Symposium.
Analysis.
or rather 'mad' friend of Socrates, who is afterwards introduced
in the Phaedo. He had imagined that the discourses were
recent. There he is mistal^en : but they are still fresh in the 173
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 (cp. Xen. Mem. i. 4).
The narrative which he had heard was as follows:—
Aristodemus meeting Socrates in holiday attire, is invited by 174 him to a banquet at the house of Agathon, who had been sacri- ficing 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, 175 and does not appear until the banquet is half over. On his appearing he and the host jest a little; the question is then 176 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 177 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 178 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 179 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
