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… 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… 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… 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… 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… 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… 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… 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… 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,… 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. Read more
