Symposium

Note on this Edition

How the volume was made

The Greek was taken from the Perseus Digital Library’s digital transcription of Burnet and cut into Burnet’s lines by reading every line-end from the photographs of his page, in the impression described in the Editorial Note. Accents, breathings and iota subscripts were read on enlargements of the photograph of each page, and a doubtful mark was settled by setting it beside sure examples of each form on the same line or page. The digital transcription marks as quotations the words of the conversation that Apollodorus reports (172a–173b), but it does not always close and open them where Burnet does, and it sets in lower case the openings of speeches and the first word after a change of speaker, where Burnet prints capitals; Burnet’s marks and capitals are restored throughout. From Eryximachus’ proposal to the end of Socrates’ speech it sets in lower case, in twenty-nine places, the accusative Ἔρωτα where Burnet capitalizes the god’s name (177c2, 177e6, 178b9, 178b11, 180b6, 180c5, 180d2, 180e1, 186a2, 186b4, 187e8, 188e1, 193d1, 195a3, 195a6, 195e1, 196d1, 198d1, 198e3, 201a3, 201b9, 202b2, 202d7, 203c1, 204b4, 204b8, 204c2, 212b5, 212c2), and it has no mark for the word Burnet obelizes at 183a1. It also prints ᾄσαντας at 176a3 as ᾁσαντας, with a rough breathing and no accent, where Burnet prints a smooth breathing and an acute; this is corrected. The ending ος of Ἀγάθωνος at 176b7, which the transcription marks as supplied, is printed closed up with the word, as Burnet prints it. The section letters and line numbers in the margin were worked out from the Stephanus divisions rather than copied, and were then compared with Burnet’s margin, page by page.

The dialogue was made in nine blocks (Burnet pages 1–9, 10–19, 20–28, 29–35, 36–43, 44–51, 52–58, 59–65 and 66–72), 2,022 lines in all. Each block was checked by four independent reviewers: two, dividing its pages between them, compared the Greek and the apparatus with the page images letter by letter, one compared the English with the Greek clause by clause, and one checked every fact and reference in the notes and in the Editorial Note. Each finding was examined again against the evidence before it was adopted, and not all were adopted. What those checks caught is recorded at the end of this Note.

The volume was then read through again as one text, since a check made block by block cannot see some kinds of error: a word rendered one way in one block and another way in the next, a recapitulation that states a step in other words than the step itself, a rendering settled late that never reached the first pages. The translator read the whole, and four further reviewers read it independently: one for the consistency of terms across the whole book, two for sense, omissions and continuity in its two halves, and one for the Editorial Note against the scan of Burnet’s volume. The Introduction, the Key Words of the Dialogue, the Outline and the Glossary were then written from the finished English, and three more reviewers checked them, claim by claim and citation by citation, together with the corrections made in the final reading.

What the final reading caught

It found some ninety points in the English and its notes, nearly all of them small, that the block checks had passed, and a number in the Editorial Note. They fall into a few classes.

The largest class was renderings that had drifted from the rule of one English word for one Greek word, most of them in the first four blocks, which were translated before the later rulings were made. ἡγεῖσθαι is “believe” at 172c, 183d and 194b–c, as everywhere else, where it had been “think”; βουλεύεσθαι is “deliberate” at 174d, 176d and 190c, so that Socrates’ “we shall deliberate” on the road (174d) is answered by his “we shall deliberate” to Alcibiades (219a–b); διαλέγεσθαι is “converse” at 174d, 181a and 183c, so that the word of the tutors’ ban (183c) returns when Alcibiades hopes Socrates will “converse with me as a lover would converse with his darling” (217b); μηχανή is “device” at 178e, 190c and 191b, as in Diotima’s “By this device” (208b); ἐνδεής is “lack” in Agathon’s own sentence at 195d, where Socrates’ later argument turns on it; and a number of other words now have in the first blocks the renderings settled for them later: ἐπιτίθεσθαι “attack” (190c), θεᾶσθαι “behold” (190e), κατιδεῖν and καθορᾶν “catch sight of” (172a, 186a), ποθεῖν “yearn” (191a), γένεσις “birth” (191c), ἐννοεῖν “consider” (190c), ῥῆμα “expression” (187a), κοινωνία “partnership” (188c), ἀγανακτεῖν “be vexed” (177a), λοιδορεῖσθαι “revile” (183d), θεραπεύειν “wait on” (175c), σύμφημι “concur” (177e), θαυμαστός “marvellous” (177b), σύνειμι “be with” (176e, 195b) and ἐνθυμεῖσθαι “reflect” (182d). σπουδή is “earnestness” in Diotima’s speech (206b, 208b), as in the earlier speeches, and “eagerness” is kept for προθυμία; ἕπεσθαι is “follow” at 208b; τεκμαίρεσθαι is “take as evidence” at 204c; ἔμφρων and ἄφρων are “having one’s wits about one” and “foolish” at 194b, so that Agathon’s contrast is heard again in Alcibiades’ “the intelligent … the many and foolish” (218d); and ἕρμαιον is “godsend” at 176c, with its note moved to that first place. Two English words had each served for two Greek words: “proud”, which was both ὑπερήφανος (217e) and μέγα φρονεῖν (198d), is now kept for the second, and ὑπερήφανος is “haughty”, with “haughtiness” for its noun at 219c; and “believe” no longer renders πείθεσθαι (186e, now “I am persuaded”) or πιστεύειν (207c, now “trust”).

