among the Greeks and among ourselves, as between ourselves
and continental nations at the present time, in modes of saluta-
tion. We must not suspect evil in the hearty kiss or embrace
of a male friend 'returning from the army at Potidaea' any more
than in a similar salutation when practised by members of the
same family. But those who make these admissions, and who re-
gard, not without pity, the victims of such illusions in our own
day, whose life has been blasted by them, may be none the less
resolved that the natural and healthy instincts of mankind shall
alone be tolerated (
Greek characters); and that the lesson of
manliness which we have inherited from our fathers shall not
degenerate into sentimentalism or effeminacy. The possibility
of an honourable connexion of this kind seems to have died out
with Greek civilization. Among the Romans, and also among
barbarians, such as the Celts and Persians, there is no trace of
such attachments existing in any noble or virtuous form.
(Compare Hoeck's Creta, vol. 3. p. 106 ff, and the admirable and exhaustive article of Meier in Ersch and Gruebefs Cyclopedia, vol. 16, on this subject; Plutarch, Amatores ; Athenaevis,p. 605 ; Lysias contra Simonem; Aesch. c. Timarchum.)
The character of Alcibiades in the Symposium is hardly less remarkable than that of Socrates, and agrees with the picture given of him in the first of the two Dialogues which are called by his name, and also with the slight sketch of him in the Pro- tagoras. He is the impersonation of lawlessness — ' the lion's whelp, who ought not to be reared in the city,' yet not without a certain generosity which gained the hearts of men, — strangely fascinated bj' Socrates, and possessed of a genius which might have been cither the destruction or salvation of Athens. The dramatic interest of the character is heightened by the recol- lection of his after history. He seems to have been present to the mind of Plato in the description of the democratic man of the Republic (viii. 560 ; cp. also Alcibiades i).
There is no criterion of the date of the Symposium, except that which is furnished by the allusion to the division of Arcadia after the destruction of Mantinea. This took place in the year b. c. 384, which is the forty-fourth year of Plato's life. The Sym-
posium cannot therefore be regarded as a youthful work. As
