Excerpt from The Dialogues of Plato, Vol. 2 of 5: Translated Into English With Analyses and Introductions
Of all the works of Plato the Symposium is the most perfect in form, and may be truly thought to contain more than any commentator has ever dreamed of; or, as Goethe said of one of his own writings, more than the author himself knew. For in philosophy as in prophecy glimpses of the future may often be conveyed in words which could hardly have been understood or interpreted at the time when they were uttered (cp. Symp. 210 foll., 223 D). More than any other Platonic work the Symposium is Greek both in style and subject, having a beauty 'as of a statue' while the companion Dialogue of the Phaedrus is marked by a sort of Gothic irregularity. More too than in any other part of his writings, Plato is emancipated from former philosophies. The genius of Greek art seems to triumph over the traditions of Pythagorean, Eleatic, or Megarian systems, and 'the old quarrel of poetry and philosophy' has at least a superficial reconcilement. (Rep. x. 607 B.)
An unknown person who had heard of the discourses in praise of love spoken by Socrates and others at the banquet of Agathon, is desirous of having an authentic account of them, which he thinks that he can obtain from Apollodorus, the same excitable, or rather 'mad' friend of Socrates, who has already appeared in the Phaedo. He had imagined that the discourses were recent. There he is mistaken: but they are still fresh in the memory of his informant, who had just been repeating them to Glaucon, and is quite prepared to have another rehearsal of them in a walk from the Piraeus to Athens. Although he had not been present himself, he had heard them from the best authority. Aristodemus, who is described as having been in past times a humble but inseparable attendant of Socrates, had reported them to him (cp. Xen. Mem. i. 4).
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