” she replied, “Iwill attempt to unfold : of his nature and birth I have alreadyspoken ; and you acknowledge that love is of the beautiful. But some onewill say : Of the beautiful in what, Socrates and Diotima ? — orrather let me put the question more dearly, and ask : When a man loves thebeautiful, what does he desire ?” I answered her “That the beautiful maybe his.” “Still,” she said, “the answer suggests a further question : Whatis given by the possession of beauty ?” “To what you have asked,” Ireplied, “I have no answer ready.” “Then,” she said, “Let me put the word‘good’ in the place of the beautiful, and repeat the question once more :If he who loves good, what is it then that he loves ? “The possession ofthe good,” I said. “And what does he gain who possesses the good ?”“Happiness,” I replied ; “there is less difficulty in answering thatquestion.” “Yes,” she said, “the happy are made happy by the acquisition ofgood things. Nor is there any need to ask why a man desires happiness ;the answer is already final.” “You are right.” I said. “And is this wish andthis desire common to all ? and do all men always desire their own good,or only some men ? — what say you ?” “All men,” I replied ; “thedesire is common to all.” “Why, then,” she rejoined, “are not all men,Socrates, said to love, but only some them ? whereas you say that all menare always loving the same things.” “I myself wonder,” I said, — why this is.”“There is nothing to wonder at,” she replied ; “the reason is that onepart of love is separated off and receives the name of the whole, but the otherparts have other names.” “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, and theprocesses of all art are creative ; and the masters of arts are all poetsor makers.” “Very true.” “Still,” she said, “you know that they are not calledpoets, but have other names ; only that portion of the art which isseparated off from the rest, and is concerned with music and metre, is termedpoetry, and they who possess poetry in this sense of the word are calledpoets.” “Very true,” I said. “And the same holds of love. For you may saygenerally that all desire of good and happiness is only the great and subtlepower of love ; but they who are drawn towards him by any other path,whether the path of money-making or gymnastics or philosophy, are not calledlovers — 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 dare say,” Ireplied, “that you are right.” “Yes,” she added, “and you hear people say thatlovers are seeking for their other half ; but I say that they are seekingneither for the half of themselves, nor for the whole, unless the half or thewhole be also a good. And they will cut off their own hands and feet and castthem away, if they are evil ; for they love not what is their own, unlessperchance there be some one who calls what belongs to him the good, and whatbelongs to another the evil. For there is nothing which men love but the good.Is there anything ?” “Certainly, I should say, that there is nothing.”“Then,” she said, “the simple truth is, that men love the good.” “Yes,” I said.“To which must be added that they love the possession of the good ? “Yes,that must be added.” “And not only the possession, but the everlastingpossession of the good ?” “That must be added too.” “Then love,” she said,“may be described generally as the love of the everlasting possession of thegood ?” “That is most true.”“Then if this bethe nature of love, can you tell me further,” she said, “what is the manner ofthe pursuit ? what are they doing who show all this eagerness and heatwhich is called love ? and what is the object which they have inview ? Answer me.” “Nay, Diotima,” I replied, “if I had known, I shouldnot have wondered at your wisdom, neither should I have come to learn from youabout this very matter.” “Well,” she said, “I will teach you : — Theobject which they have in view is birth in beauty, whether of body or, soul.”“I do not understand you,” I said ; “the oracle requires an explanation.”“I will make my meaning dearer,” she replied. “I mean to say, that all men arebringing to the birth in their bodies and in their souls. There is a certainage at which human nature is desirous of procreation — procreation which mustbe in beauty and not in deformity ; and this procreation is the union ofman and woman, and is a divine thing ; for conception and generation arean immortal principle in the mortal creature, and in the inharmonious they cannever be. But the deformed is always inharmonious with the divine, and thebeautiful harmonious. Beauty, then, is the destiny or goddess of parturitionwho presides at birth, and therefore, when approaching beauty, the conceivingpower is propitious, and diffusive, and benign, and begets and bearsfruit : at the sight of ugliness she frowns and contracts and has a senseof pain, and turns away, and shrivels up, and not without a pang refrains fromconception. And this is the reason why, when the hour of conception arrives,and the teeming nature is full, there is such a flutter and ecstasy aboutbeauty whose approach is the alleviation of the pain of travail. For love,Socrates, is not, as you imagine, the love of the beautiful only.” “Whatthen ?” “The love of generation and of birth in beauty.” “Yes,” I said.