Drama, dialogue and dialectic: Dionysos and the dionysiac in Plato's Symposium

DRAMA,DIALOGUE AND DIALECTIC: DIONYSOS AND THE DIONYSIAC IN PLATO'S SYMPOSIUM

A Thesis

Presented to

The Faculty of Graduate Studies of The University of Guelph

by STEVEN R. ROBINSON

In partial fuüilment of requirements for the degree of

Doctor of Philosophy Apd, 1998

@ Steven R.Robinson, 1998

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DRAMA, DIALOGUE AND DIALECTIC: DIONYSOS AND TWE DIONYSIAC IN PLATO'S SYMPOSIUM

Steven Ryan Robinson University of Guelph, 1998

Advisor: Professor Kenneth Dorter

This thesis is an analysis and interpretation of Plato's use of Dionysos and the dionysiac in his dialogue .-

It is shown how severai distinctively dionysiac

phenornena are conflated by Plato as the specific context within which the dialogue unfolds. Dionysiac language and imagery is then employed within that context to funher elaborate the symbolic signif~canceof those feanires. Plato thereby sets up something of a dionysiac framework within which he can locate philosophy and relate it to other feanues of Greek

culture. The main argument that is developed concems Plato's articulation of a whole range of social dichotomies by means of the various stxuctures of dionysiac religion that he employs. Dionysiac religion is S e with contradictions and contrasts, and some of these contnists ailow Plato to set up mutually exclusive classes of people who cm then be identified with, or opposed to, the class of philosophers. These contrasting classes then

reemerge within some of the speeches on Ems, where the various theories of the nature of

Ems can be translated into theoretical accounts of the relationship between the philosophers and the

a. By focusing on the division of the pplis in this way, Plato is able to ~ j e cthe t

thesîs that political community &man& the type of unifomiity traditionally demauckd by the Greek ppliS.and offers instead a theory of 'imity-maifference,''

which is to Say, a theory

that makes thejustice and the unity ofthe pplig dependent upon the entrenchment of a certain type of

diffemice - philoso op hic al diffennce. In

distingukhed by the discursive

of

and

particular, these two classes are

m,each irreducible to the other

and yet each necessq for the existence of the good pnlis. The pure philosophical discourse

of socratic conversation (or dialectic) is thus radically opposed to the popular discourse of the stage (or drama) by means of dionysiac symbolism. Plato's own dialogues then emerge

h m this dionysiac dichotomy as a third form separate from each of those and operating as an erotic bridge across the gap between hem: it is a type of discourse that leads the reader out of the lower, mythicai, public cosmological discourse of tragedy to the higher, dialecticd, esoteric cosmological discourse of philosophy -but without invalidating the former.

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

First and foremost, 1thank my advisor, Kenneth Dorter for his patience, his care, his guidance and his faith in my ability to Say something worth saying. 1have leamed more than philosophy fiom Ken, and 1look forward to learning more still. May our paths

often cross again. To those on my advisory and examining cornmittees, Spiro Panagiotou, Bnan Calvert, Victor Matthews and the extemal examiner, John Anton, 1wish to express my

for their efforts in adjudging and helping to improve my work. Of s i n c e gratitude ~

particular note in this regard was Padraig O'Cleirîgh, whose advice stretched over the years and who always nndered assistance in the most helpful and positive terms: 1 thank you. Also, Jefhy Mitscherling, though not officially my advisor, gave me advice and contributed in many ways to my research, even translating a difficult and important

chapter of German critical text into English for me. It was Jeff s teaching that f h t Yispired me to study the history of philosophy intensively, and it was in his seminar on the

that 1 f idiscovend what was to become the topic of this thesis.

The Philosophy Department and its faculty at Guelph are, in my experience, unique in th& attempts to foster a positive and respecdul atmosphere for graduate student learning. From the moment 1f k t anived as a Masters student in 1986,I was made to fetl welcome and at home. The department took every opportunity to

accommodate my wishes and to offer me assistance when 1needed it, be it for financial,

teaching?nsearch or travel pinposes. The speed with which my dissertation defense and graduation have been processed is just the last of many services for which 1am grateful. 1 wish to thank in particular those graduate officers and chairs who served during my time here: Bill Hughes, Jeff Mitscherhg and Don Stewart; Carole Stewart and, once again,

Brian Calvert. 1owe a very special debt to the secretaries, Sandra Howlett, Judy Martin, Jeanne Hogeterp and Lin& Jenkins, who were always supportive and professional, and who have gone out of their way to be helpful. My family and 1will miss them. Though 1

move on now to an uncertain funire in the underemployed profession of academic philosophy, I know that wherever 1might end up 1wiii always miss king a member of this department. I wish also to thank my fellow students, many of whom are also now my fiiends.

In particular, Stephen Haller and Jonathan Lavery have contributed both to my education and, either directly or indirectly, to my research. Through the many,many conversations, seminars, papers, reading groups and the years of companionship we have shared, they have k e n a constant reminder to me of what the Life of phüosophy is dl about, and an illustration of the value of Diotima's teaching. 1thank both of my families for their continuous moral support, the Robinsons in

Saskatchewan and the Marlows in Ontario. My parents always aîlowed me to do just what 1wanted and misted me to make something woithwhile of it aU in the end Had it not

bem for that fnedom and misr, 1might have ended up a bored engineer, lawyer or some such thing. But moral support does not pay the bills, and so I also express my gratitude to the Canadian and Ontario govemments, whose generous financial support via the SSHRC

Doctoral Fellowship and Ontario Graduate Scholarship prognuns helped so much to fund

this research. 1also wish to thank Dr. Susan Young, former Director of the Canadian

Academic Institute at Athens, for facilitating my research while in Oreece and for helping

me and my family in myriad other ways. At Susan's request, the earliest form of this thesis was delivered in an exploratory papa presented to the CAIA almost four years ago.

Finally, my deepest debt of gratitude is to Kelly, my dearest hiend and cornpanion in life. Only her unswerving and unselfish support in al1 things has made this research and

my career in Academe possible. If ever any rholar fin& something of value in these pages 1have written or in those 1have yet to write, he or she too owes a debt to Kelly Robinson. We have learned about love together, and 1dedicate this dissertation to her.

TABLE OF CON'IENTS

Achowledgements List of Figures

...................................................................................

......................

i

...............o...................,.....

vi

.....................................

1

Introduction: Tragedy. Philosophy and Dionysos

*............................ .................................. A .Summary of the Dionysiac Aspects al)The Contest and Its Judge ............................. 14 a.2) .................................................... 16 a3)Drama ............................................................... 20 ............................................................... 21 a4)Eros a.5) Mysteries ...................... ........................................ 23

Chapter One: Dionysiac Aspects of the

13

13

B .Review of the Literature Concerning the Dionysiac Aspects of the

svrnwsium ................................................

..........

................................................... 27 b.2) Helen Bacon .......................... . ..................... 35 b.3) John Anton ...........................................*.. . 39 b.4) John Brentlinger ................................................... 45 b.5) Stanley Rosen ...................... .......................... 51 b.6) Diskin Clay ....................... . . . . .............. 64 b.7) Seth L.Schein ................................................... 73 b.8) David Siàer ................... ..... ... ......... 81 b 9 ) Michael Morgan ................................................. 86 b.10) Thomas Gould ................................................... 95 b.11) Daniel Anderson ........................................ 103 ........................................................................... C - Conclusion

26

b.1) Gerhard Kriiger

111

Chapter Two: Philosophy as Mystery

................... . . ............................

..................................... ............................. B Philosophy and Mysteries in the 132 b .1) Socrates and Diotima ..................................... 143 b.2) Socrates and Aikibiades ........................ ................ C-Soc~atic-teu R a .................................... . A .Philosophy and Mysteries Rior to Plato O

Chapter T h e : Tragedy. Mysteries and Wine

Cbapter Four:

and

......................... . . ....

. The Problem Pushed to a Crisis .....

................................................ A - The Roblem Resolved .................... B .Ems and Political m e r e m ...............*.... . . ..... ... .............. C Ems and Religious Diffennce ................................................ D .Eros and Discursive Difference ................................................. E .Conclusion: Plato's Dialogues and Plaids Philosophy ..................

Chspter Five: DuPüsm and Qifkewe

O

195

233

234 253

268 278 286

LIST OF FIGURES

Figure 1

- IntroductionTragedy, Philosophy and Dionysos

It is in Plato's dialogues themselves that we first encounter the idea that philosophy must somehow be opposed to tragic poetry, though in the

(607b)

Socrates refers to the "quarre1" between them as "ancient" while provisionally banning tragedy fiom the philosophers' ideal city. Of the several nasons that Socrates gives there

for the existence of the "quarrel," none appears to have anything directly to do with Dionysos or the dionysiac. Yet when Friedrich Nietzsche proposed in that the essence of andent Greek tragedy lay in its specifically dionysiac features, he found entirely new reasons to put these two into stark opposition - so much so that he conceived the very essence of socratic philosophy to be anti-dionysiac. Nietzsche was speaking from the other side of this "ancient quanel" as a proponent of the superior value of tragedy, but that very opposition drew him into a consideration of

Plato's dialogical writing style (Nietzsche $812-14). For the dialogues, as the poetic voice of what Nietzsche labeled "logicd Socratism," are at the same time both anti-dîonysiac

and yet not unrelated to the dionysiac tragedy Plato had "repudiated." On Nietzsche's account, it is rather that Plato succeeded where Euripides had failed: while Euripides

attempted to i m p v e tragedy by amputating its dionysiac element and, likea bad doctor, succeeded only in "murdering"his patient on the operating table, Plato recognized the intrinsically dionysiac character of tragedy and instead fashioned out of it an entirely new

art forrn that was specifically animated by its socratic opposition to tragedy and to

Dionysos (90-91). As a result, Nietzsche was the first critic ever to propose that an understanding of Dionysos and the dionysiac is a prerequisite for understanding the aesthetics of Plato's dialogues, and so much so that the ancient quarrel between poetry and philosophy might be symbolized by these very two figures: Socrates versus

Dionysos.' Since Nietzsche's &y, few critics have shared the view that Dionysos is the key to Plato's writing style, though Western scholarship has always tended to agree with Nietzsche that Plato was anti-dionysiac in spirit. That tendency denves from Plato's psychological cornmitment to the employment of reason over and against the passions. Since Dionysos had always s t d as a personification of human passion, it seemed only natural to view him as an obstruction to the project of platonic philosophy, even if not its

very antithesis. Dionysos, however, does not seem to occupy a great &al of Plato's attention: there is only a scattering of direct nferences to the god throughout the corpus,

more than half of thern in a single dialogue, the

(Brandwood 151). It is all the more

remarkable, then, that one dialogue in particular, the ,-

has long been

recognized for its unusually heavy deployment of dionysiac imagery: though the god himself gets ody slight explicit mention, his likeness in the figure of Alkibiades. the wine-drinking that Alkîbiades brings, the eroticism of the event and, above all, the

'

Though it is cornmon in the iiterature to find Plato aligned with Nietzsche's Apollo in discussions of this sort (e.g.. Gouid, EtPtPPif 1ave 39), Nietzsche hirnself makes it clear that Soaates and his foiiowers are no more apollinian than dionysian. Rather. it U Euripides who, though moved by the spirit of"socratism,"was attempthg to transfixm tragedy into a p d y apollsiian fom (Nietzsche 8244). The apollinian dweiis specifically upon appearance, whîie P W s writing strives to transcend visiile reality altoge- so as not to commit the same rnistake ( 90).

s W n g description of Socrates as satyr and silenos, al1 add up to a forceful dionysiac thus provides an unparalleled oppominity to see the

presence in the text. The

dionysiac through the Iens of Plato's mind By looking through that lens, we should be able to test whether Plato is really as opposed to this god as so many interpreters have taken him to be. Moreover, the setting of the dialogue at a celebration of Agathon's fiat

.

victory as a tragic poet is generally recognized to be introducing some sort of a contrast between Socrates' philosophy and Agathon's tragic poetry -yet another angle on the "ancient puaml." Any angle on that quane1 is bound to raise the issue of the function of Plato's own written dialogues, even if only impiicitly. The

is therefore an

ideai text within which to observe Plato's own placement of philosophy vis-bvis tragedy and the dionysiac, and to test conceptions like Nietzsche's that would make them intnnsically hostile to each other?

Oddly enough, scholarship on the dionysiac aspects of the

has not

been profuse, and it is still quite normal to find new commentaries on the dialogue that

make virniaily no use of Dionysos at all.' Still, a smail contingent of scholars has over the

'

this way himself; It is most crinous that Nietzsche does not employ the was a favorite book of Nietzsche's according to Men (38~60,quotbg Kaman), the youth, and he carried a copy about in his pocket for years. And yet he refers to the (89),despite the fact that he has occasion to mention AilÙ'biades of only once in the in the same bmth as A"stophanes' view of Soctates (87) and to discuss the image of the satyr in Greek fiterature (61-67). This latter is most remarkable for the sûilnng way it parallels Alkibiades' 'That is the ongin of the fiantastic and seemhgly own description of Socrates in the so offensive figure of the Wise and rapturous satyr who is at the same time 'the simple man' as opposed to the god -the image of name and its strongest urges. and at the same time the prociaimerof her wisdom and art musician, poet. dancer. and seer of spinu in one person" (6566). Thaî Plato should use th%very h g e to descri'be Socrates seems a shocking paradox given îs the same sort of paradoxical Nietzsche's view of Plato. Codd it be that Plato's which Nietzsche is forcecl to explain cornter-exampfeto Nietzsche's theory as Euripides'

-

away (8 1-82)? E*g,Wen. whose lengthy (20-26) digression conceming Dionysos is only superficially a d serves d y to establish how thomughly antiaiigned with the text of the plaîonic everythingdionysiac m m k,such that the existence of dionysiac emotions, "nom Plato's

course of the twentieth century begun to draw more and more attention to this dionysiac dimension of the ,-

some even suggesting that it is thematic for the dialogue as

a whole. These scholars deserve our applause for taking its dionysiac symbolism seriously instead of just ignoring it, or dismissing it as a poetic decoration, the way so many othea have done. If the

differs h m the other dialogues by the intensity of its focus

on the dionysiac, then that surely suggests that the dionysiac has an important and specific role to play in the meaning of this particular dialogue. In this essay we shali follow that minority of scholars by analyzing the dionysiac content of the

in detail, and

we will be left with no choice but to agree that the dionysiac is not only thematic, but is

also the key to Plato's own statement of the aesthetics of his dialogues. We shall therefore

argue, like Nietzsche, that Plato has used Dionysos as the means to distinguish socratic philosophy and platonic dialogue from tragic poetry -but not in the way that Nietzsche does. This matter demands a more thorough aaalysis and synthesis han it has

previously nceived in the literature, and the aim of our treatment is to supply some of that. The previous critics who have noted and emphasized the dionysiac features of the

dialogue have either taken hem piecemeal or focused on one or two featuies to the

exclusion of the rest. None of them has managed to indicate the full, complex scope of die dionysiac theme. But though we hope to succeed in that regard, still there is a great

&al demanded of such an interpretation that we cannot provide within the confines of this disaxtation. There would appear to be two ways of conducting such an investigation. Fit, one could mount a N1-scale commentary that would expose the myriad facets of -

-- --

point of view, implies deep-seated sickness of SOC (26). 4

our theme through the entire text in be-by-line detail, and which would then serve as the solid foundation for more synthetic arguments. Ntematively, one could go straight to the

most important dionysiac features of the text and work up a synthetic argument in those

terms, introducing detailed textual analysis only where it is necessary to develop the synthetic argument. While the former type of study is clearly needed in this case, we have adopted the second method as more suited to the requirements of this dissertation. The much larger project of a Ml-scale commentary will have to wait for another occasion.

In the ,-

several distinctively dionysiac phenornena are conflated by

Plato as the specific context within which the dialogue unfolds. Dionysiac language and imagery is then employed within that context to further elaborate the symbolic significance of those feahues. Plato thenby sets up something of a dionysiac fiwnework within which he can locate philosophy and relate it to other features of Greek culture. The

nsult is an accolll~~lodation both ways: philosophy is portrayed as dionysiac in order that dionysiac religion itself may be given a new philosophical interpretation -and justification. Just as Plato's philosophical eros is prefigured in bodily sexual desire, so too his philosophical theology extends downward to appropriate even traditional

manifestations of Dionysos in festival, myth and mysteries. Plato's use of the dionysiac in the

is therefore mon than just one stylistic tool for communicating the

message of the dialogue; it is the very medium within which the dialogue is fashioned.

The argument we develop concems Plato's articulation of a whole range of social dichotomies by means of the various stmctures of dionysiac religion that he employs. Dionysiac religion is rife with contradictions and contrasts, and some of these contnists d o w Plato to set up muîuaily exclusive classes of people who can then be identified

with, or opposed to, the class of philosophers. These conmting classes then reemerge

within some of the speeches on Ems. where the various theories of the nature of Eros can

be translated into iheoreticai accounts of the relationship between the philosophers and the m. By focusing on the division of the

ain this way, Plato is able to reject the

thesis that political community demands the type of uniformity traditionally demanded by the Gnekpplis, and offers instead a theory of "unity-in-difference,"which is to Say, a

theory that makes the justice and the unity of the &dependent upon the entrenchment of a certain type of clifference-philosophical difference. In particular, these two classes are distinpished by the discursive difference of

and *,

each irreducible to the

other and yet each necessary for the existence of the good pPlis. The pure philosophical discourse of s m t i c conversation (or dialectic) is thus radically opposed to the popular

discourse of the stage (or drama) by means of dionysiac syrnbolism. Plato's own dialogues then emerge fiom this dionysiac dichotomy as a third form separate from each of those and operating as an erotic bridge across the gap between them: it is a type of discourse that leads the reader out of the Iower,mythical, public cosmological discourse

of tragedy to the higher, dialectical, esotenc cosmologicaI discourse of philosophy -but without invuiidcrting the fonner.

The dionysiac theme of the the speeches

is thus to be found more in the context of

-and in the cultural context of the dialogue as a whole -than in the

speeches on Etos themselves, and so our investigation must primarily be an explication of those contexts and the ways that they can modify our understanding of the speeches. The

opening chapter begins by Iaying out each of the various elements of the dionysiac theme in its own terms, independently of the way Plato has constnicted his theme. We then

embark upon a critical summary of the various efforts in the iiterature to read the

as somehow shaped by the specifically ctionysîac presence of one or mon of those feanues. Though this makes for a lengthy h t chapter, it is a very useful way to s w e y the widely incompatible variety of contrasting interpxetations that have k e n

placed upon this material. By identifying the limitations of those previous approaches we both prepare the reader for the positive contribution of our own malysis and prevent ou repeating ourselves many timcs over at later points. Where useful, we will recall and respond to these preüminary analyses also in the later treatment.

The main body of the argument will corne in chapters two through four, where we analyze in tum each of the ihrec major dichotomies that Plato articulates by means of dionysiac symbols: discursive (CM),religious (Ch3), and political (Ch4). The conclusion of this analysis is that Plato has used these contrasts to force a problem to the point of crisis: the problem of how genuine political community can exist in spite of these radical ciifferences in matters of the highest importance. Having established the fact of difference in each of these three important contexts, Plato also superimposes them all poetically upon the image of philosophy, whîch is to Say, upon Socrates. Al1 three dichotomies are then placed in jeopardy as the potential means to compt and shatter the unity of the onlÿ, just as Socrates himself was placed by his trial and his conviction before the Athenian

for his pursuit of the Me of philosophy. It is the very diversity of dionysiac religion itseif that allows Plato to use it as the putmive unity within which to model these other threatening divisions. The problem of the unity of the eplig becomes the problem of the unity of Dionysos; philosophy and

are portrayed as oppositc elements within

that putative unity. By bringing this problem out into the open, as he was wont to do with

latent problems, Plato forces upon his readers the demand for a solution: the illusion of

unity is destroyed and true unity becomes impossible unless the readers can now find a new theoretical solution. Hence, the need for what philosophy can offer. What solution

Plato gives can be found in the doctrine of eros articuiated by Socrates in response to the pnor speeches, and that is the subject of the fifth and final chapter. Unfortunately, several tantalizing problems arise on the fringes of this treatment which we are unable to deal with adequately in this context; they have therefore been bracketed off and left for future investigation. The fmt of these is the issue of Plato's

theory of drama, such as might be used to solve the riddle of the unification of tragedy

and comedy hinted at by Plato on the final page of the .-

In this regard it might

be helpful artificially to separate the contrast between philosophy and tragedy into thne distinct elements: sryle (or linguistic mode of expression); referace (or the nature of the tnith-value of these expressions); and doctrine (or what thesis is actually "taught" by the

work). In this euay we shall argue that Plato advocates roles for philosophy and tragedy that contrast in the fmt two ways but not the third. Philosophy is spoken in live

conversation, while tragedy is publically performed; philosophy is expressed via logic, and tragedy via myth; but, ultimately, what these two f o m teaclt must be essentialiy the same. Otherwise, the philosopher could not abide tragedy, and vice versa. Now,there is good reason to think that Plato's chief objections to the tragedy of his own day were of

the third sort: it was what the traditional Athenian tragedy taught about the go& and about the good life for humans that Plato codd not accept, and it was largely for this reason that Socrates banished the poets fiom the ideal city. But whether tragedy's

doctrines must necessariiy k unacceptable to Plato is another matter, and this essay wiiI

conclude that Plato needs both philosophy and tragedy working in tandem. A great deal of very intemting work has been done on this question,' but while our analysis leads up to the very threshold of that question, it does not lead across the threshold As a result, our

analysis does not lead directly to a resolution of Socrates' riddle about tragedy and comedy. 1would contend, however, that the results of our anaiysis must bear upon the resolution of that issue. A second issue that arises directiy out of this analysis is the problem of

esotericism in Plato's philosophy. Our investigation reveals how very closely Plato identifies philosophy with mystery cults in the Svmm>sium and elsewhere, and how this gives nse to a sharp and very real distinction between the spoken, "smtic" dialectic one

can experience in person (say, at the Academy), and the written conversation of Plato's dialogues. This raises the spectre of Plato's socalled secret "oral teachings" about which so much has been written, especially in ment decades. The mystery cults were, of course, famous for having theu secret doctrines and their strange myths that could be "understood" only by those on the "inside," who possessed the appropriate secret "allegory" with which to decipher them. This would appear to correspond perfectly to the hypothesis that Plato possessed a secret philosophy known only to his intimates and kept secret by them. and that the dialogues are, as it were, written in a code so as to keep those cbesoteric"doctrines secret. But, in fact, this sort of "secrecy" theory is precisely what our

analysis may be able to challenge, though it wodd take a whole other line of argument,

which we do not have room for hen, to show why. Such an argument would look closely at Alkibiades and the issue of his profmation of the Eleusinian mysteries, in combination

To namejust a few examples: Kuhn, Nussbaum, Rosen TheGould itself. Ancient: and ofcourse there is Nietzsche's The of 4

with his refennces to Socrates and the divine nature of philosophical talk. In short, if

Allribiades is presented as a profaner in the ,-

then Plato is as well, and the

actudy inverts out evaluation of the act of profanation. This might even turn out to be the key to Plato's raiionale for the existence of the traditional mystenes in the first place: it is not that the truth must be kept secret, as the popular conception would have it, but that the huth cannot be communicated despite our best efforts -it is

ineffable. As a nsult, the initiates are separated from the general populace by necessity,

and nothing they can do can overcome that separation. Socrates and Alkibiades are thus more like Cassandra-figures in the ,

in that they speak out the mith that has

been divinely revealed to them but nobody around them understands or believes what they are say»ig. This is, after ail, what Plato actually shows us: none of those who

listened to Socrates' speech, and were thereby initiated into the "cult" of philosophy, abandoned their former ways and took up the life required by Diotima's b'proper" pathway to success. Only the d e r of the dialogue is in a position to learn from the examples of Alkibiades and the others. Plato's dialogues, then, are like a partial cure for Cassancira's (Le., philosophy's) affliction: they are a means to bridge the gap between the experience of the initiates and the experience of the non-initiates: they teach an appreciation of the "raving" language that philosophen speak (the language of LpOPS)and they make it possible for non-philosophers then to enter into the life of philosophy. If this

is to be the "profanation" of a divine secret, then it is profanation not as a crime, but as a

duty of the highest oràer. In fact, any translation of "divine" Being into the terms of "profane" Becoming would be a profanation of this sort. whether it be in the r e a h of nature, of human action, or of communicative understanding: profanation of the divine

Forms is what life is all about -it is what life is. A third issue that is raised but cannot be pursued by our treatraent is the precise

psychology of Alkibiades' failure to become sufficiently philosophical. There can be linle that Plato

doubt that it is by means of his portrayai of Alkibiades in the

intends to revise the ciramatic icon of the "tragic hero" and this. of course, bears on the

prior matter of Plato's theory of drama. In particular, the emphasis on the dionysiac in the and Alkibiades' recognizable appearance as an image of the god calls out for

a comparison with Pentheus in EMpides' -,

who also resists the power of

Dionysos and is then ciestroyed after taking on the appearance of the god. In fact. it i s probably not unreasonable to suggest that Plato has this very comparison in min& and is using the comparison to cornct Euripides' tragic conception both of the role of Dionysos in the good life for humans, and of the nature of human failure to live such a good life. As some have pointed out, such a comparison would make Socrates himself the Dionysos to Alkibiades' Pentheus. This at least raises the question of whether Plato conceives of the Socrates of his dialogues as just one Wtuous human king that we al1 should emulate and

that we all, at least potentially, could be, or someone quite Iiterally beyond the paie of human aspirations

-a &mi-god on the order of Pythagoras in the eyes of the

Pythagoreans. Plato's theory of tragedy would presumably have the reader identify either with Socrates or Alkibiades, and it is no small matter to determine which.

