they awake in us emotions similar to those which the first reading of Homer evoked in Keats:

"Then felt I like some watcher of the skies

When a new planet swims into his ken;

Or like stout Cortes when with eagle eyes

He stared at the Pacific... Silent, upon a peak in Darien."

§ v. ALCIBIADES AND HIS SPEECH.

Alcibiades was about 34 years old at this time (416 B.C.), and at the height of his reputation'. The most brilliant party-leader in Athens, he was a man of great intellectual ability and of remarkable personal beauty, of which he was not a little vain. It was, ostensibly at least, because of his beauty that Socrates posed as his "erastes"; while Alcibiades, on his side, attempted to inflame the supposed passion of Socrates and displayed jealousy whenever his "erastes" showed a tendency to woo the favour of rival beauties such as Agathon. Other indications of Alcibiades' character and position which are given in the dialogue show him to us as a man of wealth, an important and popular figure in the smart society of his day, full of ambition for social and political distinction, and not a little influenced, even against his better judgment, by the force of public opinion and the on dit of his set. With extraordinary naïveté and frankness he exposes his own moral infirmity, and proves how applicable to his case is the confession of the Latin poet, "video meliora proboque, deteriora sequor." He is guiltless, as he says, of pudency, nor would ever have known the meaning of the word "shame (aioxún) had it not been for Socrates.

Yet, totally lacking in virtue though he be, the Alcibiades of the Symposium is a delightful, even an attractive and lovable person. Although actually a very son of Belial, we feel that potentially he is little short of a hero and a saint. And that because he possesses the capacity for both understanding and loving Socrates; and to love Socrates is to love the Ideal. Nominally it is Socrates who is the lover of Alcibiades, but as the story developes we see that the converse is more near the truth: Alcibiades is possessed with a consuming passion, an intense and persistent infatuation for Socrates. And in

1 "The character of Alcibiades, who is the same strange contrast of great powers and great vices which meets us in history, is drawn to the life" (Jowett, Plato 1. p. 526).

the virtue of this "eros" we find something that more than outweighs his many vices: it acts as the charity that "covers a multitude of sins."

The speech of Alcibiades, in spite of its resemblance in tone to a satyric drama composed under the influence of the Wine-god, fulfils a serious purpose—the purpose of vindicating the memory of Socrates from slanderous aspersions and setting in the right light his relations with Alcibiades1. And as a means to this end, the general theme of the dialogue, Eros, is cleverly taken up and employed, as will be shown in a later section2.

In regard to style and diction the following points may be noticed. In the disposition and arrangement there is a certain amount of confusion and incoherence. Alcibiades starts with a double parable, but fails-as he confesses-to work out his comparisons with full precision and with logical exactitude. This failure is only in keeping with his rôle as a devotee of Dionysus.

Frequency of similes: 216 A ὥσπερ ἀπὸ τῶν Σειρήνων: 217Α τὸ τοῦ δηχθέντος...πάθος: 218 Β κεκοινωνήκατε...βακχείας.

Elliptical expressions: 215 A, c; 216 B, D, E; 220 C, D; 221D; 222 B. Anacolutha: 217E; 218 A.

§ vi. THE ORDER AND CONNEXION OF THE SPEECHES.

Disregarding the introductory and concluding scenes and looking at the rest of the dialogue as a whole, we see that it falls most naturally into three main divisions, three Acts as we might call them. In the First Act are comprised all the first five discourses; the Second, and central, Act contains the whole of the deliverances of Socrates; the Third Act consists of Alcibiades' encomium of Socrates3. We have to consider, accordingly, how each of these Acts is related to the others; and further, in regard to the first, we have to investigate the relative significance of each of its five sub-divisions or scenes.

1. The first five speeches and their relative significance. Plato's own opinion of the earlier speeches appears clearly enough in the criticism which he puts in the mouth of Socrates (198 D ff.).

1 See Introd. § ii. (A) ad fin.; and Gomperz, G. T. 1. pp. 394 ff.

2 See Introd. § vi. 3, where some details of the way in which Alcib. echoes the language of the earlier speakers will be found.

3 Rettig and von Sybel make the First Act conclude with Arist.'s speech, and the Second Act begin with Agathon's: but that this is a perverse arrangement is well shown by F. Horn, Platonst. p. 254 (cp. Zeller, Symp.).

Although that criticism is aimed primarily at the discourse of Agathon, it obviously applies, in the main, to the whole series of which his discourse formed the climax. Instead of endeavouring to ascertain and state the truth about the object of their encomia-such is the gist of Socrates' criticism-the previous speakers had heaped up their praises regardless of their applicability to that object (198 E ad init.). What they considered was not facts but appearances (oπws éукwμiáŽeiv dóge); consequently they described both the nature of Eros and the effects of his activity in such terms as to make him appear--in the eyes of the unsophisticated—supremely good and beautiful, drawing upon every possible source (198 E----199 A).

It thus seems clear that Plato intends us to regard all the first five speeches as on the same level, in so far as all alike possess the common defect of aiming at appearance only (dóέa), not at reality (åλý¤¤ca), in virtue of which no one of them can claim to rank as a scientific contribution (στýμη) to the discussion.

The relative order of the first five speeches. The question as to the principle upon which the order and arrangement of these speeches depends is an interesting one and has given rise to some controversy.

