Speech of Agathon in Praise of Love
Translated by Seth Benardete
First some preliminary observations and questions:
Students of oratory, such as Plato and Aristotle, typically grouped speeches into three broad categories: (1) deliberative, i.e., those speeches that advocate for a course of action such as those for or against an act of legislation, (2) epideictic, i.e., those that demonstrate rhetorical skill usually in praise or condemnation of someone or something, and (3) forensic, i.e., those that take place in courts of law and seek to establish the guilt or innocence of a litigant. The speeches in the Symposium are all examples of epideictic oratory, and all are encomia, speeches of praise. According to the author of Rhetorica ad Alexandrum, encomia should include four basic elements: (1) an introduction, which "may be composed of some piece of praise or censure, of advise to do or not to do something, or of appeals to the audience"; (2) a presentation of the qualities of the subject that are "outside the sphere of virtue," i.e., those that are a consequence of birth, for example, ancestry, natural physical characteristics, and inherited wealth; (3) a presentation of the qualities that pertain to virtue, i.e., those that are a consequence of the subject's actions; and (4) a summary and concluding maxim or rhetorical syllogism. As a playwright who was expected to work within the specifications of the dramatic genres, Agathon reveals a sensitivity to the conventions of this particular form of oratory and claims that the other speeches have not been, strictly speaking, encomia, because they lacked one of more of these standard elements. Does Agathon's speech succeed where the others have failed?
Agathon speaks of Eros' beauty and his ability to influence others. With regard to the topic of leadership, Robert Cialdini in Influence: The Psychology of Persuasion notes: "Research has shown that we automatically assign to good-looking individuals such favorable traits as talent, kindness, honesty, and intelligence. Furthermore, we make these judgments without being aware that physical attractiveness plays a role in the process" (p. 171). Cialdini goes on to offer examples of this phenomenon in elections, hiring, and judicial decisions. How susceptible are you to this influence?
Agathon also establishes a connection between beauty and age, suggesting that his youthful appearance (a "natural quality" by virtue of his birth) and tenderness (a consequence of his behavior) refute the idea that Eros must be one of the older gods. The issue of age and the relative ages of those involved in paiderastic relationships also apply to Agathon's situation. In Plato's Protagoras Socrates describes a visit to the house of Callias in the company of Hippocrates to hear and speak with the famous Thracian intellectual. After arriving, he surveys the other members of the audience and notes (315d-e):
Prodicus [another intellectual (i.e. Sophist) from the island of Ceos] was still in bed, wrapped up in rugs and blankets, and plenty of them, as far as one could see, and beside him on the neighboring couches sat Pausanias from Cerameis and with him someone who was still a young boy—a lad of fine character I think, and certainly very good-looking. I think I heard his name is Agathon, and I shouldn't be surprised if Pausanias is particularly attached to him (translation by W. K. C. Guthrie).
In addition to the relationships between Achilles and Patroclus, Alcibiades and Socrates, we now apparently have one involving Agathon and Pausanias. How does this assumption influence your reading of this speech and the speech Pausanias, which you have just read?
"I want first to say how I must speak, and then to speak. For in my own opinion all the previous speakers did not eulogize the god but blessed human beings for the goods of which the god is the cause; yet no one has said what sort is he [195a] who makes these gifts. There is one proper manner in every praise of anything: to tell in speech—whomever the speech is about—what sort he is and what sort of things he causes. This is the just way for us too to praise Eros—first what sort he is, and then his gifts. I declare that though all gods are happy, Eros (if sacred law allow it and it be without nemesis to say so) is the happiest of them, as he is the most beautiful and the best. As the most beautiful he is of the following sort: First, he is the youngest of gods, Phaedrus; [195b] and he by himself supplies a great proof for this assertion, for with headlong flight he avoids old age—swift though it plainly is, coming on us, at any rate, swifter than he should. It is precisely old age that Eros naturally detests; he does not even come within hailing distance of it. He is always with and of the young. For the old saying holds good, that like to like always draws near. Though I agree with Phaedrus in many other respects, I do not agree that Eros is more ancient than Kronos and Iapetos; but [195c] I affirm his being the youngest of gods and ever young. And the events of old about gods of which Hesiod and Parmenides speak belong to Necessity and not Eros, if what they say is true. Otherwise there would not have been castrations and bindings of each other, and many other acts of violence among the gods, had Eros been among them; but there would have been friendship and peace, just as there is now since Eros became king of the gods. So he is young, and besides being young, he is tender. But there is need of a poet [195d] as good as Homer was to show a god's tenderness. Homer says that Ate is a goddess and tender—her feet at any rate are tender—saying:
Tender are her feet, for she does not on the threshold
Draw near, but lo! she walks on the heads of men.