These issues illustratejust how much ground there is to cover in the interpretation

of Dionysos and the dionysiac in Plato's ,

but our treatment confines itself to

the specîfîc matier of dualism and social diffmnce: the way Plato uses the dionysiac to articulate the problem of unity in poiitics, religion and discome

-and how he supplies a

socratic philosophy modeled on bacchic mystery cult as the solution to al1 of those

dichotomies so that philosophy and philosophical diffennce becorne the prerequisites for

the anainment of ail truth, beauty and justice in human life. Further research into those th= issues identified above can profit from the analysis provided by this dissertation.

- Chapter One

-

Dionysiac Aspects of the

-

A Summary of the Dionysiac Aspects

The basic argument of this thesis will be to the effect that Plato is using phenornena from dionysiac religion to indicate a number of distinct divisions within Athenian society, al1 of which are then aligned with the open antagonism between socratic philosophy and the -.

These divisions are then mapped ont0 dualistic

features of the various theories of the nature of Eros that are presented in the speeches. By this means, Plato can translate Socrates' doctrine of Eros back into the sophisticated statements of social division that are provided by the dionysiac contexts, and thmby present an account of philosophy and philosophical discourse with political, religious,

and pedagogical ramifications. It shall be our contention that Dionysos is quite iiterally the medium within which the

unfolds, since aU of the dualistic schemas -

erotic, discursive, theologicd and political -are comprehended, in some sense, by their medium: dionysiac re4igion. We need to begin our investigation, therefore, with a

summary of the dionysiac aspects of the .

The following s w e y attempts

bricfly to classify ail manifestations of the dionysiac under five basic headinp without, as yet, presuming that these five are the elements of a coherent theme. We then critically

survey the prcvious attempts in the literature to read the

as somehow shaped

by the spccifically dionysiac pnsence of one or more of these feanins. The usefulness of this initial summary ües in the fact that none of the commentators themselves, even those who have thematized the dionysiac aspects of the ,-

has ever taken al1 five of

these aspects into account.

al)The Contest and Its Judge The most expiicitly dionysiac feature of the dialogue emerges fiom a complex action within the text that spans the five speeches on Eros. It involves an invocation of Dionysos prior to the speeches followed by an answering epiphany of the god (or at least

a symbolic epiphany) after the final speaker (Socrates) has finished talking. The invocation occurs just after Socrates' arrivai at Agathon's house. Socrates and Agathon have been engaging in polite banter about which of them is the wiser, each proclaiming the other's greater wisdom. Apollodorus tells us:

"Enough of your sarcasm, Socrates," replied Agathon. "We'll settle our respective daims to wisdom a little later on, and Dionysos, the god of wine, shdl judge between us [ o i ~ a o q~ p O p & vrQ o ~Arovu'oq]; for the moment give your attention to dimer." (175e7- 10) It is not immediately clear what Agathon has in mind by this, but it is clear that Dionysos'

narne has been invoked to senle the question of which of these two is wiser.

This mates an expectation of Dionysos that remains largely unsatisfied untii the entrance of Alkibiades, who is described in ternis that make him a visual double of the god. Crowned with ivy and violets, held upright by a Bute-girl, drunk and leading a

cirunken revel through the city streets, Aikiibiades proceeds to crown first Agathon and -

--

-

--

'

-

-

AU Greek quotaîions fiom the Svmwa;Nm are from Dover's critical text and use his h e m m b e ~ gAii . Engiish transiations ofthe are by Walter Hamilton, d e s s ocherwise no&

dien Socrates with victory-ribbons, while declaring Socnites more deserving of them than Agathon. He then demands that everyone there join him in some very heavy' winednnking that eventually either drives out or overwhelms them all, except Socrates. Whether Alkibiades is to be understood as an achial epiphany of Dionysos or simply as a dninken reveler whose possession by the god is made explicit by the similarity of his appearance, then c m be no doubt that Plato is providing some sort of answer to the expectation created by Agathon's earlier invocation.

What Plato might mean by all of this is an open question. But this image of Dionysos that is given voice by the dninken Alkibiades cannot be merely incidental. A

talking Dionysos who appears in person, "on stage" as it were, leading a

a(or

dnuiken revel), bearing wine, speaking forth the language of mysteries, describing Socrates as silenus, satyr, Marsyas

-as a "piper" who leads people to bacchic rapture -

this is an overwhelrningly dionysiac pnsence reminiscent of Euripides'

m.

Whether Plato is king senous, merely symbolical or engaging in parody; whether he is reverent, reformatory or blasphemous; whether ultimately he adopts a positive or a negative stance toward Dionysos -whatever his message tums out to be. he cleariy has placed an image of this god in his text and given it a voice to speak to us about Socrates. There is no comparable appearance of a god's image in Plato's dialogues: a god who

steps forth naturalistically before the eyes of these symposiasts,no longerjust a figure in somebcdy's myth, but actuaIly present? There is something peculiarly "ciramatic" about -

- - -

-

At 214a2, Alkiiiades "puts badr" nearly a haif-gallon at once. Dover comments: "Che hesîtates to say tbat no one could dMk halfa gaiion of wim @ckly when d m d y dnink and d l talk coherently, but Plato seerns to k m g bis AIaiiades a touch of epic trement" (162). Epic

indemi!

'

Unlike the divine figures of the Tirnaeus.for instance, which are still seK'onsciously presented by the speaker in the form of a myth. this Dionysos seems to emerge without the story-

such a k r a r y device: it almost looks like a

m m *But while the nader (as the

audience) recognizes the figure as the image of the god, those who are "on stage" (within the text) do not. Plato simply must be using Dionysos to make some significant point; just

what that point might be is, of course, the subject of this thesis. But Aikibiades is not the

only dionysiac presence in this text -not by a long shot. The wine he has within him and that he brings to the othen does not belong ody to his character, it is also an essential feature of the party that he crashes.

Svmwalon Another obviously dionysiac aspect of this dialogue is indicated by its title and the nature of the event it portrays: a

w, or drinking party? Though Dionysos is a god

who repnsents many different things to the Greeks, he is first and foremost. and for the Athenians, the god of wine: wine is his power, his weapon, and his gift to mankind. Athenian festivals of Dionysos were organized around the annual wine-production schedule. Wine itself was refened to colloquially as "Di~nysos,"~ so that by dilnking it men were figuratively (and in some cases literally) said to be imbibing the god; subsequent dninkenness could be taken as divine possession, !

&mpuia

were, of course, primarily just occasions to dnnk wine in large quantities, and as such they were one of the definitive forms of the male Greek experience of the dionysiac? teiïer (Aristodemos, or Apollodoros) even king aware of i t No one within the text appears to see Dionysos in Aikiiiades; at Ieast, no one comments on it. as ~ h iaspect s is obscund by those (e.g., Rosen) who choose to translate "banquet"

'Dover pIpr9 (89), conceruhg Socrates' commait at 177el.

From Zveeoc, which Iiterdy means "having a god inside one." Gender-specificity rnatters here: women, who appear to have been generaily excluded but through the separate, fernale rites h m wine-drinlmg, encountered Dionysos not h

'

Dionysos was, therefore, a very reai, if invisible, presence at any -.'

and Plato

has put that presence artistically at his disposai simply by choosing such a setting for his dialogue. However, there is more to the dionysiac significance of the

than wine

were a forrn of riincal wine-drinking, a social institution

and dninkenness alone:

with a long history in Greece? Rigid etiquettes with religious sanction regulated the

conduct of events. The

m,or huge wine-jug in the centre of the room, was the ritual

equivalent of an altado In it, water was mixed with wine in varying strengths, and had to be filled and emptied (by drinking) a set number of times. Every

required its

"king," or symposiarch, to dictate the amount of drinking, the ratio of water to wine. and the nature of the night's entertainment and activities. The purpose of this "elaborate p

r ~

bi b e f l (Pellizer 178) was to mode1 the proper use of Dionysos' dangerous gift, which always threatened to destmy a person by releasing a flood of his lowest passions. Under the control of its symposiarch, the

elusive balance (-)

strove to maintain in its members the

between sober self-control and uncontrolled passion. There

alone, in that balance, could one enjoy the benefits of Dionysos but avoid bis attendant

hazards. As in life generally, so in the

w, success could never be guaranteed in

advance, and only the event could tell whether the outcome would be a gwd time had by and festivals surrounding the phenornenon of maewiîsm. Dionysiac religion thus divided sharpiy dong gender-hes (Carpenter & Faraone 1). Hemichs (21); Burkezt writes, "Dionysus, the god of h e and ecstacy. was worshiped everywhere; every drinker in fan could daim to be a savant of thîs god" (Ancient, 5). Lissarrague cails it "a social ntuai in the broadest sense" 25). 204-6). Here the near-religious character of the Lissarrague, ("Amund the is pffirmcd but as Oswyn M m y wams us, we must not take this too far. 'Tt is aiI too easy...to emphasize the pleasure principIe in sympotic literanue and ùehavioUT... without regard to the importance of religious context just as it is aii too easy to regard ail rituai as hnpiying reiigious rituai" (Muffay. "Sympotic History" 11).

"

-

au, w an offensive and self-destructive binge. The W. then, was like a

microcosm of the Ppiis: in its good and its bad outcomes alike it modeled the role and power of Dionysos in civiiized human life. was its typical conclusion in a komos.

Another dionysiac feature of the

a noisy, raucous procession of revelers through the public srnets at al1 hours of the night. It is just such a

that Alkibiades leads to Agathon's house. Roughly speaking, this

is the male equivalent of the femaie bacchic phenomenon of maenadism: in the

m,

the drunken, raving men are supposed to achieve an ecstatic self-transcendence (bacchzia), becoming no more than digits of the u d y band and engaging in al1 sorts of

was not restricted to the

behaviour prohibited by social noms. The

context alone: it was also a popular and coloumil part of the various annual dionysiac

festivals open to the whole public both in the city and the country in classical times." However, syrnpotic

were in a sense mire authentic, for in them we still see an

important and original feanire of the

a: its aristocratic arrogance. In conirast to the

impression one gets frorn accounts of

in the various publically sanctioned dionysia

(something like a Santa Claus parade),12sympotic

were not just fiolicsome fun for

ail: they openly engaged in hooliganism and vandalism." For the

was

essentiaily an aristocratic institution. with &ts in the warrior feasu of the Homenc era.

From olàen times the

a, with its brazen flouting of social n o m of decency and

''Comedy famously traces its mots to ihis festive context, its etymology suggesting "song of the a ." l2 'ïhough the p d s e derence of the word is somewhat unclear with regard to the public festivals (Pîckard-Cambridge63,102f.). it would not appear to be much different h m many of the other attested processions and choruses (Cole 28ffJ. Joan Burton writes that m the fourth cenairy BCE, "unnilysymposiasts persisteci &..cornmithg violent acts...~show by com*derablelitigafion hvolving violent sympotic misbehavid (233).

*

sobriety and its constant potential for damage to persons and property, was the special

pnvilege of the aristocrats, who used it aùnost as a form of social texrorism to demonstrate their distinct higher status. This particular f o m of dionysiac "madness" brought on by drinking wine - the

a- is therefore very closely associated with

svmwsia* In Greek art, moreover, both the

aand the m

s i a are major dionysiac

motifs, with the god often depicted at the head of festivities and his mythical entourage of

dninken satyrs scattered about him, engaged in an amazing variety of uncouth behaviour. The satyr, as the archetypal masculine cornpanion of Dionysos, represents the altered state

of men caught in the thralls of dionysiac possession. Perpetually in pursuit of wiw and sexual gratification, the satyr is the slave of his base passions. The satyr remains emphatically hybrid, though: it is not that a man possessed by Dionysos has become an

animal and ceased to be human, but rather that every human k i n g has an animalistic side that Dionysos lets "out of the closet," so to speak.14And thus the satyr is actuaiiy an artistic representation of the tnmsformed state of drunken symposiasts and komasts. In Plato's ,-

Socrates is npeatedly Qscribed as a satyr by Alkibiades, which is, to

say the least, surprishg considering Socrates' famous near-ascetic lifestyle and intellecniaiism; the oddity of this description within the context of a platonic dialogue is a paradox that &man& an explanation.

This brief account is enough to show that 'my

heavily steeped in dionysiac associations: wine, ritual,

was itself a context

m,and satyric representation.

l4Unlike centaurs. those 0 t h hybrià creatuns of Greek mythology, who represent by their violence a world outside of hmnan culture, satyrs "do not endanger the social ordei' 89). Their wildness designates 'hot a prehumanlumanlty but a (Lissarrague, "Amund the subhumanity, which is defmed ncgatively m relation to man" (Carpenkr & Faraone 220).

Of course, Plato could have chosen the

context for an entirely different reason,

with no intention of capitaiizing on its dionysiac connotations. But at the very least we

cm already point out that the inoption of a kpmpg and the use of satyric imagery were not themselves necessary cornponents in the depiction of a W. By including hem. Plato has compounded the presence of the dionysiac within this particular depiction.

a.3) Drama

Another dionysisc aspect of the context of this dialogue is the occasion: the celebration of Agathon's first victory as a tragic poet. Dionysos is aiso the god of the theatre. Tragedy,comedy, satyr-play, and in fact the entire phenornenon of Greek drama

and dramatic poetry wen the direct outgrowths of the cîvic Dionysostult. particularly the City Dionysia held every March.I5What was origindy a choral song-and-dance (Le., dithyramb) cornpetition in honour of Dionysos was msfonned, sometime during the

reign of the tyrant Peisistninis, into what we recognize as Attic drama.16And though an Athenian proverb declares that Attic drama had "nothing to do with Dionysos," l7 some

modem interpreters (begiming with Nietzsche) have argwd that the spint of Dionysos lies at the vety core of the Greek experience of drama, especially tragedy. But whatever the ultimate significance of the dionysiac might be within Attic drama, it remains a

simpk fact that in Plato's as in Socrates' &y dramatic productions at Athens still feu

"

AU evidence points to Agathon's victory having been at the Leuaia. a Iesser dionysia held in Febniary. l449alGll l6 The key source here on tragedy's or@ in dithyramb is Aristotle, (McKecm 1458). Ridgeway (4-8) attacks Aristotle's claim,Lwky (30-34) defends Aristotle. 612e, 67 le) as weli as Fnedtich (259.272) cites Pluta~:b'sauthority for this reteliing its o n : when Auchylos and Phtynichas introduced haoic legeads hto tragic plots. the Athenian audience îs said to have shouted out: 'What have these to do with Dionysos?"

"

1,615a).

very much within the ritual boundaries of the public cults of Dionysos. Theatre was, at least formdy, still a kind of ~ionysos-worship.18 gl.Plato has many and various refermces to drama in the

Not only

Agathon the prize-winning tragedian is present, but also Aristophanes the great cornedian.

We are told by Socrates that Aristophanes is concemed entirely with Aphrodite and Dionysos (i.e., sex and drunkenness, major themes of Old Comedy that hearken back to its origins in the "satyric"

The dialogue also famously ends on a ciramatic note:

before getting up to leave, we are told. Socrates had been discussing the craft of dramatic poetry with Agathon and Aristophanes. And since Agathon's victory had been awarded just two days before. it is even possible that this

is itself set during the

Lmaion dionysia. Though drama and svmwsia have littie or nothing to do with each other, both are closely connected to the figure of Dionysos. Plato has thus created a doubly-dionysiac context by combining them in this way.

a.4) Eros A third dionysiac aspect is the topic of discussion: Eros, the god of erotic love.

Here we m u t tread carefdy; eros (sexual desire) holds a prominent place in generally, but this was not necessarily on account of Dionysos. The -sion

had in

archaic times been an occasion for aristocratie youths to meet and become erotically

"

Friedrich reviews scholarly opinion on this matter of the dionysiac character of tragedy, and argues for a compromise solution thai restrîcts its essentially dionysiac aspects to its mon primitivefoms (274). as a play, accordkg to the dramatic Cf.eg., Gd,who attempts to read the conventions of iu oum, or AristotIe's. day. The sheer quantity and variety of dramatic reference she amasses is impressive. 177el. Cf. Dover, 89.

"

"

attached to older male lovers in their community as a means to acquiring virtue (cal1 it education, or socialization). The youths, though they couid not participate in the drinking,

wen allowed to wait upon their elders and thereby become objects of erotic attention. Such an association was expected to encourage a youth to mode1 himself upon his older lover. and thereby assimilate himself to the adult male group. As the power of the aristocracy waned, so too did this functionai homosexuality; but though this pedagogical dimension of the

slowIy disappeared, the eroticism remained and was

transferred more and more to slaves and prostitutes, both male and female.

m,

therefore, had always been erotically charged events and in Plato's day still they were occasions for sexual licence and di~play.~' As a consequence, it is only nahiral that a great deal of sympotic speech (swiving as sympotic üterature) should be of an erotic theme. and in this regard Plato's

can almost be said to fit a pattern, though in its own

more elevated, intellectualized way.

There are. however. some specifically dionysiac aspects of Eros, despite his king best known in Greek myths as an associate of Aphrodite. Consider our word "orgy," for

instance. It cornes to us h m the context of dionysiac religion, where it originally meant

"rites" (cipyia) and had no peculiarly sexual significance." Yet by the time "Bacchus" had corne to republican Rome (2& century BCE), it was the outlandish sexuai iicence of

his devotee's

athat provoked brutal npression by the state. Dionysos had always had

something of this air of sexual licence about him; in fact, his status as wine-god is 2' "Frorn the most elevated fonns of amornus discoune (iike Socrates)...to the most riarrgiilatedand orgiastic emtic homo-and heterosexual practices which could be unieashed as the ceiebration went on" (Pellizer 182). Wiîh regard to this tem. Burkert writes, '1Tbere is no doubt that sexuaiity was prominent in mysteriesf but the term r e f e d to the rites in generai, regarcüess of any sexual aspects 104).

*

.

emblematic of a deeper locus in the passions more generdy. Whether it be maenadic cannibalism (real or imagined), satyric drunkenness, wild dancing and music, or an "orgiastic" glut of sexual release, Dionysos is there implicated in the loss of self-control, and even of self, beneath the waves of repressed visceral human passion, released

communally. The

w, then, in its sexud immodesty just as in its dninkenness,

remains the attempt to enact the delicate balance between maintainhg and losing one's civilized self-control; between will, if you like, and passion, in a communal setting. For

this reason eros, as one of the most powemil passions, is almost as dionysiac as wine itself -a fact that is iliustrated by the dual character (Qunk und lusty) of Dionysos' cornpanions, the s a w :

Tnr ecstasy has its own laws and sources, even if dance and rhythmc music

can promote it to a special degree;...Nevertheless, there are two very specific stimulants that belong to Dionysos, which cannot have been missing even in the secret celebrations [Le., the mysteries]: alcohol and sexud excitement, the . . 292) dnnking of wine and phallos symbolism. (Burkert, &&&lgmn

And indeed, as early as the mid-fifth century (i.e., a generation before Plato). the figure of

Eros begins to appear in dionysiac vase-paintings of entourage, even cavorting with satyrs in the

as a member of Dionysos'

m.

A fourth dionysiac element is the language used at many points in the dialogue:

language that is evocative of mystery cd&. Mysteries were pnvate cultg in the sense that individuais were never required to participate, but elected to join on a voluntary basis. At the core of these cults was an "unspeakabIe" experience of the divine, to whidi the

members were exposed during their initiation process; the memory of that experience is

Aikibiades also bears a specid relationship, and it would be impossible to deny that Eleusis has at lest some role to play here in Plato's network of associations. Even granting this, the presence of Dionysos would still be somewhat a f f h e d here simply by mention of mysteries; but it is difficult to maintain that Eleusis is the pnmary mystery cult alluded to, or represented, by the character and speech of Diotima. which are much more bacchic than Eleusinian. To quote Walter Burkert directly: Dionysos is the god of the exceptional. As the individual gains in independence, the Dionysos cult becomes a vehicle for the separation of private groups from the polis. Alongside public Dionysiac festivals there emerge private Dionysos mysteries. These are esoteric, they take place at night; access is through an individual initiation, telete.... In contrast to the mysteries of Demeter [i.e., Eleusis] and the Great Gods [SamothraceJ, these mysteries are no longer bound to a fixed sanctuary with pnesthoods linked to resident families; they make their appearance wherever adherents can be found This presupposes a new social phenornenon of wanâering pnests who lay daim to a tradition of orgia transmitted in private succession." Diotima's mysteries are clearly portrayed as handed down this way in private succession. Likewise, Diotima is just such a travelling "charismatic" -described by Socrates as a foreigner delivenng her mantic services to Athms in a t h e of crisis (201d3-5). In the catalogue of Greek mystery cults, it was only Dionysos and Meter whose mysteries were

transmined by this sort of charismatic; but unlike Meter, Dionysos employed f e d e mantics Like Diotima. Furthermore, the word-family surrounding r e k f l (initiation), which is prominmt in the ,

was "used with a certain preference with regard to

Dionysos.'" It is worth noting that many bacchic cults, even in Socrates' &y, were -

-

"Burkert, C

aspects of the

..

i 291. Budan himselfdoes not explicitiy cwnect the mystexy with Dionysos, but uses them (and thor of the &&US.) only as

indications of the uatm of mystery expexienceper se, while pointhg out the allusion to the 92-93) Eleusinian mysteries m both cases 9. In this regard it is, perhaps, telling that Piato docs not w the word BinLert, puori/pra at aU in the For the Atheniaas. "puuqp~a"quite simply meant the nies at Eleusis. Even the verb fonn of that word ocam m oniy one place (puqeeiq~.210al). IfPlato had

m.

distinguished by their use of so-called bbbooks" of Orphic myth and lore. As PIato tells us himeif in the

m.these books contained doctrines about all of the gods, not just

Dionysos. Bacchic mysteries were thus not restricted to accounts of Dionysos alone, and could conceivably includt Eros. Tantalizingly suggestive, in this regard, is the Orphic creation myth involving the god phanes" who, we are told in other sources, was also called Dionysosz9and also cdled &os?'