“Yes, indeed,” she replied. “But why of generation ?” “Because to themortal creature, generation is a sort of eternity and immortality,” shereplied ; “and if, as has been already admitted, love is of the everlastingpossession of the good, all men will necessarily desire immortality togetherwith good : Wherefore love is of immortality.”All this she taughtme at various times when she spoke of love. And I remember her once saying tome, “What is the cause, Socrates, of love, and the attendant desire ? Seeyou not how all animals, birds, as well as beasts, in their desire ofprocreation, are in agony when they take the infection of love, which beginswith the desire of union ; whereto is added the care of offspring, on whosebehalf the weakest are ready to battle against the strongest even to theuttermost, and to die for them, and will, let themselves be tormented withhunger or 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 notknow. 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 I am consciousthat I want a teacher ; tell me then the cause of this and of the othermysteries of love.” “Marvel not,” she said, “if you believe that love is of theimmortal, as we have several times acknowledged ; for here again, and onthe same principle too, the mortal nature is seeking as far as is possible tobe everlasting and immortal : and this is only to be attained bygeneration, because generation always leaves behind a new existence in theplace of the old. Nay even in the life, of the same individual there issuccession and not absolute unity : a man is called the same, and yet inthe short interval which elapses between youth and age, and in which everyanimal is said to have life and identity, he is undergoing a perpetual processof loss and reparation — hair, flesh, bones, blood, and the whole body arealways changing. Which is true not only of the body, but also of the soul,whose habits, tempers, opinions, desires, pleasures, pains, fears, never remainthe same in any one of us, but are always coming and going ; and equallytrue of knowledge, and what is still more surprising to us mortals, not only dothe sciences in general spring up and decay, so that in respect of them we arenever the same ; but each of them individually experiences a like change.For what is implied in the word ‘recollection,’ but the departure of knowledge,which is ever being forgotten, and is renewed and preserved by recollection,and appears to be the same although in reality new, according to that law ofsuccession by which all mortal things are preserved, not absolutely the same,but by substitution, the old worn-out mortality leaving another new and similarexistence behind unlike the divine, which is always the same and notanother ? And in this way, Socrates, the mortal body, or mortal anything,partakes of immortality ; but the immortal in another way. Marvel not thenat the love which all men have of their offspring ; for that universallove and interest is for the sake of immortality.”I was astonished ather words, and said : “Is this really true, O thou wise Diotima ?”And she answered with all the authority of an accomplished sophist : “Ofthat, Socrates, you may be assured ; — think only of the ambition of men,and you will wonder at the senselessness of their ways, unless you consider howthey are stirred by the love of an immortality of fame. They are ready to runall risks greater far than they would have for their children, and to spend moneyand undergo any sort of toil, and even to die, for the sake of leaving behindthem a name which shall be eternal. Do you imagine that Alcestis would havedied to save Admetus, or Achilles to avenge Patroclus, or your own Codrus inorder to preserve the kingdom for his sons, if they had not imagined that thememory of their virtues, which still survives among us, would beimmortal ? Nay,” she said, “I am persuaded that all men do all things, andthe better they are the more they do them, in hope of the glorious fame ofimmortal virtue ; for they desire the immortal.