So in my opinion it is with a fine piece of evidence that he shows her softness, because she walks not on the hard but on the soft. And we [195e] too shall use the same piece of evidence about Eros to prove that he is soft; for not upon earth does he walk nor even on skulls, which are hardly soft, but on the softest of beings he walks and dwells. For he has set up his dwelling place in the characters and souls of gods and human beings, and not in each and every soul—for whichever soul he finds to have a hard character, he goes away from, and whichever he finds to have a soft one he dwells in. So, as he is always touching with his feet and every other part the softest of the softest, it is necessary that he be most [196a] tender. Now besides being youngest and tenderest, he is supple in his looks. Otherwise he would not be able to fold himself around everywhere, nor to be unobserved on first entering or on departing from every soul, if he were hard. The harmony of his figure is a great piece of evidence for his proportioned and supple appearance, and on all sides it is agreed that Eros is exceptionally harmonious; for lack of harmony and Eros are always at war with one another. The god's way of living among blooming flowers means that his complexion is beautiful; for Eros [196b] does not settle on what is fading and has passed its bloom, whether it be body or soul or anything else, but wherever a place is blooming and scented, there he settles and remains.
"Now this is enough about beauty as attributable to the god, though many points are still omitted; but Eros' virtue must next be spoken of. The greatest thing is that Eros neither commits injustice nor has injustice done to him, neither against a god nor by a god, neither against a human being nor by a human being. For it is not by violence that Eros is affected, if he is affected at all—for violence does not [196c] touch him; nor does he act with violence, for everyone of his own accord serves Eros in everything. And whatever anyone of his own accord agrees upon with another of his own accord, the 'royal laws of the city' declare to be just. And besides the share he has in justice he has his fullest share in moderation. For it is agreed that to be moderate means to dominate over pleasures and desires; but no pleasure is stronger than Eros; and if other pleasures are weaker, they will be dominated by Eros; and since it is he who is dominant, then in dominating pleasures and desires Eros must be exceptionally moderate. And besides, in point of courage, [196d] ’not even Ares resists' Eros; for Ares does not possess Eros (for Aphrodite, as the story goes), but Eros Ares. And he who possesses is stronger than he who is possessed; and in dominating the bravest of all the rest, he must be the bravest. Now that the god's justice, moderation, and courage have been mentioned, all that remains is wisdom; so, as far as I can, I must try to supply the omission. And first—that I too might honor our art as Eryximachus [196e] did his—the god is a poet of such wisdom that he can make poets of others too; at any rate, everyone whom Eros touches proves to be a poet, 'though he be without the Muses before.' We can, accordingly, properly make use of this fact to infer that in every kind of musical making [i.e., poetry] Eros is a good poet [maker]; for what one does not have and does not know, one could neither give to another nor teach another. And [197a] who will oppose the fact that the making of all animals is nothing but Eros' wisdom, by which all the animals come to be and grow? And don't we know that, in the case of the arts, whomever this god teaches turns out to be renowned and conspicuous in craftsmanship, and that he whom Eros does not touch remains obscure? Archery, for example, medicine, and divination were invented by Apollo when desire and love were his guides; and [197b] thus he too must be a pupil of Eros, as are the Muses in music, Hephaestus in blacksmithing, Athena in weaving, and Zeus 'the captain of gods and human beings.' So it is plain that, when Eros came to be among them, the affairs of the gods were arranged out of love of beauty—for there is no eros present in ugliness. But before that, as I said at the start, many awesome events took place among the gods, as is said, through the monarchy of Necessity; whereas since the birth of this god, all good things have resulted for gods as well as for human beings from loving the beautiful things.
[197c] “Thus Eros, in my opinion, Phaedrus, stands first, because he is the fairest and the best, and, after this, he is the cause for everyone else of the same sort of fair and good things. It occurs to me to say something in meter too, that he is the one who makes
Peace among human beings, on the open sea calm
And cloudlessness, the resting of winds and sleeping of care.
[197d] He empties us of estrangement, he fills us with attachment; he arranges in all such gatherings as this our coming together with one another; in festivals, in dances, in sacrifices he proves himself a guide; furnishing gentleness, banishing wildness; loving giver of amity, no giver of enmity; gracious, good; spectacular to the wise, wonderful to the gods; enviable to the have-nots, desirable to the haves; father of luxury, splendor, glory, graces, yearning, and longing—caring for good ones, careless of bad ones; in toiling, in fearing, in longing, in [197e] speaking, the best governor, mariner, fellow warrior, and savior; the ornament of all gods and human beings, the fairest and best guide, whom every real man must follow hymning beautifully, and sharing the song Eros sings in charming the thought of all gods and human beings.
“Here, Phaedrus, you have the speech from me," he said. "Let it be dedicated to the god, sharing, as far as I am able, partly in playfulness, partly in measured earnestness.”