Aristophanes' Speech in Plato's SymposiumAuthor(s): K. J. Dover Source: The Journal of Hellenic Studies, Vol. 86 (1966), pp. 41-50 Published by: The Society for the Promotion of Hellenic Studies Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/628991 Accessed: 09-03-2015 23:44 UTC Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of the Terms & Conditions of Use, available at http://www.jstor.org/page/ info/about/policies/terms.jsp JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide range of content in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and facilitate new forms of scholarship. For more information about JSTOR, please contact
[email protected]. The Society for the Promotion of Hellenic Studies is collaborating with JSTOR to digitize, preserve and extend access to The Journal of Hellenic Studies. http://www.jstor.org This content downloaded from 131.211.224.145 on Mon, 09 Mar 2015 23:44:34 UTC All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions ARISTOPHANES' SPEECH IN PLATO'S SYMPOSIUM I. MOTIF AND GENRE encomium on Eros (Smp.189c 2-I93d 5) is a story with a moral. Once ARISTOPHANES' upon a time, all human beings were double creatures, each with two heads, two bodies and eight limbs. Then, by the command of Zeus, each double creature was cut in half, and so humans as we know them came into being. Every one of us 'seeks his other half', and this search is Eros. If we are pious, we may hope to be rewarded by success in the search; if we are impious, Zeus may cut us in two again, and each of us will be like a flat-fish or a figure in relief. The story is amusingly told, and the comedies of the real Aristophanes are also amusing; but when Sykutris' says that the story 'reminds us of the plot of a comedy' and when Robin2 constructs a hypothetical comedy out of it, they are confounding essence and accident. The affinities of Aristophanes' story do not lie with his own comedies or with those of his contemporaries, but elsewhere. The extant plays of Aristophanes are firmly rooted in the present, and each of them explores the possibilities of a fantasy constructed out of the present. Mythology was exploited by the comic poets-rarely by Aristophanes himself, more extensively by some others-in order to present humorously distorted versions of the myths which were the traditional material of serious poetry. Some comic titles point to theogonic myths (e.g. Polyzelos, Birth of the Muses and Birth of Dionysos) or to myths about the era before the rule of Zeus (e.g. Phrynichos, Kronos,and the younger Kratinos, Giants and Titans). But among all the plays of Old and Middle Comedy which are known to us at least by title there are only two the plots of which seem likely to have had something in common with the grotesque story of the origin of Eros: (i) Pherekrates, Ant-men. This play included (ft. 120) words addressed to Deukalion, spoken by someone who is tired of eating fish; another fragment (I 13) is about fish, a third (I'14) tells a woman to make a mast, and a fourth (117) says that a storm is approaching. The fragments thus suggest a comic version of the myth of Deukalion and Pyrrha, who survived the flood sent by Zeus and created mankind afresh by throwing stones which turned into humans. This myth was known to Hesiod (fr. I15 [Rzach]), Pindar (0. ix 42 if.) and Akusileos (B33 and B39 [D.-K.]), and was used by Epicharmos.3 The title of the play, however, suggests that Pherekrates gave the myth a new twist by substituting for the stonethrowing the transformation of ants into men, a phenomenon which already belonged to a myth about the origin of the Myrmidons (Hesiodfr. 76 [Rzach], cf Kock, CAF i 178).4 (ii) POxy 427 offers us the ends of three trochaic tetrameters followed by ] avovsr ]royovya Both 'Avrt] dvovSand 'AvOpw] (Antiphanes fJ. I [Demianiczuk] =32A [Edmonds]). Toyovia are virtual certainties; of the other comic poets with names ending in -phanes, the plays of Apollophanes are listed in the Suda, and Euphanes and Alexiphanes (Lexi- ?) are each known to us only by a single mention. Irenaeus (Haer. ii 14) attributes a Theogony to would be a neat sequel (or precedent), and the theoretical Antiphanes,5 to which Anthropogony This article is a revised version of the third of three Special Lectures on 'Some Aspects of Plato's Symposium' delivered in University College, London, on February 19-2 , 1964. 1 P. 119"* of his edition (Athens, i934); cf. Rettig's edition (Halle, I875-6) ii 2 I f. 2 Pp. lix f. of his sixth edition (Paris, 1958). 3 Cf Pickard-Cambridge, Dithyramb, Tragedy and Comedy, ed. 2 (Oxford, 1962) 265 ff. 4 Meineke (FCG ii 310o) considered but abandoned this explanation. It should be noted in passing that a play called Ants was attributed to Kantharos and to Plato Comicus, but there are no fragments and no reason to suppose that it (any more than Wasps) contained an anthropogonic myth. On Aesop 166 (Perry) cf. p. 43, n. 15. Irenaeus's summary of 5 Fr. I o5A (Edmonds). the 'doctrine' of the play so closely resembles Ar. Av. 693 ff. that Meineke (FCG i 3 18 ff.) thought 'Anti- This content downloaded from 131.211.224.145 on Mon, 09 Mar 2015 23:44:34 UTC All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions 42 K. J. DOVER alternatives 7T-•oyovia, Kaproyovla and OtAvnioyovla also recede in face of line I of the fragment, ],v3pEr o( yEyEV7vqopVsO. Antiphanes began his long theatrical career (Anon. De ii 'after the Com. 13 Kaibel) 98th Olympiad', i.e. in 387/6 or 