“Those who arepregnant in the body only, betake themselves to women and beget children — thisis the character of their love ; their offspring, as they hope, willpreserve their memory and giving them the blessedness and immortality whichthey desire in the future. But souls which are pregnant — for there certainlyare men who are more creative in their souls than in their bodies conceive thatwhich is proper for the soul to conceive or contain. And what are theseconceptions ? — wisdom and virtue in general. And such creators are poetsand all artists who are deserving of the name inventor. But the greatest andfairest sort of wisdom by far is that which is concerned with the ordering of statesand families, and which is called temperance and justice. And he who in youthhas the seed of these implanted in him and is himself inspired, when he comesto maturity desires to beget and generate. He wanders about seeking beauty thathe may beget offspring — for in deformity he will beget nothing — and naturallyembraces the beautiful rather than the deformed body ; above all when hefinds fair and noble and well-nurtured soul, he embraces the two in one person,and to such an one he is full of speech about virtue and the nature andpursuits of a good man ; and he tries to educate him ; and at thetouch of the beautiful which is ever present to his memory, even when absent,he brings forth that which he had conceived long before, and in company withhim tends that which he brings forth ; and they are married by a farnearer tie and have a closer friendship than those who beget mortal children,for the children who are their common offspring are fairer and more immortal.Who, when he thinks of Homer and Hesiod and other great poets, would not ratherhave their children than ordinary human ones ? Who would not emulate themin the creation of children such as theirs, which have preserved their memoryand given them everlasting glory ? Or who would not have such children asLycurgus left behind him to be the saviours, not only of Lacedaemon, but ofHellas, as one may say ? There is Solon, too, who is the revered father ofAthenian laws ; and many others there are in many other places, both amonghellenes and barbarians, who have given to the world many noble works, and havebeen the parents of virtue of every kind ; and many temples have beenraised in their honour for the sake of children such as theirs ; whichwere never raised in honour of any one, for the sake of his mortal children.“These are thelesser mysteries of love, into which even you, Socrates, may enter ; tothe greater and more hidden ones which are the crown of these, and to which, ifyou pursue them in a right spirit, they will lead, I know not whether you willbe able to attain. But I will do my utmost to inform you, and do you follow ifyou can. For he who would proceed aright in this matter should begin in youthto visit beautiful forms ; and first, if he be guided by his instructoraright, to love one such form only — out of that he should create fairthoughts ; and soon he will of himself perceive that the beauty of oneform is akin to the beauty of another ; and then if beauty of form in generalis his pursuit, how foolish would he be not to recognize that the beauty inevery form is and the same ! And when he perceives this he will abate hisviolent love of the one, which he will despise and deem a small thing, and willbecome a lover of all beautiful forms ; in the next stage he will considerthat the beauty of the mind is more honourable than the beauty of the outwardform. So that if a virtuous soul have but a little comeliness, he will becontent to love and tend him, and will search out and bring to the birththoughts which may improve the young, until he is compelled to contemplate andsee the beauty of institutions and laws, and to understand that the beauty ofthem all is of one family, and that personal beauty is a trifle ; andafter laws and institutions he will go on to the sciences, that he may seetheir beauty, being not like a servant in love with the beauty of one youth orman or institution, himself a slave mean and narrow-minded, but drawing towardsand contemplating the vast sea of beauty, he will create many fair and noblethoughts and notions in boundless love of wisdom ; until on that shore hegrows and 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 beeninstructed thus far in the things of love, and who has learned to see thebeautiful in due order and succession, when he comes toward the end willsuddenly perceive a nature of wondrous beauty (and this, Socrates, is the finalcause of all our former toils) — a nature which in the first place iseverlasting, not growing and decaying, or waxing and waning ; secondly,not fair in one point of view and foul in another, or at one time or in onerelation or at one place fair, at another time or in another relation or atanother place foul, as if fair to some and foul to others, or in the likenessof a face or 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 ananimal, or in heaven or in earth, or in any other place ; but beautyabsolute, separate, simple, and everlasting, which without diminution andwithout increase, or any change, is imparted to the ever-growing and perishingbeauties of all other things. He who from these ascending under the influenceof true love, begins to perceive that beauty, is not far from the end. And