This evidence suggests that Diotima, the travelling, mantic, female charismatic who initiates Socrates into the mysteries of Ems, has k e n portrayed by Plato as recognizably bacchic, or dionysiac; at the very lest she is more bacchic than Eleusinian. Considering that her mysteries are the centrepiece of the

.-

the institution of

bacchic initiation rites, with their orphic theologies, becomes one more important dionysiac context of the dialogue.

-

B Review of the Litecature Concemhg the Dionysiac Aspects of the

Of the eleven authors we review hen, all maintain that Plato has used dionysiac

symbols to help him express his points. Some of the authors take Plato to be hostile to Dionysos, others to bc a &votee of dionysianism, and still others fall somewhere in

&y iatended to ailude to Eleusis, it is odd that he shouid avoid that word as he does here. Plato does use " p w ~ p r a "in (156a3) and (76e9). ûrphic fk 60. r,Diodorus Siculus, 1. ii. 3.

Anstopbanes'

693ff.

between. Some also take issue with each other, while several do not take issue where they ought to. We shall, therefon, go through them in chronological order. It is also important for us to be critical as we review these commentators' works, for criticisrn allows us to

cut through ta the most important interpretive issues and thereby avoid superficiality in the presentation. Unfominately, this means that this fiat chapter will be quite lengthy, but in-depth analysis here will prepare us for al1 of the arguments to corne in following chapters while saving us fiom having to go over the same ground again. A brief summary at the end of this chapter will then guide us into our positive presentation beginning in Chapter Two.

b.1) Gerhard Krüger

The earliest attempt to draw attention to the importance of Dionysos and the dionysiac in the

would appear to be Gerhard KrUger's

Leidenschaft,first published in 1939. As the title suggests, KrUger aims to reevaluate the role of passion in Plato's system of thought, and this brings him into contact with Dionysos as an important syrnbol of the Greek understanding of human passion. But if passion is to be considered a positive element in Plato's philosophy, then does that not mean that Plato' s philosophy entails, or at least endorses, dionysianism? WIger denies this implication in a section called 'The

as Dionysian Festival" (86-92):' in

which Plato is understood to be setîing up an encounter with the dionysiac precisely in order to challenge and &ny Dionysos' claim to exclusive dominion over human passion.

' 1am indebted to Jeffky Mitscherhg for an English translation of this section of

book I+of course, accept fullrespo119bilityfor the arguments b d t apon i t 1have not to note the piaces where 1have altered Mitscherling's translation, as they are oniy two cases of insignificanttechnicalities.

Throughout this section,Dionysos and his domain are described in what must be, for Plato. pmly negative terms: dninkenness (W),mimesis and doxa (Hl), btind pathos, "unnaniral" [sexual] desites, jealousy and wildness (91). In contrast, Socrates' doctrine of eros represents a "new, seeing passion" [Krllger's emphasis], by which "the omnipotence of pathos is broken" (90). In short, Plato articulates a higher and prior conception of passion with philosophical credentials, thereby appropnating it as a category away from the dionysiac.

For Krliger, this encounter between philosophy and the dionysiac is played out within the realm of poetry, by means of the contest of wisdom between Agathon and

socrates." He notes the oddity of the -'s

style amongst the dialogues, the way

formal and often poetic monologues have displaced the more typical Socratic

conversation." This nflects the structure of the contest, for he takes poetry and poetrycontests to be a specifically dionysiac medium (as in a sense they are in the cases of Agathon and Anstophanes). By entering into what is essentially a poetry cornpetition at Socrates is submitting himself to the jurisdiction of Dionysos and

this

agneing to challenge poetry on its own t e m . As a result, this inverted image

becomes an

("w 86). of the tragedy-competition that Agathon had won just

two days befon. Socrates (and philosophy) emerge as nctors in this contest not on account of any active denunciation of poetry or of the dionysiac, but precisely by

demonstrating their f k d o m nom the power of the dionysiac. In fact, Krüger suggests,

"

m g e r tbus focuses on the fkst of the dionysiac aspects we identified above, and identifies Aikibiades with Dionysos: ''h the dispute over wisdom... Alaibiades decides:...he cm do thïs because the god appears w i e h W (91). Socraies' attempt to mitiate such a conversation witû Agathon, and Phaedrus' refusai to toieraîe it (194d1-8). emphasize tbis oddity (Kiüger 86).

Plato's task demands this sort of treatmemt: "as mimetic poetry always fmt enchants, the vaiidity of doxa must always be refuted only ironically" (90). By such an "ironic refutation" (89), Plato cm. in effect, show us Dionysos refiting himserf." In other words, the &mg&m

does still exhibit the familias S m t i c method of refutation: rather than

disproving his opponents' theses, Socrates makes them show how they disprove themselves. The other (non-poetic) dionysiac aspects of the Svmwsiurn3' seem to be understood by Krüger as serving to emphasize that the portrayed event is entirely within Dionysos' temtory and jurisdiction. Thus al1 of Agathon's guests are subject to the same conditions and jmisdiction as Socrates, though most of them are not poets either. Dionysos' self-refutation would appear to be a necessary consequence of his mistaken ambition for supreme imperial power, or "omnipotence" (which is, perhaps, why Alkibiades is such an appropriate stand-in for the god). Alkibiades' (and Dionysos')

failure either to seduce or to conquer Socrates nveals the supremacy of the Socratic Eros, which in fact possesses the universal power to which Dionysos pretends. This is equaIly demonstrated by Alkibiades' own admitted inability to resist the power of Socrates' speeches. But the intemal division that this occasions in Akibiades is more than just a personal phenornenon; for Krllger, it is indicative of a Iarger, and perpetual, cosmic stmggle. In effect, Wiger takes advantage here of a well known feature of dionysiac

Y And ~ f b t i n g everyone else pment, as weil. except for Socrates; aU are under the sway of Dionysos, even Eryximachos, whose medicine, 'due precisely to its rationaüty. remains negatively arrested in the pathos of the state of dninkenness" (90). 3sKNger mentions the dramaticlpoetic and the sympotic aspects, as weU as the contest, but uses the w o d "mystciy"only once in passing (92) when cietaihg AUoiiades' speech. It is to be betrinsicaUy dioaysiac. as they w m , bat interesthg that Kriiger does not take as dionysiac: "mt argues that, nonetheless, Plato has goae out of his way to portray this is in any case urimistakable that Plato brought t h symposium out of this occasion into specific relation to Dionysus" (89, Krllger's emphasis).

mythology: the motif of ''resistance to ~ i o a y s o s . He " ~ ~appears to be reading Plato as articulating his own version of this motif in the ,-

where the perpetuity of this

resistance is illustrated graphically by the reassertion of dionysiac power over this at the end (with the appeanince of the first and second groups of revelers) after Dionysos had effectively been banned from the night's proceedings eariier on (176c-e).

Thus, Socrates' victory, though absolute in a sense, is also temporary. The philosopher cm never relax. because the dionysiac is an ever-present opponent: "For just as the cefebration began dionysian, so too does it end Philosophical 'wisdom' does indeed

ûiumph, but only in constant battle*' (90). And therein lies Socrates' tme value to the rest

of humanity: we are in constant danger of losing ourselves to the dionysiac, and many people have been lost so already; but Socrates is unique in his power to resist, and like an anti-dionysiac battle-standard he can rally us to defeat the ever-present enemy -within US.

mger's analysis might seem attractive at fint, if one is willing to concede that Plato and his philosophy are intrinsically anti-dionysiac; one standard view of Dionysos makes it easy to take such a stance. But there is a good deal more to Dionysos than the power of visceral human passions alom, the celebration of whîch in dionysiac religion is what seems so obviously anti-platonic. A serious problem with KrUger's reading of the -

-

"According to tbis motif of dionysiac mythology. Dionysos and his followers are foreign

arrivais whose dismptive rites sp& like wiId£ue, once on Greek soil. In the p s t , many historiaas took this motif at face value and coacluded thaî Dionysos was a laîe (almost post-Homeric)foreign intmsion in Oieece and not reaIIy pan of Heflenism per se; however, archaeological evidence has since proved tbat Dionysos was aIready ai home in Greece in Mycenaean (i.e., pre-Homeric) times. The motif tends now to be undaoad as cepresen~ga timeless aspM of dionysiac expaieme itseE i.e.. tbat the god is typcaUy experiencedas a dangerous onnish, a sudden appeanuice, or an M b l e farce who must, nonetûeless, stili be resisted (Guthrie, G& 172-3). Krfïger does not explicitty mention this motif, but it was a standard view of the dionysiac in his &y and bis account seem to illustrate it perfecly.

ne

,-

which puts platonic philosophy and dionysiac religion in direct opposition to

each other (so that the two are "in constant battle"), is that Dionysos does, after dl,

rendet his judgement (through Alkibiades) in favour of Socrates, no?Agathon. As the judge in what we are to understand is a contest between his own poeûy and its enemy. philosophy, Dionysos clearly gives the victory to philosophy. Nor does Alkibiades make only the minimal admission of defeat that one might expect from an enemy; his praise is lavish, almost excessive, with regard both to Socrates himself ("utterly godlike and golden and beautifbl and wonderful," 216e6-7) and to his speeches ("they're the only arguments which realiy make any sense; on top of that they are supremely inspiring, because they contain countless models of excellence and pointers towards it," 222a2-5). If Alkibiades is speaking for Dionysos as the enemy of Socratic Eros, as m g e r maintains, then this is rare praise indeed. Nor are those the only approving statements Alkibiades

makes. He also describes Socrates repeatedly and explicitly as a satyr - the friend, cornpanion and devotee of Dionysos; rnoreover, he explicitly names Socrates' philosophy

as a type of bacchic rapture: r f i +iloa6+ou ~ pavSa~se KU\ Paqetas (218b3). These features make it hard to see Dionysos in such direct opposition to Socrates as Kriiger says he must be. If anything, it appears Dionysos (through Alkibiades) is attempting to daim Socrates as his own. But KrUger maintains that they are etemd enemies, and that

Dionysos goes on to renew his assault immediately after this spcech. But how, we m u t

ask, can the god so uncquivocally admit defeat and then mount a new attack? If, however, in order to maintain Krüger's opposition, we were to understand these words of

Alkibiades to be his own, and not the god's, we then have the new problem of distinguishing his voice h m the god's. Surely any such distinction could only undemine

the divine authority of the judgement itself and put into question Alkibiades' supposed

role as a npresentation of Dionysos. It appean, then, that Kruger's conception of irony cannot extend to cover these positive evaiuations of Socrates by ~lkibiades~' without threatening the keystone of his interpretation: the identification of Aikibiades with Dionysos. But if these words cannot be understood ironically, then Krllger's contention that philosophy is completely opposed to the dionysiac cannot be maintained. His appeal to the "paradoxicality" of Akibiacies' speech is tantamount to adxnitting as rn~ch.~*

Krllger notes that the speech is dionysiac thmugh and thrwgh, and even suggests that it is to be understood as somehow quaiifying the opposition between philosophy and the dionysiac: 'The interpretation of the speech of Alcibiades will have to demonsirate how something from the nature of the same Eros that is praised by Socrates' speech reveals itsetf in this sphere as well" (92). But on the basis of the text itself, and without any prejudice against the dionysiac. might we not just as easily reverse this statement? Le.: "The interpretation of the speech of Alkibiades wi1I have to demonstrate how something from the nature of Dionysos reveals iwlf in the sphere of Socrates' speech as well"? m g e r has given us no good muon not to do so. Another problem with Krllger's nading is that it seems to imply that Plato is

openly declaring in the

that both he himself and Socrates are guilty of the

The fact that Aiki'biades gives this praise grudgingly, and even declans, There can be no teconciliation between you and met' m the context of references to violence (213d6), might appear to support Kr(iger's reading, but only if tbis is tbe god speakhg and not Aikibiades penonaiiy. This threat of violence is inconsisrcnt with the nature of the praise Aiikbiades gives, and while such inccmsistency is understandable in the case of a human sou1 being puiied in opposite directions (precisely AUo'bades' chunstance here), it does not seem understandable in the case of the god Dionysos himself. And if we mst ideutify the god with one side of ihis incoosistency, then why not with the proSocraiessentiments? ""Aletibiades lets the efficacious might of true Eros become important oaiy with great retuctance and extreme par&xtèality" (91, Krtiger's emphasis).

very crime for which Socrates was tried and executed. Dionysos, after all, was one of the go& honoured by the Athenians in civic rites; in fact, at Athens he was one of the more

important of the go&. On Krliger's account of the ,-

Plato is advocating the

defeat and denial of this Athenian god in preference for a "new" god, the philosophical

Eros is to be praised [instead of Dionysos]: the omnipotence of pathos is bmlcen; a new,seeing passion cornes into power. But we must stress: not in such a way that the new god simply âestroys the old gods, but in such a way that his superiority in the proceedings of the celebration is proven. Just as certainly as the essence of Ems is only now discovered in distinction from the world-go&, so ceriainfy is his power as such already in fact recognized and thus nu? without relation to the old gods. (Kruger'semphasis, 90)

Even more explicitly: 'The authonty of the god who govems dnmkenness will be broken in two" (89). If this is indeed Plato's message then it sounds a great deal like "believing

in deities of his own invention instead of the gods recognized by the state" (m 24b9-10). It is hard to see how Plato (or Socrates) could hold the position attributed to

him here by Kr(iger and not be guilty of dishoaouring the "world-gods:"the Homenc

deities recognized and honoured by the people of Athens. To "&stroy the authonty" of

Dionysos simply does not seem compatible with the pious acceptance of him as a god. Krllger, in effect, n a & Plato to be offking a new theology that is incompatible with, and intolerant of, traditional Greek religion; and hence, as guilty of the charges brought against Socrates.

Perhaps fiom the vantage point of our own cenniry, as we move ever more into the "pst-Christian" phase of European civiiization, it is easy for some to see Socrates as

an enlightened inte1lecnial struggiing to break the bonds of a primitive religion. If so, then we might be inclined to side with Socrates here, against the law that condemned him, and

take him as a free-thinker martyredby an oppressive traditionalisrn. But on the evidence

of the dialogues, that does not appear to be the way Plato saw him. On the contrary, Plato everywhere tums the charge of impiety around and redirects it back against Socrates'

accusen, against the people as a whole, and against the makers of the stories about the gods (e.g., Homer). It is not that Plato is telling us that Socrates was impious, "as he should have been;" nor is it that Socrates was more pious than the Athenians because he

had the one tme religion in contrast to their false; rather, he was the most pious of men because he was huer to the gods of Athens than were all of the other Athenians. Admittedly, this sort of piety would be difficult to defend before the impious masses themselves, who do not understand their own gods." But contrary to what KrUger would have us believe of Plato in the ,-

Plato never makes Socrates challenge the

authority of the Olympian gods per se, just the stories told about them by poets and

priests. It is entirely consistent for Plato to defend Socrates' piety while at the same time using h h as a mouthpiece to criticize important aspects of Greek mythology. But on

Wger's account, Plato goes far beyond any mere revision of Homeric theology, to openly advocating its overthrow in the .-

Somatic piety that we find in

-,

That contradicts Plato's defenses of

and elsewhere. To some,this might

appear to be a pureiy semantic quibble: whether Socrates and Plato celebrate new gods or transform the old until they are unrecognizable, either change would be equally -

-

p p

-

the position Socrates is in at his trial. It might expiain wby Piato has Meletus make the much stmnger charge of atheism when challenged by Socrates (&&gy 266). d e r than &king to his written (and publicly recordecl) asdavit that would appear to have cbarged Socrates ody with worshiping dwerent g&. Hui Meletus saick to the written charge, PIato codd not have avoickd wading into apublic à e m o m o t o n of Socrates' supaior understanding of the public gods (the only conceivabk defase) a task that may weil have been beyond him at the the he wrote theor at any tirne. "This is essentidy

-

unpalatable to the Athenian people. But on this slight shift in emphasis hangs the question

of the guilt or innocence of Socrates. The former option, which Krtiger advocates, is in no way compatible with Socnites' innocence or Plato's defenses of it.

b.2) Helen Bacon

The next tnatment that attributes a dionysiac theme to the

is HeIen

Bacon's infiuential article of 1959. Contrary to Kriiger, Bacon sees no great antithesis between Plato and Dionysos, though she agrees with KrKger that the

posits

dramatic poetry as the place where the two corne together. Bacon sets herself the task of explaining why "[tJhelast word of this dialogue about love lis] given not to &os but to Dionysos, the god of tragedy and comedy and wine9'(45)." Her solution takes Plato to be using Dionysos primarily as a symbol for Attic drama itself. Accordingly, we are to

as an indirect statement, mainly through Socrates' mouth,

understand the

about the relationship between dramatic poetry and Plato's own dialogical writing-style. Her thesis is that Socrates is portrayed as a dramatic poet himself, and a better one than

both Anstophanes and Agathon; and his claim that the same person can wrîte both tragedy and comedy is supposedly exemplified (and thereby proven) by the dialogue itself. In other words, the

is both a tragedy and a comedy, and Plato is

declaring himserfto be the very man that Socnites refers to in the end-ridde, namely, the

coasummate dramatic pet. This "last word," says Bacon, is in fact a poetic summary of

as a whole; namely, that Plato's

what has been enacted at length in the -

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--

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"The "last word" sk is refenhg to is the curiok tiddle on the tinal page, in which

Socrates is said to have proven to Agathon and Arîstophanes that "the same man could be capable

of wrïting comedy and tragedy," since each employs the same dpq (223d4-5).

dialogues are a new, superior genn of dramatic poetry.

Lüre Krliger, Bacon emphasizes the contest of wisdom implicitly set up at 175e, and takes Alkibiades to be the personification of Dionysos (4230. However, she

understands this to be a contest of technical skiil in tragedy specifically (424,427), which is why Dionysos must be the judge. By soundly defeating both Agathon and Aristophanes with his Whioso performance praising Ems, Socrates eams his dionysiac victory crown

and goes on to illustrate his supriority e\ren further by Qinking the two pets under the table. For Bacon, Socnites' apparent immunity to wine is an indicator of the favour

shown him by the wine-god (423,427), whereas for Krüger it was a sign of his freedom

from the power of the wine-god Despite this difference, however, both KrUger and Bacon

seem to a p e that the sympotic connotations of Dionysos are secondary, sening mainly to set the scene as dionysiac and thereby to reinforce the presence of the god in order to draw the reader's attention more directiy towards Socrates' encounter with the god's

primary signification: dramatic poetry.

The same thing goes for the mystery-language, according to Bacon. She mentions the 4bmysteries of Dionysos" (424) and notes that Socrates is portrayed by Akibiades as

capable of producing the ecstatic effects of such initiation rites. But she then appropriates these effects for drama itself, effkctively reducing the mystery-Dionysos to another version of the drama-Dionysos: It has been observed by others that the effects of Socrates' "pipings" are essentiallythe effects of Dionysiac pipings, the effkcts of tragedy.....These are the violent emotions that accompany... the recognition scene in tragedy. (425)

Socrates' effectiveness as a tragedian is thus reinforced by Plato's portraya1 of Alkibiades as a tragic hero tom asunder by the 'brecognition"of his own worthlessness and inability

to follow a higher path. Bacon even suggests that Socratic "initiation" is identical with tragedy: "Socrates...whose little comedy of king in love with handsome young men initiates them into the tragic experience of self-confrontation" (428). The whole complex of mystery-language in the ,

then, along with its identification of Socrates

with the bacchic piper Marsyas, is for Bacon just one more avenue into Plato's thesis

about the Qamatic character of the dialogues. But since Bacon wants to persuade us that Plato is declaring himself a dramatic

p e t who, as such, differs only in some degree from the others (i.e., in that he is better at it), she also ncognizes the need for an account of what it is that separates hirn from them and makes him a philosopher." Much of her article is devoted to this question, which she

answers by distinguishing Plato's dialogues C'perhaps lowly and elementary") h m the so-cded "higher dialectic" (416). She develops this distinction using the allegory of the cave from the

m.The dialogues, she says, are addressed to those in the cave; they

are, like al1 poetry, composed of illusions, directed at people incapable of

but able

to comprehend and leam from illusions becaw of their complete subjection to illusion. Plato is a superior p e t because his illusions (his "poems") direct people up out of the cave, whereas the work of the other h a t i c poets binds people ever more forcefully

within the cave (or the world of opinion). Monover, the place Plato leads them to is the "highetdialectic," where they cm then kthemselves of illusions completely. In an apparent violation of the principle of justice that Socrates propounds in the

m.

Bacon's Plato does double-duty as a p e t and a philosopher since, for Bacon, the= would -

''

Bacon ~presentsPlato's aitique as both techicd (i.e., Mifymg the two genres) and substuntiw (i.e.. reconceiving the meaning of dramatic poetry). Plato's phiiosophy provides the basis for the substantive d q u e .

appear to be little in common (in terms of terhnr;)between the dialogues, which operate within the realm of opinion, and the higher dialectic, which operates within the realrn of

iPePsBy explicitly associating the mystery-language in the

with Dionysos,

Bacon has a way of binging Diotima and Alkibiades together in the figure of Socrates, and hence of seeing Plato as "Dionysos-positive," in at least some limited sensd2

However, her insistence on reducing al1 of the dionysiac feanires to facets of a single,

primary signification (dnunatic poetry) also n m s the nsk of erasing important discontinuities within the dionysiac itself, discontinuities that Plato may well k depencling upon his naders to recognize. It is worthwhile bnefiy to point out a few of the Limitations of Bacon's approach. First, her use of the syrnpotic-Dionysos merely as a symbol for the clramatic-Dionysosdenies her access to certain political aspects of the

setting:it blurs the satyric-maenadic gender di~tinction~~ and the aristocratie-demotic distinction, both of which are latent in the contrast between the dionysiac features of

and dnuna. Second, her reduction of mysterycult initiation expexience to that of the tragic "catharsis" (fear and pity) of Aristotle cuts her off from any contnist Plato

Bacon's arguments do not entail that Piato is a proponent of dionysiac religion in any substantive sense; on the contrary, his usc of the dionysiac is restncted to that of a medium within which Socrates' (and Plato's own) affiaity to dramatic poetry can bit symbolically demonstrated The positivity this shows is d y no mon than the absence of the sort of negativity Krüger attributes to him: Le., Plato, at least, does not consider it a diseredit to himself or to Socrates to be pomyed as dionysiac in th* limited way. 43 Tragedy can be said to exemplify the serious and destructiveferninine (Le.. the maenadic) side of the dionysiac and contras&sharpIy with the 'Yun and frolic" attitude of the comcdic and sympotic masculine (Le., the satyric) side (Hatab 127-128). That such a distinction at Agathon's victory in may be relevant here is fiutber mggested by the setting of this the knaia festival (a ritual event specifically associated with maenadism), and by the sharp contrast between Agathon's efEeminacy and S m ' stout masctrlinity (as attested by Aikiiiades). 42

might wish to exploit between public and private religion? And thirci,by making Plato a winning cornpetitor in a contest of dramatic poetry, Bacon effectively identifies platonic dialogue with drama and thereby obviates any radical platonic critique of drama per se. There is a danger that she may be compromising bath tragedy and platonic dialogue by

uniffing them so directly.

b.3) John Anton John Anton's brief but insightfbl article of 1962,"Some Dionysian References in

the Platonic Dialogues," has perhaps had less influence than it &serves. He argues that: Plato has made deliberate use of religious materials and traditions, particularly of the Dionysian strain, to enhance and articulate his philosophical conception of the philosophical life. (49) Plato, he c l a h . was a religious reformer in the broadest sense, whose goal was to clarify and assimilate 'hot theology, but the fundamental devance of the institution of religion

to the whole of the Greek cultural enterprise" (50). His project of using art (i.e., his poetic dialogues) to effect this reform puis him in a long tradition of artistic religious reformers h m Homer, Hesiod and the early naturaiists through to the dramatic poeu themselves.

