Symposium

Name: Symposium
Author: Plato

Ancient Greek with an independent English translation.

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SymposiumSymposium · 196c–197b

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Symposium · 196c–197b

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Ancient Greek

p. 68

ἡδονὴν κρείττω εἶναι· εἰ δὲ ἥττους, κρατοῖντ’ ἂν ὑπὸ Ἔρωτος, ὁ δὲ κρατοῖ, κρατῶν δὲ ἡδονῶν καὶ ἐπιθυμιῶν ὁ Ἔρως διαφερόντως ἂν σωφρονοῖ. καὶ μὴν εἴς γε ἀνδρείαν Ἔρωτι 196d “οὐδ’ Ἄρης ἀνθίσταται.” οὐ γὰρ ἔχει Ἔρωτα Ἄρης, ἀλλ’ Ἔρως Ἄρη—Ἀφροδίτης, ὡς λόγος—κρείττων δὲ ὁ ἔχων τοῦ ἐχομένου· τοῦ δ’ ἀνδρειοτάτου τῶν ἄλλων κρατῶν πάντων ἂν ἀνδρειότατος εἴη. περὶ μὲν οὖν δικαιοσύνης καὶ σωφροσύνης καὶ ἀνδρείας τοῦ θεοῦ εἴρηται, περὶ δὲ σοφίας λείπεται· ὅσον οὖν δυνατόν, πειρατέον μὴ ἐλλείπειν. καὶ πρῶτον μέν, ἵν’ αὖ καὶ ἐγὼ τὴν ἡμετέραν τέχνην τιμήσω ὥσπερ Ἐρυξί196eμαχος τὴν αὑτοῦ, ποιητὴς ὁ θεὸς σοφὸς οὕτως ὥστε καὶ ἄλλον ποιῆσαι· πᾶς γοῦν ποιητὴς γίγνεται, “κἂν ἄμουσος ᾖ τὸ πρίν,” οὗ ἂν Ἔρως ἅψηται. ᾧ δὴ πρέπει ἡμᾶς μαρτυρίῳ χρῆσθαι, ὅτι ποιητὴς ὁ Ἔρως ἀγαθὸς ἐν κεφαλαίῳ πᾶσαν ποίησιν τὴν κατὰ μουσικήν· ἃ γάρ τις ἢ μὴ ἔχει ἢ μὴ οἶδεν, οὔτ’ ἂν ἑτέρῳ δοίη οὔτ’ ἂν ἄλλον διδάξειεν. καὶ 197a μὲν δὴ τήν γε τῶν ζῴων ποίησιν πάντων τίς ἐναντιώσεται μὴ οὐχὶ Ἔρωτος εἶναι σοφίαν, ᾗ γίγνεταί τε καὶ φύεται πάντα τὰ ζῷα; ἀλλὰ τὴν τῶν τεχνῶν δημιουργίαν οὐκ ἴσμεν, ὅτι οὗ μὲν ἂν ὁ θεὸς οὗτος διδάσκαλος γένηται, ἐλλόγιμος καὶ φανὸς ἀπέβη, οὗ δ’ ἂν Ἔρως μὴ ἐφάψηται, σκοτεινός; τοξικήν γε μὴν καὶ ἰατρικὴν καὶ μαντικὴν Ἀπόλλων ἀνηῦρεν ἐπιθυμίας καὶ ἔρωτος ἡγεμονεύσαντος, 197b ὥστε καὶ οὗτος Ἔρωτος ἂν εἴη μαθητής, καὶ Μοῦσαι μουσικῆς καὶ Ἥφαιστος χαλκείας καὶ Ἀθηνᾶ ἱστουργίας καὶ Ζεὺς κυβερνᾶν θεῶν τε καὶ ἀνθρώπων. ὅθεν δὴ καὶ κατεσκευάσθη τῶν θεῶν τὰ πράγματα Ἔρωτος ἐγγενομένου, δῆλον ὅτι κάλλους—αἴσχει γὰρ οὐκ ἔπι ἔρως—πρὸ τοῦ δέ, ὥσπερ ἐν ἀρχῇ εἶπον, πολλὰ καὶ δεινὰ θεοῖς ἐγίγνετο,

