Symposium

Key Words of the Dialogue

Each entry says what the word meant in Athens, what the dialogue does with it, and how it is rendered. The Glossary at the back lists the renderings with the places where they occur.

Love, be in love (erōs, Erōs; eran)

Erōs was the passion of desire, above all for a beautiful person, and Erōs the god of that passion, one of the first gods in Hesiod, and in later poets often the son of Aphrodite. The verb eran meant “to be in love”. Greek wrote no capitals to tell the god from the passion, and the speakers move between them: Phaedrus praises a god “among the very oldest” (178b–c), Pausanias distinguishes two Loves as there are two Aphrodites (180d–e), Eryximachus finds love in the body, the seasons and the stars (186a–188d), Aristophanes makes love “the desire and pursuit of the whole” (192e–193a), and Agathon praises “the youngest of the gods” (195a–c). Socrates’ questioning turns the god back into a relation, “love of something” (199d–200a), and Diotima makes Love “a great daimon” (202d); from 205a on, as she speaks of the passion, Burnet prints the word in lower case: “love is of the good’s being one’s own always” (206a). The English renders erōs by one word, “Love” where Burnet prints the capital and “love” where he does not, so that the reader can see where the argument passes from the god to the passion; this was settled with the publisher. The verb eran is “be in love”, ho erōn “the one in love”, and ta erōtika “matters of love”, the subject Socrates says is the only one he knows (177d); erōtikos of a person is “given to love” (208e).

Beautiful (kalos)

Kalos was the common word for the beautiful in looks, the fine in workmanship and the noble in conduct, and the adverb kalōs meant “well”. Every speaker uses it, and the argument depends on its being one word: Agathon “beautiful” (174a, 212e), Pausanias’ beautiful and shameful actions (180e–181a), the “most beautiful” speech each guest must make (177d), Love who is not beautiful because he lacks beautiful things (201a–c), Diotima’s “giving birth in what is beautiful” (206b), and the ascent through beautiful bodies, souls, ways of life, laws and kinds of knowledge to “the beautiful itself” (210a–211d). The English renders kalos “beautiful” in every use, of persons, things, acts, practices and speeches, so that the one word stands at every rung of the ascent, as settled with the publisher; where English would say “fine” or “noble”, the reader should hear those senses in “beautiful”. The adverb kalōs is “well” (“you did well indeed”, 174e), and its comparative “better” (182d, 221a). The noun kallos is “beauty”, and kalos kagathos, the Athenian phrase for a gentleman, is “beautiful and good” (204a, 222a). Kallonē, Diotima’s word for the goddess of the birth, is “Beauty” (206d).

Lover, beloved, darling (erastēs; erōmenos; ta paidika)

In the Athenian practice the speakers take for granted, the erastēs, the “lover”, was a grown man who courted a youth, his erōmenos, “beloved”, or paidika, “darling”, a plural used of one person. The roles were not supposed to be reversed: the lover desires, the beloved is courted and may “gratify” (see Gratify). Phaedrus holds that the gods honour a beloved who cherishes his lover more than a lover who cherishes his darling (180a–b); Pausanias holds that a lover’s slavery to his darling is no reproach, and allows the beloved one “willing slavery”, the one that concerns virtue (184b–c); Aristophanes has lovers of both sexes; Diotima corrects Socrates for thinking Love “the beloved, not what is in love” (204c). Alcibiades turns the roles round: he offers himself to Socrates “exactly like a lover laying plots for his darling” (217c), and he warns that Socrates deceives his young men “as though he were a lover, and himself becomes, rather, darling instead of lover” (222b). The English keeps the three words apart, as in the Lysis, and keeps “the one in love” for the participle ho erōn, so that the reader can see when a speaker means the role and when the passion.

Gratify (charizesthai)

Charizesthai meant to do someone a favour or a kindness, and, of a youth and his lover, to grant him sexual favours. Pausanias’ speech is an argument about when it is “beautiful to gratify lovers” (182a–b) and when shameful, and its argument concludes: “it is wholly and in every way beautiful to gratify for the sake of virtue at least” (185b). Eryximachus transfers the word to medicine and music, where one must “gratify what is good and wholesome in each body” (186c) and “gratify the orderly among human beings” (187d). At the start Eryximachus wants “to gratify” Phaedrus with his proposal (177c), in the ordinary sense, and Alcibiades returns to Pausanias’ sense when he thinks it “very senseless not to gratify you in this too” (218c). The English renders the word “gratify” every time, so that the ordinary and the erotic senses are heard together, as the speakers mean them to be.

