Symposium (Plato)

The Symposium is a Socratic dialogue by Plato, dated. It depicts a friendly contest of extemporaneous speeches given by a group of notable Athenian men attending a banquet. The men include the philosopher Socrates, the general and statesman Alcibiades, and the comic playwright Aristophanes. The panegyrics are to be given in praise of Eros, the god of love and sex.
In the Symposium, Eros is recognized both as erotic lover and as a phenomenon capable of inspiring courage, valor, great deeds and works, and vanquishing man's natural fear of death. It is seen as transcending its earthly origins and attaining spiritual heights. The extraordinary elevation of the concept of love raises a question of whether some of the most extreme extents of meaning might be intended as humor or farce. Eros is almost always translated as "love," and the English word has its own varieties and ambiguities that provide additional challenges to the effort to understand the Eros of ancient Athens.
The dialogue is one of Plato's major works, and is appreciated for both its philosophical content and its literary qualities.

Setting

The dialogue takes place at a banquet in the year 416 BC at the house of the tragedian Agathon in Athens.

Principal characters

The dialogue's seven main characters, who deliver major speeches, are:

Phaedrus : an Athenian aristocrat associated with the inner-circle of the philosopher Socrates, familiar from Phaedrus and other dialogues
Pausanias : the legal expert
Eryximachus : a physician
Aristophanes : the eminent comic playwright
Agathon : a tragic poet, host of the banquet, that celebrates the triumph of his first tragedy
Socrates : the eminent philosopher and Plato's teacher
Alcibiades : a prominent Athenian statesman, orator, and general
Background

In Ancient Greece, the type of banquet depicted in the dialogue, a symposium, was traditionally attended by a group of men, who would first partake in a meal, followed by drinking for pleasure, which was accompanied by music, dancing, recitals, or conversation. The setting means that the participants would be drinking wine, meaning that the men might be induced to say things they would not say elsewhere or when sober. They might speak more frankly, or take more risks, or else be prone to hubris—they might even be inspired to make speeches that are particularly heartfelt and noble.
The dialogue takes place in 416 BC, the year in which the host Agathon had the dramatic triumph mentioned in the text. The disastrous expedition to Syracuse, of which Alcibiades was a commander, took place the following year, after which Alcibiades deserted to Sparta, Athens' archenemy.

Style, dating and authorship

Socrates is renowned for his Socratic method, which involves posing questions that encourage others to think deeply about what they care about and articulate their ideas. Unlike most of Plato's works, which take the form of a back-and-forth Socratic dialogue, between Socrates and one or more interlocutors, the Symposium is a series of speeches from different characters. However, the underlying philosophical method remains the same; examining the conflict in ideas between the different speeches can allow the reader to see the philosophy that underlies them all.
The work was written by Plato, no earlier than 385 BC. The characters are historical, but this is not a report of historical events. There is no reason to doubt that they were composed entirely by Plato. The reader, understanding that Plato was not governed by the historical record, can read the Symposium, and ask why the author, Plato, arranged the story the way he did, and what he meant by including the various aspects of setting, composition, characters, and theme, etc.

Synopsis

Frame story

Apollodorus of Phalerum—a passionate follower of Socrates—recounts the story of the symposium to an unnamed friend, having narrated the events to Glaucon while en route home the previous day. The banquet had been hosted by the poet Agathon to celebrate his first victory in a dramatic competition at the Dionysia of 416 BC. Though Apollodorus was not present at the event, which occurred when he was a boy, he heard the story from Aristodemus and confirmed the events with Socrates.
The story, as told by Apollodorus, then moves to the banquet at Agathon's home, where Agathon challenges each of the men to speak in praise of the Greek god, Eros.
Socrates is late to arrive because he became lost in thought on the way. When they are finished eating, Eryximachus takes the suggestion made by Phaedrus, that they should all make a speech in praise of Eros, the god of love and desire. It will be a competition of speeches to be judged by Dionysus. It is anticipated that the speeches will ultimately be bested by Socrates, who speaks last.