Some renderings missed the Greek. At 211c the formula ὃ ἔστι καλόν, which Burnet prints with the verb accented, is “what beautiful is”, with a note, not “which is beautiful”; at 210e τι … καλόν is “something beautiful, marvellous in its nature”; at 174b the ἄν of Stephanus’ reading, which Burnet prints, is translated (“that you would be willing”), with a note; at 184b the dative is “left to our law”; at 192d the lovers over whom Hephaestus stands “lay in the same place”, and at 191e the halves enjoy “lying with” men, where the English had them recline as at table; and three particles were restored (203a, 203c, 207c). The quotation marks the English had put round Euripides’ words at 177a were removed, since Burnet neither quotes nor spaces them there. Phrases that followed a published translation more closely than the Greek requires were reworded (175c, 177d, 180b, 183e, 186a, 188c, 210e, 218e). In the notes, a new note explains hermaion at its first occurrence (176c), another the comic barb of Aristophanes at 192a, and the note on karteria names the whole family (220a).

In the Editorial Note, the Laurentian manuscripts Burnet cites elsewhere in the volume are given correctly (Laur. 2643 in the Phaedrus, and three in plut. lxxxv); ζῴῳ is placed at 206c7; the uses of the square bracket after a lemma are described as the apparatus has them, with the commonest, a single witness’s reading, added; the description of the papyrus’ readings now covers its diaeresis, the letters Burnet supplies with and without accents, and the words it adds; the places Athenaeus quotes are given precisely; the renderings of logos and synousia are completed; T and W’s τ’ ῆ· at 174e7 is added to the forms kept as printed; and the description of Burnet’s page and the list of abbreviations were rearranged, the abbreviations in alphabetical order.

What remains undone

Several scholars in the apparatus are named as Burnet names them, by surname or initial only: L. Schmidt, Hertz, Schütz, Vermehren, Voegelin, Schneider, Parmentier, Sommer and Mehler. For some a likely name was found (Schütz is perhaps Christian Gottfried Schütz, Vermehren perhaps Moritz Vermehren, Mehler probably the E. Mehler who edited Xenophon’s Symposium at Leiden in 1850), but the work behind each proposal has not been seen. Where Creuzer proposed ἀδύνατον at 208b and Ast περισκοπῶν at 221b has not been found, nor whether Cornarius’ ἀποληφθέντες at 219e stands in his Latin version of Plato or in the notes printed with it (Basel, 1561). Nor has the Laurentian manuscript that Burnet cites at 174e6 as Laur. xiv. 85 been found in a catalogue, or the entry of Photius’ Lexicon that he cites at 174e2–3.

One reading of this copy lies at the limit of what its photographs show: the accent beside the breathing in T’s ἕαδε at 223b8, read as an acute from a worn sort; a second copy of the impression would settle it. At 214b6 the second siglum is a clear T where B is presumably meant; another edition’s apparatus would show whether Burnet erred.

The apparatus is Burnet’s alone. It has not been collated against the manuscripts or the papyrus, and readings proposed since his edition are not reported. The translation follows Burnet’s text even where later scholars would print something else.

The notes are a reader’s aid, not a commentary. They were chosen to explain what the English cannot carry, and they label the more doubtful interpretations as such. What the dialogue finally holds about love is set out in the Introduction as a question, not argued; a reader who wants the scholarly debate will need a commentary.

The checks described above were made by independent reviewers working from the same page images. The volume has not been read by a specialist outside the project, and a reader who finds an error is asked to report it.

The record of the blocks

The notes that follow are written when each block is finished, and are kept as a record of what its check found.