thetrue order of going, or being led by another, to the things of love, is to beginfrom the beauties of earth and mount upwards for the sake of that other beauty,using these as steps only, and from one going on to two, and from two to allfair forms, and from fair forms to fair practices, and from fair practices tofair notions, until from fair notions he arrives at the notion of absolutebeauty, and at last knows what the essence of beauty is. This, my dearSocrates,” said the stranger of Mantineia, “is that life above all others whichman should live, in the contemplation of beauty absolute ; a beauty whichif you once beheld, you would see not to be after the measure of gold, andgarments, and fair boys and youths, whose presence now entrances you ; andyou and many a one would be content to live seeing them only and conversingwith them without meat or drink, if that were possible — you only want to lookat them and to be with them. But what if man had eyes to see the true beauty —the divine beauty, I mean, pure and dear and unalloyed, not clogged with thepollutions of mortality and all the colours and vanities of human life —thither looking, and holding converse with the true beauty simple anddivine ? Remember how in that communion only, beholding beauty with theeye of the mind, he will be enabled to bring forth, not images of beauty, butrealities (for he has hold not of an image but of a reality), and bringingforth and nourishing true virtue to become the friend of God and be immortal,if mortal man may. Would that be an ignoble life ?”Such, Phaedrus, —and I speak not only to you, but to all of you — were the words ofDiotima ; and I am persuaded of their truth. And being persuaded of them,I try to persuade others, that in the attainment of this end human nature willnot easily find a helper better than love : And therefore, also, I saythat every man ought to honour him as I myself honour him, and walk in hisways, and exhort others to do the same, and praise the power and spirit of loveaccording to the measure of my ability now and ever.The words which Ihave spoken, you, Phaedrus, may call an encomium of love, or anything elsewhich you please.When Socrates haddone speaking, the company applauded, and Aristophanes was beginning to saysomething in answer to the allusion which Socrates had made to his own speech,when suddenly there was a great knocking at the door of the house, as ofrevellers, and the sound of a flute-girl was heard. Agathon told the attendantsto go and see who were the intruders. “If they are friends of ours,” he said,“invite them in, but if not, say that the drinking is over.” A little whileafterwards they heard the voice of Alcibiades resounding in the court ; hewas in a great state of intoxication and kept roaring and shouting “Where isAgathon ? 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 ivy and violets, hishead flowing with ribands. “Will you have a very drunken man as a companion ofyour revels ? Or shall I crown Agathon, which was my intention in coming,and go away ? For I was unable to come yesterday, and therefore I am hereto-day, carrying on my head these ribands, that taking them from my own head, Imay crown the head of this fairest and wisest of men, as I may be allowed tocall him. 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 tell me ;if I come in shall we have the understanding of which I spoke ? Will youdrink with me or not ?”The company werevociferous in begging that he would take his place among them, and Agathonspecially invited him. Thereupon he was led in by the people who were withhim ; and as he was being led, intending to crown Agathon, he took theribands from his own head and held them in front of his eyes ; he was thusprevented from seeing Socrates, who made way for him, and Alcibiades took thevacant place between Agathon and Socrates, and in taking the place he embracedAgathon and crowned him. Take off his sandals, said Agathon, and let him make athird on the same couch.By all means ;but who makes the third partner in our revels ? said Alcibiades, turninground and starting up as he caught sight of Socrates. By Heracles, he said,what is this ? here is Socrates always lying in wait for me, and always,as his way is, coming out at all sorts of unsuspected places : and now,what have you to say for yourself, and why are you lying here, where I perceivethat you have contrived to find a place, not by a joker or lover of jokes, likeAristophanes, but by the fairest of the company ?Socrates turned toAgathon and said : I must ask you to protect me, Agathon ; for thepassion of this man has grown quite a serious matter to me. Since I became hisadmirer I have never been allowed to speak to any other fair one, or so much asto look at them. If I do, he goes wild with envy and jealousy, and not onlyabuses me but can hardly keep his hands off me, and at this moment he may do mesome