386/5.6 If, as I have argued Plato wrote the elsewhere,7 Symposiumbetween 385/4 and 379/8, we are free to speculate that was the earliest plays of Antiphanes and provided Plato with the basic among Anthropogony idea for Aristophanes' speech; but speculation of this kind, always a tempting way of filling a vacuum, must not be allowed to displace positive evidence, and I offer now the evidence which leads us away from Comedy. (I) The theme of Aristophanes' story, the origin of sexual love, is of a type prominent in many different cultures, including preliterate cultures, in the Old and the New World alike. Motifs belonging to this type include: changes in the size and shape of human beings, changes in the position of the genitals and breasts or in the texture of the skin, changes from double people to single people, and the origins of sex differentiation.8 In Greek (I exclude for the moment the speculations of fifth-century philosophers) the classic example is Hesiod's story (Th. 570 ff.) of the first woman (re-used, with important changes, in Op. 54 ff.). Comparable stories are characteristically Aesopic.9 In P1. Phaedo6oc I-7 Sokrates, rubbing his leg to restore the circulation, is struck by the interdependence of pleasure and pain, and remarks, 'I think, if Aesop had taken note of them, he would have composed a story about how the god wished to reconcile them, for they were always at loggerheads, and, when he found he could not, fastened their heads together' (i.e. united their bodies under one head, as 6ob 8-9 shows). Kallimachos (Jr. 192.15 f.) concludes with the words 'this is what Aesop said' an iambus which speaks of a time when beasts and birds and fishes could talk; Zeus took their voices from them and distributed these voices among men. In addition to (2) Aetiological stories are to be found at all levels of sophistication. Hesiod and Aesop1o we may distinguish: (a) Tragedy, which, so far as we can see, eschewed the purely biological in favour of Kulturgeschichte(A. Pr. 436 ff. and Moschion fr. 6-the latter relegates Prometheus to the status of a hypothesis) or Ideengeschichte(Kritiasfr. 25 [D.-K.], on the origins of religion). (b) The philosophers. Anaximandros made man evolve from an aquatic creature (Aio, AI i, A3o; Kirk and Raven, pp. I4i ff.), and Empedokles postulated a stage at which creatures came into being with two faces or with combinations of male and female or of human and animal characteristics (B57-62; Kirk and Raven, pp. 336 ff.). However grotesque the products of Empedokles' unusual imagination may seem to us, we must remember that he was attempting to explain the origin of species in their present form. Protagoras in P1l.Prt. 320oc ff. offers a story which is philosophically serious, in that it is used as an introduction to an exposition of ethical views which deserve attention, it is systematic, and it is an elegant work of art, but it resembles preliterate myth in representing species of phanes' a slip for 'Aristophanes', and Theogony was excluded from CAF. 6 Meineke's tentative emendation (FCG i 304) of to KaTa was mistaken; cf. Anon. De Com. ii 16 tieTd and E. Rohde, y' pdpAvyrtdog, s61'iae 6' n p 'T RhM xlii (1887) 475 (= Kleine Schriften [Tiibingen and Leipzig, 1901] i I85). 7 Phronesis x (1965) 2 ff. 8 Stith Thomson, Motif-Index of Folk-Literature, ed. 2 (Copenhagen, I955), motifs A 1225.I1, 1281.1-2, 130oI, 1310.I, 1313.0.2, 1313.3, 1313.4.I, I3I6.o.I, 1352, 1352.3, and M. Nojgaard, La Fable antique (Copenhagen, 1964-) i 102 f., 402 ff. Vast though the Motif-Index is, it can be augmented annually from anthropological publications. On the other hand, some of the examples cited in it should possibly be discounted (for our present purpose) as the product of diffusion from the Platonic story; cf. D. Daube, The New Testament and Rabbinic Judaism (London, I956) 72 f., 79, on the bisexual Adam (I owe this reference to the Rev. R. A. S. Barbour). 9 Not all the Aesopic stories known in Classical times, perhaps not more than a minority, should be called 'fables'; cf. K. Meuli, Herkunft und Wesen der Fabel (Basel, I954) and especially Nojgaard (passim), whose definitions are strict. 10 It is hard to refuse a Classical pedigree to some aetiological stories which are attributed to Aesop in much later times, e.g. Photius Ep. 16, Themistius p. 434 (Dindorf); cf. B. E. Perry, TAPA xciii (1962) 294 ff. This content downloaded from 131.211.224.145 on Mon, 09 Mar 2015 23:44:34 UTC All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions ARISTOPHANES' SPEECH IN PLATO'S SYMPOSIUM 43 living creatures as being fitted out with their attributes by a supernatural though fallible quartermaster. (c) What Plato calls 'old wives' tales'; that is, folklore at the subliterate level. Thrasymachos in P1. R. 350e 2-4 says contemptuously that he will say 'yes' and 'no' and 'well!' to Sokrates 'as to the old women who tell stories'. The nature and scope of these stories is not so easily established as the fact of their existence, but they may have embraced both the remote past and the life after death. In Hp. Ma. 285e Io-286a 2 Sokrates compares the pleasure which the Spartans take in the apxatoAoyla(285d 8) of Hippias with the pleasure of children in the stories of old women; and in Grg. 527a 5 Sokrates fears that the story of . . caiErpypads. It is notejudgment after death may be dismissed.by Kallikles as uv8Oos worthy that at the beginning of the story Sokrates uses a story-teller'sformula and