Phaedrus' speech

Phaedrus opens with the claim that Eros is the oldest of the gods, citing Hesiod, Acusilaus and Parmenides, and argues that being the oldest implies that the benefits conferred by Eros are the greatest. Eros provides guidance through shame; for example, by inspiring a lover to earn the admiration of his beloved into showing bravery on the battlefield, since nothing shames a man more than to be seen by his beloved committing an inglorious act. Lovers sometimes sacrifice their lives for their beloved. As evidence for this, he mentions some mythological heroes and lovers. Even Achilles, who was the beloved of Patroclus, sacrificed himself to avenge his lover, and Alcestis was willing to die for her husband Admetus. Phaedrus concludes his short speech reiterating his statements that love is one of the most ancient gods, the most honored, the most powerful in helping men gain honor and blessedness—and sacrificing one's self for love will result in rewards from the gods.

Pausanias' speech

Inspired by the cults of Aphrodite Pandemos and Aphrodite Urania, Pausanias—the legal expert of the group—introduces a distinction between vulgar and heavenly love. Vulgar Love is in search of sexual gratification, and his objects are women and boys; Heavenly Love is the pederastic love towards young men, which produce the benefits described by Phaedrus.
Pausanias contrasts common desire with a "heavenly" love between an older man and a young man, in which the two exchange sexual pleasure while the older man imparts wisdom to the younger one. He distinguishes between this virtuous love, and the love of an older man for a young boy, which he says should be forbidden on the grounds that love should be based on qualities of intelligence and virtue that are not yet part of a boy's makeup and may not develop.
He then analyses the attitudes of different city-states on pederastic love. The first distinction he makes is between the cities that clearly establish what is and what is not admitted, and those that are not so explicitly clear, like Athens and Sparta. In the first group there are cities favorable to pederastic love, like Elis, Boeotia l, or unfavorable to it like Ionia and Persia. The case of Athens is analyzed with many examples of what would be acceptable and what would not, and at the end, he makes the assertion that Athens' code of behavior favors the nobler type of love and discourages the baser.

Eryximachus' speech

Though it is Aristophanes' turn, a bout of hiccups prevent him from speaking, and Eryximachus—the physician—takes his turn, prescribing various hiccup cures in the interim. Eryximachus claims love affects everything in the universe, including plants and animals; once love is attained, it should be protected. Eros not only directs everything on the human plane, but also on the divine. Two forms of love occur in the human body—one is healthy, the other unhealthy. Love encourages sophrosyne, or soundness of mind and character; He governs medicine, music, and astronomy, and even regulates hot and cold and wet and dry, which—when in balance—result in health.
Throughout Eryximachus' speech, Aristophanes tries unsuccessfully to end his hiccoughing fit by holding his breath and gargling with water, until finally sneezing brought about by having his nose tickled with a feather ends the comic scene.

Aristophanes' speech

Before starting his speech, Aristophanes warns the group that his panegyric to love may be more absurd than funny. His speech gives an explanation of why people in love say they feel "whole" when they have found their love-partner. He begins by explaining that people must understand human nature before they can interpret the origins of love and how it affects their own times. This is, he says because in primal times people had doubled bodies, with faces and limbs turned away from one another. As spherical creatures who wheeled around like clowns doing cartwheels, these original people were very powerful. There were three sexes: male, female, and hermaphrodite; they were said to have descended from the Sun, the Earth and the Moon, respectively. These creatures tried to scale the heights of Olympus and planned to set upon the gods. Zeus thought about blasting them with thunderbolts, but, not wanting to deprive himself of their devotions and offerings, he decided to cripple them by chopping them in half, in effect separating each entity's two bodies.
Ever since that time, people run around saying they are looking for their other half because they are really trying to recover their primal nature. The women who were separated from women run after their own kind—whence lesbians. The men split from other men also run after their own kind and love being embraced by other men. Halves of hermaphroditic wholes are the men and women who engage in heterosexual love. Aristophanes says some people think homosexuals are shameless, but he praises their "confidence, courage and manliness": only homosexuals "prove to be real men in politics," and many heterosexuals are adulterous and unfaithful. Aristophanes then claims that when two people who were separated from each other find each other, they never again want to be separated. This feeling is like a riddle, and cannot be explained. Aristophanes ends on a cautionary note. He says that men should fear the gods, and not neglect to worship them, lest they wield the ax again and we have to go about hopping on one leg, split apart once again.
The speech has become a focus of subsequent scholarly debate—it is seen sometimes as mere comic relief, and sometimes as satire: the creation myth Aristophanes puts forward to account for sexuality may be read as poking fun at the myths concerning the origins of humanity, numerous in classical Greek mythology.