(a) It has been suggested (e.g. by Rötscher) that the speeches are arranged in the order of ascending importance, beginning with that of Phaedrus, which is generally admitted to be the slightest and most superficial, and proceeding gradually upwards till the culminating point is reached in the speech of Agathon'. This view, however, is untenable in the face of the obvious fact that Agathon's speech is in no real sense the best or most important of the series; rather, from the point of view of Socrates, it is the worst. The fact that each speaker commences his oration by a critique of his predecessor might seem, at first sight, to lend some colour to the view that each was actually making some improvement, some advance; but this preliminary critique is plainly nothing more than a rhetorical trick of method.

(b) Steinhart would arrange the speeches in pairs, distinguishing each pair from the others according to the special spheres of the activity of Eros with which they deal. Phaedrus and Pausanias deal with the

1 Cp. Susemihl, Genet. Entwick. d. plat. Phil. p. 407: " 'So bildet denn der Vortrag des Sokrates den eigentlichen theoretischen Mittelpunkt des Werkes, die übrigen aber mit dem Alkibiades eine aufsteigende Stufenreihe."

2 Observe also how, in 193 E, Eryx. characterizes the first four speeches as TOMλà και TaνTodaπá, "motley and heterogeneous."

3 Similarly Deinhardt, Über Inhalt von Pl. Symp.

ethical sphere; Eryximachus and Aristophanes with the physical; Agathon and Socrates with the higher spiritual sphere.

This scheme, however, is no less artificial, although it contains some elements of truth; and a sufficient ground for rejecting it lies in the fact that the speech of Socrates cannot be classed along with the other five1.

(c) Hug's view is that the speeches are arranged from the aesthetic, rather than the logical, point of view, in groups of two each. The second speech in each of the groups is, he holds, richer in content than the first; and the groups themselves are arranged with a view to contrast and variety. But here again, little seems gained by the device of pair-grouping; and the development within the groups is obscure. Hug, however, is no doubt correct in recognizing that the arrangement of the speeches is governed mainly, if not entirely, by artistic considerations, and with a view to literary effect; and that an artistic effect depends largely upon the presence of variety and of contrast is beyond dispute.

(d) Any satisfactory explanation of the order in which the speeches are arranged must be based upon the internal indications supplied by the dialogue itself.

The first inference to be drawn from such indications is this: the speech of Socrates must be left to stand by itself, and cannot be grouped with any one of the first five speeches. This is made quite evident by the tone of the whole interlude (198 A-199 c) which divides Agathon's discourse from that of Socrates, and in special by the definite expression οὐ γὰρ ἔτι ἐγκωμιάζω τοῦτον τὸν τρόπον...ἀλλὰ τά

1 Cp. Jowett (Plato 1. p. 527): "The speeches have been said to follow each other in pairs....But these and similar distinctions are not found in Plato; they are the points of view of his critics, and seem to impede rather than to assist us in understanding him." This is sensibly observed; still, Jowett is inclined to dismiss the matter too lightly. I may add that, while from the artistic point of view it is absurd to class together the speeches of Arist. and Eryx., there is a certain connexion of thought between the two, in their common relation to physiological theories, and so far we may allow that Steinhart points in the right direction (see § iii. 4, above).

2 Cp. Jowett (Plato 1. p. 256): “ The successive speeches...contribute in various degrees to the final result; they are all designed to prepare the way for Socrates, who gathers up the threads anew, and skims the highest points of each of them. But they are not to be regarded as the stages of an idea, rising above one another to a climax. They are fanciful, partly facetious, performances....All of them are rhetorical and poetical rather than dialectical, but glimpses of truth appear in them." This is well said.

γε ἀληθῆ...ἐθέλω εἰπεῖν κατ ̓ ἐμαυτόν, οὐ πρὸς τοὺς ὑμετέρους λόγους (199 A-B): these last words should finally settle the matter.

We are thus left with five speeches, not six; and this of itself might be enough to show that a division into pair-groups is not feasible. And when we further examine the internal indications, the arbitrary character of any such grouping becomes yet more obvious. For although the first two speeches possess a good deal in common, and were, apparently, confounded together by Xenophon, the method of grouping them in one pair tends to obscure the great difference between them in point of substance, style, and general ability of statement, and to obscure also the fact that a number of other discourses intervened between these two (μετὰ δὲ Φαῖδρον ἄλλους τινας εἶναι 180 c). The express mention of this last fact is a land-mark not to be ignored.

Moreover, while this distinction is marked between the first speech and the second, there are internal indications which point to a special connexion between the third and the second. Eryximachus starts from the same assumption (the duality of Eros) as Pausanias; and, moreover, he expressly states that his speech is intended to supplement that of Pausanias (186 A ad init.). Furthermore, we find Aristophanes classing together these two (189 c).

As regards the fourth discourse (Aristophanes'), we are forbidden by similar internal indications to class it along with any of the preceding discourses. Although much of its point lies in its allusiveness to Eryximachus' theories, Aristophanes himself expressly emphasizes the difference between his speech and the others (189 c, 193 D); and indeed it is evident to the most cursory inspection. Nor is it possible, without reducing the group-system to the level of an unmeaning artifice, to pair the speech of Aristophanes with that of Agathon, which follows next in order. The only ground for such a grouping would be the purely fortuitous and external fact that both the speakers are professional poets in style and substance the two speeches lie leagues apart, while not even an incidental connexion of any kind is hinted at in the text.

The reason for the position of the fifth discourse (Agathon's) is not hard to discover. Once the general plan of the dialogue, as consisting of three Acts, with the discourse of Socrates for the central Act, was fixed in the author's mind, it was inevitable, on artistic grounds, that Agathon's oration should be set in the closest juxtaposition with that of Socrates,-in other words, at the close of the first Act. This disposition is already pointed to in the introductory incident, where Agathon promises to engage in a match "concerning wisdom" with