calls our attention to its formulaic character: aLKovE884, au, MLa KaAof Vdyov (523a I).11 Plato's Eleatic in Pit. 268e 4-5 introduces his remarkable myth with the words 'now attend closely to my story, as children do',12and approacheshis main subject by way of the standstill of the sun in the myth of Atreus and Thyestes.13 (d) The story told by Sokratesin Phdr.259b 6-d 7, of how cicadas came into being from humans in remote times, suggests that the aetiological story, like the EUKCV(e.g. Smp. 215a 4 ff.) was a recognised genre of urbane invention.14 (3) The range from philosophy, through epic and tragedy, to fable and folklore is a very wide range indeed, but the categories which I have distinguished are linked together sometimes by community of formula, sometimes by details of content over and above their general community of theme. Protagoras'sstory, Kritiasfr. 25, Moschion fr. 6 and Kallimachos fr. 192 all begin with variations of the formula 'once upon a time'.15 Prometheus,the bringer of fire, the 'culture hero' whom we recognise in the folklore of peoples far removed from the Greeks, figures in the antecedents to the story of the Woman in Hesiod;16 he is already a friend of mankind, for reasons which Hesiod does not give (Th. 535 ff., Op. 50 ff.). His brother Epimetheus is the intermediary who takes the Woman to mankind (Th. 511Iff., Op. 85 if.). In Protagoras'sstory Prometheus and.Epimetheus are the divine stewards who are charged with the distribution of attributes to all species of creature. In the Aesopic story of Kallimachos, again, it is presupposed that Prometheus was the actual maker of mankind (3, cf fr. 493 and Aesop 240 [Perry]). Hephaistos and Athena are the craftsmen who make the Woman in Hesiod (Th. 571 ff., Op.6o ff.), and it is from them that Prometheus steals the means of life for the human species in Prt. 32 id 5-e 4. The agent of Zeus who takes the Woman to Epimetheus in Op. 83 ff. is Hermes, it is Hermes who is sent by Zeus to implant shame and justice in men (Prt. 322c i ff.), and Hermes is commonly Zeus's agent in the later Aesopic corpus (e.g. io8 [Perry]). In Aristophanes' story the agent is not Hermes, but Apollo, as in a minority of later fables (e.g. Avianus 22), and Hephaistos appears, as it were, on the sidelines (Smp. i92d 2 ff.). AdOov 11 Cf Tim. 20od 7-8 aKove 64, 6ZKpaTeg, d5 'udaaUitvdTrdTZov,navdrtnaa yesluv dU0o0g;, beginning a story received (d I) EK na)atag Because of the formula, I do not take 10Oog dKO?g. ... .(a<nep ypao' in Grg. 527a 5 as a mere synonym for 'nonsense', but equally I do not suggest that Tht. I76b 7, where 6' is contrasted with 'the truth', ypa<ov iOAog Aey~dlevog gives us any information about Greek old wives' tales. 12 This is a more appropriate translation than 'boys' ('like a boy', Taylor), if Hp. Ma. 286a 1-2 is any guide. Nojgaard i 548 ff. rightly emphasizes that fables (as he defines them) are designed for an adult audience, but this does not alter the fact that they (with other stories of a fable-like character) are digestible by children and much adult fare is not. 13 Cf. Wilamowitz, Platon ii (ed. 3, Berlin, 1962) 175; K. Ziegler, NJA xxxi (1913) 550 ff.; A. E. Taylor, Plato: the Sophist and the Statesman (Edinburgh, 1961) 21 IIf. 14 On the eCLKWVin general Cf. Fraenkel on A. Ag. 1629 ff. and G. Monaco, Paragoni burleschi degli antichi (Palumbo, 1964). On the story of the cicadas, cf. P. Frutiger, Les Mythesde Platon (Paris, 1930) 237 n. 5Motifs of the type 'cicadas were once men' may have existed in folklore in Plato's time; 166 cf. Aesop 6 viyv Trd aat iv TcrA. (Perry) 'vOeptogno E. Norden, AgnostosTheos, ed. 2 (Leipzig, 15 Cf./t~vpr~' 1923) 368 ff., and Nojgaard 459 f. 16 Cf. Frutiger 238. This content downloaded from 131.211.224.145 on Mon, 09 Mar 2015 23:44:34 UTC All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions K. J. DOVER 44 (4) Community of motifs between Aristophanes' story and one or more of the works which I have cited, combined with the resemblance of its central motif to non-Greek preliterate stories, suffices to establish the large field within which it falls. But where exactly within this field ? To what level of sophistication does Plato mean us to assign it ? There are three important indications that he has a low level in mind. (a) Whereas it was the concern of the philosophers to offer, so far as possible, complete and systematic explanations of evolutionary processes and the origins of things as they are, the biological mechanism of Aristophanes' story is so naive that it does not bear questioning. The bisection of double individuals in the remote past not only made each of the resulting single individuals at that time seek the other half of himself but also makes each of us, the descendants of those single individuals, seek his or her own complement (91 d 3-I93c 8), as if we ourselves were the immediate product of bisection. This standstill of time, this gay indifference to the distinction between individual and species, is a universal characteristic of folktales of the type 'how the leopard got his spots', and is also to be observed in Hesiod's first story of Woman. From this unique first woman is descended yvos . . yvvaLtKC6 . (Th. 590). How then did mankind reproduce itself before her? And are not OqAvrTEpa•v all men and women equally descended from men and women ? Questions of this kind are not only unanswerable; the very asking of them is an anachronistic reaction to Hesiod's story. In Op. the