harm. Please to see to this, and either reconcile me to him, or, if heattempts violence, protect me, as I am in bodily fear of his mad and passionateattempts.There can never bereconciliation between you and me, said Alcibiades ; but for the present Iwill defer your chastisement. And I must beg you, Agathoron, to give me backsome of the ribands that I may crown the marvellous head of this universaldespot — I would not have him complain of me for crowning you, and neglectinghim, who in conversation is the conqueror of all mankind ; and this notonly once, as you were the day before yesterday, but always. Whereupon, takingsome of the ribands, he crowned Socrates, and again reclined.Then he said :You seem, my friends, to be sober, which is a thing not to be endured ;you must drink — for that was the agreement under which I was admitted — and Ielect myself master of the feast until you are well drunk. Let us have a largegoblet, Agathon, or rather, he said, addressing the attendant, bring me that wine-cooler.The wine-cooler which had caught his eye was a vessel holding more than twoquarts — this he filled and emptied, and bade the attendant fill it again forSocrates. Observe, my friends, said Alcibiades, that this ingenious trick ofmine will have no effect on Socrates, for he can drink any quantity of wine andnot be at all nearer being drunk. Socrates drank the cup which the attendantfilled for him.Eryximachussaid : What is this Alcibiades ? Are we to have neither conversationnor singing over our cups ; but simply to drink as if we werethirsty ?Alcibiadesreplied : Hail, worthy son of a most wise and worthy sire !The same to you,said Eryximachus ; but what shall we do ?That I leave toyou, said Alcibiades.The wise physicianskilled our wounds to heal shall prescribe and we will obey. What do youwant ?Well, saidEryximachus, before you appeared we had passed a resolution that each one of usin turn should make a speech in praise of love, and as good a one as hecould : the turn was passed round from left to right ; and as all ofus have spoken, and you have not spoken but have well drunken, you ought tospeak, and then impose upon Socrates any task which you please, and he on hisright hand neighbour, and so on.That is good,Eryximachus, said Alcibiades ; and yet the comparison, of a drunken man’sspeech with those of sober men is hardly fair ; and I should like to know,sweet friend, whether you really believe — what Socrates was just nowsaying ; for I can assure you that the very reverse is the fact, and thatif I praise any one but himself in his presence, whether God or man, he willhardly keep his hands off me.For shame, saidSocrates.Hold your tongue,said Alcibiades, for by Poseidon, there is no one else whom I will praise whenyou are of the company.Well then, saidEryximachus, if you like praise Socrates.What do you think,Eryximachus ? said Alcibiades : shall I attack him : and inflictthe punishment before you all ?What are youabout ? said Socrates ; are you going to raise a laugh at myexpense ? Is that the meaning of your praise ?I am going to speakthe truth, if you will permit me.I not only permit,but exhort you to speak the truth.Then I will beginat once, said Alcibiades, and if I say anything which is not true, you may interruptme if you will, and say “that is a lie,” though my intention is to speak thetruth. But you must not wonder if I speak any how as things come into mymind ; for the fluent and orderly enumeration of all your singularities isnot a task which is easy to a man in my condition.And now, my boys, Ishall praise Socrates in a figure which will appear to him to be a caricature,and yet I speak, not to make fun of him, but only for the truth’s sake. I say,that he is exactly like the busts of Silenus, which are set up in thestatuaries, shops, holding pipes and flutes in their mouths ; and they aremade to open in the middle, and have images of gods inside them. I say alsothat hit is like Marsyas the satyr. You yourself will not deny, Socrates, thatyour face is like that of a satyr. Aye, and there is a resemblance in otherpoints too. For example, you are a bully, as I can prove by witnesses, if youwill not confess. And are you not a flute-player ? That you are, and aperformer far more wonderful than Marsyas. He indeed with instruments used tocharm the souls of men by the powers of his breath, and the players of hismusic do so still : for the melodies of Olympus are derived from Marsyaswho taught them, and these, whether they are played by a great master or by amiserable flute-girl, have a power which no others have ; they alonepossess the soul and reveal the wants of those who have need of gods andmysteries, because they are divine. But you produce the same effect with yourwords only, and do not require the flute ; that is the difference betweenyou and him. When we hear any other speaker, even very good one, he