Plato has gone to quite a lot of trouble to present the Symposium within a Framing Narrative …
While Plato wrote the Symposium sometime after 385 BC, the framing conversation between Apollodorus and his companions appears to take place between 401 BC and 399 BC, while the Symposium itself is set in the year of Agathon’s first victory in the Dionysia, 416 BC.
These dates were taken from the interesting Wikipedia article on Plato’s Symposium
Here is my own diagram of the framing events:
So what is all that about then? Why so complex? What does it add? How much of it is true?
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[…] 1 The Framing Narrative […]
Nowhere else does Plato provide such an elaborate framework. There’s something like it in Phaedo, Parmenides, The Republic, and a few other works, but not on this scale. Plato is also at pains to describe just how the account was transmitted, at least down to Apollodorus. When I first read it, I thought that Plato was keen to establish that, whatever might have been the case with his other dialogues, in this one he was describing a real event, however much the individual speeches might owe to him.
The commentators, however, don’t go along with this. Hamilton (Penguin) says that ‘the philosopher in Plato has not yet banished the artist and the poet’. He goes on to say that the fictitious nature of the account cannot be doubted even though Plato ‘has been at unusual pains to impart to the whole scene a deceptive air of authority’. In other words, Plato, like any other writer of fiction, is keen to make his account realistic.
Dover dismisses the matter with:’Plato’s reasons for adopting this technique in a minority of his works are not known’.
Rowe says: ‘the very attempt to create the illusion of an actual conversation, in progress as we begin to read, is itself transparent’. His view seems to be that Plato is asserting the essential, if not the literal, truth of what he writes, and hence the reference to Socrates’ agreement with the account. But again, why so elaborate?
Bury points out that ‘Apollodorus, although asked only for the λόγοι spoken at the banquet, proceeds to give a full account of the accompanying incidents’, and that this indicates that the framework is important for estimating the effect of the Symposium. He also suggests that there may have been another account of the Symposium current (Phoenix’ account) and that Plato was seeking to discredit this. He further suggests Polycrates as the author.
We just don’t know, do we? And that I think, is quite enough on the framework.
Brilliant as usual, Robert ~ please don’t stop!
Very thought provoking! I wonder what was in Phoenix’ account that might have so needed discrediting…. it does seem to me that there is a great deal of effort going into placing this a precise distance back in time… could it have something to do with Maddy’s (and Bury’s) idea (see Alcibiades entry) of denying there had been physical relationships between Socrates and Alcibiades, or any of his other young followers … why would Plato want to do that? What a perplexing jigsaw this is!
Going off on a tangent, something that really leapt out at me whilst listening to the cd occurs in the framing narrative. Eryximachus is speaking about how they have resolved to each drink as much as each desires and proposes to dismiss the flute-girl that she may go and pipe to herself or, ἢ ἂ βούληται ταῖς γυναιξὶ ταῖς ἔνδον. If it wasn’t for that phrase ~ to the women indoors ~ it wouldn’t have crossed my mind that the women of the household were anywhere in the vicinity, or the very near vicinity, or that they even existed at all!
I have heard it suggested that the framework might mirror Plato’s phenomenology. To have made the Republic’s framework similarly elaborate would have been over-egging the pudding (is that the right expression?), but it’s OK in the Symposium because the Symposium is meant to be a comedy.
I have a feeling that the Symposium shouldn’t be read unless you are going to read the Phaedrus as well, which I haven’t. But that may give us some extra clues.
I haven’t read the Symposium for 6 or 7 years, so I can’t contribute much at the moment. I’m going away for 12 days and was hoping to read some Vergil, but I could have a stab at the Symposium and the Phaedrus instead.
I would be very interested in some input from the Phaedrus. From my (not very reliable) memory of a lecture I attended in Durham, it is an important source which sheds light on understanding why Socrates physical ugliness is drawn in such contrast to the beauty of his nature … but I wouldn’t want to drag you away from Vergil 🙂
P.S. I think Agathons’ first victory was in 416, not 426.
Thanks Fuficius. I have corrected the post and the diagram 🙂
Unfortunately, the Phaedrus is a tough one and more than I’d like to read on holiday, although it happens that I have the Loeb for that one.
I will probably read the Vergil instead, although I turfed Chariton out of the bookshelf last night as a contender.