deadly gift of Zeus is no longer primeval woman, but a named person, Pandora; this modification removes a biological naivet6 which may have come to seem to Hesiod himself out of place in serious poetry, but in the element added to the story, the jar of ills which Pandora brings with her, there is still a degree of indifference to mechanism which has troubled readers and students of Hesiod from Classical to modern times." (b) Aristophanes is made to say (193a 3-b 6) 'there is, then, a danger that if we do not behave as we should towards the gods we shall be cut in two again, and go round like figures in relief'. The warning has affinities with the moral which is normally the point of a fable,18 the contrition often expressed at the end by a character in a folktale,19 and, rather strikingly. with the ending of one of Hans Andersen's stories, The Shirt Collar ('and this we must remem ber, so that we may on no account do what he did'). Some kind of warning or threat about the future is attested for at least one Aesopic story of genuine antiquity, alluded to in Arist. Meteor. 356b 9-17, where Aesop 'in a rage with a ferryman'20 says that one day Charybdis, which in its first burst of activity had exposed the mountains and in its second the islands and the plains, will in a third and last effort suck down all the water in the world (thereby, one presumes, depriving greedy and dilatory ferrymen of their livelihood).21 (c) After the warning, a happier note is struck (193a 7-d 5): 'Each man should exhort his fellows to piety ... Eros allows us to hope that if we show piety towards the gods he will return us to our original nature' (by enabling each of us to find and abide by his other half) 'and by healing us make us blessed and happy'. To close a story with a wish for our own 17 Cf. A. S. F. Gow in Essays and StudiesPresented to Sir WilliamRidgeway(Cambridge, I913) 99 ff., and G. Fink, PandoraundEpimetheus(Diss. Erlangen, 1958) 65 ff. My own view is that Hesiod meant to say what Hermokrates says more sophistically in Th. vi 78.2: ot3 ydp o0'6vre •pa r~g Te EntOvplag KaG T' g tVrg Tdv arbdv duoltwg'aplav yevyiaOat. Man is traitag of his own hopes and fears, because he can choose to hope and fear, but he cannot choose when to be sick or well. 18 There is an amusing French example in A. de Montaiglon and G. Raynaud, Recueil de Fabliaux (Paris, 1877-) ii no. 32; cf. R. C. Johnston 19 E.g. (ed.) F. H. Lee, Folk Tales All Nations of (London, I931) 679, 'Had I not been so wilful and malicious, I had now been empress!' (Italy) and 909, 'O why was I not a better bird when I was young?' (Spain); cf. Nojgaard i 395 ff. Aristotle assumes that 20 Note up6g T 'ynvopOepda; we know the story (cf. Entretiensde la FondationHardtix [1963] 107). 21 In Aesop 8 (Perry) a similar prediction is made not as a threat in anger but as a response to some shipwrights who had challenged Aesop to make a joke against them. and D. D. R. Owen, Fabliaux(Oxford, i957) xiii f., xvii f. This content downloaded from 131.211.224.145 on Mon, 09 Mar 2015 23:44:34 UTC All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions ARISTOPHANES' SPEECH IN PLATO'S SYMPOSIUM 45 happiness, or the happiness of the audience, is common in European folklore;22 cf. the modern Greek 'they lived happily ever after, and may we live even more happily',23 and the last two words of the Republicgive a deft hint of the story-teller's formula. For these reasons I suggest that Plato means us to regard the theme and the framework of Aristophanes' story as characteristic not of comedy but of unsophisticated, subliterate folklore. I shall offer below (Section III) a reason for his choice of genre; but let us look first at some of the elements which he has fitted into this framework. II. ELEMENTS OF PARODY (I) Certainly at two points, and possibly at a third, Plato has reminded us of the real Aristophanes. (a) When we read (I92a 2-7) 'some say that they' (sc. boys who yield readily to their lovers) 'are shameless, but that is not true ... for it is their courage and manliness and mascuAnd this is strongly supported by the fact that boys of this linity that make them act so. .... when have to kind, they grown maturity, are the only men24in political life', we cannot help end of the in the Clouds(the play of Aristophanes more likely than any other recalling dispute to have imprinted itself on Plato's memory), where the Honest Argument is forced to admit ( 1088 ff.) that it is from the ranks of the EpV'pwK70-otthat public speakers are drawn. This is, moreover, a stock joke of Old Comedy; cf. Plato Comicusfr. I86.5 KEKOO 7TEVKa' 70-oyapoOv drTWpEUEL, Ar. Eq. 878 ff., Ec. 112 ff. Plato has adopted an Aristophanic joke but has invested it with an irony which is characteristic of his own methods, not of Comedy. (b) After saying 'if we are on good terms with the god' (sc. Eros) 'we shall meet our own rrawetKd,which at present few succeed in doing' (I92b 3-6), Aristophanes continues (b 6-c 2) 'and Eryximachos must not treat my speech as a joke25 and take me to be referring to Pausanias and Agathon-they are perhaps among the successful ones and are both male in We recall the brutal portrayal of Agathon's femininity in Th. 130 ff., cf. Ar. nature....' fr. 326, Z Luc. p. 178 (Rabe). Here again Plato has taken a typical Aristophanic motif but has transformed it by substituting bland cattiness for vilification. (c) It is not, I think, wholly insignificant that the striking anachronistic