The mythical figure who symbolically npresents this class of religiously motivated artists is Orpheus, and so Anton concludes that Plato "is much like Orpheus minus the bloody

end, but an Orpheus with inteliecnial clarity and philosophical vision" (54).

For Anton, then, the

s dionysianism has a much larger and more

imprrssive scope than it does for Bacon, or even for KNger. By integrating the dionysiac

"Conside~gthe apparent theological content of the dialogue in Diotima's doctrine of

E m s (whichgzirger took to k a direct attack on the ciry's gods) and its designaiion as mystenes, tbis publiclprivatecult distinction could quite possibly have a d e to play.

39

si& of Greek religion with his philosophy in this Iimited way,Plato is at lest acknowledging the fundamental importance of its outlook and substance: "Plato's Socrates is able to see through Aicibisdes because he is at home with human nature in ail

its primordial Bacchanism and all the soul's ineradicable passions" (53). Anton points out that this contrasts rnarkedly with Soctates' other pupils, Xenophon, Antisthenes and

Aeschines, who dl "made a specid effort to efface 'that disgrace' [Alkibiades] from their teacher's memory" (53). Plato, "the master's most human and imaginative pupil," was the

only one capable of seeing the positive significance of Socrates' fnendship with Alkibiades. Thus, according to Anton, the

contradicts the "piiritanical," and

moraiistic view of Plato that Western scholarship has tended to produce (53).

Far from opposing or trying to eradicate the dionysiac, says Anton, Plato aims to anthropomorphize, and thereby preserve, ail of what is important in his culture's religious experience, including the dionysiac. Anton implies that Plato is an atheistf but an atheist who sees value in religion's "mythical unification and craving for ideality" (52). And so

Plato is actually out to replace the "Bacchic deities" (Le., silenes, satyrs, Marsyas and Dionysos himself) with his new philosophical ideal of "the wise man of Ahens" (52). Socrates is to be something of a secular source of the dionysiac, a mortal human king

who madels in himself, and produces in others, all the important forms of dionysiac

reügious expience. In this way, the

renders religion into philosophy without

"Perhaps 'hhumaublic,

aspects of the

m,Philebusand

other dialogues to find a basis for his clairns about these political implications (e.g.. 195,197,200). These concems might have k e n more directly addressed by enploiting the

political aspects of the dionysiac symbolism Plato has utilized in the

itself,

but about which Clay says nothing. However, Clay would appear to have two problems here with disagreements between the symboI of the "dionysiac crowning"and his account of Plato's thesis about

"

shares this thesis with Bacon and Anton. that the dialogues are a supaior form of

dramatic p t r y .

drama, which is supposed to make sense of that syrnbol. First, Clay's c l a h that the dialogues overcome and uni@ tragedy and comedy makes those two forms sound very

much like equal opposites. It is not that philosophy is supenor to tmgedy in the same way that tragedy is supenor to comedy. but that tragedy and comedy are opposing pnnciples that are overcome via the mediation of philosophy which, by overcoming hem, itself still

contains thernea But why then is Socnites, in his coronation, contrasted only with Agathon? Ie., Why does Plato explicitiy give us a contest of wisdom between only Agathon (the tragedian) and Sacrates (the philosopher)? This is a serious objection to Clay's a r g ~ m e n twhich , ~ depends so much on this imagery for its initial plausibility. Perhaps embamissed by the obvious absence of Anstophanes (the cornedian) from this important symbolic action, Clay maintains his opposition between comedy and tragedy by making Socrates hirnsekf into the representative of comedy, instead of Aristophanes (190). In other words, Socrates aiready canies with him (because of Aristophanes' -)

an identification as a figure of comedy. To combine the two forms, then, Plato

need only add a tragic dimension to Socrates -which he does by means of the uagedycontest with Agathon. But this can only make us wonder why Plato would have bothered to includc Anstophailes in the dialogue at dl; a few references to the Clou& would have bem suffiCient to establish Socnites' comic "credentials."" And what of the final scene

where Socrates, Agathon and Aristophanes, alone, are arpuing over the art of dramatic poetry? Are they still wearing their crowns? If so, it would only more emphaticaily stress a A more clear expression ofthis thesis that tragedy and comedy are q u a i opposites, iïke two sides of the same coin, can be found in ffitab (127-8), who appean to be working h m Kerenyi's account of the dionysiac. This would not be as serious an objection to Antoa, for instance, who appeals to a wider

"

range of dionysiac signifies in generating bis response to the end-riddle. The= is such a =ference, in AIkiiiades' speech (221b 1-3). 67

Anstophanes' exclusion h m the eadier agonistic scheme. Plato appears to make this contest of wisdom stnctly diadic, between Socrates and Agathon, and that must cd into doubt whether Piato has really put tragedy and comedy on such an equal footing in this dialogue. The second problem is with the undeniable fact that both Agathon and Socrates

are crowned by Alkibiades. T'rue, Socrates is clearly given precedence over Agathon, but Alkibiades removes only some of the ribbons from Agathon's head For at least the nmainder of this scene, and perhaps the rest of the night, the aigedian and the philosopher Wear victory crowns together in contrast to al1 others present. This is a problem not only for Clay's interpretation, but for Bacon's and Anton's as well. Al1 three of these commentators have understood Plato to be revamping Attic drarna in producing his dialogues,in the sense that Plato is claiming the dialogues can successfully fùlfill the irnplicit political or paiâeutic function that Attic & m a had formerly failed to fuifill. And

therefore Plato's dialogues are to be understood as the perfected form of tragedy ("the tnie tragedy") with which Socrates would replace Anic drama in the

and the

m.But why, then, does Plato leave Agathon crowned despite giving clear precedence to Socrates? He codd have made Alkibiades nmove al1 of the nbbons from Agathon's

-but he

head, and such an act would have agreed with the tone of Alkibiades' wordsM

chose not to. Instead, Agathon's %ctory with words" is ncognized but placed on a whole other order of achievement h m Socrates': -

-

"

-

--

-

-

-

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ALkiiiades' words are already a great diminutionof Agathon's achievemen~one might even caii them humiliatmg, so it cannot be that he left somenibons on Agathon's head simply to k polite, Nor can it be said that Agathon's aown represents the false opinion of the majotîty and Socrattes' the huejudgement of the gcxi, and that therefore Agathon tetains his crown because he continues to Main the adoration of the multitude, for it is preàsely the one ''me judge" (i.e., Akiiiades as Dionysos) who leaves him with the crown.

Otherwise he might blame me for crowning you and leaving him uncrowned, whose words bring him victory over ail men at alI times, not merely on single occasions, like yours the &y before yesterday [erUt6v 6% viic6vsa év I 6 y o i ~~r&vraqLvOpôxoy, 06 p6vov xp6qv Oonep d,BAL' a g a . (213e2-4)

In effect, Akibiades is saying that Agathon's victory was temporary or contingent -a genuine victory over ail men, but only for an instant -while Socrates' victory is simply

part of his character, he is always victorious over al1 men.But this would make no sense at al1 if Socrates and Agathon practised the same "use of words," or the same

m,as

would be the case if both were ciramatic pets, for then Socrates' perpetual superiority

would deny Agathon any victory at all (and al1 the ribbons would properly have ken taken away from him). Rather, the implication would appear to be that each practises a distinct "word--'

and that Plato still wishes to express approval for Agathon's

poetry, but to a lesser extent than he approves of Socrates' "poetry." Thus Agathon.

retains his crown as the best tragedian, but tragedy itself has been lowered in esteem compared to Socrates' art -whatever that might be. Such an Unpikation is not

compatible with these commentators' understanding of Plato's view of drama. For them, Plato's supenor art form is intended to supplant the earlier, flawed forms of tragedy and comedy.

This brings us to a more gened di"culty with Clay's and Bacon's theses. To resolve the end-ridclle of the

quires that we articulate Plato's 'Vieory of

drama." This is no smaU undertaking, for it means finding definitions of tragedy and comedy that are sufficiently broad both to explain the well-documented traditional

sepmition of the two f o m , and to justify Plato's comctive unincation of the two. The

issue cannot be avoided, because Socrates' assertion-that the same man can master the art 69

of tragedy and of comedy presupposesjust such a theory of drama to back it up. Clearly. by having Aristodemos alIude to this socnitic argument without reporthg its details, Plato

prompts his reader to riddle-out for herself the arguments that Socrates must have use& On this point we cm agree with Clay that, "If it is to be found anywhere, the answer to

our ndde lies submerged in the dialogue itself' (187). Unfomnately, Clay does not follow his own good advice and goes on to draw his argument h m other dialogues, using connective assertions like, "The poetics of the

poetics of the

and

are fundamentally the

m"(197).

Neither Bacon nor Clay has taken this challenge seriously enough. Each offen a

simple theory of drama with only the slightest of argumentative support, as if Plato's

theory of drama were the subject of no controversy. And yet, this must be the ultimate criterion by which their interpretations stand or fall. Clay's "theory" amounts to a narrow

focus on a single differentia taken from Aristotle: "For Plato, tragedy centred on the high and serious, comedy on the low and laughable" (194). Perhaps this narrow account, which ignores a.Uother possible criteria (e.g., historical, cultic, psychological and theologicai).

appeals to Clay because of the way that it conveniently maps ont0 the higMow social class distinction of the statesman's political "poetry"of city-building, but to leave it at that would beg the question. We must be precise about the logic involved hem Clay is

not simply asmming that Plato's

should count as a variety of ciramatic

poetry; that is part of the burden of his argument. And yet the argument he gives amounts to no more than the claim that the style, in combination

exhibits these same two types of imitative

-as if any representation of the ''high and serious" should count as

tragic, and any representation of the "low and laughable" as comedy? Yet are we to

count Perïcles' funeral oration a tragedy? Or Homer's

m? And what of the satyr-

plays that every tragedian (but no cornedian) had to mite and stage at the City Dionysia in addition to his tragic trilogies? Surely they must count as "low and laughable," and hence as cornedies. To distinguish between comedy (certainly not part of the traditional art of the tragedian) and satyr-play (certainly part of the craft of the tragedian), Plato is

clearly going to need some more elaborate criterion than "low and laughable." Had Socrates appealed to such a simplistic account in his argument with the poets he would

have convinced no one

- not even a dninkard.

Similady, Bacon gives her theory of drama only in her final paragraph, as if to cap off the argument:

Both comedy and tragedy center around man's relation to error. The unacknowledged enor is the cause of a misplaced complacency which is comic, the acknowledgment of error, with its shattenng of complacency and illusion, is in essence a recognition scene, which is the hem of tragedy. (430) This account of drama, also essentially Aristotelian, is much more elaborate and appealing than Clay's bare distinction. but Bacon applies it in an unnervingIy flippant

fashion. Tragedy can k comic and comedy tragic, she tells us (430). Tragic and comic speeches and circumstances can be lmxed and combined fieely to mate works that are both tragic and comic. In effect, Bacon takes Plato to be asserting that there is nothing

mutually exclusive about these two gems at aU, even in their pn-platonic forms, which

"

In other wads. a necessary premis of Clay's argument is not that "AU tragedy is serious," which is certainly accurate. but that "AU serious literature is tragedy:' which seems unreasoaable.Otherwise it simply wouid not foIIow that the counts as an example of tragedy and comedy for these reasons. which is his chief argument Clay seems mterested in applying his premise only to the case of Piato's writhg, ad hoc

makes us wonder why the rest of the Greeks felt they were so very different." Smly we

must ask of Bacon, as of Clay: if Plato's new form of non-performance writing is to count as tragedy or poetry by w t u e of sharing these features she has used to define the respective genres, then why not a whole range of other new forms of writing as well? By

her account, should we not count any discourse at al1 -written or spoken, fact or fiction

-tragedy, comedy or tragi-cornedy, if only it exhibits the appropriate relation of humans to enor? Take Thucydides' m r y of t heW a for instance. It would appear to contain many examples of the sorts of complacency and shattering-ofcomplacency that Bacon amibutes to thc

.-

And what was that war (or most

wars, for that matter) if not a tragic comedy of errors? Could Somites not be refemng to

Thucydides in the end-riddle? If Plato is to count as a ciramatic poet by vimie of these aspects of his work, then do they not earn Thucydides that title as well? We have already noteci, above, the difficulty faced by any interpreter who takes

Plato to be advocating his own non-performance dialogues as a new form of &ma. Certainly there are many philosophical concems raised by Plato in the dialogues that

might profitably be put to use analyzing the form and content of Attic tragedy and

comedy. It is only nasonable to expect that Plato might attempt such an anaiysis himself, even by mimicking dramatic forms. We must be on guard, therefore, against mistaking a platonic analysis of drarna for an attempt by Plato to idenw philosophy, or philosophical writing, with dramatic poetry. Moreover, we must k careful not simply to assume, as

Bacon seems to do, that Plato shares -Mstotle's understanding or evduation of dramatic

"

No poet, in Plato's expexience. had ever wrinni both tragedy and comedy; Agathon and Aristophanes had to be compellafby Somates to admit (tpooavayicci~e~v rbv Zoicpbq 8poAoyeîv. 223d3) that it was even possible for one man to do both.

poetry. But as Bacon and Clay both point out, the fact that such a riddle as Plato has given

us in the last lines of the

ends-offa dialogue so rich in ciramatic content and

"starring" Anstophanes and Agathon, strongly suggests that we are to use the itself to mswer the riddle, and that Eros has a role to play in Plato's theory of drama. The critic who wishes to solve the end-riddle has before her the task of finding within this

dialogue the dues to that theory of cirama, the existence of which Plato seems to be

tlaunting at us on the final page. But we are nosion who belong in the lowest categories ("a7' or "b"), the

''$éPqA6~TE itdk y p o r ~ o ~in' ' Alkibiades7words, including the slaves and anyone else with no previous involvement in philosophical talk Second, there are many present who

belong at l e s t at the second stage (categories "c" or "d"), namely, Aristodemos and ail of those who gave speeches; they have known the "adder's bite" of philosophical talk, and have thus been initiated into the "cult" of philosophy/Eros. Nor is there sufficient reason

to doubt that these people occupy the "in ktween7' state of philosophy. Of course, there is

a sense in which, according to Diotima's doctrines,all living things occupy that "in between" state, for Ems tums out in the long run to be none other than nature itself. But the fwidamentally erotic nature of all Living things is not what is at issue h m . With

regard to wisdom, these speakers, unlike moût human beings, have al1 carried their erotic

impulse into the domah of speech and r e m ()LQyouç ai biavo@ara, 210d5-6). Both Agathon and Aristodemos desperately want to get (or leam) Soctates' 'insdom." Anstophanes' myth talks of humanity's deepest desire king for an unanainable "other"

h m what it is at present. Eryximachos is a medical scientist and naturalist, and gives the speech that more than any of the others resembles genuine presocratic philosophy.

Pausanias gives a speech dincted at reforming the Iaws of Athens, which at least f o d l y gives him one leg up on Diotima's ladder. And Phaedrus even more than the rest is

obviously a lover of

u, beautiful talk -especially if it concems Eros. On top of

this is the simple fact most of them are explicitiy portrayed as sexuaily active here, in the context of Socnites' teaching that Eros is philosophical. Admittedly, ail of these putative b'philosoph~"have senous deficiencies that many scholan have identified in &tail, e.g.: Phaedrus cornes across as an egoist; Pausanias is a self-inimsted sensualist; Agathon a vacuous fop; and so on. But this was precisely the point of our fmt assumption: these people may indeed be incompetent at doing philosophy, but that in itself does not mean that they are not still somehow motivated by the spirit of philosophy and do not participate in the "Korybmtic rites" of philosophical talk. It would be a very intensting exercise to investigate in detail the evidence Plato presents for locating these people more

precisely within our schema (Figure 2). Of particular interest, given the narrative structure

of the dialogue, would be the placement of Anstodemos and Apollodoros. But for now it is sufficient to place them somewhere in the middle position.

This brings us to Socrates and Alkibiades, whose speeches are directly related by their cornplementary use of mystery-language. One thing seems clear, at least: that

Diotima's mysteries "thus fax? (210a), the actual

ato which Socrates could

"probably" be initiated correspond to the experience of genuine participation in philosophical talk; no more and no less. Her "teachings" about those mysteries (2Ole210a) primarily concem the nature of Eros, and this includes the nature of philosophy.

Monover, they mostly take the form of the typical socratic m. as if Diotima were "sounding him out." No doubt, to someone intent on pursuing philosophical talk more seriously, it would be of great benefit to understand what that project involves, where it leads, and how it relates to the rest of human Iife. Diotima teaches dl of this to Socrates, but still these doctrines themselves are not the same thing as "doing" philosophy. They help one to understand what philosophy is so that when "the adder bites," one will know how to take it and benefit from it. To recall Pieper's metaphor of &as suggestive of the narcotic effect of a h g , we might compare the contrast between un unguided and a properly guided philosopher with the contrasting experiences of a drug-addict and a self-

medicating doctor." A good doctor, who (ex hypothesi) understands the dnig (what it is for, and how to use it) still experiences the same narcotic effect as the hg-addict when she takes the dmg, but she conducts her Ive in such a way that the drug works for her, and not against her. To apply this metaphor to our text, Socrates and Diotima are like doctors explainhg the nature of a wondrous and powerful drug that can help us to produce the best in human life, if handled properly. Alkibiades, on the other hand, gives the testimony

of an unschooled dmg-addict. But by relating this back to Socrates and the rest of the

participants, he reveais that they, too, are "users." It would appear to be a mistake, then, to see Socrates' detached reflectiveness, coolness, logic, and calm as entirely characteristic of the life of philosophy that he and

Dioiima recommend. As has always been obvious, Aikibiades' speech flatly contradicts that view of Socnites, h m the perspective of sorneone who could perhaps rightly clairn to know himbetter han anyone else. In fact, it seems likely that the tendency to discard

"It is not insignifiantthat the seif-medcatingdoctor of the svrnwsium recommenàs that

drinlringis bad for you, and shouid be avoided except in moderation.

Aikibiades' speech in the

and to concentrate almosi exclusively on that of

Socrates/Diotimahas contributed in no smail degree to the evolution of what Anton calls the ''puritanical" view of PIato in Western scholarship. By giving Socrates only half the

account -the detachai, doctrinal, "philosophicai" half -Plato has seemed to many critics to authorize a one-sided, purely rationalistic, and anti-dionysiac view both of

himself and of his philosophy. And as Nussbaum's work illustrates, it is not enough just to rediscover the value of Alkibiades' speech; one must also be willing to take what it says at face value. According to Nussbaurn, for instance, Plato has added Alkibiades' speech in order to force a dilemma upon us: these two types of Eros are so utterly distinct that we cannot have botfi, so we must choose, and each choice involves the sacrifice of a

supreme value. Shall we follow Alkibiades, who represents humanity, vulnerability and also tragedy?; or follow Socrates, who represents ultimate security and invulnerability but at the cost of human care, human attachment, and even hurnanity itself? Plato then uses Alkibiades -his biography, and the very condition that he has aiiowed Socnites to manoeuver him into -as evidence for why we should choose "philosophy" with its stone-like invulnerability. This choice, however, presented in this way as a dilemma, is tragic itself, and so Plato's project is in a sense ultirnately self-defeating. Better to take our chances, cast our dice with Alkibiades, and Iive a human Life with al1 its attendant

human risks. This, Nussbaum's nading of the ,

exhibits in pcrhaps its most extrrme

form the traditional antidionysiac view of Plato and of the svrnwsium. As she says herseif, ' n i e Symposiwn now seems to us a harsh and alarming book" (198); we must agree, on her readmg. But we do not need to see Socrates and Aikibiades as antagonistic

in this sense. Rom Alkibiades we leam that Socrates did indeed participate in the

'"madness and frenzy" of philosophy, and continues to do so, for this is none other than philosophical talk itself -Socrates' major preoccupation. His calm extenor is deceptive and conceais a sou1 possessed by a korybantic rapt-

a rapture that spreads to (some)

others when he engages them in his peculiar brand of conversation. If anyone at this represents the h e anti-dionysiac philosophy that Nussbaurn has attributed to Sacrates it is Eryximachos. the rationalistic doctor who eschews drunkenness and who departs when the party gets out of hand We may suspect Eryximachos of employing this

"dnig." philosophy, precisely to reduce his dependency on drugs: "My medical experience has convinced me that drunkenness is bad for people" (176~8-d2).Alkibiades addresses him while passing mund the wine: "Ah Eryximachus...best of sons of the best and soberest of fathers" (214b3-4).hardly a compliment in the circumstances. While Alkibiades is al1 passion and no doctrine (and hence no control), Eryximachos is just the opposite. all doctrine and control, with very little passion. Socrates. however, combines these two sun&red halves into one whole person, though we could never have told thut from his speech alone.

There is still more to this account of the mysteries themselves, however, for as we know h m Socrates' speech there are two distinct levels of initiation into the rnysteries of

Ems. We have so far discussed oniy the fïrst, '?he madness and hmzy of philosophical

talk." But what about the final mysteries, t a ? Has Socrates also participated in these rites and thereby eamed his ticket into category (e) of Figure 2 (i.e., the "teleoi" philosophers), or is he still to be classed in section (c) with those who are on the right track to the final revelation but have not yet achieved it? Alkibiades' speech can

help us here as well. His mystery-language refers both to philosophical talk and to godlike and exceedingiy beautiful [xkyuaAa] images he has seen. His speech even

concludes by bringing these two experiences together: Socrates' talk is itself godlike, and

contains images of perfect virhie. Yet Akibiades has not "seen" these beautiful images with his eyes: they are to be found "inside" Socrates and "inside" his 1QMi,which

suggests some kind of mental perception or understanding. We are reminded of Diotima's terminology: "where he sees beauty with the faculty capable of seeing it" (212al-2). U b i a d e s seems unable to describe this experience literally, so that he must speak metaphorically or "by means of images [k'eir6vov]" (215a5). Moreover, Socrates is absolutely unique in this regard. Al1 of the others are fellow initiates in the "fknzy" of philosophy, but none of them has ever seen what Alkibiades has seen, and what can be

sem only in Socrates: the godlike beuuv at his core. This language strongly suggests that something very special has happened between these two men that goes far beyond even the ordinary rapture of philosophical talk. Given the context, then seems little doubt that

Alkibiades has somehow managed to experience both levels of initiation into the mystenes of Ems, and that, in his perception of it at least, the vision of beauty came rhrough Socrates.

