From the book
Symposium
Plato · Diotimos Editions · 2026
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At a Glance
- The wordThe personified name Beauty is distinct from the ordinary adjective and noun.
- In the SymposiumDiotima calls pregnancy and generation immortal in the mortal animal and therefore divine.
- In this editionThe translation capitalizes Beauty here for the personification and keeps Moira and Eileithyia as names.
- A place to readDivine generation, fittingness, personified assistance and the pregnant subject’s reactions.
Meaning
The personified name Beauty is distinct from the ordinary adjective and noun. Moira and Eileithyia name functions surrounding birth, while fittingness explains why beauty is a suitable setting for a divine process in a mortal creature.
Use in the book
Diotima calls pregnancy and generation immortal in the mortal animal and therefore divine. What is ugly is unfitting for the divine; the beautiful is fitting. Beauty then receives the offices of the powers attending childbirth. These names do explanatory work: approaching beauty releases the pregnant subject into gladness and production, whereas ugliness brings contraction, distress and retention.
The small bodily verbs make the passage more than an abstract formula. The subject draws near, opens or melts in delight, coils up, turns away and shrinks back. Excitement about beauty is explained by release from pain. The object carried precedes the encounter, and the encounter enables its birth. Reading Beauty as the mother or as the newborn would scramble the account’s roles.
This description applies to the broad claim about bodily and psychic pregnancy. It is not a clinical proposition that physical childbirth depends upon aesthetic attractiveness, nor a historical account of a particular ritual. The personification clarifies the philosophical analogy while the subsequent discussion supplies its intellectual and ethical applications.
Places to read
Translation in this edition
The translation capitalizes Beauty here for the personification and keeps Moira and Eileithyia as names. At 206d it follows the printed everything divine; the apparatus also records every god. The local argument should be based on the printed wording.
ἁρμόττω (harmottō)
harmottō — To fit or be in harmony; the participle characterizes beauty’s suitability to the divine.
- 206d — τὸ δὲ καλὸν ἁρμόττον. Beauty is fitting, in contrast to ugliness.
Read: Beauty at birth.
Εἰλείθυια (Eileithyia)
Eileithyia — The goddess of childbirth, whose assisting office clarifies Beauty’s generative role.
- 206d — Εἰλείθυια. Beauty is Eileithyia at the birth, not the child being born.
Read: Beauty at birth.
Καλλονή (Kallonē)
Kallonē — Beauty personified as the enabling power at birth.
- 206d — ἡ Καλλονή. Beauty is named as Moira and Eileithyia for generation.
Read: Beauty at birth.
Μοῖρα (Moira)
Moira — Moira or Fate/Portion, assigned a function at birth in Diotima’s personification.
- 206d — Μοῖρα. The name is predicated of Beauty alongside Eileithyia.
Read: Beauty at birth.
ὠδίς (ōdis)
ōdis — A birth-pang, used to explain the pregnant subject’s excitement at beauty.
- 206e — μεγάλης ὠδῖνος. Beauty releases the person carrying a conception from great labour-pain.
Read: Beauty at birth.