Symposium - AIC

Gabriel Danzig
Pausanias
As a devoted lover of Agathon (Protagoras 315d-e; see also X. Mem. 8.32), Pausanias shares
with Phaedrus the general aim of dispelling the stigma that attaches to eros. 19 He is the first speaker to
claim that homosexual love is superior to heterosexual love, an opinion that must not have been
universally accepted if he has to argue for it (see 181c). Like Phaedrus, Pausanias is concerned with
popular attitudes and he uses some form of the word nomos not less than 21 times between 181d and
184e. As an erastes, Pausanias suffered from a different kind of hostility than that to which an
eromenos was exposed. While the eromenos suffered from the humiliation of being used like a
woman, the erastes was considered an enemy by the friends and family of his supposed victims (see
183c-d).
Pausanias defends himself by accepting the views of his opponents to a large degree. There
are men who should be kept away from boys, especially very young ones, but he is not among them.
He hopes to redeem the reputations of virtuous pederasts such as himself and to encourage potential
young eromenoi to choose the right sort of lovers. The better sort love boys for their souls or intellects,
and hence have no interest in girls or very young boys, neither of whom have much intellect to love
(181c). 20 They love slightly older boys whose intellects are starting to bloom and they tend to stick
with them for a long time. He thinks it is wrong to castigate those who engage in pederastic relations
in the right way, arguing that it is only the inferior lovers who give pederasty a bad name (182a). He
takes the high moral ground by proclaiming that there should be a law against those who take
advantage of young boys (paidōn: 181d-e), but it is surprising to see who this law is meant to protect.
Pausanias argues that the pederasts are the ones who are harmed by the young boys they pursue, since
young boys are apt to turn out disappointing (181e). His parallel, the sanctions against sexual relations
with unmarried free women (181e-182a), would not support this explanation. But it fits well his effort
to gain sympathy for the older lover.
As Pausanias notes, parents are deeply concerned about the effects pederasty may have on
their young children and take serious efforts to prevent its occurrence (183c-d). Understandably,
Pausanias spends much less time on this than he does describing the encouragement that is given to
those who pursue beautiful young men (182d-183c). These conflicting attitudes need reflect nothing
other than the fact that plenty of men in Athens, including the very fathers who objected to the
pederastic use of their sons, would have been quite happy to form a sexual relationship with a nice
young boy from another family: what is good for me may not be good for you. But Pausanias, finding
a deeper logic in them, argues that Athenians take a moderate stance towards pederasty, neither
outlawing it, as is done in barbaric (ie., non-Greek but also uncivilized) and tyrannous regimes, nor
enforcing it, as is done in societies whose members, according to him, lack the wit to properly seduce
a boy. Its complex and seemingly contradictory attitudes – encouraging the lover while discouraging
the boy – are actually designed to insure that the young people will form sexual relations with
excellent men like himself.
The speech seems like an advertisement for these better lovers, and hence for Pausanias
himself. He argues that the better lovers contribute to the acquisition of virtue and wisdom by the
boys (184c-185c), and he also puts great emphasis on the fact that the better lovers are willing to
devote themselves to their beloveds for the long-term (183e-184b) 21 as he apparently did with
Agathon. 22 But although Pausanias devotes much of his effort to praising those who love boys for
their souls rather than their bodies, he does not encourage what we call “platonic” relationships. It is
important to him that the boys he seduces reciprocate his affection by offering their bodies for his
gratification, and he insists that young men give their bodies only to those who, like himself, love
them for their souls (tois men charizesthai, tous de phugein: 184a). Nor does Pausanias place any limit
on the kind of sexual activities that may legitimately take place. As he says, there is no act that is
inherently prohibited; it all depends on how it is done (181a). The analogies he offers, of drinking,
singing and talking, suggest that he is referring to specific acts that lovers engage in with their
beloveds. The better lover does not refrain from any of these acts, but rather performs them in a fine
19 Many theories have been proposed to explain the order of the speeches in Symposium (see Bury, lii-lvii). I believe that
each speech is paired both with the one before it, if there is one, and with the one after it, if there is one.
20 While boys are more attractive intellectually than girls, there is no claim that they are more beautiful physically. In
Xenophon’s Cyropaedia (5.1.7) and Memorabilia (3.11) women are presented as the most beautiful temptations.
21 Pausanias’ and Agathon’s long-term love affair played an important role in the introduction of this principle which was to
play a fundamental role in Aristotle’s thinking on friendship and in the thinking of the entire philosophic tradition in the west
and its associated cultures during the thousands of years that followed.
22 There may be something defensive in this latter claim, since his long-term relationship with Agathon was made into a
subject of ridicule in Athens. See L. Brisson, “Agathon, Pausanias, and Diotima in Plato’s Symposium: Paiderastia and
Philosophia,” in Plato’s Symposium, ed. J. Lesher et al., Washington, 2006, 229-251.
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