Symposium (192-196)

Men who are sections of the male pursue the masculine, and so long as their boyhood lasts they show themselves to be slices of the male by making friends with men and delighting to lie with them and to be clasped in men’s embraces; these are the finest boys and striplings, for they have the most manly nature. Some say they are shameless creatures, but falsely: for their behavior is due not to shamelessness but to daring, manliness, and virility, since they are quick to welcome their like. Sure evidence of this is the fact that on reaching maturity these alone prove in a public career to be men. So when they come to man’s estate they are boy-lovers, and have no natural interest in wiving and getting children, but only do these things under stress of custom; they are quite contented to live together unwedded all their days. A man of this sort is at any rate born to be a lover of boys or the willing mate of a man, eagerly greeting his own kind. Well, when one of them—whether he be a boy-lover or a lover of any other sort— happens on his own particular half, the two of them are wondrously thrilled with affection and intimacy and love, and are hardly to be induced to leave each other’s side for a single moment. These are they who continue together throughout life, though they could not even say what they would have of one another. No one could imagine this to be the mere amorous connection, or that such alone could be the reason why each rejoices in the other’s company with so eager a zest: obviously the soul of each is wishing for something else that it cannot express, only divining and darkly hinting what it wishes. Suppose that, as they lay together, Hephaestus should come and stand over them, and showing his implements[*] should ask: What is it, good mortals, that you would have of one another?—and suppose that in their perplexity he asked them again: Do you desire to be joined in the closest possible union, so that you shall not be divided by night or by day? If that is your craving, I am ready to fuse and weld you together in a single piece, that from being two you may be made one; that so long as you live, the pair of you, being as one, may share a single life; and that when you die you may also in Hades yonder be one instead of two, having shared a single death. Bethink yourselves if this is your heart’s desire, and if you will be quite contented with this lot. No one on hearing this, we are sure, would demur to it or would be found wishing for anything else: each would unreservedly deem that he had been offered just what he was yearning for all the time, namely, to be so joined and fused with his beloved that the two might be made one.

The cause of it all is this, that our original form was as I have described, and we were entire; and the craving and pursuit of that entirety is called Love. Formerly, as I have said, we were one; but now for our sins we are all dispersed by God, as the Arcadians were by the Lacedaemonians[*]; and we may well be afraid that if we are disorderly towards Heaven we may once more be cloven asunder and may go about in the shape of those outline-carvings on the tombs, with our noses sawn down the middle, and may thus become like tokens of split dice. Wherefore we ought all to exhort our neighbors to a pious observance of the gods, in order that we may escape harm and attain to bliss under the gallant leadership of Love. Let none in act oppose him—and it is opposing him to incur the hate of Heaven: if we make friends with the god and are reconciled, we shall have the fortune that falls to few in our day, of discovering our proper favorites. And let not Eryximachus interrupt my speech with a comic mock, and say I refer to Pausanias and Agathon; it may be they do belong to the fortunate few, and are both of them males by nature; what I mean is—and this applies to the whole world of men and women—that the way to bring happiness to our race is to give our love its true fulfillment: let every one find his own favorite, and so revert to his primal estate. If this be the best thing of all, the nearest approach to it among all acts open to us now must accordingly be the best to choose; and that is, to find a favorite whose nature is exactly to our mind. Love is the god who brings this about; he fully deserves our hymns. For not only in the present does he bestow the priceless boon of bringing us to our very own, but he also supplies this excellent hope for the future, that if we will supply the gods with reverent duty he will restore us to our ancient life and heal and help us into the happiness of the blest. There, Eryximachus, is my discourse on Love, of a different sort from yours. As I besought you, make no comic sport of it, for we want to hear what the others will say in their turn—I rather mean the other two, since only Agathon and Socrates are left.