Symposium

p. 69

pleasure is stronger; and if they are weaker, they would be mastered by Love, and he would be master; and mastering pleasures and desires, Love would be exceptionally temperate. And indeed in courage 196d ‘not even Ares withstands’ Love.¹ For it is not Ares who holds Love, but Love who holds Ares — of Aphrodite, as the story goes² — and the holder is stronger than the held; and mastering the most courageous of the others, he would be the most courageous of all. Of the god’s justice and temperance and courage, then, it has been said, but wisdom is left; so far as is possible, then, one must try to leave nothing out. And first, so that I in my turn may honour our craft as Eryximachus honoured 196e his own, the god is a poet so wise as to make another one too; at any rate everyone becomes a poet, ‘even if he was without the Muses before,’³ whom Love touches. This it befits us to use as testimony that Love is a good poet, in sum, in all making that belongs to music;⁴ for what one either does not have or does not know, one could neither give to another nor teach anyone else. And 197a indeed, as for the making of all animals, who will dispute that it is Love’s wisdom, by which all animals are born and grow? And in the craftsmanship of the crafts, do we not know that the one whose teacher this god becomes turns out of note and illustrious, while the one whom Love does not touch, obscure? Archery, moreover, and medicine and divination Apollo discovered with desire and love leading him, 197b so that he too would be Love’s pupil, and the Muses in music, and Hephaestus in bronze-working, and Athena in weaving, and ‘Zeus in steering gods and human beings’.⁵ That is why the affairs of the gods too were set in order when Love came to be among them — of beauty, plainly; for on ugliness there is no love⁶ — but before that, as I said at the beginning, many dreadful things befell the gods,

1.Adapted from a line of Sophocles’ Thyestes, in which it is Necessity that “not even Ares withstands” (fragment 256 Radt).

2.Of Aphrodite: Ares’ love of Aphrodite, sung by Demodocus in the Odyssey (8.266–366). The Greek has one word, erōs, for the god and for the passion.

3.From Euripides’ Stheneboea (fragment 663 Nauck): “Love teaches a poet, even if he was without the Muses before.” Plutarch devotes a question of his Table Talk to the line (1.5, 622c).

4.Poet … making: poiētēs is literally “maker”, and poiēsis “making”; Agathon passes from the making of poems to every making, the making of animals included. Diotima returns to the word at 205b–c.

5.Burnet spaces these words, Zeus with them, as a quotation; their source is not known.

6.On ugliness there is no love: epi, Burnet’s own reading, which B’s first hand may have had; T, W and Stobaeus have epestin, in the same sense (apparatus, b5).

About This Reading Edition

The complete Symposium, 172a–223d: at Agathon’s banquet the guests praise Love, Socrates recounts Diotima’s teaching, and Alcibiades praises Socrates. Burnet’s Greek faces a new Diotimos Editions English translation, with an introduction, key words, outline, glossary, critical apparatus, and linked translator notes.

Historical Text and Translation

Greek: Plato, Symposium, in John Burnet, Platonis Opera, volume II (Oxford, 1901; second edition, 1910), in a later impression printed by John Johnson and issued by Humphrey Milford no earlier than January 1935, as described by the supplied edition. Its Greek was taken from the Perseus Digital Library transcription and checked against photographs of that impression; Burnet’s readings and critical apparatus are retained. The digital Greek transcription and its modifications are attributed to the Perseus Digital Library, Tufts University, under CC BY-SA 4.0. English translation and editorial matter: Diotimos Editions, 2026.

About Diotimos Editions

This historical edition credits Diotimos Editions as its English translator.

Rights

The ancient Greek work and Burnet’s printed edition are in the public domain. The Perseus digital Greek transcription and its modifications are reused under CC BY-SA 4.0, as verified from the official Perseus repository license. The supplied edition reports checking its transcription against Burnet’s printed pages. The new English translation and editorial matter are credited to Diotimos Editions, 2026; no open license for those new contributions is stated in the supplied files.