This reading mates a nurnber of very interesting questions and problems. For even if we are willing to accept that Alkibiades is somehow moved by the spint of

philosophy and has therefore been exposed to the lower mysteries, still we cannot accept that Plato means to place him in the class of "perfect"philosophem. If Alkibiades was

exposed to Beauty "itself,Ven why did he hm out the way he did? Codd Plato be trying to tell us that Socrates' philosophy and his "vision of the Beautifiil" is so very

ineffective that AUcibiades could just hun his back on it (like he says) and continue king the rotten person we ali know him to have ken? It is perhaps too early to attempt to

nsolve this problerns, without reference to other of the dionysiac aspects of the dialogue (see below, ChS), but one answer suggested by the ascent passage of Diotima's teachings is that it was Socrates' expenence of the rires that Alkibiades witnessed, not his own. Mer all, Diotima makes it clear that it is by means of philosophical conversations with beautifid young men that the philosopher nses to his fmt glimpses of Beauty itself -and

then the vision strikes. If we are to assume that Socrates has had this experience at al1 then it is likely, if not certain, that he had it in someone else's presence (whether or not the other person shared in the vision). We might well ask who that other person was, and

wonder how this whole flair might have looked ftom the other si& of the conversation. In Aikibiades' speech, Plato may be teiling us? And if the abilities of his interlocutor contribute at ail to the philosopher's ascent (Diotima does not Say, but cornmon sense wouid suggest that they do), then Socrates could hardly have chosen a more able, intelligent, passionate and beautifil boy with whom to discourse. This is the conclusion to which our analysis of the mystery-language points. Y Given the context of bacchic enthusiasm, this rrlationsûip between Socrates and Alki'biades is reminiscent of Socrates' account of *'levelsof inspiration" in the (533d-536b), which uses the image of magnetic rings. In that image, divinity e n m into a sou1h m above, not only drawing that soui upward to the divinity like an iron ring to a magnet but aiso conferring upon that sou1 a meanire of its own magnetic force by which it amans other iron rings. so that, "as h m the loadstone. a mighty chah hangs down" (536a), each Mc anachecl magneticaily to the one above. Socrates ad&, 'We cal1 it king 'possessed,' but the fact is much the same, since he is heW (536b. English translation by Cooper, Hamilton & Caîms). The upward, attractive force is maby a downward emanation fkom individuai to individuai. Sacrates is chidly concemed to but he makes it clear that bis image applies to divine accountfor poetic inspiration in the inspiration generaUy. and he utplicitly mentions Orpheus, the korybants. the bacchants, and "bacchic transport"as examples of this sort of thing. Here in thesvrnwsism. Ems is the name of an attractive force that draws us up to diMnity9and which enters into Socfates by a form of bacchic capture9so that Aliûibiades would appear to be one of the "links" that is "held?' by Socrates' own enthnsiastlL

However, if, as we Say, Aikibiades' portrait is accurate and Socrates is the most rapturous of all of the celebmts of ''bacchic" philosophy, then why did Plato leave us wondering about that? Why did he portray Socrates as restricting himseif to the inteilectual, doctrinal account of the meaning of the mysteries, thereby concealing his own "fienzied"experience of hem? This is a good question, for we must admit that Socrates' speech has created a definite air of "mystery" (in the modem sense) that has led to numerous attempts over the centuries to reconstruct the experience of Diotima's vision in a variety of

not least of all mysticism proper. There is, however, no reason here

not to accept the answer that appears to be supplied by the very images and terminology Plato employs: mystery cults. Plato has chosen to present philosophy in both Socrates' and Alkibiaâes' speeches as a mystery cult. Every mystery cult had its secrets, namely the

experience of the bmsh with divinity that constituted one's initiation. And Alkibiades, we know from history, was a profmter of mysteries at m. By nvealing his experience of something samd in the "cult" of philosophy, he is telling a secret in the presence of

the uninitiateci, as his own words explicitiy declare. The simple answer to our question, then, as to why Socrates is unforthcomuig about his own experiences, is that Plato has placed him within a textual construct that demands his silence, whereas Alkibiades, as a hown profaner, cm be expected to break that silence. Why Plato has placed him within such a.textualconstruct (i.e.,"philosophy as mystery cult," whether literal or metaphorical), cannot be answcred without lwking to the

as a whole, and in

particular to the rest of the interrelateddionysiac aspects of the dialogue which may modify our understanding of this s ~ a i i e d mystery-cdt But given the setting at diis "Pkpefs book is itseff an exampk of such an attempted reconstniction. though baseci primarily on the phædnis.

W. where there is a mixture of people h m both inside and outside of philosophy,%it seems that some sort of profanation becomes necessary even just to reveai are genuine mysteries here at dl. We might ask: How else could PIato show us

that th-

that philosophy reaily is a type of mystery, in such a context, except &y showing it pmfaned?

-

te k&l&&&

C Soctatic

If Allribiades' speech is taken senously and at ?icevalue, as we have argued it should be, then Socrates emerges not as the &tached practitioner of a rationalistic and anti-human philosophy (as hîs speech, taken alone, has led some to believe) but as a successN conjunction of doctrine (or understanding), on the one hand, and an overwhelming passion, on the other? In the ,that passion as telestic &,

Plato has chosen to represent

the "madness" experienced in mystery-initiations, which in

the phaednis Socrates attributes to Dionysos. In the phaednis,however, Socrates

distinguishes telestic kinds of divine &,

from what he caUs erotic

and while he praises ail four

he saves his highest praise for the erotic, which he bnngs directly

into his account of philosophy. This could be taken either as a development in Plato's thinking about

m;as a rhetorical expedient givcn his diffent objectives in the two

dialogues; or even just as the lack of a desire to maintain xigid boundaries between these phenornena. In any case, his choice in die

"

to describe a "mystery-cuitof

is imlike the where everyone who is not a philosopher In this the has been "sent away" befom the convemation begios, and where any taik of mysteries or secreis is apt to f d only on initiates' cars. Le.. Socrates does hdeed represent EiPgSht togetha with Leidmschaft.as Rrllger's titie suggests.

&os" would appear to make it difficult for him to separate the two in that instance (the telestic from the erotic). Given the remarkable emphasis on the dionysiac in the

,

which is absent in the

=.

it seems likely that Plato has cast his

conception of philosophical mania into a specifically

mold in order to bnng it to

bear on that other dionysiac symbolism. Contrary to Pieper's assumptions, then, the way to understand Plato's concept of philosophical inspiration leads not away from the dionysiac associations of mania, but through thern. We shall see more of this in the foiiowing chapters. Let us just note now, in passing, that this reading of the mysterylanguage of the

makes the portraits of Socrates in these two dialogues much

more similar than has traditionally been accepted" But to return to the

in particular, this identification of philosophy as a

kind of mystery cult has interesting consequences quite apart from giving

some

kind of role in epistemology. First and foremost, it assimilates to philosophy the esotericism that is an essential feature of these cults: i.e., the separation of the in-group

h m aU others by means of a shared initiation experience. The mysteries of Eros are even doubly esotenc because there are two stages of initiation, which mates an in-group within the in-group, as at Eleusis. The potential for a political problem lurks within this

esotericism, in that it would appear to be a form of nligious practice (and even of Me) that does not contain the

as one of its variables. What, we must ask, is to be the

The has long kena thom in the ride of PIato scholars precisely b u s e of this perceiveci great diffance. The tendency has been to take the Socntes of Diotima's spech as (e.g., it is very hte, or the nom and to then fhd some way to explain the oddity of the very early). Nussbaum (again, an extreme case) sees the two portraits as JO remarkably different thaî she can explain it only by appaling to a developmentalthesir involving a radical docainal transfonaation and 'keligious" conversion (of the erotic variety) on Plato's p a SimpIy put: between these two dialogues he feu in love, and thereby had a new base of experience to work fmm that he had lacked Wom

relationship between this cult and the state?: subse~ent,as Eleusis appears to have been (at least & facto), or independent? S m t e s certainly shows us what he thinks of statedirectives in the

and we should have to look very closely indeed at Diotima's

speech to find any answer to this question, for she seems to voice no political concems at dl. Of course, there were many private cults in Greek religion, not al1 of them new and not aii of them mystenes, so the problem was not unfamiliar to Greek thinkers and legislators. For example, there was a lengthy stmggle for preeminence between the private family cults (i.e., of noble families) and the Oplis-cuits that fonns part of the story of the emergence of the

itself as a stable political structure in the archaic period

That struggle was even dramatized in classical tragedy; the family-cul&lost."

In Chapter One we consiàered Morgan's attempt to resolve this problem by mapping the mystery-cult of the

ont0 the cult at Eleusis, which was both

politically integrated and famous for its vast numbers of initiates. In a sense, Morgan wants us to see Diotirna's cult as potentially inclusive of everybody,just as Eleusis was: If everyone could become part of the "in-group" then the problem would disappear,

would it not? But on Diotima's account, these mysteries clearly are not going to be for everyone: she notes the difficulty of the effort, the need to do it "just right," and her doubt that even Socrates can succeed*

-which proves that good intentions are not sufflcient.

Morgan's is an appealing strategy, but even if we reshict ourselves to the lower mysteries, we must not forget that what we are taking about here, when ail is said and

"

Examples include Aeschylus' Sopbocles' A m and Euripides Bacchae. against the religious commitments of the noble household, which is each of wûich pits tbe subsequenly destroyd Even with regard to the prelimmary mysteries she is rserved: you couldp r o b d y do it, thus far.

"

done, is philosophy. C m we ~ a I l take y Plato to be suggesting that a i i human beings are philosophers at heart, just waiting to hear Marsyas' pipe? Some modem educators hold views U e that, but few of them are phiIosophy teachcrs. Even Plato's putative philosophers in the

are shown to be resisting its allure (e.g., Eryximachos,

Aristophanes, and, of course, Alkibiades). There was, however, one very famous variety of rnysterytult for which this particular political problem became acute -the very real "mystery-cuit of philosophy"

known as Pythago~eanisrn.Above, we discussed the way recmt discoveries have broken down many of the barriers between bacchic, orphic and pythagorean cult in Socrates'

lifetime. We noted how even if Plato means to mark this -cuit as recognizably bacchic, this still gives him access to a wide variety of ideology, doctrine and practice, especially from southem Italy and Sicily, including the Pythagoreans. Could Plato be trying to associate Diotima's cult of philosophy, either literaily or metaphorically, with the Pythagoreans? It may be relevant here that Plato's Academy was organized in law,

and apparently in every other way, as a

-a private religious cult of the form

typical of mystery cults, both bacchic and pythagorean:

The Academy was a strongiy built institution. It was not a commercial entapnse but a confraternity or sect ...There was still an emotional if not an amorous link between master and pupil. Juridically, like the Pythagorean secf it was a religious association -8iaooç a brotherhood dedicated to the Muses6' and, after his death, to the apotheosized Plato -a wise precaution, soothing the susceptibiitiesof a bigoted democracy ever ready to accuse the philosophers of impiety...Slato had chosen [its location] not for its convenience...but for its nligious associations. For it was a holy place, made famous by many legends which were used as an excuse for repuiar fimeral garnes. It was close to a numbet of sanctuaries consemted to the infernal

-

'' Here we see a possiibk further overlap of the categories of Phaednts*

distinguished m the

gods Poseidon, Adrastes and Dionysus." ( M m u 670

It seems a very real possibility, then, that Plato has the Pythagoreans in mind when he calls philosophy a mystery cuit in the ,-

but if he does, then the effect is just

the opposite of Morgan's atrempt to associate philosophy with Eleusis. Plato then would

appear to be posing the very incompatibility of philosophy and the pPliri. We cannot decide this issue yet, but it is important to realize that the

may very well be

raising an explicitiy political problem by portraying philosophy as a mystery-cult.Many commentators have argwd that the

does contain a political thesis; attending

to its use of mysteries seems like a p d s i n g way into such a thesis.

Marrou goes on somewhat specuiatively to iink the academic curriculum to the educationai proposals in J a s'%esides lectures, a prominent place was given to the kind of fkiendly conversation that went on during the drinking parties -oiyinclata"(68).

- Chnpter Three Tragedy, Mysteries and Wine

We argued in the fint chapter that a contest between Socrates and Agathon that is somehow to be played out over the course of the

is stmngly implied at 175e,

with Dionysos narned as judge.' While most of the commentators we have surveyed

discuss this implication: they also disagree about its nature and significance. Severai of them. taking theû cue from the occasion for Agathon's drinking-party, infer that it is. strictly speaking, to be a contest of poetic ski22 analogous to the one that Agathon had won just two days before, but now with Somites as his chief cornpetitor; these interpretations tend to focus on the relationship between Plato's "poetry" (i.e.. the dialogues) and tragic poetry, and on the end-riddleO3 Of the other commentators, some understand it to be a contest ktween poetry and philosophy per se,' while one takes it to be nothing more than a personal contest of wisdom? The Iast of these opinions has the

WRie of reflecting what Agathon actualiy says:

'%nough of your sarcasm, Socrates," replied Agathon. "We'U settle o u . respective claims to wisdom a little later on [bAiyov Gasepov 61dt~ao6pe8a&y6t e uai où zepi q~ao@iad,and Dionysos. the god of wim, shaUjudge between us [br~ororii~ p h ~ e v o 1 5 Arov6aq]; 4> for the Cf. Chapter Che, #al(14-16); also 8b.l (Kr(iger), 8b.2 (Bacon). 9b.5 (Rosen).

'only Brenùinger, Schein & Morgan make no mention of it.

Bacon, Anton. Clay and Sida. In contrast to Bacon et ai.. Krtiger takes it to be a poetry contest but argues that Somtes

d a s not W y participate, thereby M y separating socratic philosophy fiom ciramatic poeay (much as does Rosen who foiiows m g e r in this). Anderson.

'

moment give your attention to dinner." (175e7-10) Not only those commentators concerned with the dionysiac have adjudged this passage to

be important as a hming d e v i n for what foiiows in the rest of the dialogue! And yet the very meaning of the passage is p d n g -so puzzling that Walter Hamilton, our translater, has felt compeIled to insert a phrase not in the Greek in order to help us out:

"the god of wine." Are we to presume, as Hamilton does, that, for Agathon, wine is somehow to be implicated in Dionysos' judgement of the respective daims to wisdom? At first dance, Plato appears to give us very linle to go on here. Dionysos' name seems to corne out of nowhere and the narrative immediately moves on, leaving this invocation behind. On the one hand, it is extremely odd for wine to be associated with wisdom like this: does not drinking it have just the opposite effect, to deprive one of one's wisdom? Yet on the other hand, the way that Agathon en& the sentence strongly suggests that Hamitton is right: 'but for the moment, give your attention to dinner [vCv 6è

x p 6 ~r6 oeî~tvov ...]."While Agathon gives no hint of how Dionysos' judgement might

manifest itself, this passage shows at Ieast that he expects that judgement to contrast with and foiIow upon the dinner. Heavy drinking is therefore the most likely referent of

Agathon's "Dionysos;" this is, after all, a ,

where heavy drinking was the

natural sequel to the meal? It would appear, then, that Plato has lefi Agathon's meaning deliberately ambiguous, with the result that his reader c m o t avoid the question, "Why Dionysos?" We are forced to pause and consider which aspect of the dionysiac Agathon

has in mind. And if the auswer to this.question is to be wine, then we m u t ask, "Why ..

Eg., Bpry xixf.

'Since Eryximachosbas uot yet proposed the speech-making, Agathon cannot be r e f h g to thaÉ contest.

should wine be invoked to adjudicate wisdom?' Of course, when Alkibiades appears looking like Dionysos (at 212d-e) and gives

out crowns first to Agathon and then to Socrates, we c m see in that action a clear reference to this earlier passage: Alkibiades ~ n i out s to be an image of Dionysos who compares these two men and declares Sarates superior, Alkibiades as Dionysos is then quite üterally the judge of their contest. He does not use the word "wisdom" in handing out his crowns, however, but speaks instead of the cornpetitors' respective abilities with won& (213d8c5). In combination with the earlier passage, then, we may take this "ability

with words" to be an appropriate measure of wisdom. But although this earlier passage takes on a new meaningfor the reader in the iight of Alkibiades' later entrance, thai new

meaning is shictly ironic. It cannot have been Agathon's own meaning because Agaihon was not expecting Alkibiades to appear. Moreover, Akibiades' imitation of Dionysos is

itseIf ironic: the reader sees it but then is no indication that Agathon or anyone else in the dialogue could have expected it or is even aware of it, including Apollodorus -no one commenu on it. As a result, we are still left with the puzzle of Agathon's own meaning when he said that Dionysos would judge their respective claims to wisdom. To take the answer supplied ironicaüy by Aikïbiades (at 212e-213e) as the only sense behind the passage quoted above (175e7-10) would be unsatisfactory, because it amounts to saying that Agathon's invocation does not make any sense dramaticdy. There must have been some fairly obvious sense that Socrates and the others would have seen in Agathon's comment, or they too would have stopped to ask him what he meant. Having noted how this passage brings the "wisdom" of 175e9 into direct conjunction with the "victory with

words" at 213e3, we might weU infer that Agathon's own meaning in invoking Dionysos

will bring a thirâ variable into play here (cg.. wine), and a factor such as that is not to be

ignoreci. Turning to the context for guidance, we may note that the invocation occurs in a

bnef conversation between Socnites and Agathon when Socrates first entem. Apollodoms tells how those present began to eat without Socrates, and how Agathon kept asking after

Socrates during the meal (175~2-6);he then tells of Socrates' entry and relates this bnef skipping ahead to the point when the dinner has been conversation ( 1 7 5 ~ 6 4 0before ) cleared away and the heavy drinking is about to begin (176a1-4). M a t we have in 175~6el0 is therefore an isolated snippet of conversation not direct1y related to the prior and subsequent conversations retold by Apollodorus. This is important because it forces us ta

look closely at these twenty-one lines of context for clues to the meaning of Agathon's enigmatic phrase. One thing that does clearly emerge from this bnef exchange is the suggestion of a noteworthy difference between the wisdom possessed by each of these

men: Agathon's wisdom is of the sort that is clearly manifest to everyone, whereas Socrates' defnitely is not. Socrates says of Agathon's wisdom,"yours is bnlliant

[Aappai],and may shine brighter yet; ...look at the dazzling way it flashed out the &y beforr yesterday before an audience of more than thiny thousand Greeks" (175e4-7). "Aapxpa" can mean not only bright and shining, but clear and perspicuous. By contrast,

Socnites' wisdom is "ambiguous and like a dream [ Q p @ ~ p q q c n p odaxep ~ hp]" (175e34). For Agathon, the sign that Socrates h a gained some new piece of wisdom is

that he has ended his soütudc on the neighbour's doorstep and entered into the social

intercourse of Agathon's party (175d1-2). His wisdom is lÏke a secret that he alone possesses, and Agathon wants him to share that secret. To receive Socrates' wisdom,

Agathon feels he m u t get close to b,even touch him [Ùm6pev&, 175~81- unlike the thousands of spectaton who were al1 exposed to Agathon's "Lapxpa" wisdom together in the theatre.

In Agathon and Socrates, then, we see the popularly acclaimed wisdom of the theaüe contrasted with the more subjective, personal wisdom of a "ciream." This contrast ailows Plato to indulge in Socrates' typicai self--cation

(he calls his wisdom "slight"

[Qaijkq tic], 175e3) while at the same time holding open even here the possibility that Socrates' more b'personal"wisdom is very real and of a fundamentally different sort than most people would recognize. We saw in the previous chapter how Plato uses Socrates' and AlkibiaQs' words later in the dialogue explicitiy to portray philosophy as a type of

bacchic mystery cult. According to that metaphor, saraic wisdom, if there be such a thing, is not conveyed person-to-person but cornes as a flash of insight to philosophers

engaged in conversation with their beloveds. Agathon clearly desires a share of Socrates' private wisdom. He knows that to be enlightened by Sarates he must become intimate

with him, but he is about to make the same rnistake that Alkibiades later confesses to have made. Socrates' response suggests that he understands the sexual overtones of Agathon's offer: It would be very nice, Agathon, if wisdom were W<e water and flowed by contact out of a person who has more into one who has les, just as water can be made to pass through a thread of w w l out of the N l e r of two cups into the emptier. (175d3-7)

Socrates thus responds to Agathon's hint of a possible exchange of sexual submission for wisdom, or m e . which was the typical rationale for sexuai relationships between men, by rejecting it. UnfortitnateIy, says Socrates, wisdom is not like semen; it does not flow

fkom the fuller (older) to the emptier (younger) vessel, as if through a "thad."' It is only later, in Diotima's teachlng, that WC l e m more of socratic "wisdom" and why, as a

passive vision, it is not communicable person-to-person. Agathon's wisdom, however, does appear to be communicable,and Socrates' words describing Agathon's effectiveness

in the theatre are similar to Diotima' words describing the experience of Beauty itself:

"Look at the dazziing way it flashed out [oBro a@dôpaé&kap$ev rra\ é ~ @ a v f i ç &yéveeo]the &y before yesterday before an audience" (175e5-7; compare to 210e).