I propose first to speak of the plan most proper for my speaking, and after that to speak. Every one of the previous speakers, instead of eulogizing the god, has merely, as it seems to me, felicitated humanity on the benefits he bestows: not one of them has told us what is the nature of the benefactor himself. There is but one correct method of giving anyone any kind of praise, namely to make the words unfold the character of him, and of the blessings brought by him, who is to be our theme. Hence it is meet that we praise him first for what he is and then for what he gives. So I say that, while all gods are blissful, Love—with no irreverence or offence be it spoken—is the most blissful, as being the most beautiful and the best. How most beautiful, I will explain. First of all, Phaedrus, he is youngest of the gods. He himself supplies clear evidence of this; for he flies and flees from old age—a swift thing obviously, since it gains on us too quickly for our liking. Love hates it by nature, and refuses to come within any distance of it. He is ever consorting with the young, and such also is he: well says the old saw, Like and like together strike.[*] And though in much else I agree with Phaedrus, in this I agree not, that Love by his account is more ancient than Cronos and Iapetus[*]: I say he is youngest of the gods and ever young, while those early dealings with the gods which Hesiod [*] and Parmenides relate, I take to have been the work of Necessity, not of Love, if there is any truth in those stories. For there would have been no gelding or fettering of each other, nor any of those various violences, if Love had been amongst them; rather only amity and peace, such as now subsist ever since Love has reigned over the gods. So then he is young, and delicate withal: he requires a poet such as Homer to set forth his delicacy divine. Homer it is who tells of Ate as both divine and delicate; you recollect those delicate feet of hers, where he says—

Yet delicate are her feet, for on the ground

She speeds not, only on the heads of men.

[*] So I hold it convincing proof of her delicacy that she goes not on hard things but on soft. The same method will serve us to prove the delicacy of Love. Not upon earth goes he, nor on our crowns, which are not very soft; [*] but takes his way and abode in the softest things that exist. The tempers and souls of gods and men are his chosen habitation: not indeed any soul as much as another; when he comes upon one whose temper is hard, away he goes, but if it be soft, he makes his dwelling there.

So if with feet and every way he is wont ever to get hold of the softest parts of the softest creatures, he needs must be most delicate. Youngest, then, and most delicate is he, and withal pliant of form: for he would never contrive to fold himself about us every way, nor begin by stealing in and out of every soul so secretly, if he were hard. Clear evidence of his fit proportion and pliancy of form is found in his shapely grace, a quality wherein Love is in every quarter allowed to excel: unshapeliness and Love are ever at war with one another. Beauty of hue in this god is evinced by his seeking his food among flowers: for Love will not settle on body or soul or aught else that is flowerless or whose flower has faded away; while he has only to light on a plot of sweet blossoms and scents to settle there and stay. Enough has now been said, though much remains unsaid, of the beauty of our god; next shall Love’s goodness be my theme. The strongest plea for this is that neither to a god he gives nor from a god receives any injury, nor from men receives it nor to men gives it. For neither is the usage he himself gets a violent usage, since violence takes not hold of Love; nor is there violence in his dealings, since Love wins all men’s willing service; and agreements on both sides willingly made are held to be just by

our city’s sovereign, the law.

[*] Then, over and above his justice, he is richly endowed with temperance. We all agree that temperance is a control of pleasures and desires, while no pleasure is stronger than Love: if they are the weaker, they must be under Love’s control, and he is their controller; so that Love, by controlling pleasures and desires, must be eminently temperate. And observe how in valor

not even the God of War withstands

[*] him; for we hear, not of Love caught by Ares, but of Ares caught by Love—of Aphrodite. The captor is stronger than the caught; and as he controls what is braver than any other, he must be bravest of all. So much for justice and temperance and valor in the god: it remains to speak of skill; and here I must try my best to be adequate. First, if I in turn may dignify our craft as Eryximachus did his, the god is a composer so accomplished that he is a cause of composing in others: every one, you know, becomes a poet,

though alien to the Muse before,

[*] when Love gets hold of him. This we may fitly take for a testimony that Love is a poet well skilled—I speak summarily—in all composing that has to do with music; for whatever we have not or know not we can neither give to another nor teach our neighbor.