Chapter 6. Hesiod: Consecrate Murder In Hesiod’s vita, we find a substantial set of the familiar legendary themes we have encountered so far—consecration, victory in riddle contest, oracle-related death, and cult. Hesiod’s vita is clearly moving in the same orbit as those of Aesop and Archilochus, ringing the changes on the standard story of the sacral poet’s life and death. A. Brelich, in his study of hero… Read more
Chapter 7. Shadows of Hesiod: Divine Protection and Lonely Death The lives of Ibycus, Arion, Stesichorus, and Simonides echo Hesiod’s vita in their themes of divine protection, often through animals, and lonely, violent death. Therefore it will be useful to consider them in close proximity to Hesiod. Ibycus Ibycus [1] was born in Rhegium, Italy, and left there, for Samos,… Read more
Chapter 8. Sappho: The Barbed Rose One would not expect Sappho, who was associated largely with delicate love poetry, to have a vita that would resemble the patterns followed by the Aesop and Archilochus vitae. Yet, though she does not have as full a dossier of the scapegoat hero cult themes as do Aesop and Archilochus, and her life is not as (folklorically) well documented as theirs,… Read more
Chapter 9. Alcaeus: Poetry, Politics, Exile Alcaeus is an important transitional figure in this study, because with the vita of Alcaeus we seem to leave legend or legend-embroidered history and enter firmly into history. The events in his life, as reflected in his poetry, even though they concern jockeyings for power among rival clans and tyrants in a relatively unimportant island, still have the feeling of authenticity,… Read more
Chapter 10. Theognis: Faceless Exile Theognis of Megara is a shadowy figure whose poetry offers us some evocative hints about his life; one can only wonder if it is a real life or a stereotypical poet’s life. [1] As early as Plato, we read of the “poet … Theognis, a citizen of Megara in Sicily” (ποιητὴν … Θέογνιν, πολίτην τῶν ἐν Σικελίᾳ… Read more
Chapter 11. Tyrtaeus: The Lame General Virtually all critics agree that the story of Tyrtaeus, in which the lame Athenian schoolmaster is sent to the Spartans as a joke, only to become their general in the Second Messenian War, is unhistorical—a piece of Attic propaganda, perhaps, to account for the fact that the Spartans even produced a poet. [1] H. J. Rose… Read more
7. Where is Socrates on the “Ladder of Love”? Ruby Blondell On the Road “Where is [Socrates]?” Agathon asks Aristodemus, when the latter shows up at his house a couple of pages into Plato’s Symposium (174c12). Later Alcibiades tacitly likens Socrates to Odysseus (220c), the archetypal wanderer, thus obliquely raising the question of where he is in his larger “travels.” [1]… Read more
8. Tragedy Off-Stage Debra Nails Plato weaves strands of the tragic and the comic, high seriousness and low bawdiness, into his Symposium; that much is uncontroversial. If someone should miss the sweep of the plot from the celebration of Agathon’s prize for tragedy to the waves of drunken revelers, the kômos, there is a telling reminder at the end. With snores in the background, Socrates is… Read more
9. The Virtues of Platonic Love Gabriela Roxana Carone Socrates’ speech on Love in the Symposium (201–212), reporting his conversation with the Mantinean priest Diotima, stands as prima facie counterintuitive. First, it is not clear that it has anything to say about interpersonal love at all; and even if it does, it might seem to offer a view that conforms pretty well to our popular… Read more
10. Agathon, Pausanias and Diotima in Plato’s Symposium: Paiderastia and Philosophia Luc Brisson My goal in this contribution [1] is to shift the center of interest of Plato’s magnificent dialogue the Symposium on two points. First, by showing that the dialogue develops a critique of a specific form of education within the framework of paiderastia , [2]… Read more
