Introduction In his Symposium Plato crafted a set of speeches in praise of love that has attracted the interest of philosophers, theologians, poets, and artists from antiquity down to the present day. In the third century CE, Plotinus drew on aspects of the Symposium to fashion an account of the nature of the twin processes of emanation and return to “the One.” Following Plotinus’ lead, a… Read more
1. The Symposium as a Socratic Dialogue Christopher Rowe This essay will make one very specific claim: that the Symposium is properly to be treated as a Socratic dialogue. In one way it will of course be quite uncontroversial to describe the Symposium as “Socratic”: Socrates is on any account the focus of the whole dialogue, which ends as it begins, with a celebration of particular… Read more
Two: The Role of the Earlier Speeches in the Symposium: Plato’s Endoxic Method? Frisbee C. C. Sheffield [1] It is well known that there are deep and important differences between Plato and Aristotle. One of these concerns the status and role of endoxa in philosophical inquiry. Although Aristotle appears to find value in the endoxa, that is in “the things… Read more
3. A Platonic Reading of Plato’s Symposium Lloyd P. Gerson 1. The American poet and critic John Jay Chapman (1862–1933) wrote, … to the historical student, to the man who not only knows something of books, but something of the world, the Symposium of Plato is seen to have been in every age since Plato the most effective plea for evil that one can… Read more
4. Medicine, Magic, and Religion in Plato’s Symposium Mark L. McPherran If you [Eryximachus] show me that you know me better than I do myself, and can foresee even my next mood, … must I not conclude that my whole effort is puerile, that my intimate tactics vanish in the face of your entirely exterior art, which envelops my body and soul at once… Read more
5. Permanent Beauty and Becoming Happy in Plato’s Symposium Gabriel Richardson Lear [1] Our first encounter with Socrates in the Symposium is bizarre. Aristodemus, surprised to run into Socrates fully bathed and with his sandals on, asks him where he is going “to have made himself so beautiful (kalos)” (174a4, Rowe trans.). Socrates replies that he is on his way… Read more
6. A Study in Violets: Alcibiades in the Symposium C. D. C. Reeve [1] Agathon’s drinking-party has reached its philosophical apogee in Socrates’ vivid, Diotima-inspired description of the ultimate object of all love and desire, the Platonic form of beauty—the beautiful itself. All of a sudden, there is a commotion and loud knocking. Someone “very drunk and shouting loudly” is… Read more
7. Philosopher and Priest: The Image of the Intellectual and the Social Practice of the Elites in the Eastern Roman Empire (First–Third Centuries AD)* Matthias Haake 1. The Epicurean philosopher Lysias of Tarsus was something of a monster. At some point in the late Hellenistic or early Augustan period, [1] he was appointed stephanēphoros, that… Read more
8. An Egyptian Priest at Delphi: Calasiris as theios anēr in Heliodorus’ Aethiopica* Manuel Baumbach 1. The Discovery of the Priest in the Greek Novel When we consider the figure and role of the priest in the Greek romantic novel, there is a conspicuous discrepancy among the five extant novels. Whereas priests and priestesses do not appear at all within… Read more
9. The Iamidae: A Mantic Family and Its Public Image Michael A. Flower Every student of Greek history knows that the Peloponnesian War was brought to an end when Lysander, the brilliant and ruthless Spartan admiral, captured the entire Athenian fleet at Aegospotami in 405 BC. What is less well known, perhaps familiar only to a handful of scholars with an interest in Greek divination, is… Read more