reference in Smp. I93a 2-3 to the dissolution of Mantineia26 is located in the speech of Aristophanes. Comedies which presented burlesque versions of myths were full of topical allusions, which must have had an exceptionally amusing effect when uttered by divine or heroic characters It is (e.g. Kratinos fr. 240, Theopompos fr. 18, PSI I I75=Philiskos fr. IA [Edmonds]). not impossible that Plato is having a joke with us, as it were, on two levels, outdoing at his own game the man whom he is portraying and inserting his own most audacious anachronism into an aetiological story ostensibly recounted by a comic poet many years earlier. (2) Certain resemblances between the double humans of Aristophanes' story and the monsters of Empedokles B6I are undeniable; the o1AO0VEZs creatures of B62 may also perhaps 22 26 KwO•0VT6v Cf. J. Bolte and G. Polivka, Anmerkungen OdPV Adyov, which, out of context, we zu den Kinder- und Hausmdrchender Briider Grimm (Leipzig, should take to mean 'ridiculing my speech', i.e. 1913-) iv 24 f., 34 ff.; R. M. Dawkins, Modem 'criticising my speech by making jokes against it'. Greek in Asia Minor (Cambridge, 1916) 561, 571. A But passages immediately before and after Aristowish for the happiness of the hearer sometimes implies phanes' speech suggest that Aristophanes here means that the teller deserves material reward for his efforts, by Kw0/68 eVV something like 'answer mockery with just as a beggar seasons his importunities with mockery' (cf. elKdaEvl/dVTEtKd'v6t, Meno 8ob 8-c 6): blessings. ye)aCxronoteig,dAAwovUyew, Kat qJPaKd 18a oi Toi 1dyov 23 ProfessorN. M. Kontoleon drew my attention to dvayKdsetg yiyveOat Toi meatrro, dv Tt ysAolov eiq7( this. U /pE /in e S. . b 4-5 dAAd arTe3... 193d 7-8 (arnep o&tv 24 The expression is not coined for the occasion, but deMiOrivaov, i KWt•WNOa acrdv. occurs in serious contexts, e.g. X. HG vii 1.24 26 Cf. n. 7. Kat'gtdoov iv6pa ?7yo5-VTo. vT6v AvKo•?j6V •inepeq~Aow This content downloaded from 131.211.224.145 on Mon, 09 Mar 2015 23:44:34 UTC All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions 46 K. J. DOVER have something in common with the double humans, but the meaning of the fragment is not so clear that anyone can be sure what Empedokles was visualising.27 The judgment that Aristophanes' speech is mainly or primarily designed as a parody of philosophical speculations28 carries little conviction once we take our eyes away from philosophy and poetry and observe the positive affinities between the speech and folklore. Empedokles, like all the early philosophers,"9 but to a greater degree than most, was himself influenced by the motifs of myth and folklore, and I am prepared to believe that his evolutionary speculations did not enter Plato's head during the composition of Aristophanes' speech. (3) Double humans were not wholly unknown in heroic myth, and the story of the Aktorione-Molione30 existed in more than one form before Plato's time; cf. Hesiod fr. 13 (Rzach), Ibykos PMGfr. 285, Pherekydes F. Gr. Hist. 3F 79(b). This story may have helped to determine the direction taken by Plato's imagination in composing Aristophanes' speech, but one could not say more than that; between monstrous individuals and the nature of a whole species there is a world of difference. (4) The same consideration reduces the relevance of the Orphic belief that Phanes was a double being with his genitals at the rear (Orphicafrr. 76, 77, 80, 81 [Kern]). There is a more important point of contact in H. Orph. 9-4, where the moon is called 'both male and female', as in Aristophanes' speech (I 9ob 3). It should, however, be noted that in H. Orph. Athena (32.1o) and Mise (42.4) are also bisexual, and Aristophanes' schema, Sun =male, Earth =female, Moon =male +female, is not recognisably Orphic. In default of satisfactory evidence for the antiquity of the Orphic myths which are known to us only from late sources,31 I would rather regard Orphic doctrine as influenced by Smp. than as influencing it. (5) Although I believe that Plato's intention to parody Empedokles, heroic saga or the Orphics is highly doubtful, there is another passage in Aristophanes' speech ( 19ob 6-9) which has not attracted the attention which it deserves. The race of double humans was proud and violent and attacked the gods: 'and what Homer says about Ephialtes and Otos, rr-pt EKEdVWV the attempt to make a way up to heaven'. Editors and translatorssome- AEy•E7a,an times import imaginary Kal and translate, 'is said also about them'.32 But the text as it stands represents Aristophanes as saying that the story which Homer tells of Ephialtes and Otos is in fact a story about the double humans. For the form of the sentence we may 1 . . . V compare the document quoted in Thuc. viii 58.7: KOLV 7bV r7d AEOV o 7TOAEFLOV.7WV know that flovtwvrat 'A67)valovs, v allegorical KaTaAVEcOat.33 Now, we KTa'7a•wE 7rpoS were well established of Homer interpretations Colo~" by Plato's time (Cra. 407a 8-b 2, cf. Z" II. xx 67). So far as our direct testimony goes, its whole tendency was to treat what is concrete and personal in Homer as standing for the abstract and general, and the words which Plato gives to Aristophanes differ in that they treat a myth which is already naive in Homer as an 27 Cf. Kirk and Raven, p. 338. Ziegler 533 if.; Robin lxf.; Sykutris 19"*; Frutiger 239; A. E. Taylor, Plato (ed. 6) 220. 29 Cf. the implications of Arist. Meteor. 