The Other Symposium

David M. Johnson (Southern Illinois University, Carbondale)

Neither the structure nor the purpose of Xenophon's Symposium is immediately clear.  Bernard Huß has argued that various themes (love, and the contrast between play and seriousness) serve to unify the whole, and that Xenophon meant the warm portrayal both of democrats and of those killed by democrats to promote reconciliation at Athens.  But the multiple themes do not provide a single focus for the work, and the reconciliation argument rests largely on biographical speculation.  Thesleff's hypothesis that Xenophon added Socrates' lengthy speech on love (chapter 8) only after reading Plato's Symposium has also continued to win adherents.  I argue that the whole of Xenophon's Symposium is designed to present Xenophon's version of the Socratic teaching on eros, and to position it with regard to other versions of Socrates' teaching.  While Xenophon's Symposium is indeed loosely structured, lending it its characteristic natural charm, Xenophon carefully chose his characters and themes in order to set up Socrates' account of eros.

Socrates attacks corporeal love at a party honoring a couple that would be notoriously promiscuous, the rich Callias and his boyfriend Autolycus, butt of Eupolis' play by that name.  Before his attack, Socrates both lays claim to and demonstrates the art of philosophical pimping, the art of making teachers attractive and of introducing them to the right students.  Socrates most difficult task is to pimp himself (cf. 8.5), as he must do to make his austere teaching about love attractive to Callias.  Hence Socrates presents his attack on corporeal love as praise of Callias' noble relationship with Autolycus.  But as Callias' illegitimate half-brother, Hermogenes, tells us, Socrates' praise of Callias is instruction disguised as flattery (8.12).  Socrates' future accuser, Lycon, father of Autolycus, praises Socrates after hearing him speak in favor of spiritual love (9.1).  Huß takes this as a proleptic rehabilitation of Lycon.  But as his son's chaperone, Lycon could hardly do otherwise than praise Socrates' advocacy of chastity, and Socrates' speech rather proves that Socrates was a better guard against corruption of the youth than Lycon was, even in the case of Lycon's own son.  Lycon is a hypocrite, and Xenophon's account of Socratic eros is part of his defense of Socrates. 

Socrates is contrasted throughout the Symposium with Antisthenes, whose arguments are Socratic enough in substance but counterproductively harsh in tone.   I therefore argue that Socrates' statement that Antisthenes possesses the art of the pimp is ironic (4.61-4).  Antisthenes himself is shocked by this allegation, and his putative pimping success in introducing sophists to Callias and introducing the non-entities Aeschylus of Phlius and "the stranger from Heracleia" to Socrates is rather questionable.  Socrates repeatedly intervenes to rescue people from Antisthenes' attacks in order to preserve the harmony of the party.  Left to his own devices, Antisthenes would tear people apart rather than bring them together.

Callias' debauched relationship with Autolycus, Xenophon implies, is the sort of thing that can result if one glorifies pederasty without fully recognizing its corporeal dangers.  Xenophon's Socrates explicitly attacks only Plato's Pausanias (8.32), but his attack is pretty clearly aimed at the positive view of physical pederasty shared by most speakers in Plato's Symposium.  Plato's Socrates, of course, emphasizes the grand metaphysical reach of eros rather than its corporeal beginnings, but even Diotima's ladder of love begins with love for one beautiful body, and rises first to love for many such bodies.  Plato's Socrates chastely rejects the full frontal assault of the naked Alcibiades, but Socrates' rejection of Alcibiades remains, at least for Alcibiades, mysterious.  Xenophon aimed to clear up that mystery.  Xenophon's Socrates also promotes a positive teaching about eros in which love drives both lover and beloved to improve themselves, a teaching the Socratic Aeschines had his Aspasia deliver to none other than Xenophon himself (SSR VI A70).  Thus Xenophon aimed to take what is best from other accounts of Socrates, while avoiding the harshness of Antisthenes and the imprudent vagueness of Plato.  Xenophon's account of Socratic eros is clearly related to those in other Socratics, but the agreements between our sources is just as well taken as a confirmation of their origin in the life and teachings of the historical Socrates as the result of a literary debate.  Certainly Plato's erotic metaphysics makes him the outlier here.  Thus while Xenophon's account of Socratic eros lacks the philosophical depth of Plato's theory, it is more likely to be an accurate account of Socrates' own views.