Persons of the dialogue: Apollodorus - Phaedrus - Pausanias -
Eryximachus
- Aristophanes - Agathon - Socrates - Alcibiades - a troop of revellers
Scene: The House of Agathon
Translated by Benjamin Jowett - 21 Pages (Part 2) - Greek fonts Search Plato's works /
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I was astonished at her words, and said: "Is this really true, O thou wise
Diotima?" And she answered with all the authority of an accomplished sophist:
"Of that, Socrates, you may be assured;-think only of the ambition of men, and
you will wonder at the senselessness of their ways, unless you consider how
they are stirred by the love of an immortality of fame. They are ready to run
all risks greater far than they would have for their children, and to spend
money and undergo any sort of toil, and even to die, for the sake of leaving
behind them a name which shall be eternal. Do you imagine that Alcestis would
have died to save Admetus, or Achilles to avenge Patroclus, or your own Codrus
in order to preserve the kingdom for his sons, if they had not imagined that
the memory of their virtues, which still survives among us, would be immortal?
Nay," she said, "I am persuaded that all men do all things, and the better
they are the more they do them, in hope of the glorious fame of immortal
virtue; for they desire the immortal.
Symposium part 1 of 2. You are at part 2
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