producesabsolutely no effect upon us, or not much, whereas the mere fragments of youand your words, even at second-hand, and however imperfectly repeated, amazeand possess the souls of every man, woman, and child who comes within hearingof them. And if I were not, afraid that you would think me hopelessly drunk, Iwould have sworn as well as spoken to the influence which they have always hadand still have over me. For my heart leaps within me more than that of anyCorybantian reveller, and my eyes rain tears when I hear them. And I observethat many others are affected in the same manner. I have heard Pericles andother great orators, and I thought that they spoke well, but I never had anysimilar feeling ; my soul was not stirred by them, nor was I angry at thethought of my own slavish state. But this Marsyas has often brought me to suchpass, that I have felt as if I could hardly endure the life which I am leading(this, Socrates, you will admit) ; and I am conscious that if I did notshut my ears against him, and fly as from the voice of the siren, my fate wouldbe like that of others, — he would transfix me, and I should grow old sittingat his feet. For he makes me confess that I ought not to live as I do,neglecting the wants of my own soul, and busying myself with the concerns ofthe Athenians ; therefore I hold my ears and tear myself away from him.And he is the only person who ever made me ashamed, which you might think notto be in my nature, and there is no one else who does the same. For I know thatI cannot answer 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 therefore I runaway and fly from him, and when I see him I am ashamed of what I have confessedto him. Many a time have I wished that he were dead, and yet I know that Ishould be much more sorry than glad, if he were to die : so that am at mywit’s end.And this is what Iand many others have suffered, from the flute-playing of this satyr. Yet hearme once more while I show you how exact the image is, and. how marvellous hispower. For let me tell you ; none of you know him ; but I will revealhim to you ; having begun, I must go on. See you how fond he is of thefair ? He is always with them and is always being smitten by them, andthen again he knows nothing and is ignorant of all thing such is the appearancewhich he puts on. Is he not like a Silenus in this ? To be sure heis : his outer mask is the carved head of the Silenus ; but, O mycompanions in drink, when he is opened, what temperance there is residingwithin ! Know you that beauty and wealth and honour, at which the manywonder, are of no account with him, and are utterly despised by him : heregards not at all the persons who are gifted with them ; mankind arenothing to him ; all his life is spent in mocking and flouting at them.But when I opened him, and looked within at his serious purpose, I saw in himdivine and golden images of such fascinating beauty that I was ready to do in amoment whatever Socrates commanded : they may have escaped the observationof others, but I saw them. Now I fancied that he was seriously enamoured of mybeauty, and I thought that I should therefore have a grand opportunity ofhearing him tell what he knew, for I had a wonderful opinion of the attractionsof my youth. In the prosecution of this design, when I next went to him, I sentaway the attendant who usually accompanied me (I will confess the whole truth,and beg you to listen ; and if I speak falsely, do you, Socrates, exposethe falsehood). Well, he and I were alone together, and I thought that whenthere was nobody with us, I should hear him speak the language which lovers useto their loves when they are by themselves, and I was delighted. Nothing of thesort ; he conversed as usual, and spent the day with me and then wentaway. Afterwards I challenged him to the palaestra ; and he wrestled andclosed with me, several times when there was no one present ; I fanciedthat I might succeed in this manner. Not a bit ; I made no way with him.Lastly, as I had failed hitherto, I thought that I must take stronger measuresand attack him boldly, and, as I had begun, not give him up, but see howmatters stood between him and me. So I invited him to sup with me, just as ifhe were a fair youth, and I a designing lover. He was not easily persuaded tocome ; he did, however, after a while accept the invitation, and when hecame the first time, he wanted to go away at once as soon as supper was over,and I had not the face to detain him. The second time, still in pursuance of mydesign, after we had supped, I went on conversing far into the night, and whenhe wanted to go away, I pretended that the hour was late and that he had muchbetter remain. So he lay down on the couch next to me, the same on which he hadsupped, and there was no one but ourselves sleeping in the apartment. All thismay be told without shame to any one. But what follows I