Shameful, ugly (aischros)

Aischros, the opposite of kalos, meant both “ugly” in looks and “shameful” in conduct. Phaedrus’ “shame at shameful things” (178d) and Pausanias’ account of the law (180e–185a) use the moral sense; Agathon says that “on ugliness there is no love” (197b); and Diotima’s first lesson to Socrates turns on whether what is not beautiful must be ugly (201e–202b). The English renders it “shameful” of acts and practices and “ugly” of persons and in the argument where it answers “beautiful”, so that both senses of kalos stay in view; Pausanias’ noblest youths may be “uglier than others” (182d). Diotima’s “ugly” is the opposite of the beauty in which one gives birth (206c–d, 209b), and the beautiful itself is “not beautiful in one respect and ugly in another” (211a).

Law (nomos)

Nomos meant both a written law and an accepted custom, anything “held” (nomizetai) in a city. Pausanias contrasts the simple law about love in Elis and Boeotia, the law in Ionia and under barbarians, and the “intricate” law at Athens and Lacedaemon (182a–d), and argues that “our law wants to test soundly and well” which lovers to gratify (183e–184a); Aristophanes’ halves of the male, who as men are pederasts, are compelled to marry “by the law” (192b). The English renders it “law” throughout, as in the rest of the series, although at Athens much of what Pausanias describes was custom rather than statute; a note says so at its first occurrence (181d). The word returns on Diotima’s ascent, where the lover beholds “the beautiful in ways of life and in laws” (210c), and in Agathon’s quotation, “the laws, kings of the city” (196c).

Encomium, praise (enkōmion; epainos)

An enkōmion was a speech or song in praise of someone, and the rhetoricians of Plato’s time taught how to make one. The guests agree that each will “speak a speech in praise of Love” (177d), and the speeches are encomia: Socrates bids Phaedrus “begin, and make an encomium of Love” (177e), Agathon wants first “to speak of how I must speak” (194e), and Socrates, after Agathon’s speech, refuses to “make an encomium in this way”, since it attributes to its subject “the greatest and most beautiful things possible, whether they are so or not” (198d–199a). The English renders enkōmion “encomium”, enkōmiazein “make an encomium of”, and epainos, epainein “praise”, and keeps “hymn” for hymnein (177c, 193c–d, 197e; the noun at 177a). At the end the words come back as play: Alcibiades will “praise” no one but Socrates (214d), and Socrates must “praise the man on my right”, so that he wishes “to make an encomium of” Agathon (222e–223a).

Daimon, daimonic (daimōn; daimonios)

A daimōn in common speech was a god, or any divine power that one could not name, and daimonios meant “heaven-sent” or “marvellous”, and, in address, “my good sir”, often with irony. Diotima makes the word a rank: Love is “a great daimon”, for “everything daimonic is between god and mortal”, “interpreting and ferrying across to gods the things from human beings, and to human beings the things from gods” (202d–e); and “the man wise about such things is a daimonic man” (203a). Socrates’ own sign, which Plato calls “something divine and daimonic” in the Apology (31c–d), is not named in the Symposium. The English keeps the Greek word “daimon”, since “demon” would mislead, and renders daimonios “daimonic” throughout, so that the reader hears Diotima’s word when Alcibiades calls Socrates “daimonic in truth and marvellous” (219b–c) and when Socrates answers him “you daimonic man” (223a).

Resource, poverty; at a loss (poros, penia; euporein, aporein)

Poros was a way across, a passage, and so a means, a resource; aporia was the want of a way, and aporein “to be at a loss”. Diotima makes the father of Love “Resource”, son of Metis, and his mother “Poverty”, who plots “to get a child from Resource” because of “her own want of resource” (203b–c); Love is therefore “always poor” but “resourceful”, “never at a loss nor rich” (203c–e). The English keeps “resource” for the family where English allows: “resourceful” (203d), “with more resource” (204e), “has resource in speeches about virtue” (209b), “how resourcefully” (223a), and “at a loss” for aporein, as when Socrates expects to be “at a loss” after Agathon (198a–b) and Alcibiades “was at a loss” before Socrates (219e). The story of Love’s birth thus speaks in the same words as the speakers’ fear of having nothing to say.

