INTRODUCTION.

Of all the works of Plato the Symposium is the most perfect in form,
and may be truly thought to contain more than any commentator has ever
dreamed of; or, as Goethe said of one of his own writings, more than the
author himself knew. For in philosophy as in prophecy glimpses of the
future may often be conveyed in words which could hardly have been
understood or interpreted at the time when they were uttered (compare
Symp.)--which were wiser than the writer of them meant, and could not
have been expressed by him if he had been interrogated about them.
Yet Plato was not a mystic, nor in any degree affected by the Eastern
influences which afterwards overspread the Alexandrian world. He was
not an enthusiast or a sentimentalist, but one who aspired only to
see reasoned truth, and whose thoughts are clearly explained in his
language. There is no foreign element either of Egypt or of Asia to
be found in his writings. And more than any other Platonic work the
Symposium is Greek both in style and subject, having a beauty 'as of
a statue,' while the companion Dialogue of the Phaedrus is marked by
a sort of Gothic irregularity. More too than in any other of his
Dialogues, Plato is emancipated from former philosophies. The genius of
Greek art seems to triumph over the traditions of Pythagorean, Eleatic,
or Megarian systems, and 'the old quarrel of poetry and philosophy' has
at least a superficial reconcilement. (Rep.)

An unknown person who had heard of the discourses in praise of love
spoken by Socrates and others at the banquet of Agathon is desirous of
having an authentic account of them, which he thinks that he can
obtain from Apollodorus, the same excitable, or rather 'mad' friend of
Socrates, who is afterwards introduced in the Phaedo. He had imagined
that the discourses were recent. There he is mistaken: but they are
still fresh in the memory of his informant, who had just been repeating
them to Glaucon, and is quite prepared to have another rehearsal of them
in a walk from the Piraeus to Athens. Although he had not been present
himself, he had heard them from the best authority. Aristodemus, who
is described as having been in past times a humble but inseparable
attendant of Socrates, had reported them to him (compare Xen. Mem.).

The narrative which he had heard was as follows:--

Aristodemus meeting Socrates in holiday attire, is invited by him to
a banquet at the house of Agathon, who had been sacrificing in
thanksgiving for his tragic victory on the day previous. But no sooner
has he entered the house than he finds that he is alone; Socrates has
stayed behind in a fit of abstraction, and does not appear until the
banquet is half over. On his appearing he and the host jest a little;
the question is then asked by Pausanias, one of the guests, 'What shall
they do about drinking? as they had been all well drunk on the day
before, and drinking on two successive days is such a bad thing.' This
is confirmed by the authority of Eryximachus the physician, who further
proposes that instead of listening to the flute-girl and her 'noise'
they shall make speeches in honour of love, one after another, going
from left to right in the order in which they are reclining at the
table. All of them agree to this proposal, and Phaedrus, who is
the 'father' of the idea, which he has previously communicated to
Eryximachus, begins as follows:--

He descants first of all upon the antiquity of love, which is proved by
the authority of the poets; secondly upon the benefits which love gives
to man. The greatest of these is the sense of honour and dishonour.
The lover is ashamed to be seen by the beloved doing or suffering any
cowardly or mean act. And a state or army which was made up only of
lovers and their loves would be invincible. For love will convert the
veriest coward into an inspired hero.

And there have been true loves not only of men but of women also. Such
was the love of Alcestis, who dared to die for her husband, and in
recompense of her virtue was allowed to come again from the dead. But
Orpheus, the miserable harper, who went down to Hades alive, that he
might bring back his wife, was mocked with an apparition only, and
the gods afterwards contrived his death as the punishment of his
cowardliness. The love of Achilles, like that of Alcestis, was
courageous and true; for he was willing to avenge his lover Patroclus,
although he knew that his own death would immediately follow: and
the gods, who honour the love of the beloved above that of the lover,
rewarded him, and sent him to the islands of the blest.