Uniike Ion (in IPn),however, Agathon does not appear to have a great deal of faith in the

wisdom of his dramatic productions: and he assumes that Socrates is making fun of him by hyperbole; nor does he agree with the low estimation of Socrates' own wisdom. His

accusation of sarcasm (at 175e7) rnakes sense only in this Light: in this "dispute," each attests the other's p a t e r wisdom at the expense of his own.1° Socrates' "sarcasm" lies in w e already see prefigimd h m a platonic critique of that standard rationale for erotic love between menCf 194b.where Agathon suggests that his drama won the prize before an "uncritical audience." 'O This is an important point overlooked by many interpreters, e.g., Rosen (28) and Anderson (IO), both of whom take Agathon's invocation as a kind of bravado. The issue is whether, in invoking Dionysos ta judge tùeir relative degrees of wisdom, Agathon has in mind that he or Socrares is really the wiser. Rosen argues that Socrates has insuitecl Agathon to his face, to wtrich Agathon responds by calling Socrates "w (175e7) in a much more forcefd and Iiteral sense than Hamilton's translationas "sarcastic." Because the water & string analogy with *dom does not hold says Rosen, Socrates' valuation of a seat next to Agathon is the opposite of what he says it is: I vaIue the privilege of sitting beside you very highly (175el):' becornes "Ido not vaiue the privilege of siüing beside you very highly:' i.e.. ''1consider you worthless." Aside fiom mch an inference king fdacious (denial of the antecedent), it seems to fly in the face of Socrattes' obvious desire to sit there. And while it would indeed be rude of Sacrates to say such a tbiug, we shouid hardly expect Agathon to be so offended after he had already declareci himself desbus of Socrates' wisdom; Le., after he had admitted to be wanting in wisdom. But Rosen insult, m v o k Dionysos publicly to declare Agathon the wodd have it that Agathon, stung by wiser and put Socrates in his pIace. The case is in fact just the opposite. Were these two really to go into coutt over th matter (as Agathon's language metaphorically suggesu) then Agathon wouid be prosecuting Socrates for false modesty ,not for denying Agathon any due respext. Sonates' rematks are 'bsarcastic"only because they maintain the obviously false (to Agathon) pretense that Agathon is wiser. Anderson's rrpdsig maLes much the same mi-. He writes: 'FmmAgathon's point of view the reference to Dionysos is understandable- He hasjust received a

declaring Agathon's wisdom to be of far greater value. This contrast between Socrates' and Agathon's types of wisdom therefore

.

manifests another contrast that puts their contest squarely within the jurisdiction of Dionysos: namely, the contrast between the public cults of Dionysos (including the

Lenaia and the City Dionysia) and the esotenc mystery cults of Dionysos. We have aiready seen how closely Socrates is associated with the latter in the ;

Agathon is even more closely associated with the former. Alkibiades says it is their ability with wor& that marks out each of these men as "victonous" over others, and these

two cults contrast sharply in terms of their characteristic modes of speech, or dixourse. The telestic-dionysiac discourse of the rnysteries is intimate and esoteric, and proceeds by

personal conversations ("1Pepi"); it is addressed, always and only, to a few. The dramaticdionysiac discourse of tragedy is public and exotenc, and proceeds by

mgih~ (especially ~ Homeric

and

e); it is always and only addressed to the many. This

contrast of the few and the many has k e n superimposed on Socrates and Agathon in the

.-

For instance, Agathon had woseparate victory celebrations (173a2-7), one

public (the many) and one -this one -private (the few); but Socrates avoided the

former "fkom dislike of the crowd" (174a6-7). Later, it is suggested that Agathon is really et home with the many and feels vulnerable kfore the few:

'1should be forgetfbl indeed, my dear Agathon, if, after seeing your courage and high spirit when you appeared upon the platform with the actors just before the production of the play, and faced a crowded audience without the least s i p of embarcassment, 1 now supposed that you were Iikely to be upset favorable judgement nom Dionysos in the awardhg of the prize for tragedy, and is jolàogly suggesthg the god would award him another favorable judgement" (10). But if Agathon already considard his W o m so superior to Socfates' then why wodd he seek aftcr Socrates' Company the way he does? Socfates' fame and allure lie p d s e l y and oniy in other people's suppositions of his superior wisdom.

-

-

by a handful of people iike us." "But m l y you don't suppose, Socrates, that 1am so stage-struck as not to know that to a man of sense a handfid of wise men is more formidable than a crowd of fools?" (194a8-b8) There are many other occasions throughout his dialogues when Plato likewise associates Socrates and socratic speech with the few-side of this same dichotomy," which only goes to reinforce the generality of Plato's association of somtic philosophy with the privacy and esotericism that is characteristic of mysterytults. It is therefore worthwhile pusing

briefly to consider the extent to which tragedy, as a form of public discourse, ciiffers from

It is a striking contmt. The mysteries, with their

m,their secret mloeai.

and theV intellechializing allegory, are the very definition of esotericism; Athenian

drama, on the other han& was the most exoteric form of poetry known to the Greeks, aside nom Homer. Dramatic poetry was addressed to the entire citizen body and was performed before a sizable hction of it; in this respect, it resembles speech in the democratic Assembly, except that attendance was likely to be higher ai the theatre. N o m Frye has noted a consequence of this sort of performance, while commenting on

the return of oral poetry in our own the:

Poeny which addnsses a visible audience must win the sympathy of that audience, and hence a surface of explicit statement embodying social attitudes that the audience cm share cornes back into poetry. Of the characteristics of an oral culnire that are once again with us, one is what Wyndham Lewis ncognized and deplored as the "dithyrambic spectator." Such poetry demands a consolidation of public opinion."

The name of the audience thus pmfoundly afîected the various genres of ancient Greek Il l2

Poetry*

Eg., &&gg (3 1~03%); (485d); * Frye (150, quocal in Gent% wîth specific""L"e

(363a);

(48a-49a).

ancient Greek cxperience of

pœtry, all of which were primarily oral down to Plato's &y. Whereas Homer and epic

might be called catholic in this regard, lyric was generally composed to be performed before srnail gatherings of a determinate s o d 3In the case of drama, the audience was none other than the pQLig as a whole, and hence the "consolidation of public opinion"

peculiaf to drama was expressly political. Scholarship from the 1 s t several decades has greatly extended our understanding of the relationship between theatre and g&

in ancient ~thens."Old Comedy wears its

politics on its face, as it were, and so its political nature has always been well known; but the same cannot be said for tragedy. That has now changed For one example, Simon

Goldhill has recentiy drawn attention to the way performances of tragedies at the City Dionysia were directly preceded, inside the theatre itself, by a powerful display of civic ideology:

[Tlhe four momenu of ceremony preceding the dramatic festival were ail deeply involved with the city's sense of itself. The Libations of the ten generais, the display of tribute, the announcement of the city's benefactors, the parade of state-educated boys, now men, in full military unifom, al1 stressed the power of the polis, the duties of an individual to the polis. The festival of the Great Dionysia is in the full sense of the expression a civic occasion, a city festival. And it is an occasion to Say something about the city, not oniy in the plays themselves. The Great Dionysia is a public occasion endowed with a special force of küef. This is fundamentally and essentially a festival of the democratic polis. (114)

" Cf.W.R(ls1m'Early Gnek poetry üved thmugh oral pefiormance, and therefore in

situations which were imbedded in the communal Me of Archaic society. As one would expect, these are not random situations, but specific types of situation, which in tum were bound to spefinc social institutions. This fiindamental fact is one which ih interpretet of early Greek poetry ignores at his peril. The more this conviction has k e n exp10d in recent years, the more the symposiun has inevitabiy become the facus of attention....as the central place for the creation and performance of poetry"(230). Gentüi draws quai attention to for instance, with Sappho

m.

(72-89).

"Already in the work of George Tbomçon and Bernard Knox, the politicai dimension of

tragedy had moved to "centre stage." Latet, it was a chief focus of French scholarship, as În the work of Jean-Pierre Vernant and Pierre Vidal-Naquet More recentiy, Seaford, Goldhill, Meier and others have built substantialiy u p n that e a r k work.

In such a context. the plays and their authors perfonn a social hnction often overlooked by their traditional interpreters." The precise nature of the political ideology that

informed tntgedy has been explored at length by Christian Meier, who argues that dl &-institutions,

including tragedy and the various pPiis-festivals, were created or

employed by the EPlig at least partly as instruments of its prolonged struggle with the nobility, from whom the people had slowly wrested power in the archaic period.16

Rimarily, the aim of such instruments was to unifi the body of the citizenry, for "only through unity could the middle classes match the influence of the nobility" (18); tragedy was a rneans for the citizens as citizens to reflect on their new role and to corne to terms with the unprwedented political conditions:

In tragedy the received, mythical way of thinking engaged with a new rationality. foik culture engaged with high culture. Might it not have served to play out recurzently, by way of myth, the concems of citizens as citizens? It may k that they sought in the plays, in the festival of the Grrat Dionysia, renewed confirmation of their order and its principles, and of the justice of the world However diverse, indeed divergent, had been the politicai positions with regard to the upheaval of achieving fidl democracy, the question of how such a bnak with an order sanctioned by the go& might be assimilated into the traditional world-view was probably common cause for concem. (30

....

l5 Even a severe critic of Goldhül's work Rainer Friedrich, approves of this basic insight: "Goldhüi estabLishes most effectively the political context of aagedy: the text of tragedy becornes part of the larger text of the civic discourse of the polir. This is a signifiant advpnct in the

understanding of Greek mgedy" (263)l6 Meier is not suggesting the simplistic thesis that the tragedians were political backs grinding a party axe: 'This need not mean that tùeir worlcs were coasumed by politics. Nor need the tragedians have adopted a stance on topical political issues, most likely just the opposite. But the evidence catainly suggests that bey did have a political funciion, which must wamiot investigation" (5). Vernant & Vidal-Naquet d t e : The ûagic univene Lies betsveen tsvo worlds belonging both to a past age and to the new values developed so rapidy by the city-state of Pisictatos, Cleisthenes. Tùemistoc1esand PericIes.... h the tragic conflict the hem, the king and the tyrant caiarmy still appear committed to the heroic and mythical tradition but the solution to the drama escapes them. It is never provideci by the hero on his own; it aiways expresses the triumph of the coiIectïve values of the new dernomaticQty-state" (vii).

...

...

Despite the overlaid ideology of panhellenic hegemony in Athenian tragedytL7 the

integration of the pPlis dways remained a main function of chic institutions, including tragedy, throughout the classical period.18 Goldhill, Meier, Seaford and many other scholars have now produced interpretations of particular plays that unfold this political dimension of the genre in detail.19 What al1 of this means for our study is that Agathon's peculiar form of discourse

-at which he excels and demonstrates his "wisdom" -is at least partly concemed with the creation and maintenance of a unifieci, public view of the world This is necessarily a rrligious discourse in that it attempts to locate the citizenry and the pPliS by reference to traditional accounts of piety, justice, and the go&. But, as such, ir is a religious discourse of the muny, the " A O ~ O \ . " Socrates, on the other hand, avoids the public and does not

engage in public s p e e ~ hhis ; ~wisdom and discourse are pnvate, even intimate, a religiou~discourse of the few. However, PIato has located both of these men's peculiar

modes of discourse squarely within the realm of Dionysos: Agathon's tragedy is the peàagogical element of a dionysiac ppüs-cult, while Socrates' philosophical talk is portrayed in the

as the pedagogical element of a dionysiac mystery-cult. And

these two modes of discourse are, at least potentially, hostile to each other. Socrates was put to death on the grounds that his private discourse was undeimining the public l7

Since Alheos was host to many forrignen by the Iate spring when the City Dionysia was 250) which the pplîs used

held, the festivai became an "international" event (Seaford ta pmject an image of itself abroad.

m,

Seaford descri'bes this as the pmdoxicai contradictioa between "centrifugai and centripetal pressures" in the development of the City Dionysia in the sixth ceatury (&@Q& 2491, and Wfites that: "In this rrspect,Panheilenic asphiion and the continuing integration of the polrs go hand in hancl"(251). (115-123); Meier on Aeschyb' oeuvre Cf. GolclhiII on Sophocles' & 28 1-327) &A (62-203); Seaford on Euripides' &&ag and Sophodes' and . &&gy, 3 1c-32a. l8

"

discourse. Therefore, when Agathon says (175e7-10) that they shall go into court over

wisdom, with Dionysos as the judgc, we have been prepared by their prior conversation for far more than a mere contest between their personal degrees of wisdom. As representatives of two contrasting fonns of dionysiac discourse, they symbolize the potential confiict between private and public political discoune as weU as the latent theological conflict between Orphic religion and the traditional Delphic/Homenc religion. Moreover, since this has been portrayed as a contest of wisdom (measured by "ability with words"), it is difficult to see how Dionysos' judgement could avoid king at the

sarne time a judgement of tmth in theology. These considerations can direct us towards a fuller understanding of Agathon's invocation than can be found in the Literatun. He cannot himself have meant to imply this religious/discmive contrast that we have just exposed in his conversation with Socrates, for we have been given no indication that Agathon is himself aware of the association that Plato means to set up between Socrates and bacchic mystenes; that, after dl,is what only Socrates' and Alkibiades' speeches will later reveal to lhis crowd. We have also seen why it is natural to read his invocation as a reference to wine-drinking, albeit with some puzzlement as to why that should be the case. But since this contest of wisdom can also now be viewed as a contest of dionysiac forms entirely within the realm of the dionysiac, it foilows that the Dionysos who judges between them should not be biased in favour of one of them. For instance, to set up the drama-Dionysos as judge in a cornpetition between drarna and philosophy (as Kriiger does) wodd both be prima fade unfair to

phüosophy, and give rise to a paradox when Dionysos awards the prize to Socrates after

a11.f' Iristead, Plato has pruvided an impartial judge by selecting a third fonn of dionysiac

cult-event to act as the common ground within which these two other dionysiac foms (tragedy and sacratic philosophy/rnysteries) can "go to court." This even establishes a

rationale for Plato's choice of the dialogue: the

and of wine-drinking as the context for this

is a neutral space (in dionysiac terms) where a neutral Dionysos

(the wine-Dionysos) may render an unbiased judgement between these two other forms of

cuit and discourse. And, after ail, the Dionysos who does eventually render that judgement is none other than the d m k e n Alkibiades -the only man in the house (at that

time) who is in the power of the wine-Dionysos. This answers both of the questions ("Why Dionysos?' and "Why wine?') that &se immediately in response to Agathon's invocation. Although it still does not

completely resolve the oddity of Agathon's apparent implication that wine can adjudicate wisdom, it shows why it is appropnate for Dionysos to be the judge; and since Dionysos ispresent at this event (primarily, as wine) it is only naniral for his judgement to be

manifested in a fom appmpriate to this event, i.e.. in the effects of wine-drinking. Arrned

with this understanding, we rnay take this unusual implication at face value and presume that Agathon has in mind some raiionale for the ability of wine to discriminate wisdom

-

and that the nahue of ihis rationale will become more apparent to us as the night proceeds, just as he says.

After this fauly elaborate preparation for a test of wisdom by means of wineciririking (175c6c10), it cornes as a shock to encounter Pausanias' proposal just four lines l

d that heavy dnnking be set aside on this particular occasion. This would appear to

*' We have discussedthis problem with Krüger's interpretationabove (29-3 1).

Though Pausanias' proposai is nlated immediatefy foiiowing Agathon's invocation in

contradict the spirit of Agathon's invocation and it throws into doubt whether Dionysos will be allowcd to decide the case as Agathon had predicted: in so far as ihis S Y ~ M ) ~isQ I ~

deprived of its requisite heavy drinking, it is to some extent also deprived of the presence of the god Nonetheless, by means of this proposal a clue to Agathon's rationale is revealed. Everyone present (except for Socrates) had already had a bout of heavy drinking the night before, at the public celebration, and is therefore wary of embarking upon another so smn after. It is Eryximachos' response to Pausanias' proposal that is of interest hem. After checking to see that Aristophanes and Agathon agree with Pausanias,

What a goâsend for us, ...1mean for me and Aristodemus and Phaednis and our other fnends, that you who have the strongest heads [Upeî~o i 6uva~cGraro~ xiveiv] arnong us have given in; we are never able to compete [flpeî~ ...QbBvarorl.1don't count Socrates; both methods suit him equally well [ i ~ a v dyàp ~ uai bp@kepa], and he will be content whichever we adopt. ( 1 7 61-5) ~

This statement effectively divides the participants into three classes according to their capacity for heavy wine-drinking. The first group includes most everyone at the party those who "cannot compete" in wine-drinking contests. The second group contains the "stmgest heads" who presumably can be expected to be in the running to win such contests; this group appears to include only Aristophanes and Agathon, and perhaps

aus sa nias." The third category is nserved for Socrates done, who is marked out as king speciai because he is indfferent [ i ~ a v Q@kepa]. b~ Eryximachos' ebullience is then a

resuit of his discovery that even the "strongest heads" are disinclined to dnnk heavily on

-

ApoUodow' murative, some considerable time bad elapsed between these w o events sufncient for the completion of the m d and the riaial preparations for the drinking Party (176al4)a The ~ference ofEryximachos' "you" ai 176~2is ambiguous as to whether it includes Pausanias as one Of the "sirong" heads or ody the two dramatic pars.

this occasion, which spells relief for the weaker heads. However, this characterization of Socrates as indifferent implies two things. Fit, the previous division carries with it an

inclination to drdc heavily or not: the "weak heads" are disinclined to drink heavily, the "strong heads" are inclined to do so, while Socrates is neitkr. Second, Socrates' inciifference suggests that his capacity may be even greater than that of the "strongest

heads," for although even their limit has been reached on account of the previous night's drinking, Socrates' has not. It is not entirely clear whether Eryximachos himself means

that this is so simply because Socrates was not present the night before, or that Socrates is

known more generally for possessing the ability to dnnk a very great deal despite lacking any comsponding inclination to do so. But his complete confidence in predicting Socrates' answer (so that he need not even ask Socrates, though he is sitîing nght there) certainly suggests the latter, and this is confirmed exactly by Aikibiades' description at

220a4: "Though he drank only when he was forced to do so, he was invincible, and yet, what is most nmarkable of dl, no human being has ever seen Socrates dmnk." Socrates

capacity for drinking is therefore to be rated at least equal to that of the "strongest heads"

Eryximachos' classification is, of course, borne out by the conclusion of the dialogue. Aristodemos manages to report the amount of dnnk to which each of our named participants was exposed (with the exception of Pausanias who goes unmentioned):

There was a gened uproar, ail order was abolished, and &ep drinking k a m e the d e . Aristodemus reported that Eryxmachus and Phaednis and some others went away at this point. He himseif feil asleep....Towards daybreak... he woke up, and fond that the rest of the party had either f d e n asleep or gone away, and that the only people still awake were Agathon and Aristophanes and Socrates.... Anstophanes fell asleep k t , and when it was fuUy light Agathon foiiowed hùn. Then Socrates... got up and went away.

(223bM9)

Since Pausanias was not among those who participated for the duration of the Party, he must have "either failen asleep or gone away," like the other "weak heads." In fact, this proves that Pausanias was not to be included with those whom Eryximachos addressed as "you who have the strongest heads," at 176~2.It is therefore comrnon knowledge within this group that t h e of the members have a signifîcantiy higher capacity for wine-

drinking than ail of the rest, namely Aristophanes, Agathon and Socrates. Likewise, it is a given that these three also have ~putationsfor a higher degree of wisdom than the Est:

Aristophanes and Agathon are prize-winning playwrights, while Socrates had already been satirized on stage as a "wise man" (Le., a sophist) eight years befon by none other

than Aristophanes. It is therefore almost certain that Agathon has in mind the notion that one S capacityfor wine drinking is directly proportional to one 's wisdom. When Agathon

says, "We'll settie our respective claims to wisdom a little later on, and Dionysos, the god

of wine, shall judge between us," he means that the wiser of them will outlast the other in a bout of heavy dnnking. Monover, given their respective reptations as cirinkers, he has every nason to think that the contest will eventually corne down to the two of thcm over ail others (as it does) and that Socrates will win (as he does). The only other cornpetitor

who could even possibly give these two a run for their money is Anstophanes

-and he

does so as well, sticking it out aimost until dawn.

Everything about Aristodemos' prologue up to176a4 is therefore preparing us for a drinking contest between Socrates and Agathon, and just such a drinking contest is what

does eventually result fiom Alkiiiades' unpredicted intervention. But because of Pausanias' proposal at 176a5-7, the participants elect early on to suspend heavy drinking

on this occasion, which suggests that Agathon's prediction of a drinkinglwisdom contest will be deniecl, though in fact it is only delayed However, as Aristodemos' and Apo~odonis'narratives impIy,%and as we can weil imagine, there would be little of interest to Socrates' disciples, to philosophers in generd, or to Plato's reading public in the reteiling of the events of a drinking contest alone, regardless of who might have won i t What Apollodorus' fiiends want to hear about and what we want to read about is the speeches on Eros. That is the tnie content and core of this dialogue, but their delivery has

been placed by Plato in the context of what has been described (now, with Agathon's invocation, in emphatic terms) as a dnnking contest. It would seem that, having set us up for a wisdom contest to be adjudicated by means of drinking, Plato must now avert that

drinking temporarily in order that the wisdom at issue might be manifested to his rea&rs in a way more appropriate to his own medium: a written dialogue. In other words, though a drinking contest may be an appropriate measure of wisdom at a readers and Apoilodorus' listeners are not themselves at a

w, Plato's and are not

participating in the dnnking; for S m t e s ' or anyone else's wisdom to be manifest in this dialogue, it must be manifest not in wine but in words. But then, why cast it so strongly

as a drinking contest in the fifit place? We have seen one major reason for Plato's selection of wine as the medium

within which to manifest Dionysos' adjudication of this contest of wisdom: mndsymOPsiPn is a form of the dionysiac in which both of these contestants may

participate equally, and which is not partial to eiüicr of their competing forms of dionysiac discourse. However, thm is more to

than wine-drinking alone. As

The narrators devote about forty-five pages to the speeches, but ody one paragraph to the drinking.

noted above, at the beginning of this essay (210,

possessed their own particular

variety of discourse: especially, erotic praise poetry.r By having Eryximachos propose a series of speeches in praise of -,

Plato replaces one sympotic feature (heavy drinking)

with another that is equaily naturaI for that context, but which effectively transforms

(temporarily) the medium within which the contest of wisdom will take place. It is clear

hom his proposal that Eryximachos has anti-dionysiac intentions. We already know that he has a "weak head" for drink. He next asserts (somewhat cautiously) that "dmnkenness is bad for people" (176d2-3), and when the rest agree to his proposal he goes even further by removing the fl~te-girl~~ and initiating the speechifying. However, it rnight be said that

Eryximachos' selection of a topic for the speeches undermines his own anti-dionysiac

&signs, because sexual desire is just one more element from within the repertoire of means by which Dionysos works his effects upon people. By focusing the night's entertainment on

in order to gratify his beloued,?' Eryximachos demonstrates that

despite his medicai science he is ultimately still subject to the power of this god. His failure to eradicate Dionysos cornpletely gives the god "a fwt in the door," as it were, through which AUcibiades (as Dionysos) will later enter and assume control." '5 Cf. Gentili 89-104. E.g: 'The poetry of Anacmn draws its themes h m the festivities of banquet and symposi-.. The bloom of Bathyiios' youthful beauty. the eyes of Cleoboulos, the blond hair of the Thracian Smerdis, and the gentle disposition of Megistes were recuning themes in the erotic poems dedicated to young men.... The E m s it celebrates...hiad to do with the fomis of iife md coaduct to k encouragecl during the coune of a boy's =tic nlationships. There is a certain symboiîc value to the story that the pet, upon king asked why he composed poems for boys and not hymns to the go&, replieci: 'because it is they who afe my gdds"' (890. The music of the flute is dionysiac, and aids the wine in producing the dionysiac effecu of intoxication. Eryximachos nlatcs how the idea for love-speeches is not his but Phaedms' and says: Y thidc Phaednrs is rïgh~1should therefore iike to gratify him by o f f e ~ him g a contriiution'* (177c4-6). It becornes apparent through AUnbiades' actions and words that it is his erosfir Agathon that brought him here in the h t place (222b-223a).