Love wisdom, lover of wisdom (philosophein; philosophos; philosophia)

Philosophia, “philosophy”, was in Plato’s time still felt as the love of wisdom, and philosophein as “to love wisdom”. Apollodorus thought he “ought to do anything rather than love wisdom” before he met Socrates (173a). Diotima argues that “no god loves wisdom”, nor do the ignorant, but those between, “of whom Love too would be one”: Love “must be a lover of wisdom” (204a–b). The English keeps the parts of the word, “love wisdom” and “lover of wisdom”, where the argument depends on them, and “philosophy” for the noun (173c, 182c, 210d), as in the Lysis; Alcibiades’ “wisdom-loving madness” (218b) renders the adjective.

Give birth, beget, be pregnant (tiktein, tokos; gennan; kyein)

Diotima’s account of love’s work uses the words of childbirth for men and women alike. Tiktein is “give birth” and tokos “giving birth”, gennan “beget” and gennēsis “begetting”, kyein “be pregnant” and kyēma “what it has conceived”. “All human beings … are pregnant both in body and in soul”, and love’s work is “giving birth in what is beautiful, both in body and in soul” (206b–c); the one who is “pregnant in his soul” seeks a beautiful soul in which to beget, and they rear what is begotten together (209a–c), as Homer and Hesiod left their poems and Lycurgus and Solon their laws (209d–e). The English keeps each word for its own Greek, so that “give birth” and “beget”, which Greek can say of either parent, both stand where Diotima uses them. At the top of the ascent the lover will “give birth not to images of virtue … but to true virtue” (212a).

Immortal, immortality (athanatos; athanasia)

Athanatos, “deathless”, was the gods’ epithet; thnētos, “mortal”, was man’s. Diotima places Love between them (202d–e), and then argues that love is of immortality as well as of the good, “if love is of the good’s being one’s own always” (206e–207a): mortal nature “seeks, so far as it can, to be always and immortal”, and can do so only “by birth”, leaving behind something new (207d). The love of honour is the same desire, “laying up immortal fame for all time” (208c), and those pregnant in soul beget children “more beautiful and more immortal” (209c). The one who beholds the beautiful itself may, “if to any other human being”, “become immortal” (212a). The English renders the words “immortal” and “immortality” throughout.

Ways of life, studies, kinds of knowledge (epitēdeumata; mathēmata; epistēmai)

The rungs of Diotima’s ascent have names that the English keeps distinct. After bodies and souls the lover is led to behold “the beautiful in ways of life and in laws” (210c); epitēdeumata are the practices and pursuits of a life, and the English renders them “ways of life” throughout (209c, 210c–d, 211c, 221c). Then come the epistēmai, “kinds of knowledge” (210c); the same plural is “pieces of knowledge” at 207e–208a, where Diotima speaks of what is learned and forgotten, and a note at 210c says so. In the summary of the ascent the lover goes “from ways of life to beautiful studies, and from the studies to end at that study which is the study of nothing other than that beautiful itself” (211c); mathēmata, “studies”, are things learned, and the change of word from epistēmai to mathēmata is the Greek’s.

Behold, catch sight of (theasthai; katidein, kathoran; theōrein)

Diotima frames the ascent in the language of the mysteries of Eleusis, where the highest grade of initiation was the epopteia, the “beholding”, and her verbs of seeing take colour from it (interpretation). “The perfect rites and those of the beholding” are what Diotima doubts Socrates could follow (210a). The lover must “behold” (theasthai) the beautiful in ways of life (210c); “contemplating” (theōrein) the great sea of the beautiful (210d), he “will suddenly catch sight of” (katopsetai) something beautiful, marvellous in its nature (210e), and life is worth living “as he beholds the beautiful itself” (211d). The English keeps each verb for its own Greek: “behold” for theasthai, “contemplate” for theōrein, “catch sight of” for katidein and kathoran, and “see” for the common verbs, so that the order of the ascent can be followed in the English. The same words are used of ordinary seeing, as when Alcibiades did not “catch sight of” Socrates (213a) and when it “was worth beholding Socrates” at Delium (220e).

