Plato’s Symposium Summarised (for fun and definitely not education)
Some random guy: Hey Socrates, wanna go to Agathon’s dinner party with me?
Socrates: Yeah Agathon’s good-looking!
Some random: We have to come up with something to say to them about why you’re here though.
[They talk for some time about what explanation they’ll use, that they have to have a reason for why Socrates is with him etc]
Some random: How about we say that I invited you?
[They arrive at Agathon’s house]
Some random: Hey guys, Socrates is coming with me but he’s not here yet, he’s talking to the neighbours or something.
Everyone: That’s cool! Socrates is like that.
Somebody else: We should have rules for drinking.
Everyone: Good idea, drinking too much can be bad for you.
Also Everyone: So the rules for drinking are each man should drink as much as he wants.
Somebody I forget who: We should each compose a panegyric ode to the god/concept of love.
Everyone: Yeah good idea literally no-one’s ever done that before.
[I think somebody else goes first but the first one I remember is …]
Pausanias aka “Pasta Sauce”: There’s two types of love, the common vulgar type and the higher type. The lower type is the love of the body, the higher is the love of the mind. The lower type is for child abusers and straight men. The higher type can only be experienced between two consenting ‘of age’ men cause women don’t have minds amirite?
Some men abuse underage boys and that is shameful, but also some young boys are gold diggers/just trying to get status from their older lovers and in that case they are the shameful ones.
Being in love makes you do crazy things that would otherwise be considered crazy but it’s totally fine if it’s in the name of love.
Also the Persians are bad and homophobic (and coincidentally our enemies)
[Then it was Aristophanes’ turn]
Eryximachus aka “Eric Maxis”: You should hold your breath, or drink some water or just wait and I’ll go first. I’m a doctor, and love is a lot like the body, since I’m a doctor by the way, all my analogies are about the body from a medical perspective. Did you know that I’m a doctor?
Aristophanes: Now I’m totally not joking when I tell you this. Once upon a time humans were two people stuck together, with two heads, four arms and legs etc. Our backs were facing the same way as our heads and genitals. We were super happy then and this annoyed the gods. We used to cartwheel (the fastest method of travel) right up to the gods and be rude to them and they were like what are we gonna do about these humans?
So Zeus cut us in half down the middle, and turned our heads around so we’d be looking at the place we were cut and be ashamed (that’s what the bellybutton is). And then everyone was sad, except when they found another person and then they’d cling to them, all the time, to the point where they wouldn’t eat and would die. So Zeus was like let’s turn their genitals around, so now when they were clinging to each other and facing each other, they could come to something of a –resolution- of their feelings. Now they ate, but still they didn’t part from each other much.
There were three types of humans before they were split; one made of two females, one two males, and one was half male half female. So the people who came from one gender wholes are only attracted to the same gender and people from a male/female whole are attracted to the opposite gender [I never expected bi+ erasure to come from ancient Greece but there you go]
The male attracted men are the best cause that’s the most masculine. Agathon and Pausanias are totally in that group. [Wikipedia says Agathon was ‘notoriously effeminate’ so my guess is this is irony].
If you happen to find the specific half that you were separated from then you’ll be super in love and this is called soulmates.
And by the way I was totally not joking, why won’t you take me seriously? Is this cause I’m a comedy playwright?
Agathon: [Agathon has in my opinion the best speech about love, he says how it can be more than just romantic love, how it can be a passion for creating art/music etc, it’s good even though I can’t remember it that much]
Socrates: Instead of telling you my actual opinion I’m just going to quote this woman who once tried to recruit me into her mystery religion cult. [Mystery religion is an actual type of religious category, Christianity was one of them, though much later]. Her name was Diotima.
Diotima: Do you know anything about love Socrates?
Socrates: Nope I’m an idiot!
Diotima: That’s cool, I’ll tell you about it. It’s not all good and beautiful like you might think, in fact it desires what is good and beautiful so the god of love doesn’t have those things. So he’s not good and beautiful, or at least he’s somewhere inbetween, shades of grey and all that. He is the child of Poverty and Invention [I think. She goes on for ages and I can’t remember].
That’s the basic understanding of love but the only way you’ll fully understand it is if you initiate yourself into my religious cult! Just go through the initiation ritual and then you’ll have all the secrets revealed!
Socrates: And that’s my speech on love.
Everyone: Well I guess that’s it, I mean we left Socrates till last for a reason, pack your bags folks, that’s all –
Alcibiades aka “Alcopop”: [crashes through the doors] Hold my amphora!
Agathon: Hey Alcibiades we were just each saying an ode to the god of love do you want to join?
Alcibiades: I am utterly drunk so it won’t really be fair- Wait [sees Socrates] WHAT is THIS man doing here?!!!
Agathon: Well there’s a long and convoluted story behind it, you see someone I invited invited him, isn’t that crazy? [Ok I added that bit]
Alcibiades: Good luck trying to get me to speak in praise of love, this man [points at Socrates] REFUSES to let me praise any other man but him!
Socrates: It’s really the other way around
Alcibiades: Ok ok, I’ll compose an ode to Socrates and he can sit there and tell me if anything I say isn’t true. How about that Socrates? Would you agree to that?
Alcibiades: Well fine then.
Alcibiades: Let me tell you what this man has done to me! I tried my hardest to seduce Socrates (and it should have been the other way around btw!) I tried to seduce him at the gym, I tried to seduce him after a dinner date, then I tried the direct approach in bed but he still refused to sleep with me!!! (Except in the literal non-sex sense). He won’t love me and it is a CRIME! Ugh but he’s such a good speaker no one else can speak like him, I want his wisdom listening to him speak is the only time that I don’t feel like I’m better than everyone else. I’m in constant awe of him even when we were in the military together he was noble and thoughtful and idiosyncratic and also saved my life that one time no matter how much salt I throw at this magnificent man GOD I can’t stop being in love with him it hurts!
Also he won’t let me sit next to Agathon cause he wants all the beautiful men to himself.
Everyone: Alcibiades we think you’re less drunk than you’re pretending to be.
[Then like, everyone in the street I guess, shows up at the party cause Alcibiades left the doors to Agathon’s house open and them’s the rules. Most people ended up crashing, Socrates stayed up all night chatting to someone (not Alcibiades or Agathon) cause he apparently is a superhuman who doesn’t get drunk, feel the cold or need to sleep.]
[And somehow this was all transcribed by Plato who, you may notice, wasn’t even there]