"

In effect, then, Eryximachos' proposal allows Plato temporady to substitute speech-making for wine-ciriaking -to substimte worhfor whe. Moreover, this evening's fare is no mere erotic praise poeûy: it is speech in praise of the god Ems himseK which means that these speeches will themselves constitute yet another type of

dionysiac nligious discourse, in this case a type suited to the context of the W. But since dionysiac nligious discourse is precisely the realm of expertise within which Somates and Agathon are competing for the designation of most wise, the speeches

become an ideal medium within which to carry on that very contest." The speeches are,

for al1 intents and purposes, equivalent to the medium of wine. This equivalency has k e n estabfished in a number of ways. Fht, there is the actual physical replacement of one by the other: where heavy drinking is supposed to be, it has been excluded and replaced with

speechifying;and when heavy wine-dnnking resumes, the speechimng comes to an end. Second, the or&r of the speeches corresponds to the order in which the participants bow

out of the drinking, with Aristophanes, Agathon and Socrates, respectively, coming last." Third, the speeches in praise of E

m are, like wine,a third dionysiac medium, distinct

from both dramatic poetry and Socrates' philosophical talk and hence unbiased? Fourth,

"

Tbat the participants themselves view the s p e e c m g as a type of coatest is confirmai by Socrates own words (at 194a1-4,198b-d,199bl-2). This also is to k expected as a normal feature of sympotic practice: 'Thus the logos ~ynipotikos,at a certain point in the gatheting, cornes to assume the d e of a contest, a demonsttation wbich each m e m k is expected to make of his abüity and his tecMcPI and executive capacities" (Pellizer 179). 30 ALkiiades is in every way an exception to these smicairer. He is technically not part of either contest, as he eIects to praise Socrates rather than and he is already quite dnink when he arrives; his role as judge wouid preclude thai possibilty in any case. Also, no mention is made of what happens to himat the end of the Party.

a

31

reqaisite neutrality of ihis form of discoune explains a great deal. F i and foremost, it tells us what the speeches are nor: they are not examples of tragedy or comedy, nor are they examples of "philosophicaltaik."They are a form distinct h m all of these, so that no matter how much any speaker might import to his speezh from his own profession (e.g., AriStophanes and iaughter at 189b6-7;Socnites and elnichas.with Diotima; etc.). none of these speeches is a product of those PM~~SS~OIS. Aristophams is not defiering comedy h m , nor is Agathon

Aikibiades, the d m k e n judge of the contest of wisdom (which Agathon had emphatically

identifïed as a drinking contest), awards his crowns on the bais of their respective abilities with wordr. And finaily there is Socrates' curious ability to drink vast quantities

of wine without getting dmnk; this last point requires a more detailed accounting. As Thomas Godd was perhaps the first to point out

aAn~ient230-231), and

as Anderson agrees (1 1,103-lW), Socrates' unique capacity for wine-drinking is open to two opposite interpretations: either Socrates is immune to wine because he is immune to the power of Dionysos (and hence is a "creahire of Apollo," in Anderson's words), or he

is immune to it because he is always already possessed by Dionysos (and hence is a "creahue of Dionysos"), so that no amount of wine can make him more dmnk than he

always already is. Anderson opts for the iatter interpretation on the grounds that Wabiades, as Dionysos, describes Socrates as a satyr and as Marsyas -the dninken cornpanions of Dionysos -so this attribution of wine-imrnunity which is borne out in fact becomes "a case of the god claiming his own" (1û4). Anderson is nght hem, in a

sense; but there must be more to it than that, as Gould had argued before him. An obvious objection to Anderson's argument is that Socrates sirnply does not act a s if he were drunk

-he does not stagger when he walks, saimmer and slur his spech, behave wildly, for delivering tragedy nor Socrates philosophy. These are praise-speeches spoken at a the entertainment of an audience of fnnids not a pubüc theatrical event and not an intimate conversation. This gives the lie to aU of the diverse and complex attempts in the üterature to define these speeches in pncisely the tams of Attic drama, usualiy in order to resolve fhe end-ricidie. We should expezt confision of the issue to k the naairal result of those attempts (as Sider perhaps illustrates best of a& cf.above, 81). Agathon might have been invited to mite a speech h m his winning tragedy, but he is not; Socrates might bave b e n dowed to engage in philosophicai taik, but he is not. Rather, each i s cornpelleci to adopt a cornmon form that effixtively pua him out of his own elemenî, and if is on& becme of ùuit that they c m be measured a g a d euch other. We may weil expect that aspects of their profèssioas is what will explain success and failure for the participants in this speakîng-competiiioo, but that is not the same thing as assnmingî h t their respective pr0feSSion.sare king exemplified in the speeches that they give.

-

sluggishly or inapppriately, and so on. By contriut, Alkibiades. who is dnmk and wh6 is (ex hypothesi) possessed by the god, does also obviousIy uppear to be drunk. So what sense does it make to Say that Socrates is always dru& in this same way? The substitution, or equivalency, that Plato has set up between dionysiac words and dionysiac wine makes it possible to conceive of Socrates as being, in a sense, perpetually "dr~nk."~'

We have already discussed Alkibiades' description of Socrates as Iike a satyr-figurine that

opens up to nveai images of the gods: Somites has gods inside of him, and those gods are also in his words -his philosophical tak (1389. Alkibiades in effect clairns that Socrates is perpetually in a state of "enthousiasmas" (of having god within km).But

enthousiasmasis none other than the state which differentiates between mere drunkenness, and genuine possession by Dionysos? By means of the divine words that

fiil up, and emanate from, his person, then, Socrates is possessed by Dionysos in a way that is for al1 intents and purposes equivalent to possession by wine, but without the wine.

He is b'word-dnink," possessed by dionysiac discourse. And because he is always already

genuinely

(withwords), wine has no eff't upon him. F i t Eryximachos and then

Alkibiades stresses Socnites' uniqueness in this regard: he is so indifferent to dnnking

that he need not even be consulted on the question of whether to dnnk or not; and no

human king has ever seen him dnmk. This immunity to wine is so singular because it is part of Socfates' other, more primary, singularity which is revealed in Alkibiades' speech: he bas climbed up to a higher level of existence than that occupied by the men around

a Gouid does not nddnss this equivaience?but treats it ail as purely metaphoncal (230231).

R d &O the analogy of Socrates and Marsyas, whereby the '*philosophicaltaik" of Socrates is SimüarIy identifid with raptmus nate music (the v a y son of music that was banished, almg with wine, by Eryxhachos).

him -a level that is closer to g d Wine, therefore, cannot exert its usual effect on Socrates and bnng him into contact with goci, as it can for other men; on the contrary, it is Socrates' words that act iike wine in possessing the souls of others, bringing them even if only for the duration of a conversation -up to his Ievel.

This substitution of words for wine by Eryximachos, followed by the resubstitution of wine for words by Aikibiades, means that the contest between Agathon and Socrates is played out twice, once in each medium, with,apparently, identicai results.

Aikibiades' crowning of both Agathon and Socnites as "victorious with words," but with Socrates more so, corresponds to their ais0 king the two men who outdnnk al1 of the others, with Socrates finally outdrinking Agathon as well. However, we have seen already how this is a contest of more than just the respective degrees of wisdom of these two men: by thtir contrast they symbolize the opposition between the public religious discourse of Delphic/Homeric religion (Agathon), and the private religious discourse of orphiclbacchic mystery-religion sar rate^).^ When Plato has Dionysos give Socnites the victory here, he cannot but be pnoritizing these two discourses: the orphidbacchic mystery-religion of Socrates' philosophical talk LF bener, and to no small degrce. The absolute terms in which Socrates' victory is described (complete irnmunity to wine; a

godlike core beneath his unappealing exterior; "not just thc other &y, iike Agathon, but ulways") make that victory so complete that the god is, in effect, saying, "No contest!"

"

Again, let me stress here as in the previous chapter that 1do not mean to descni mystety cuits pcr se as a separate religion; Burkert has demonstratedthat mysienes were just an experimental cult-option that developed n a W y out of the votive character of DelphicMomenc religion itself. Thne is, therefore, no Greek "mystery reIigion," per se. However, in combination wîth Orphism, the bacchidpythagorean mystery cults absorkd a religious impulse foreign and opposed to the Delphic/Homexic, making it appropriate and even necessary in tbis case to speak of a distinct religious discome in these mysteries-

Yet this does not mean that Plato intends Socrates' religious discourst to supplmt Agathon's, or even that Plato believes it ought to supplant Agathon's, the way so many interpreters of this dialogue have concluded fiom Socrates' victory. That would be a fallacy based on the false premise that Agathon and Socrates are engaged in the same activity, which they are not. We saw in the pnvious chapter how Socrates' discourse was

necessarily a discourse of the few: it is quite simply beyond the reach of most people (Diotima even wondered whether it was beyond the nach of Socrates). To Say that Plato intends Socrates' talk (or philosophy) to become the single new religious discoune for everyone would be tantamount to depriving most people of religion altogether, or even inciting them to atheism. If the many (oi nobAo\) are to have religion at al1 then it must be in terms that they cm understand and to which they can relate

-Le., not philosophy.

There must therefore aiways be these two religious discourses in the g&, one for the many and one for the few (the philosophers). Plato has shown us the crowning of both Agathon and Socrates, with priority going to S m t e s ; yet both remain crowned, and both

an "wisei' than al1 othen. Agathon has earned his "crown-of-the-many" in the theatre; Socrates his "crown-of-the-few" in conversation with those he loves, such as .Wbiades. Plato thereby establishes the validity and the necessity of both types of discourse, but problematizes the relariomhip between them.

This resuit of our analysîs (that the chief significance of the contest between Agathon and Socrates lies in the prioritizîng of philosophy over tragedy qua foms of religious cult and discourse, albeit with both remaining equally necessary) is given more substance through Pausanias' articulationof a precisely similar distinction of cults in his speech on Ems. In contrast to Phaednis, who spoke of Eros as if he were singular,

Pausanias says there are two Erotes, one comsponding to each of the two ~phrodites:~' Now what are the two Aphrodites? One is the elder and is the daughter of Uranus and had no mothw, her we c d Heavenly [06pav'with its strongiy negative comotations, so too both '&mg$' and *'bandemosn in Greek.

the cornpanion of the elder ~phrodite? But it is dso these most obvious meanings of the two epithets tbat puts them so clearly into relation with the Socrates-Agathon contrast.

Agathon's is a publiccult discourse addressed to the entire ppliS, including Socrates, and Somtes makes this very explicit: "We were in the theatre, you know, and part of the audience of ordinary people [rhv noAA6vI" (194~4-5).Hence, Agathon's cult and discourse is literaily "pandemic," in that it is inhekntly pblic and-dl-inclusiveof the

citizenry. On the other hanci, according to Pausanias, the

Eros is that which

animates the gwd lovers (ayu0oi); it is clearly the better of the two Erotes. And though in the case of Aphrodite, the name "-'

naturally implies "bom from Ouranos,"

the word more generally means "heavenly," since "

was also"the Greek word for

~

the sky and the heavens. Pausanias is therefore using the epithet ''= primarily as

a positive value-terni: as an epithet applied both to the god Eros and to the love he inspires in men,the word connotes something more like "üans-human,"or "close to god." It is in that sense that it most clearly corresponds to Somtes' variety of religious

cult and discourse. Finally, Pausanias' caveat that "we ought to praise al1 the gods" afflrms that both of these cults are legitimate and demand recognition and praise -even the worse of the two which, according to Pausanias, is responsible for less-than-virtuous

behaviour. We have perhaps now said as much as can be said about the contest between

Agathon and Socrates in strictiy religious terms, but if so then still it is quite a lot. Plato

has actually provided his reader with a great ded of information in this regard. If this has

not been adequately appreciated in the lïterature before now then it is almost certainly on -

- -

"Being the daughter of Onranos, this Aphrodite (Hesiod) is a generation older 16an Zeus, whiIe the other account (Homet) would make Pandemic Aphrodite the daughter of Zeus.

account of the unwillingness of most interpreters to take PIato's association of Socrates with the dionysiac at face value. Once we have made the connection between Socrates'

philosophical talk and bacchic mystery-cult initiation. the cult-contrast with Agathon

emerges naturally out of their contest of wisdom and is then reiterated in several different aspects of the text, as we have shown. Socrates' victory in this contest of "wisdom" then canies with it the apparent implication that his heterodox account of divinity is true, while the Homeric/Delphic myths that he fin& so unpalatable arefa~se? The p i c m that

this paints is the picture of a proMem, specifically, the problem that Plato must then overcome by means of the doctrine of eros that finally emerges from the series of

speeches. It is the problem of the CO-existenceof two distinct religious discourses within one and the same community. One discourse is exotenc and public, and extends to all citizens who al2 partake of it; the other is esotenc and pnvate, and extends only to those few citizens who are capable of meeting its very high demands, and who also participate simultaneously in the public discourse. In what sense can two such cults be compatible?

In what sense can there be peace between them?How can it be possible for one person to be committed simultaneously to what are, essentially, n ~ distinct o religions? These are ways of phrasing the problem that Plato has set himself the task of addressing in the

.-

It is the problem of Socrates' life

-of his guilt or innocence on the charges

for which he was condemned And, ultimately, it is the problem of whether philosophy -

Socrates' incompatibe hetedoxy is displayed clearly in Euthyphro: "Indeed, Euthyphro. this W the reason why 1 am a defendant in the case. because I G d it harâ to accept thmgs iike tbat king said about the go&, and it is lkely to be the reason why 1SM k told I do wrong" (6a5-8). Just such an opposition is. of course, &O the d t of Gould's analysis of Plato's Dionysos into 'hnro" gods, one mie and one false (above, Chapter One ib.10). But what Gould overIwks is precîsely the political probiem that this opposition gives rise to, as if 6is so-cded %ad" Ems were simply disposabIe.

can ever W y be integrated within society, or whether it is doorned to be forever at odds with it. It is this embedding of the bbAgathon/Somites-c~n~tT' within Pausanias' speech that will allow Plato to approach the problem by means of the doctrine of eros, because Pausanias' distinction of the two Erotes will be taken up and developed in tun by

Eryximachos and Anstophanes in very different terms. Pausanias is therefore the chief point of contact between the dionysiac context of the speeches on Eros and the actual content of those speeches themselves. Accordingly, the continuing development of this

contrast (Pausanias' dual Eros) by the later speakers can be translated back into the original tems of the contrasting dionysiac religious discounes of tragedy and philosophy.

In the foilowing chapter. we shall begin to show how such a translation might be done, and what it has to tell us.

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- Chapter Four &mp~& and ~ M.The Problem Pushed to a Crisis

We have seen how the depiction of somatic philosophy as a mystery cult (Ch2)

and the contest by which it is so expiicitly contrasted with tragedy (Ch3) both draw attention to the potential for political and religious confiict between philosophy and the

*.

But something that has never been adequately appreciated is the extent to which

Plato's choice of a

for the context of this dialogue acnially aggravates that

opposition. In Athens in the classical period the

had become an

institutionalized form of resistance to the democracy -largely symbolic, but in some cases real.' In this regard, one could Say that it served a political function exactly opposite

to that of tragedy and the pplis- festival^:^ whereas those institutions posited an ideology of unity and integration (and the equality of ail citizens as citizens) against the tradinonal

preeninence of the aristocrars, the

was a predominantly aristocratie forum

within which to maintain the aristoctatic sense of superionty and difference against the This does not contraâict the aforementioaed neutnüty of the vis-à-vis hagedy and mysteries, because that issue concemecl the impartiality of the god, and in tragedy and mysteries the cuit itseif was necessariiy eitheraIi-mclusive or exclusive. respectively.Though most in fact SM with the dionysiac its exclusion of the many, that exclusion was an and not inherent in its dionysiac character. 'The many" couid accidental feantre of the just as legitimately as "the few," but generally they did and did hold theu own dionysiac so to a much lesser degree, and in imitation of the nch. There are even cases of pubüc buildings simultaneoasly as part of publicly fhded cult designecl to accommodate many srnail events, The wodd also have been much less prominent (or nonexistent) in demotic as a i e d t of the poorer citizeus' inabüity to handle the cousequemes of nibseqnmt iitigation. See Meier, as discussed above. 167f.

prevaiing dmocmticpolitics of the age.3In Oswyn Murray's words,

The fundamental potential for opposition between drinking group and democracy is clear. However much the fifth-century demaracy might try to provide pubüc ctining-rooms and public occasions for feasting, the symposion remained IargeIy a private and aristocratie preserve; but the social attitudes which it existed to promote requiredpublic display. This was provided by the komos, the ritual drunken not at the end of the synzposion, performed in public with the intention of dernonstrating the power and lawlesmess of the dnnking group. (Murray. 'The Affaii' 14%)

The

of fifih-cenniry Athens were thus home to "drinking-groups" with

predominantly aristocratie memberships. These groups were bent on violating both the etiquette and the laws of the city, be it just for fun, for political results, or to mate a bond

of dminality (a pisfiS), and it was out of these dnnking-groups that the farnous "poiitical clubs" (or hetainiai)of fifth-century Athens amse.' Consequently, "to the fifth-century

Athenian [theatre] audience, the symposion is an alien world of licence and misbehaviour,

far removed h m the decorous religious or philosophical group envisaged by

Murray (''Sympotic History" 7): 'The symposion became in many respects a place apart h m the normal d e s of society, with its own strict code of honour in the pistis there created, and its own willhgness to estabtish conventions fundameutally opposed to those within the polis as a whole." Following the ltad of Brno Gentili and othen (rnainiy in Italy) who have been investigating the oral context of Greek lysic poetry since the late ninetan-sixties, a considerable number of scholars have in recent years begun to thmw new light on the nature and the signEcance of the as an important and multi-faceted social phenornenon. Perhaps fonmost amongst these is Oswyn Murray,editor of an excellent collection of ment essays 0. Though most of this r a m t work has Little h c t i y to do with Plato's some of it cm be brought to bear very fniimilly on our hterpretation of the dialogue: 'Despite the enonnous significance of Plato's S'posiwn within the classicai tradition, the tradition itself betrays k t e d understanding of Greek sympotic customs" (Murray, "Sympotic History" 8). We have alnady had several occasions to refa to M m y and his contriOutors, and shall continue to do so in what foiiowsSympotic activities were instrumental in fosterîng the communal identities of the rnatched betairripi, the irnporîance of this facîorcan be seen in that the typical size of the the d g capacity of îhe standard Greek dining room, o r e . '%rithtwo to a couch, an d r o n wiiI normaiiy hold ktwan fourken and ihirty persons. Any larger numba of couches tends to isolate the members of the symposion fhm each other, and to maLe impossible the communal activities characteristic of it. The size of the group and of the space within which it operaied had an important effect on the nature of the p u p loyaities and the formation of the hgt&&' (Mumy, "Sympotic-tory'' 7; P e k , 180, linLsthis to the normativïty of sympotic Bergquist covers the anhaeological evidcnce).

m,

Xenophanes" (Murray,"The Mair"150). If, however, we wish to employ the historical insight of Murray and othea inio

Athenian sympotic traditions as a basis from which to investigate Plato's &Q&UI,

an

objection witl ahost certainly be raised at the outset, namely, that Plato, unIike our twentieth-century scientific investigators of the

w, has an ethical program and

prescriptive purposes behind his writing. As a result, when Plato writes of

m,in

or eisewhere, it is precisely Xenophanes' "decorous" type of event that he

the

that may have been standard

does have in mind and not this raucous mode1 of

practice in the Athens of his own &y. If so, then we should hesitate before attributing to Plato's discussion or portraya1 of

any implication of these sorts of political

connotations. It is, of course, well known that in the objectionable features of the standard

itself Plato mitigates the

and replaces them with a more

eniightened, intellechial fan.This agrees with what he has Socrates Say in other dialogues.' In the ,

for instance, Socrates actually refers directly to the

dnnking-parties of the scrambling of political cliques with flute-girls

while reviewing the features of the philosopher: 'The

for office; social functions, dinners, parties

-such doings never enter his head even in a ciream (173d)!

Taken

together with many other passages scattered ihrough the dialogues where Socrates alludes

347~-348aTecugan writes: "Onemay be surprisecl at finding how Cf esp. constantiy Piaio refened to the symposion thughout his writings, endeavouring to make judgemenîs on or even to corne to iums with it... The impact of the symposion on Plato's thought b one more proof of the important part which this institution played m the Greek worid" (238). It is noteworthy that atjust tbis point in the , while reviewhg the characteristicsof philosophers as such, Thedorus maices the foiiowing conmt: "ûur arguments are our own....We have no jury, and no audience (as the ciramatic poeis have), Sitting in control over us. ready to criticize and give orders" (173~).Both junes and audiences r e p e n t the power of the

-.

to drinking parties, sometimes in more positive te=, alternative account of a "philosophical -,"

this betrays an underlying, and may with some confidence be

put down as Plato's own conception of what a drinking party ought to be? We ought,

more as an idealized projection by Plato back ont0 this event

then, to take the

many years before of a fom that would have rendered it amenable to Socrates' participation, than as simply a reiteration of the normal (but thoroughly unsocratic) that would actually have been ükelier. And, acc&dingly, we should expect very linle historical reality in Plato's portrayal, so that ment sociological or anthropological

analyses of the histoncal institution of the Gnek

(such as Murray's) would be

of littie devance. In other words, since Socrates says (in the )philosopher would not even ciream of attending the

that the

of m, or of getting

involved with the things that concem them, but then participates willingly in Agathon 's, is an idealized depiction suited to Plato's

we should infer that the

philosophicai purposes, and that it will therefore exclude any and al1 refiection of the political machinations of the

m.For that reason, we must eschew concrete

historical examples in our interpretation of the

and concentrate instead on the

text itself, within which Plato has constnicted his f a n t a s y - w according to his

prescribed sympotic reforms.

This objection rnight aU be well and good8were it not for the fact that Plato

'

For an investigationof Plaîo's treatment of the ouiside of the svrnwsium, see Tecqan, who argues for a developmentai thesis moving k m lofty ideais of intelleauai in hû early works, to a resigned acceptance of the usefulnessof irrationaiism in the bbconstitution

for-

ofLgyySI&IL

* Might a i l be well and good, but iikely ïs not Just because Plato has restrictedtbe

drinking and the physical activities and sîrengthened the inteliechml element, that gives us no nason to mfcr that he intends to reject the W e r fiinctioa and signif7cance of the institution. To understand Plato's sympotic refonns we need to how what the mformed was all

himself has unequivocally imported the concerns and activities of the

and their

by giving Alkibiades a major role in very

dnnking parties directly into the

close historicd proximity to the infamous "flair of the rnystene~."~ This is not to Say that Plato intended to portray Agathon's party as an example of the typical

w, so that

we should be on the look-out for political plots and machinations amongst these very

participants and their speeches, nor even that these friends of Agathon's constitute a

repuiar "drinking group." Rather, this particular W. while more ''XenophanicW than most on account of Eryximachos' proposais (and hence more compatible with Plato's own ideais), is nonetheless put into direct r r l a t i ~ nw 'i ~th those other Athenian that we h o w to have been occurring at about the same time

Akibiades as a prominent participant

-also with

-which were very shortly both to min Aikibiades'

about, and that is what these new stuclies intend to @fi. P e W r writes: 'Tt seems to me worth rememkring tbat the first philosopher to attempt to give an organic definition of the symposion was not unaware of the distinctive qualities and the ambiguities -which are peculiar to i and which define it precisely in relation to the reaim of the passions....[O]ne could formulate in G m k texmhology a syntbesis and definition of the symposion, which would be very close to the long discussion which Plato devotes to it in... the Lmvs: it is @ipparov @opou,and pAéq jbov fjç....m bis type of exercise...WUbe able to be mon satisfactorily understood within the perspectiveof a semiotic study of the passions in aocient Greece" (183). In other words, Plato's is not much different h m that of modem scholan, understanding of th fuoction of the are even cast in terms of that very functionality. It is mistaken, then, to and his reforms in the '%am scratch" such that we can just assume that Plato is inventhg his philosophical ignore traditional forms and look entirely to the pages of Plato's dialogues to uuderstand hU sympotic ideaIs. puts this Piato's choice of Agathon's nrJt victory for the dramatic date of the dialogue's main events either five or seventeen months prior to the desecration of the h e m . The Atheniau calendar year 416/15BCEmetches h m Iuly 416 to June 415; thus the ciramatic date of the Agathon's victory placed in January of "416" by Athenaeus 217b. would appear to k just five months *or to the expedition andjust days or weelu pnor to the appointment of 1Ukiiiades as generd (Febniary 415). Dover' however, ~ f e tno this reconstruction as "a persistent enor in modeni discussions of [the svrnwsiuml that has o b s c d that interval" (EIB1P 9nl). Instead, Dover would place ~gauiofl'svictory at the Lenaia of 4Wl6,and hence "[Aikiiiades'] appointment as one of the generais of the Sicüian Expedition Iies over a year ahead" (9111)For . datuig of the events of 415 themselves see Mad)oweii 181489. Io KnoWmg of the proximity of these events, the reader will natudy be on the look out for any indication by Plato of Allaiiades' infamous profiillations, even at this W.

