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Updated: June 25, 2025
To Diotima, the wise woman of the Symposium, he expresses his unhappiness: Still must I mourn That every lovely thing escapes the heart Even in the moment of its cherishing. Eros appears and promises Agathon that if he will accept his love, he may find happiness in eternal beauty, and his poetical gift will be ennobled: Eros I am, the wooer of men's hearts.
When Socrates had done speaking, the company applauded, and Aristophanes was beginning to say something in answer to the allusion which Socrates had made to his own speech, when suddenly there was a great knocking at the door of the house, as of revellers, and the sound of a flute-girl was heard. Agathon told the attendants to go and see who were the intruders.
At the end of the dialogue one of the company tells how Socrates compelled Aristophanes and Agathon to admit that it was one and the same man's business to understand and write both tragedy and comedy a doctrine which has been practised only in modern drama. In this dialogue we first seem to catch the voice of Plato himself as distinct from that of Socrates.
Most of the tragic poets of Greece derived their plots from a limited number of well known stories. But Aristotle justifies Agathon for departing from this custom and making both his plot and characters fictitious, for the plays of Agathon give none the less pleasure. But not all pleasure, he says, is appropriate to tragedy.
Welcome, Aristodemus, said Agathon, as soon as he appeared you are just in time to sup with us; if you come on any other matter put it off, and make one of us, as I was looking for you yesterday and meant to have asked you, if I could have found you. But what have you done with Socrates?
For, like Agathon, she spoke first of the being and nature of Love, and then of his works. And I said to her, in nearly the same words which he used to me, that Love was a mighty god, and likewise fair; and she proved to me as I proved to him that, in my way of speaking about him, Love was neither fair nor good. "What do you mean, Diotima," I said; "is love then evil and foul?"
But the plot of this Satyric or Silenic drama has been detected, and you must not allow him, Agathon, to set us at variance. I believe you are right, said Agathon, and I am disposed to think that his intention in placing himself between you and me was only to divide us; but he shall gain nothing by that move; for I will go and lie on the couch next to you.
The inference that he who desires something is in want of something, and that he who desires nothing is in want of nothing, is in my judgment, Agathon, absolutely and necessarily true. What do you think? I agree with you, said Agathon. Very good. Would he who is great, desire to be great, or he who is strong, desire to be strong? That would be inconsistent with our previous admissions. True.
Jakob Wassermann, born in 1873 at Fürth, begins at least as a delineator of the things of his home; for his first product, The Jews of Zirndorf is in its first part a legendary picture taken from the history of the Fürth ghetto, and in its second part there comes into the foreground the figure of Agathon Geyer, a Jewish messiah of the present, whose deep-seated longing to see God conquers the narrow spirit of the law, of slavery and asceticism.
Here is a description by Plato of his bearing at the close of an all-night carouse, which may stand as a concrete illustration not only of the character of Socrates, but of the meaning of "temperance" as it was understood by the Greeks: "Aristodemus said that Eryximachus, Phaedrus, and others went away he himself fell asleep, and as the nights were long took a good rest: he was awakened towards day-break by a crowing of cocks, and when he awoke the others were either asleep, or had gone away; there remained awake only Socrates, Aristophanes, and Agathon, who were drinking out of a large goblet which they passed round, and Socrates was discoursing to them.
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