Symposium - AIC

Aikaterini Lefka
who replace the heroes in this role in the platonic dialogues are the wise legislators and governors of a
city (Theaetetus, 170 a 12; Republic, V, 463 b 1; VI, 502 d 1; Lois, IV, 704 d 6) as well as the
excellent and the wise men in general (Laws, III, 689 d 9; XI, 922 a 1).
We may therefore consider that Plato keeps here the traditional domain of the life and the
good government of a city, but insists on the salutary role of intelligence, justice, wisdom and moral
excellence in the public sphere 16 . He also refers to “saviours” quite originally, on the occasion of a
philosophical debate and argumentation or of a narration that reveals the truth, against all false
opinions 17 . The philosopher attributes rarely any epithets to the particular gods he refers to, and soter
isn’t an exception. It is accorded only to Zeus, the wise governor of the world, in the passages cited
above, and to Eros, just once, on an occasion that merits a closer look.
III. The Platonic Eros as a soter
Eros is a divinity usually presented as terrible by the poets, who put more eagerly into evidence the
torments of his victims 18 . In the Symposium, the orators decide to adopt a new, positive way to depict
him: for the first time, they undertake to praise “the great god” Eros as a benefactor.
Agathon, the host of the banquet, exclaims in the end of his speech, among other
qualifications, that Eros is “in trouble, in fear, in longing, in speaking, a steersman, defender, fellowsoldier
and saviour without peer (παραστάτης τε καὶ σωτὴρ ἄριστος), ornament at once of all gods
and men, most beautiful and best guide, whom everyone must follow” (197 d 8-e 3) 19 .
Only a few commentators paid some attention to the use of the term soter here. For exemple,
L. Brisson just notes that “the preceeding parastates (the hoplites who stood beside his fellow soldier
and was supposed to protect him, as well as be protected by him) accords a military sense to soter” 20 .
R. G. Bury makes a parallel with the protector daimon of each person, as well as with Socrates as a
soter, putting forward that this term is usually attributed to heroes. Taking under consideration the
military and the naval context, he concludes that “the general sense of the passage is this: ‘in the
contests both of war and peace the best guide and warden, comrade and rescuer is Eros’” 21 .
I believe that the salutary action of Eros is nevertheless present in all speeches of the
Symposium. In fact, every speaker offers a different aspect of the multiple functions of Love as a
“saviour” for humans, in a complex structure that progressively leads to the most innovating Platonic
positions on the subject.
Phaedrus 22 and Pausanias 23 support that love will push a person to defend his lover’s life (as it
was the case when couples of warriors were fighting together, for example), to pursue and to
accomplish virtue (especially courage) and to enjoy the eternal honour (time) that could come out of
these heroic deeds – this was the only access to eternity that the heroes of the Homeric poems could
pretend to.
Pausanias, by his distinction between Eros Ouranios and Eros Pandemos, introduced the
element of a rational and selective approach to Love, if one wants to receive his salutary effects. The
more traditional, disastrous characteristics of the divinity are found in the second Eros.
Euriximachus 24 goes even further, by developing a true “erotic science” that permits us to know how
to approach and to conduct this universal force, innate to all beings, so that we might benefit of the
health, the harmony and the well-being that the “good” Eros can install to our body and mind and to
avoid as much as possible the nuisance of the “bad” one, the desire for inappropriate things. Eros
guarantees the unity and the concord among the different parts of the world, including the friendly
relations between the members of a community and even between gods and men.
Aristophanes 25 , with his peculiar myth of the “three original genders” of humankind, takes up
the healing power of Eros, who alone offers us the possibility to recover from the division imposed to
us by Zeus because of our ancestral hybris, by finding our “other half”, restoring our initial nature and
living happily ever after in a perfect union.
16
For the notion of “salvation” in Plato’s political theories, see A. Kelessidou, 2009.
17
Plato can use also other expressions related etymologically to soter, like soteria, sozein etc., but we chose here to examine
only the cases where he mentions the divine epithet.
18
See for example, Sappho, fr. 2 ; fr. 44 and fr. 46.
19
Translation of C. J. Rowe, 1998.
20
L. Brisson, 1998, p. 206, n. 331.
21
R. G Bury, 1973, p. 83.
22
Plato, Symposium, 178 a 6- 180 b 8.
23
Idem, op. cit., 180 c 3-185 c 3.
24
Idem, op. cit.,185 e 6-188 e 4.
25
Idem, op. cit.,189 a 1-193 e 2.
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