-

political career and bring Athens to the brink of civil war. The events of the summer of 415 BC [Le., the &air of the mysteries] in Athens affecteci the lives of many individuals for the next twenty years; and, in the larger political view, they cm be held to have k e n ultimately responsible for the f d of the Athenian empire, in that they opened up a fatal bnach of misîrust in Athenian political life, between the dems and its traditional aristocratie leaders. This revelation of the potential existence of a me class stniggle in Athens Ied directly to the defensive oügarchic leaction of 4 11 BC. (Murray, "The Affair" 149) Where, after dl. is Alkibiades comingfrom when he arrives at Agathon's party if not one

of those un-socratic and un-philosophical

-perhaps even one of the very

at which he profaned the Eleusinian rnystenes? By his previous participation in

on the same evening, he effectively imports an image

the more typical kind of

of that other kind of party into Agathon's, and thereby establishes the contrast between

hem; by then making hirnself the

.-

he even goes on to transfm Agathon's

party into something more like the typical kind." In mding this dialogue, therefore, we need to remember that unlike dl of ihose other places where Plato also discusses

outside of the ,-

this dialogue portrays a putatively historical event

involving well-hown personages at a notorîous juncnire in Athenian history. This makes a special case and gives it a context in which the features of historical

the

fom an alrnost palpable backdrop. The so-calied "affair of the mystenes" foilowed closely upon the notonous

mutilation of the herms in the days leading up to the departure of the Athenian force to

" Xt is perhaps most notewonhy that Plat03 ideaiized conception of the philosophicai

gives no role to the kpmpp,the one aspect of the typical svmwQion that set it most violentiy agaînst the peace of the community.Appropnately, Agathon's SVmWSi0n does not end in a either, but carries nght on through to dayIight. It was, however, by means of a that Alkilbiades anivecl there h m his earlier party.

a

Sicily in 415 se. In a single night, almost ali of the herms12in Athens were defaced, a

tremendous act of sacrilege that was initially thought to have required as many as three hundred participants. According to Thucydides, the matter of the h e m was, 'thought to

be ominous for the expedition, and part of a conspiracy to bring about a revolution and to upset the democracy" (VI, 27). The resultant draconian measures taken by the state failed to rwt out any conspiracy, however, and though testimony was indeed heard that implicated a number of

in a unified action aimed at destabilizing the

govement. the official story finally accepted by the board of inquiry was that the entire mutilation was just the nsult of excessive enthusiasm on the part of a single drinking

group of twenty-two men, in a

a. NI members of that drinking group were subject

to death or exile for the crime (except Andokides, who was granted ùMiunity in retum for testimony). Certainty in this matter has eluded modern investigators as much as it did the ancients, but more important for our study is that the mutilations led to the creation of

"what became in effect an official commission of inquiry into the activities of sympotic groups" (Murray, ''The Aff&" Mg), with the result that the investigation was extended to address other sacrilegious acts that might be related to these in any way. It was in this

extended capacity that the board heard testimony to the effect that the Eleusinian mystenes had been profaned at a number of different

held in a number of

different hou~eholds.'~

'*Herms are stylized statues of Hennes used (among other things) to mark property boundanes. 13Evidence has survived of five separate lists of participants (Le., of five distinct gmups of profaners) with no overlap berneen gmups but for the foilowing: Alki'biades occm on thm of the lis& as a participant, Poulytion on one Lict as a participant and another as housebolder (Muray,The Affair" 153-155; three of the Lisu are disclosed by Andokides 13,35-37;15,21024; 35,22026. Mad)oweii M y discusses the events). The evidence suggests that the= may have been othex Iists of nidicmimts in addition to these that have d v e d , and that even amongst these five

AMbiades was accused of participating in both the mutilation of the herms and the profanation of the mysteries. but while he was quickly exonerated of the former, the

latter charge stuck and proved to be his undoing. The crime was punishable by death or exile; added to those penalties was a stem curse from the priesthood at Eleusis. That the charges were politically motivated is taken for granted by Thucydides, and scholars tend to agree, but stili there seems to be littie doubt about Alkibiades' guilt. Nonetheless. in the shift h

m the mutilation of the herms to the affair of the mysteries the threat of an

anti-democratic conspiracy was lost. That threat is what had driven the investigation to uncover the existence of the profanations in the first place. Once discovered, the

profanations were prosecutcd as serious offences in their own right, but in ail likelihood they wcre not motivated by desias against the constitution. Murray rejects the thesis

forwarded by Dover and others that these sacrilegious acts were done in the spirit of humour, as a type of sympotic entertainment. Rather, he traces the sacxilege to the underlying social function of the

itself, a thesis that has many lesser exarnples

in its favour (The Affair" 157); this particular act of profanation would then be an extrernely daring example of a general sympotic pattern. Unüke the sympotic kQmPi(and the smashing of the herms) which were public displays intended to send a political

message, these private acts of sadege were a type of bravado interna1 to the

itself, by which means the participants could self-indulgently flaunt the extremity of their

groups there may have been many repeated instances of the crime. One of the events was said to have been held m Akibiades' house. Of the sixty-eightprofaners whose names have corne down to us. only four of them were among those condemned for the mutiIations. which suggests that the N O affiairs were m fact not relaied. Wheîher or not the testirnonies of the informers can be . considered trustwoahy, "it was clearly believed...that the Mysteries had been profaned on a number of Merent occasions, in what were evidently sympotic situations" (Murray, 'The Affaii' 15s).

disregard for social n o m : [SJuchacts are not done for a political purpose; they are done in Thucydides' words, 64' uppe~,through contempt for the gods and for the ordinary conventions of society; they demonstrate 'an undemocratic contempt for the laws', an OZ bqpon~finapavopia (Thuc.6.28.2). Yet they were never intended to become public knowledge. ("The Affair" 158)

Murray sees important parallels with aristocratie clubs in seventeenth- and eighteenthcentury England, that flaunted their atheism and even dabbled in Satanism in a stnkingly

similar fashion. Such sacrilege as this, he says, '%an exist oniy in a society which believes

in God, and within a group which is not entùely sure that it does not believe. It is a defiant gesture directed towards God as much as man,daring Him to punish and half expecting Hirn to do so" (158). Ultimately. whatever motivated the profanations is less

important than what the whole &air reveals about the relationship of the sympotic groups to the

aof which they were ostensibly a part. The people of Athens suspected these

groups of being hostile to the state, and the

of king the locus of an active

resistance to the demucratic constitution. To destroy Allcibiades, his political opponents needed do no more than implicate him in the sacrilegious activities of these groups. Having failed to do that in the openly threatening case of the hem,'*they were able to ride the crest of public paranoia and employ extraordinary legal mesures to mot out

something else offensive of which he (apparently) redy was guilty.

The effects, however, were more fat-reaching than merely to displace a single poiitical leader. If, as Murray has argued, "This revelation of the potential existence of a mie class struggle in Athens led directly to the defensive oligarchie reaction of 411 ec," -

'*~hue is, of course. a possibilty that the mutiiation of the henns was perpetratedby Alki'biades' political opponents precisely in order that he be accused of responsibility. hplicit here is the demotic fear that Auobiades intended COseize power in Athens while m cornmand of the expeditionary forces and set himself up as a tyrant.

then it may weil have been this political manipulation of the public distrust of the drinking groups that initially f'ractured the political unity of the Athenian ppliS and prepared the way for increasingly violent civil strife, and eventually, outright civil wad5

In such a historical context as this, no

can be without political significance,

because even ifd that the participants themselves had in mind was to get together with frieads for a hannless,' delightful celebration (as at Agathon's), still that celebration was private. Beyond the closed doors of the

was an ever more feamil and watchful

public that was suspicious of the possible intrigue and hostile designs at work within. And, of course, few

really were just harmless, delightful celebrations like

Agathon's. By choosing for the setting of his dialogue a

celebrated during this

temse period of crisis in recent Athenian history, Plato brings the historical disintegration .

of the Athenian pplig into the ambit of the dialogue's problematic; by inserting Alkibiades as a character, he then draws that issue into the foreground. Once again, then, Plato places before his readers a clash between two opposed sub-groupings of the PQLiS, one of them "the few" (in this case the aristpi, or the nobility) and the other "the many" (in this case the

a, or the poor), and impiicitly raises the question of how it is

possible for such oppositions to coexist within the pPlis. Alternatively, we might say that Plato is asking whether a city that contains such divisions as this c m ever constitute a genuine political community. Plato's use of the

thus reiterates the same sort of conflict that we saw

emerging between Socrates and Agathon, but now in exclusively political r e m and with In this regad, it is worth nohg that the oiigarchy of 411 BC, wîth its infamous "death sqaads," was organized precisely by a coilaboration(svnamosial of-as was f d to be the case in 415; though as M m y saggests, this may as n e t y have been a proâuct of the prosecutions of 415, as their vindication.

a different constituency: in both cases (syrnpotic

m,and dionysiac thiaspg)we are

presented with a small subset of the citizenry forming itself into a private union with

interests potentialiy incompatible with those of the polis,16 thereby effectively challenging the authority and the integrity of the ppliS itself. While the

connotes

and inwduces the conflict between rich and poor, Plato's metaphoncal description of philosophy as a c u l t ~Though . ~ ~ neither

presents the religious confiict between ecstatic and pragmatic nor

was necessarily hostile to the pPlis, the

potential for hostility was then, and was keenly felt by the public. Plato was well schooled in the political intransigence of both conflicts. For the former, he had his own experience of the Peloponnesian War, which had revealed the fiagiüty of the "social contract" between nch and poor in the Greek cities;18for the latter, he had the example of

the Pythagoreans. By posing the same problem repeatedly, not only as political and religioics, but also as discursive (via the contest between Agathon's poetry and Socrates'

philosophical talk), Plato would appear to be problematizing the very possibility of a With regard to the W.Murray ~ r i t e of s Andokides' testimony: TertainLy the and the means of cementing them are well atteste& hportance of the ties of loyalty in the not least in the manner in which Andalcides had to defend himseif at fength against the accusation that he had ktmyed his hetairpi; he taiks of 'the most temale misfortune of ail' (1.51), the choice on the one h d , and, on the other, his famiiy and his city" ('The Affaii' 153, between his Muüay's emphasis). Likewise, it is now weil know how the autonomy of the dionysiac 298). and that the made it ''autitheticai in various rrspecu to the ppiis" (Seaford, appropriation of dionysiac religion by the g& essentiaiiy consisted in the means of co-opting that autonomy. As Burkea writes, with regard to the ultimate failure of Pythagoreanism: 'It was evidently the ovmidiag power of the polis with its thomugh military and politicai organization that did not tolerate sects but upheld the c l a h to furnish the pRmary reference system for any 'we/they' dichotomy"("Craft" 22). By "ecstatic"1mean to mdicate the doctrine of human participation in the divine (a feanut sband by the dionysiac mystay cdis, orphic or otherwise); by "pragmatic," 1mean the mutuai exclusiveness of human and divine that h typical of HomeridDelphic religion. fiom the I8 Consider esp. Socrates* following description of the Greek Tach of ihem is a geat many cities, nota city, as they say in the game. At any rate, each of them consists of two cities at war with one another, that of the poor and that of the nch, and each of these contains a great many" (422e-42%). l6

"

genuine political community that contains sub-groupingswith radicaily distinct interests, abilities or commitments. But by the very nature of Plato's compIex presentation in the ,-

these

three logically distinct versions of the problem are not left entirely separate but are

poetically superimposed. We have seen (Ch2)how Plato has metaphoncaily identified Socrates' philosophical talk with the nligious experience of dionysiac possession, thereby also identimng the dionysiac '"few" of the

with the intellectual "few"

who are both capable of, and drawn towards, dialectical inquiry. This suggests a type of defined by philosophical ability and inclination. Alkibiades' "secret" address to his fellow "snake-bite" victims then cornes very close to identifying the membenhip of bat particular philosophical fhiaspswith the participants at Agathon's svmwçion:

Seeing too that your compmy consists of people like Phaedms, Agathon, Eryximachus, Pausanias, Aristodemus, as well as Anstophanes, not to mention Socrates hirnself, people who have al1had your share in the madness and bnyof philosophy -well, you s h d hear what happened....As for the servants and any other vuigar and uninitiated persons who may be present, they must shut their ears tight against what 1am going to Say. (218a7-218b7)

Though some non-philosophers are indeed present, they are certainly not prominent participants and Alkibiades even lumps them together with the slaves.19This effectively locates the philosophical the impression of a

here within the bounds of this drinking party, creating that is at the same time coextensive with a sacrîlegious

m.20 This impression is ieinforced by the presence of othcrs who participated in the l9 It is this off-hand refetence to the slaves thaî makes the dusion to his profanations a caiainty, for it was infamously on the testimony of slaves thiiî the profmations were fint revealed

and Alktiiiades later convictedis beside the point Neither is it, That Agathon's Party is,Bfat, clearly not an m faet, a it is the impression created by these coineidences that counts. To the pubïc at are identical in their assertion of an a-poLiticai Iarge, these dirre (phiiosophy, via its and &&&via its "undernocratic autonomy: philosophy via its logif,

"

a,

e,

infamous profanations: not only Allabiades but Phaednis and EQximachos were also

among those convicted -aU together, three of the six speakers in the -."

By

superimposing the three conflicts in this way, Plato is able poetically to associate philosophy with the 'Tfew"end of each of them. He thereby implicates for it not only a method of logical discourse (dialectic, or "philosophical talk") but a religious distinction (baccheia or

m) and, at the same time, an aristocratie stance (heraireia).

At this point we can not help but recall the description of the just society from

Book IV of the

m,which explicitly recommends a rigid (but not hereditary) caste

system based on aptitude for the thne basic divisions of labour. There,the highest (and by far the smaliest) class is the caste of ruling philosophers, who are distinguished by their superior moral and intellectual capabilities, and ultimately by their success at

employing dialectic (the fundamental method of philosophical discome). These ruling philosophm conml al1 foms of public discome as well, even dictating the popular mythologies. Moreover, their intellection places them in the most intimate contact with divinity that is possible for human beings, i.e.. knowledge of the Fonn of the Gwd (a

religious, or quasi-nligious, experience that is n a W y denied to a i l non-philosophes). The phüosophy-caste of the

thus exhibits the essential features of each of the

three npnsmtatives of "the few" in the :-

polirifally, they possess the social

preeminence of a genuine nobility; discursiveiy, they engage in dialectical abstraction

coatempt for the iaws [OU 6qpon~Qxapavopial." None of thse is subject to the authority of the pPlir.the latter even beiag hostiîe to i t The public distrusteâ aii three, and here in the

Plato is unihg the three unda that baimer of autonomy h m the W.We have and aireiuiy noted the striking simüarity of Aristophanes' portraya1 of phüosophy in the in the to these we might add Aristophanes' Euripides' portraya1 of the dionysiac

parody of sympotic n o m in the Wasps.

m;

*'Phaednrs.. Andokides 15,21. Eryximachos: Andokides 35.25.

beyond the ken of al1 non-philosophers; and religiously, they both set the public standards

and monopolize the highest cult activity, intellection of the Form of the Good. We can therefore Say that the

historically concretizes (in a fragmented condition)

these imaginary abstractions h m the

m: dialectic is not the hypothetical

methodology of hypothetical philosopher-kings, but rather Socrates' philosophical ralk; howledge of the F o m is not an exercise in logic, but rather a personal experience of divinity, like dimysiac ecstasy; the philosophers are not some sort of idealized elected

representatives, but literaily a law unto themselves, as 6efis rhe

e. In the &~&II,Ç

these three features are a i l combined in the single constituency of the philosophers, but in the

they are divided amongst three separate constituencies each of which is

itself at odds with the same, more powemil, opponent Thus, what is presented in the

-the W.

as the necessary outcome of the

theoretical inquiry into justice is presented in the

as a senous practical

problem. The Greek ppüS is a type of society premised on the equality of free citizens

-1.

Its laws are justified only as the will of the people (democracy was just the

most extreme, and one might even Say cynical, form of this pan-Hellenic w-ideology). Such a society is every bit as intolerant of genuine class distinctions as modem liberal

societies, and yet, in the

m.Plato demands just that: rigid class distinctions. How

can the dominion of such a philosophical caste possibly be compatible with political

justice? How could its duIlps be conceived of as genuinely k e and equal citizens? How could those citizens (much stronger and more numerous) be expected voluntarily to accept the alien rule of the philosophm? Philosophical d e simply is not iâentical to the will of the many; philosophical religion isnot compatible with popular mythology;

philosophical argument c m o t be translated to the stage. 1s it not then necessarily the case that philosophers share a fate in common with the traditional Greek aristocnicy intnnsically superior to "the rnany," but subject to its collective power? Must not philosophy engage in subterfuge and subterranean &mations of its autonomy and ambition, simply in order to survive? Must it not practice an 06 6qpori~Q xapavopia,

an 'bun&mocratic contempt for the Iaws"? Must it not cultivate its differrnce in secret, at the philosophical drinking panies of the Academic

m? In other words, must not

Socrates (and Plato, and al1 philosophers), ultimately become the very image of

Alkibiades and his sacrilegious

m?

Fmm this standpoint we are finally in a position to appreciate the degree to which Plato has the historical example of Pythagoreanism in mind. Aside €rom the aforementioned close connection between Pythagoreanism and the orphicfdionysiac fhipgpSon which somatic philosophy is modeled in the Svmwsium (Ch2), the

Pythagoreans had actuaily constituted just such an exclusive religious, political and

m.Moreover, the terminology for describing the Pythagorean caste was modeled on that of the m: intellectual niling-caste within several Oreek

In marked contmst to the elusive 'Orphies', the basic fact about P y t h a g o d s m is the existence of Pythgoreioi, people g e n d y designated as the followers of a certain individual. This kind of designation was cumnt in party politics of the hetairia style: there were the Kyloneioi at Athens or the Diagoreioi at Rhodes, there were the Dioneioi at Syracuse with whom Plato was in contact; also adherents of what we would cal1 philosophers would get such a label as H&aWeiteioior Anamgoreioi. As to Pythugoreioi, we equally find them designated as 'fnends'. philoi, hetairoi, gnOnmoi, huntilt%aiof Pythagoras. (Burkert, "Cr& Versus Sect" 14) In other words, pythagonan cults were no less than philosophical hetaireiai.at the same time as they were philosophicd m. Pythagoreanismrepresents an mfiagmented

historical example of the caste of philosophers that is theoretically justified in the and that is fragmented into three separate pieces in the .

Yet the

Pythagoreans famouslyfailed to overcome their intrinsic separateness fiom the & , ~ Q s and institute a stable political society; eventually, the

rose up against them as

against tyrants, and they were destmyed. Could it be the case that the Pythagoreans were doomed to fail in their bid to rule (and, like hem, all philosophers), or did they simply not possess a philosophy sophisticated enough to justify such a system? By using the historical case of Athens, in the ,

to dissect the idea of a philosophical niling-

caste into its three essential differentia (intellectual,political and religious), Plato is, in effect, anatomizing the stnicture of Pythagorean elitism. The fate of the Pythagoreanswas

much the same as that of Alkibiades, and it would appear that a similar fate was to befdl Socrates himself -destruction at the han& of a pplis intolerant of political and reiigious

difference. Does the sarne fate await Plato and the other Socratics? Ch can they instead vindicate Socrates (and philosophy itself) by finding within his example the gem of true political justice? At issue is whether the spiritual followers of Socrates, the "Socruteioi"

of Plato's Acaderny, will be able (in principle) to articulate the rationale for ajust phitosophical anstocrucy,and thereby succeed where the Pythagoreioi failed.

Modem liberal political theory tends to approach this problem via the promotion of public education in combination with representative democracy. This mates the illusion of universal popuiar participation in govenunent while it theontically discredits any and aii class distinctions amongst citizen$

&kens; every citizen is given what

she needs to govem the suite, i.e., to vote. In practice, however, modem Western politics

tends to res«ve power for an e l k class of political experts who are both enaniched and

insulated fiom public intederemce: liberal theory thus tends to serve as apologia for an illiberal declass-system. in sharp contrast to this liberal charade, Plato refuses to conceal his problem beneath the myth of universal and equal participation in government. Instead, in the ,of the citizenry that the

he implicitly aligns philosophy with those very sub-groupings

fears the most. He chooses to emphosire the

incommensurability of philosophy with the

and thereby pushes their opposition to

a crisis, and cornes close to suggesting to his readen that philosophy, Iike Alkibiades, niut

either rule the palir or be m war with itO2

How then might philosophy be expected to justify such d e ? Above ail, Plato must demonstrate that philosophy has the wherewithal to recognize difr~rencewhile overcommgfaction. It is this recognition of difference that is the key to Plato's political

program.= Ail Greek politics pnor to Plato was premised on a monistic political uniformity. To be membea of the same community, citizens were expected to share the

same public world-view and values-system and to idcntifj themselves fmt and foremost by reference to the pnlis. To maintain this uniformity (or at least the semblance of it) the

OQÜS often had forcibly to suppress genuine political, nligious and intellecm

diffmnce? Three great classical iexts, all wrîtten within about twenty years of each

*

In other woids, if philosophy d a s not rule the ppliS and thenby instituejustice, it wili remain one faction among many factions, ali of which are at war with each other. The earlier nference to B&e 422-3 is pertinent hem. We need to stress here that tbis platonic differençc is not the nlativistic perspectivism of pst-modem.& politics. but the necessazy difference that exists between ders and ruied, in levels of understanding. world-view. ways of He.religious practice and sacial roles. The philosophers and the "workers" are to be very dwerent people irtdeed. in general. though tùere was. of course, considerable This is a point about Gicek variation in deof mtolerancefrom city to city and across periods. Athens, as Saxates himseif remarks, was the most tolerant of all Greek cîties, which is why philosophy could thrive there. His own deaîh, however, shows the limits of such tolerance, at least as regards religion. Burkeds analysk of the history of Pythagorranism(‘‘Cuit") maLes the case for intolerance more gencrally , not just in religious matters. though that is bis topic (see above, 1941116)As . for inteilectud f J

other at the peak of Athenian cultural preeminence, portray these efforts as a Me-or-death stniggle of the pPliS: in Euripides' Anstophanes' -, versus the

m,it is the ppliS venus the dionysiac m;in

versus the ohron