365b 9 f. the possible utilisation of this myth in 30 On archaic vase-painting, cf. R. Hampe, Friihe griechische Sagenbilder (Athens, 1936) 45-49, 87 f. (While I must defer to Professor J. M. Cook on a question of Greek iconographic technique, I cannot feel completely convinced that his interpretation [ABSA xxxv See above p. 3. (1934/5) 206] disposes of Hampe's.) 31 Ziegler 56I ff., Frutiger 240. I do not suggest that we should treat the evidence for Orphic doctrines more grudgingly and pedantically than the evidence for the history of any other myths and religious beliefs; only that we should not treat them less so. 32 So, explicitly, Rettig ad loc.; but the translations 28 of Robin, Sykutris, Calogero (Bari, 1928) and Ritter (Tiibingen, 1931) take pains to avoid the importation of 'also'. as passive (cf. Th. iii 33 I take KazaAtvarOat 115.4), not as middle. 'Since one of the two parties to any such agreement is likely to want to make peace before the other (even if only by a small margin), the provision which needs to be made is 'if either party wishes to make peace, let him not make it except on terms to which the other party agrees', and this is said in the form 'and if they wish to make peace, let it be made on the same terms'. Thucydides is quoting a document, so that the question of stylistic variation hardly arises-as it does in [Lys.] 20.32 Katqb~acy5a Toig Asdovat fleflatd$arge AdYov rdv cdivrwCOv tovrYpdoraT'ov A'yeTat ydp KtA. This content downloaded from 131.211.224.145 on Mon, 09 Mar 2015 23:44:34 UTC All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions ARISTOPHANES' SPEECH IN PLATO'S SYMPOSIUM 47 an allusion to, or erroneous version of, a myth even more grotesque. Possibly the reconciliation of conflicting myths and the assumption that Homer is the repository of truth, however he disguises it, were a recognisable feature of popular story-telling in Plato's time, and he may have felt Aristophanes' interpretation of Od. xi 307 ff. to be an appropriate insertion. Sokrates plays at something similar in Phdr. 229c 6-e 7, imagining how the myth that Boreas carried off Oreithyia could be explained by the suggestion that she was blown off the rocks by the wind. This explanation, converting a supernatural person into a natural phenomenon, has some affinity with the conversion of the individuals Ephialtes and Otos into a species; but it must be admitted that the affinity is limited, and Sokrates in Phdr. indicates that useless speculation of this kind, although adypOLKOS. uofda, is still the province of o craool. The speech of Aristophanes may possibly show us how Plato rated this Caofa.34 III. ETHOS If we now ask why Plato decided that an Aesopic story, with or without a seasoning of other elements, was the appropriate contribution for his Aristophanes to make to the laudation of Eros, we can at least be confident that it was not simply because Aesopic and other unsophisticated stories are sometimes related, mentioned or utilised in comedy,35 nor even because a cosmogonic passage occurs in Av. 685 ff. (a passage given prominence in modern times because we know so little about early 'philosophical' doctrines and are anxious to remedy our ignorance). Comedy uses, adapts and parodies every genre of composition. from folklore to philosophy, but this does not mean that in its design and conception a comedy resembles either a folktale or a philosophical treatise. Plato himself, as we have seen, uses the formulae and framework of the folktale for.Sokrates in Gorgias and the Eleatic in Politicus; the difference between their stories and Aristophanes' lies in their point and their level of sophistication. Plato's decision in the case of Aristophanes' speech rests, I suggest, on the values shared by comedy and folklore,36 and these become apparent when we examine the most important contrasts between Aristophanes and the other speakers in Smp. Every other speaker argues to some degree in abstract terms, even if the argument disguises itself, in traditional form, as an exposition of the attributes of a supernatural being. Only Aristophanes commits himself whole-heartedly to the particular and the perishable; he takes it for granted that for an individual reunion with his unique, individual 'other half' is an end in itself. This is the issue between him and Diotima. The extent to which Plato wishes us to regard every speaker in Smp. as making at least one positive contribution, one step forward towards the Platonic doctrine of Eros, is not a matter of general agreement,37 and this is hardly surprising. Sexual love is, after all, a real phenomenon with which we are all acquainted. Plato's doctrine, however other-worldly the form it assumes when he has developed it, takes some aspects of our actual experience as its starting-point. From these two facts it follows that it would have been very difficult for Plato to compose for the characters in his Symposium,intelligent and amiable Athenians, five 34 Cf. Frutiger 181 n. 2, andJ. Tate, CQxxiii (1929) (1930) I ff. I42 ff., xxiv 35 Aelian NA vi 5I tells an aetiological story (anchored to a quarrel between Zeus and Prometheus) about the ass, the snake and old age, and ends: 'Aristeas' (not otherwise known as the name of a comic poet) 'and Apollophanes, poets of comedy, sing this story' (cf. Meuli 24 f.). But that a comic poet made the story the plot of a comedy is hardly conceivable; we should think rather of something like Ar. Lys. 781 ff. 36 Cf. Q. Cataudella, Dioniso ix (1942) 6 ff. Cf. Frutiger 196 f. (I do not know