From the book
Symposium
Plato · Diotimos Editions · 2026
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At a Glance
- The wordDivination, piety and themis concern the regulation and intelligibility of human dealings with gods.
- In the SymposiumEryximachus makes sacrifice and divination part of a partnership between gods and humans, governed by the right care of Love.
- In this editionTwo readings matter at 188c–d2.
- A place to readDivination guards, heals and creates friendship.
Meaning
Divination, piety and themis concern the regulation and intelligibility of human dealings with gods. Their religious force should not be erased by treating them as interchangeable with civic law or generic good behavior.
Use in the book
Eryximachus makes sacrifice and divination part of a partnership between gods and humans, governed by the right care of Love. Impiety arises when the disorderly rather than the orderly Love is honored, both toward parents, living or dead, and toward gods. Divination therefore watches and heals those who love and produces friendship through its knowledge.
Aristophanes places piety inside his myth’s conditional hope. The gods can divide people further if they remain disorderly; reunion requires reconciliation. He does not say that complete restoration has already occurred for everyone who forms a couple. Agathon’s modest proviso “if it is right” belongs to the decorum of praise before his extraordinary claim about Love’s happiness.
Diotima later preserves the connecting work but changes its structure. Love is not simply one of the fully happy gods: the daimonic carries petitions and sacrifices upward and divine commands and returns downward. Divination is part of this mediation. Reading the later passage beside Eryximachus shows continuity in the question of communication without collapsing their different accounts.
Places to read
Translation in this edition
Two readings matter at 188c–d2. Burnet prints “those who are in love”, not the alternative “loves”, as what is watched and healed. He also prints “piety” from Stobaeus where the principal manuscripts reported in the apparatus have “impiety”. The article follows the continuous supplied text, without claiming fresh witness collation.
ἀσέβεια (asebeia)
asebeia — Impiety; Eryximachus attributes it to honoring the wrong Love in relations with parents and gods.
- 188c — ἀσέβεια. The neglected orderly Love explains impiety in his account.
Read: Divination, piety and right.
εὐσέβεια (eusebeia)
eusebeia — Piety or appropriate regard toward divine powers, made a condition of hoped-for restoration by Aristophanes.
- 188d — εὐσέβειαν. Positive piety in the printed reading.
- 193d — εὐσέβειαν. Aristophanes conditions Love’s promised restoration upon human piety.
Read: Divination, piety and right.
θέμις (themis)
themis — What is divinely right or sanctioned, rather than simply a statute enacted by a city.
- 188d — θέμιν. Paired with piety as the object of divinatory understanding.
- 195a — θέμις. Agathon qualifies his praise: if it is right to say Love is happiest.
Read: Divination, piety and right.
μαντική (mantikē)
mantikē — Divination as an expertise concerning relations between gods and human beings; later placed within daimonic mediation.
- 188c–d2 — ἡ μαντικὴ. Eryximachus calls it a craftsman of divine-human friendship.
- 202e — ἡ μαντικὴ πᾶσα. Diotima places all divination through the daimonic.
Read: Divination, piety and right.