16 In the same work (188a-d), part 1

The constitution of the seasons of the year is also full of both these loves. When the things I have just mentioned, the hot and the cold, the dry and the moist, experience orderly love for one another and attain harmony and a temperate mixture, they bring a fruitful year and health to human beings, other animals, and plants, and do no harm. But when love accompanied by excess gains the upper hand in the seasons too, it destroys and injures many things. Plagues tend to arise from such conditions, along with many other diseases of various kinds in animals and plants. Frosts, hailstorms, and blights likewise result from the greed and disorder of these relations of love with one another. Knowledge of them in connection with the movements of the stars and the seasons of the year is called astronomy.³¹⁸

16 In the same work, part 2

Moreover, all sacrifices and everything governed by the art of divination, that is, the communion of gods and human beings with one another, concern nothing other than the protection and healing of love. Every kind of impiety tends to arise when someone fails to gratify orderly love or honor and give it precedence in every action, and favors the other kind instead, in dealings with parents both living and dead, and with the gods. In these matters divination has been appointed to examine lovers and heal them. Divination in turn creates friendship between gods and human beings through its knowledge of human affairs of love, insofar as these tend toward divine law and reverence.³¹⁹

16 In the same work, part 3

Thus Love taken as a whole has vast and mighty power, or rather all power. But the love fulfilled in good things with self-restraint and justice, both among us and among the gods, has the greatest power. It provides us with every happiness and makes us able to associate and be friends with one another and with the gods, who are greater than we are.

17 In the same work (202c-203a), part 1

“Do you not call those who possess good and beautiful things happy?” “Certainly.”

“But you have admitted that Love desires beautiful and good things because he lacks those very things?” “I have.”

“How, then, could one who has no share in beautiful and good things be a god?” “He could not, it seems.”

“Do you see, then,” she said, “that you too do not consider Love a god?”

“What, then,” I said, “could Love be? Mortal?” “By no means.”

“What, then?” “As I said before, between mortal and immortal.”

“What is that, Diotima?” “A great spirit, Socrates: for everything of the spiritual order is between god and mortal.”³²⁰

17 In the same work, part 2

“With what power?” I asked.

“To interpret and carry across to the gods what comes from human beings, and to human beings what comes from the gods: from the former, prayers and sacrifices; from the latter, commands and recompense for sacrifices. Being between the two, it fills the interval, so that the whole is bound together with itself. Through it all divination proceeds, as does the art of sacred matters concerning sacrifices, initiations, incantations, and all prophecy and sorcery. A god does not mingle with a human being; through this intermediary all intercourse and conversation takes place for gods with ⟨human beings, and with gods⟩ for human beings, whether awake or asleep. A man devoted to such matters is spiritual; one skilled in something else, in crafts or some manual occupation, is a mere artisan.³²¹ These spirits are many and of every kind, and Love is one of them.”