Itself by itself; single in form (auto kath’ hauto; monoeidēs)

At the top of the ascent the beautiful is “itself by itself, with itself, single in form, always being”, and “all the other beautiful things” share in it, while it “becomes neither anything more nor less, nor suffers anything at all” (211b); it is “the divine beautiful itself, single in form” (211e). The phrase auto kath’ hauto was used of a thing considered on its own, apart from its relations; Pausanias had used it of the practice of love, which “is, itself by itself, neither beautiful nor shameful” (183d), recalling what he had said of every action (180e–181a). Monoeidēs, “of one form”, is a rare word, which Plato uses of the forms in the Phaedo (78d, 80b). The English renders the phrase “itself by itself” in both places, so that Pausanias’ relativism and Diotima’s beautiful itself are heard in the same words.

Insolent, insolence (hybristēs; hybris, hybrizein)

Hybris was outrage, violence or contempt for another’s honour, a crime at Athens, and also the arrogance of one who knows no limits; hybristēs was a man given to it. Agathon calls Socrates “insolent” in jest (175e); Pausanias’ Heavenly Aphrodite has “no portion of insolence” (181c); Alcibiades calls Socrates “insolent” in earnest (215b), and says that Socrates despised his youth “and treated it with insolence” (219c), and that his speeches wrap round themselves “a hide, as it were, of an insolent satyr” (221e). The English renders the family “insolent”, “insolence” and “treat with insolence” throughout, as in the series, so that the charge Alcibiades brings can be traced back to Agathon’s joke.

Ironic (eirōneuesthai; eirōnikōs)

An eirōn was a dissembler, one who says less than he means or pretends to know less than he does; the word was not a compliment. Alcibiades says that Socrates “goes on all his life being ironic and playing with human beings” (216e), and that he answered Alcibiades’ offer “very ironically, and very much like himself and as he used to” (218d). Aristotle names Socrates as the example of this self-depreciation (Nicomachean Ethics 4.7). The English renders the verb “be ironic” and the adverb “ironically”, so that the English word, which comes from it, carries the same charge; it does not mean the modern “ironic” of events.

Likeness, statue, silenus (eikōn; agalma; silēnos)

Alcibiades will praise Socrates “through likenesses”, eikones, “for the sake of the truth, not of the laughable” (215a). An agalma was anything to delight a god, and so a statue of a god or a precious image; the sileni in the carvers’ shops, opened, “are seen to have statues of gods inside” (215b), and Alcibiades has seen Socrates’ “statues inside”, “so divine and golden and all-beautiful” (216e–217a); Socrates’ speeches have “the most statues of virtue” (222a). The sileni were the snub-nosed, horse-eared companions of Dionysus, like the satyrs, and Marsyas was a satyr. The English renders eikōn “likeness” and eikazein “liken” (215a, 216c, 221c–d), agalma “statue” throughout, and silēnos “silenus”, so that the likeness of 215a returns in the same words when Alcibiades ends with the sileni that open (221d–222a) and when Socrates calls the speech “this satyr and silenus play” (222d).

Temperance, endurance (sōphrosynē; karteria)

Sōphrosynē, “temperance”, was the virtue of self-control and sound sense, the subject of the Charmides; karteria, “endurance”, was the strength to hold out against hunger, cold and pleasure. Eryximachus speaks of the Love accomplished “with temperance and justice” (188d), and Agathon makes Love “exceptionally temperate” (196c). Diotima calls the ordering of cities “temperance and justice” (209a). Alcibiades finds Socrates, opened, “full … of temperance” (216d), and admires his “nature and temperance and courage” and his “intelligence” and “endurance” (219d); on campaign “the others were nothing at holding out” beside him (220a). The English renders sōphrosynē “temperance”, as in the series, karteria “endurance” and karterein “hold out”, as at 184b and 216a.

Desire, lack (epithymein; endeēs)

Epithymein, “desire”, was the common verb of wanting, of food as of persons. Socrates’ questioning of Agathon turns on it: “what desires desires what it lacks, or does not desire if it does not lack it” (200a–b), as in the Lysis (221d–e); so Love, if he is of beautiful things, “lacks beauty and does not have it” (201b). The English renders endeēs, with “to be”, “lack”, and keeps “be in need” for deisthai (176a, 184e, 199b, 207c, 215c), so that the argument’s word is heard where Agathon used it unknowingly, “he lacks a poet such as Homer was” (195d); until the final reading of this edition that place had “is in need of”. Love is “a housemate of lack” (203d), and Alcibiades is “still in lack of much” (216a).