why Frutiger says 'le veritable but de cette fable . . ce n'est pas d' clairer le lecteur sur la cause ou l'origine de l'amour, mais sur sa nature et ses modalites'); Sykutris 121*; Robin lx; W. Gilbert, Ph lxviii (i909) 69 f.; J. Stenzel, Platon der Erzieher (Leipzig, 1928) 203 f.; R. A. Markus, The Downside Review lxxiii 37 (1956) 220. Cf. Nojgaard i 225, 459. This content downloaded from 131.211.224.145 on Mon, 09 Mar 2015 23:44:34 UTC All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions 48 K. J. DOVER different encomia on Eros without attributing to each of them some sentiments reconcilable with his own doctrine and some expressions (e.g. the l~arsg3s of 191d I-2, I92e 9 and apX•la 193c 5) which could actually stand, with a somewhat changed reference, in an exposition of his own. If Plato really meant us to regard Aristophanes' speech as an advance towards a true conception of Eros, he veiled his design impenetrably, for it is the central point of that speech which Diotima rejects explicitly. She says (205d I o-e 7, cf. 212C 4-6): 'There is an argument which says that lovers are those who are seeking the other half of themselves.' But 'individuals do not show affection for what belongs to themselves, except in so far as a man speaks of Good as his own and belonging to himself and of Bad as alien'. Diotima is directly attacking the assumption without which Aristophanes' explanation of Eros could not have been offered: that each person seeks, loves and cherishes himself and what is or was part of himself. This assumption is attacked again, at greater length,39 in Lg. 73Id 6-732b 4, where it is regarded (b 6, e I) as a popular view: 'that every man is E o1 v naturally dear to himself'. This view is disastrous, rvvAooTat yap rTEplrob t•Ao0vevov 0d o'TE yav dv3pa (e 5-6); orTEYEv(732a 2-3) Eavro-v -ra av-ro Xpero'v y excessive self-love, and pursue everyone must 'avoido'-vE E• E•odEvov is better than he is always whosoever himself' (b 2-3). The values and assumptions implicit in Aristophanes' speech are essentially popular. The comic hero is, at least in this respect, the common man; he reacts, but reflects little, and his shrewdness and ingenuity are directed to the creation or restoration of circumstances in which he can enjoy to the full all the pleasures except those of intellectual exertion. Yet to many of us at the present time, who are not ancient Greek peasants, the attitude of Aristophanes is more congenial than anything else in Smp.40 One reason is religious, the tendency of Christians (from IJohn 4.8 onwards) to treat the divine not only (as Plato does) as an object of love, not even as characteristically active in love, but as identifiable with the relationship, love, itself.41 A second reason is the romantic tradition in the arts; popular literature and drama often assume that for each individual there exists somewhere in the world one other individual of the opposite sex such that these two individuals are the 'right answer' for each other, and this assumption is to be found, with many reservations and modifications, at all levels of sophistication,42 from Romeo's 'Did my heart love till now?' to weekly magazines for adolescent girls. Yet a third reason is that we would rather accept observed facts, however mysterious, than close our eyes to them in order to construct a coherent metaphysical doctrine; and the facts afford us a secure base from which we can assess the issue between Aristophanes and Diotima. The subject of Smp. is Eros; translators (who deserve our sympathy, for they cannot be consistent without misleading us) convey the impression that its subject is love. We must, however, distinguish43 between: (I) Sexual desire. As a rule, when A desires B he does so by virtue of qualities in B which are generally recognised, in the society to which both A and B belong, as desirable. 38 Cf. Rep. 61id I-2. 39 This is not the only occasion on which Diotima's views are re-stated by the Athenian; cf. Lg. 721 b 6-c 8 Smp. 207C 9-209e 4 (Phronesisx [1965]16 ff.). , 40 Cf. Sykutris 123*; Stenzel 203 f.; H. Koller, Die Komposition des platonischen Symposion (Diss. Ziurich, 1948) 47. 41 Cf. I am concerned here Sykutris Io8*, 121*. not with what the words 60eds dydcvijarvi, meant to the writer, but with their influence (whether acknowledged or not) on attitudes to Plato in the twentieth Markus 222 emphasises that Aristophanes century. draws our attention, as none of the preceding speeches has done, to the relational aspect of love; but, of course, to Aristophanes the purpose of a given individual is not to acquire and express a certain disposition towards potential objects in general, nor to promote the well-being of a particular object without creating an erotic relationship to it, but to create that relationship to a particular object. 