Συμπόσιον
1559
- love
- early works to 1800
- soul
- rhetoric
- religious aspects of love
- christianity
- platonic love
- influence
- ancient rhetoric
- immortality (philosophy)
The story
One of the most famous works of literature in the Western world, Plato's Symposium is also one of the most entertaining. The scene is a dinner party in Athens in 416 B.C. at which the guests - including the comic poet Aristophanes and Plato's mentor, Socrates - playfully discuss the nature of eros, or love. By turns earthly and sublime, the dialogue culminates with Socrates's famous account of the "ladder of love," an extended analysis of the many forms of eros. The evening ends with a speech by the drunken Alcibiades, the most popular and powerful Athenian of the day, who insists on praising Socrates rather than love, offering up a brilliant character sketch of the enigmatic philosopher. This Modern Library edition is the authoritative translation by Benjamin Jowett, substantially revised by Dr. Hayden Pelliccia, associate professor of classics at Cornell University. This revised translation takes into account advances in scholarship since Jowett's day and modernizes the Victorian English where it is coy or archaic. The result is a translation neither too colloquial nor too literal, one that is faithful to both Jowett's superb prose and Plato's matchless original.
What it’s like
Talky, witty and warm, with the feel of a long dinner that slowly loosens into late-night candor: couches set around a low table, wine poured again and again, lamps guttering as the talk moves from joking to serious. The prose is a modernized Jowett, clear and conversational where the Victorian original was stiff, and the voice carries the easy rhythm of guests taking turns, one speech handing off to the next, each speaker trying to outdo the last with a toast, a myth, or a sly reversal. The mood is convivial and intellectually playful, with flashes of tenderness and bawdy humor that stay mostly suggestive; the sensuality is in the banter about beauty and desire rather than in anything explicit. Violence and cruelty are absent, and the danger is only social embarrassment or a sharp philosophical rebuke. It suits an unhurried evening alone with a glass of wine, a slow weekend morning, or a reread for anyone who likes ideas delivered in the company of good talk. Readers who enjoy Socratic dialogue, classical wit, and the pleasure of watching a room full of clever people argue about love will find it especially rewarding.
More books like Συμπόσιον
Closest in mood, pacing and theme. Tell us why you loved Συμπόσιονand we’ll explain which ones fit you.
