Plato Laughs Last: The Comic Agon in Plato’s Symposium

Mike B. Lippman (Emory University)

According to an anecdote in Plutarch (Moralia 10c-d), when asked whether the Clouds offended him, Socrates replied, “Not at all!  Being mocked in the theater is like being mocked in a big symposium!”  His response provides a model for interpreting one of the agones taking place in Plato’s Symposium.  The surface competitions concern speeches on love, but submerged below is yet another comic, but urgent, agon between Plato’s texts and Aristophanes’ Clouds.  Plato made clear in the Apology (18a-e) that the Clouds cast an indelible stain upon Socrates’ name and had an immense influence over the jury.  His mild treatment of Aristophanes may seem puzzling and difficult to reconcile.  Plato’s apparent friendliness, however, subjects Aristophanes to the same comic treatment Socrates faced in the Clouds. 

In order to clear Socrates’ name, Plato must counter allegations that he was responsible for negatively shaping Alcibiades’ character.  In the Symposium, we learn that surely Socrates had influence, but all positive, for only when Alcibiades is away from Socrates does he do wrongly.  In his speech, in its way a second Apology, Alcibiades quotes Clouds 362 (221b1-3) to illustrate Socrates’ bravery in the retreat from Delium and elsewhere tells of Socrates’ odd, yet somewhat superhuman, powers in the same way as Aristophanes.  Both describe, for example, how Socrates goes barefoot, easily endures physical hardships and always wears a serious expression.  The Clouds, then, contains truth but it is misunderstood and distorted. Alcibiades gives the more accurate interpretation.  Just so, Plato’s portrayal of Aristophanes contains kernels of truth, but turns him into a caricature.  We note Aristophanes’ excessive interest in physical pleasures and hear a speech filled with funny images of tumbling limbs, sexual organs and belly buttons.  He seems ridiculous even if likeable.  We laugh with him but also at him and in doing so dismiss him.  Thus Aristophanes treated Socrates in Clouds. 

Still, Plato allows a careful reader to detect a spark of intellect in the comic poet.  Aristophanes is anxious that he will not be taken seriously (189b2-7 and 193b7-8).  Socrates too has this fear.  According to Alcibiades (221d7-222a6) though, even if Socrates speaks of ridiculous things, when examined closely his words are filled with virtue and truth of the highest caliber.  The same description to a lesser extent applies to Aristophanes.  Despite his focus on the physical, Aristophanes adds another dimension to the loves of his ex-circular people.  There is something, he says (192c8-d1) that their soul wants, but cannot express, only catching a glimmer of something bigger.  He here looks forward to Diotima, who says (202a1-10) that a middle ground between truth and ignorance exists when one has correct beliefs but cannot articulate them.  Diotima in turn hearkens back to Aristophanes’ speech when she says that those who seek the other half of themselves (205d9-206a1) are not participating in love except insofar as the other half is good.  In no way, however, does her point contradict Aristophanes.  Rather, she misrepresents him to be saying something more trivial than he actually is.    

This misrepresentation leads to Plato’s elegant final point in the comic contest.  Aristophanes tries to respond to Socrates’ mention of his speech (212c4-6) but is cut off by the noisy entrance of Alcibiades and is unable to defend himself.  In the Apology Socrates claims the Clouds was his real prosecutor, so Aristophanes is thus convicted and sentenced by Plato’s readers without any defense, doomed to be a perennial joker but never a true thinker.  Comic turnabout, therefore, is fair play, and Plato has the last laugh.