Aristophanes' Speech in Plato's Symposium

Author(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
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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-

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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.

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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.

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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
OqAvrTEpav
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.

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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 KwO0VT6v
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 KWtWNOa 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

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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-

AEyE7a,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'7awE
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.

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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.

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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
apXla
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
tAo0vevov 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
EodEvov 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.

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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
E1LLTr'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.

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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.

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