could hardly tell youif I were sober. Yet as the proverb says, “In vino veritas,” whether with boys,or without them ; and therefore I must speak. Nor, again, should I bejustified in concealing the lofty actions of Socrates when I come to praisehim. Moreover I have felt the serpent’s sting ; and he who has suffered,as they say, is willing to tell his fellow-sufferers only, as they alone willbe likely to understand him, and will not be extreme in judging of the sayingsor doings which have been wrung from his agony. For I have been bitten by amore than viper’s tooth ; I have known in my soul, or in my heart, or insome other part, that worst of pangs, more violent in ingenuous youth than anyserpent’s tooth, the pang of philosophy, which will make a man say or doanything. And you whom I see around me, Phaedrus and Agathon and Eryximachusand Pausanias and Aristodemus and Aristophanes, all of you, and I need not saySocrates himself, have had experience of the same madness and passion in yourlonging after wisdom. Therefore listen and excuse my doings then and my sayingsnow. But let the attendants and other profane and unmannered persons close upthe doors of their ears.When the lamp wasput out and the servants had gone away, I thought that I must be plain with himand have no more ambiguity. So I gave him a shake, and I said : “Socrates,are you asleep ?” “No,” he said. “Do you know what I am meditating ?“What are you meditating ?” he said. “I think,” I replied, “that of allthe lovers whom I have ever had you are the only one who is worthy of me, andyou appear to be too modest to speak. Now I feel that I should be a fool torefuse you this or any other favour, and therefore I come to lay at your feetall that I have and all that my friends have, in the hope that you will assistme in the way of virtue, which I desire above all things, and in which Ibelieve that you can help me better than any one else. And I should certainlyhave more reason to be ashamed of what wise men would say if I were to refuse afavour to such as you, than of what the world who are mostly fools, would sayof me if I granted it.” To these words he replied in the ironical manner whichis so characteristic of him : “Alcibiades, my friend, you have indeed anelevated aim if what you say is true, and if there really is in me any power bywhich you may become better ; truly you must see in me some rare beauty ofa kind infinitely higher than any which I see in you. And therefore, if youmean to share with me and to exchange beauty for beauty, you will have greatlythe advantage of me ; you will gain true beauty in return for appearance —like Diomede, gold in exchange for brass. But look again, sweet friend, and seewhether you are not deceived in me. The mind begins to grow critical when thebodily eye fails, and it will be a long time before you get old.” Hearing this,I said : “I have told you my purpose, which is quite serious, and do youconsider what you think best for you and me.” “That is good,” he said ;“at some other time then we will consider and act as seems best about this andabout other matters.” Whereupon, I fancied that was smitten, and that the wordswhich I had uttered like arrows had wounded him, and so without waiting to hearmore I got up, and throwing my coat about him crept under his threadbare cloak,as the time of year was winter, and there I lay during the whole night havingthis wonderful monster in my arms. This again, Socrates, will not be denied byyou. And yet, notwithstanding all, he was so superior to my solicitations, socontemptuous and derisive and disdainful of my beauty — which really, as Ifancied, had some attractions — hear, O judges ; for judges you shall beof the haughty virtue of Socrates — nothing more happened, but in the morningwhen I awoke (let all the gods and goddesses be my witnesses) I arose as fromthe couch of a father or an elder brother.What do you supposemust have been my feelings, after this rejection, at the thought of my owndishonour ? And yet I could not help wondering at his natural temperanceand self-restraint and manliness. I never imagined that I could have met with aman such as he is in wisdom and endurance. And therefore I could not be angrywith him or renounce his company, any more than I could hope to win him. For Iwell knew that if Ajax could not be wounded by steel, much less he bymoney ; and my only chance of captivating him by my personal attractionshad faded. So I was at my wit’s end ; no one was ever more hopelessly enslavedby another. All this happened before he and I went on the expedition toPotidaea ; there we messed together, and I had the opportunity ofobserving his extraordinary power of sustaining fatigue. His endurance wassimply marvellous when, being cut off from our supplies, we were compelled togo without food — on such occasions, which often happen in time of war, he wassuperior not only to me but to everybody ; there was no one to be comparedto him. Yet at a festival he was the only person who had any real powers ofenjoyment ; though not willing to drink, he could if compelled beat us allat that, — wonderful to relate ! no human being had ever seen Socratesdrunk ; and his powers, if I am not mistaken, will be tested before long.His fortitude in enduring cold was also surprising. There was a severe frost,for the winter in that region is really tremendous, and everybody else eitherremained indoors, or if they went out had on an amazing quantity of clothes,and were well shod, and had their feet swathed in felt and fleeces : inthe midst of this, Socrates with his bare feet on the ice and in his ordinarydress marched better than the other soldiers who had shoes, and they lookeddaggers at him because he seemed to despise them.I have told you onetale, and now I must tell you another, which is worth hearing, ‘Of the doingsand sufferings of the enduring man’, while he was on the expedition. Onemorning he was thinking about something which he could not resolve ; hewould not give it up, but continued thinking from early dawn until noon — therehe stood fixed in thought ; and at noon attention was drawn to him, andthe rumour ran through the wondering crowd that Socrates had been standing andthinking about something ever since the break of day. At last, in the eveningafter supper, some Ionians out of curiosity (I should explain that this was notin winter but in summer), brought out their mats and slept in the open air thatthey might watch him and see whether he would stand all night. There he stood untilthe following morning ; and with the return of light he offered up aprayer to the sun, and went his way. I will also tell, if you please — andindeed I am bound to tell of his courage in battle ; for who but he savedmy life ? Now this was the engagement in which I received the prize ofvalour : for I was wounded and he would not leave me, but he rescued meand my arms ; and he ought to have received the prize of valour which thegenerals wanted to confer on me partly on account of my rank, and I told themso, (this, again Socrates will not impeach or deny), but he was more eager thanthe generals that I and not he should have the prize. There was anotheroccasion on which his behaviour was very remarkable — in the flight of the armyafter the battle of Delium, where he served among the heavy-armed — I had abetter opportunity of seeing him than at Potidaea, for I was myself onhorseback, and therefore comparatively out of danger. He and Laches wereretreating, for the troops were in flight, and I met them and told them not tobe discouraged, and promised to remain with them ; and there you might seehim, Aristophanes, as you describe, just as he is in the streets of Athens,stalking like a and rolling his eyes, calmly contemplating enemies as well asfriends, and making very intelligible to anybody, even from a distance, thatwhoever attacked him would be likely to meet with a stout resistance ; andin this way he and his companion escaped — for this is the sort of man who isnever touched in war ; those only are pursued who are running awayheadlong. I particularly observed how superior he was to Laches in presence ofmind. Many are the marvels which I might narrate in praise of Socrates ;most of his ways might perhaps be paralleled in another man, but his absoluteunlikeness to any human being that is or ever has been is perfectlyastonishing. You may imagine Brasidas and others to have been likeAchilles ; or you may imagine Nestor and Antenor to have been likePerides ; and the same may be said of other famous men, but of thisstrange being you will never be able to find any likeness, however remote,either among men who now are or who ever have been — other than that which Ihave already suggested of Silenus and the satyrs ; and they represent in afigure not only himself, but his words. For, although I forgot to mention thisto you before, his words are like the images of Silenus which open ; theyare ridiculous when you first hear them ; he clothes himself in languagethat is like the skin of the wanton satyr — for his talk is of pack-asses andsmiths and cobblers and curriers, and he is always repeating the same things inthe same words, so that any ignorant or inexperienced person might feeldisposed to laugh at him ; but he who opens the bust and sees what iswithin will find that they are the only words which have a meaning in them, andalso the most divine, abounding in fair images of virtue, and of the widestcomprehension, or rather extending to the whole duty of a good and honourableman.This, friends, ismy praise of Socrates. I have added my blame of him for his ill-treatment ofme ; and he has ill-treated not only me, but Charmides the son of Glaucon,and Euthydemus the son of Diocles, and many others in the same way — beginnin | |