42 Cf. T. F. Gould, Platonic Love (London, I963) 33, 170 ff. distinction drawn here between three 43 The different experiences is not intended to carry any implication for their causation or biological interrelation. This content downloaded from 131.211.224.145 on Mon, 09 Mar 2015 23:44:34 UTC All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions ARISTOPHANES' SPEECH IN PLATO'S SYMPOSIUM 49 Hence C can understand why A desires B; and when confronted with D, who possesses the objectively desirable qualities in greater measure than B, A is likely to prefer D to B. (2) Affection, which we may feel for anyone of either sex and any age. (3) What I will call, cautiously, 'preference'. When A's desire for B amounts to 'preference', it often happens that B is not conspicuous for objectively desirable qualities, that C does not understand why A prefers B, and that A's preference is unshaken by the accessibility of the infinitely desirable D. We use the term 'love' for (2) and (3), sometimes for the activity which is the expression of (i)-rarely for (i) itself-and the expressions 'fall in love' and 'be in love' exclusively in connexion with (3). In Smp., Phaidros, Pausanias and Agathon use the words 'pws and in conformity with Prodikos's definition of dpiv of (I) and (3) indiscriminately-and Cpwo• who 'desire doubled'. as Eryximachos, quickly ascends to a level of generalisation (B 7) which deprives his speech of any but an historical interest,44 uses E'powand E'pv not only of (1), (2), (3), but also of compatibility and co-existence. Aristophanes uses the words exclusively of (3). Here Phaidros, Pausanias, Agathon and Diotima are ranged together against him. To is our reaction to beauty; and when they take the trouble to speak of the first three, E'pw• of soul' 'beauty (e.g. I83e I), they are still speaking in terms of a reaction towards something which is objective in so far as its value is recognised by society in general. To Diotima, 'pogSis our reaction to the imperishable, which is the object of knowledge, because it is real, and pari passu the object of desire, because it is good. Desire for a beautiful individual is either a step in the right direction, so long as it is recognised as a step, or an error, if it is treated as something more than a step. When A dpaB, he does so (unless he is guilty of erroneous desire) because B is a medium, a vehicle, for a joint advance towards the imperishable. Thus he can fall in love with B; but can he stay in love, if he finds that D is a better medium ? What becomes, on Diotima's theory, of the observed facts of what I have called 'preference', and what is it right for A to do if he finds that he has preferred someone who, as his intelligence tells him, is an inferior medium ? Is 'preference' no more than an error ? In Phaedrus there is one modification of doctrine which makes a gesture towards 7rd7 Each soul awtvdLEVaaEwtv, and one observation which also implies a recommendation. an with that eleven who leads one of the the heavens the acquires affinity gods through I of souls it and this to which ff., 248a 250b 5-c 6), company belongs (246e 4 ffaffinity determines the nature of the choice which is made when one individual dpaanother (252c 3253c 6). Moreover, two lovers who have lapsed from true co-operation in the search for the imperishable and have made, in an unguarded moment, 'the choice which the majority regard as felicity', feel themselves thereafter committed to each other by 'the greatest of all for them ever to break by becoming enemies pledges', which it would be oi3 E1LL•Tr'v (256b 7-d 3). These gestures are not made by Diotima, from whose doctrine of Eros that subjectivity which seems to us the most singular characteristic of love45 is rigorously excluded. Aristophanes' speech, with comparable rigour, excludes objectivity, for he nowhere suggests that A desires B by virtue of qualities in B which might cause C also to desire B. Sexual intercourse is recognised as desirable (191 c 6-8), but it is also recognised that the object of desire in 'pwoSis something beyond sexual intercourse (i192c 4-d 2). Modern sympathy for AristoTAPA lxxvi (i945) 95 f., seems to 44 L. Edelstein, me to overrate both the significance of Eryximachos's speech and Plato's respect for doctors; I find it hard not to see an element of unkind parody in I88d 9e 2. Markus's appraisal (221) is, in my view, closer to Plato's, and cf. G. J. De Vries, Spel bi" Plato (Amsterdam, 1949) 266. 45 Singular because the evidence required for the explanation of an individual case is vast and largely inaccessible, not because the principles involved in such an explanation conflict in any way with our ordinary experience. This content downloaded from 131.211.224.145 on Mon, 09 Mar 2015 23:44:34 UTC All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions K. J. DOVER 50 phanes' attitude may be a product of romanticism, but the speech which expresses the attitude is not a modern interpolation in ancient text. It was not even composed by Aristophanes as an attack on Plato, but by Plato, as a target for Diotima's fire. Plato believed that popular values, as assumed and exemplified in comedy and folklore, were committed to the individual, the particular and the familiar, and that such a morality was irreconcilable with the practice of philosophy; and, as we watch Dikaiopolis celebrating the Rural Dionysia E's-r v j--Lov v aXoLEvoS, it is difficult to deny the accuracy of Plato's observation. At the same time, AOco popular morality was neither the only nor the most formidable enemy; Plato and the comic hero were at one in despising and disliking cowardice, dishonesty and the selfish abuse of power. If a satisfactory reconstruction of the history of Plato's feelings towards the real Aristophanes continues to elude us,46 it is because Plato's view of popular values could not, in the nature of the case, be free of complications. K. J. DOVER. Universityof St. Andrews 46 Cf. especially G. Daux, REG Iv (1942) 216 ff. This content downloaded from 131.211.224.145 on Mon, 09 Mar 2015 23:44:34 UTC All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions