Symposium - AIC

Harold Tarrant
contemplate the possibility of a serious message, while that used by others does not. Certainly we are
unlikely to listen seriously to anything resembling the speech of Lysias in the Phaedrus, and we do in
fact have a speech in the Symposium that the computer recognises as closely resembling it. That
speech is of course the speech given by Lysias’ great admirer Phaedrus. We divided the Symposium
according to speeches, plus a file for the introduction preceding the speeches, and another for
additional frame-material, while dividing the Phaedrus into:
Phdr.A: what precedes the speech of Lysias
Phdr.S1: the speech of Lysias
Phdr.B: what follows Lysias and precedes Socrates’ first speech
Phdr.S2: Socrates’ first speech
Phdr.C: what follows his first speech and precedes the Palinode
PalinodeA: to 247c2
PalinodeB: 247c3-253c6
PalinodeC: 253c7 on
Phdr.D (1-3): what follows the palinode, words 1-2000, 2001-4000, 4001 on.
To these materials were added the Phaedo divided into 2000-word blocks; Republic IV, VII, and X
similarly divided (except that the Myth of Er was kept separate); a composite file consisting of all
Gorgias’ contributions to the Gorgias of around three lines or more; the final myth in the Gorgias. The
computer easily isolates and links together the files consisting of Gorgias’ speeches, Lysias’ speech,
and Phaedrus’ speech in the Symposium (chart 2):
Chart 2: Cluster analysis of parts of middle-period dialogues
Most files that we should expect to display the features of everyday conversational language are
placed in cluster 3 (centre, blue) or 4 (right, yellow), both in the right-hand arm of the chart. Here are
placed all blocks of Phaedo except for the two last blocks (106b7-111e5, 111e5-end), all blocks of
Republic iv, vii and x except the Myth of Er and the Cave-block (514a1-520d3), all non-speech
Phaedrus; and the introduction and frame of Symposium plus Alcibiades’ speech. The three rhetorical
files (cluster 1, left, red) are kept together, 3 separate from, but distantly related to files in which Plato
appears to use other kinds of non-conversational language, usually myth-like or poetic: the myth of
judgment in Gorgias, the Myth of Er, the account of the True Earth in Phaedo, the Cave-block of Rep.
514-520, both of Socrates’ speeches in Phaedrus—the first poetic, the second poetic and sometimes
myth-like, and all speeches in Symposium other than the shallow rhetorical exercise of Phaedrus and
the speech of Alcibiades. This latter, though a monologue, closely resembles the narrative
introduction and frame of Symposium.
What do all the main speeches other than those of Phaedrus and Alcibiades share in common?
3 Subsequent analysis used files reflecting the real language of Gorgias (Helen, Epitaphios), Lysias (c.Erat.), and Isocrates
(c.Soph.); the speech of Lysias and Phaedrus’ speech proved closer to Lysias and Isocrates than to Gorgias.
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