INTRODUCTION.
Symposium.
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 com-
mentator 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 (cp. Symp. 210
foil., 223 D) — which were wiser than the writer of them meant,
and could not have been explained by him if he had been in-
terrogated about them. Yet Plato was not a mystic, nor in any
degree affected by the Eastern influences which afterwards over-
spread 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 expressed 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. x. 607 B.)
Steph. 172 Analysis 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,
