BLANCKENHAGEN, PETER H. VON, Stage and Actors in Plato's "Symposium" , Greek, Roman and Byzantine Studies, 33:1 (1992:Spring) p.51 Stage and Actors in Plato's Symposium tPeter H. von Blanckenhagen KONG PLATONIC DIALOGUES, the Symposium has always enjoyed the widest appeal. It contains no difficult or tedi­ ous argumentation; it is not about intellectual problems; it seems easily comprehensible to all readers. It proceeds swift­ ly, with dramatic force and poetic persuasiveness, and holds the reader captive and enthralled. Lofty thoughts and entertaining tales follow one other and intermingle; irony and good-natured humor provide comic relief. Courtesy and easy manners characterize its participants as members of a civilized, educated society, into which each appears introduced as a welcome guest, and to which each reader would be flattered to belong. The Symposium is perhaps the one long and important Greek text that contains nothing forbidding, strange, remote, or alien to us. No other Greek text can be appreciated so immediately as a great piece of literary art; its timelessness is not claimed by tradition but is personally experienced at each reading; its poetic power shines forth always fresh; no dust of millenia has gathered, no patina has to be removed: it is made of pure, solid, and imperishable gold. Yet it does overwhelm us. What has been wrought by a master craftsman has as much grandeur as intimacy, as much beauty as vitality, filled with grace and charm; and it lets us contemplate what we all know as the center of our existence: love. The shock that some may feel at hearing love discussed as love between men can easily be overcome. The praises of love quickly appear to raise it to a level that transcends the attractions of the sexes; rather than passionate feelings between two unique individuals, love seems to be absolute, a natural force and a divine gift. But when we approach the text more closely and begin to ponder the meaning of each sentence, each paragraph, the con­ struction of the whole and its 'message', everything that appeared so easy and simple reveals difficulties, complexities, questions, problems-and thus the Symposium has inspired a veritable library of exegesis and interpretation. 51 BLANCKENHAGEN, PETER H. VON, Stage and Actors in Plato's "Symposium" , Greek, Roman and Byzantine Studies, 33:1 (1992:Spring) p.51 52 STAGE AND ACTORS IN PLATO'S SYMPOSIUM Every attempt at interpretation must proceed from an account of setting and persons as precise and complete as possible. One has first to understand the platform on which, and the background against which, events and speeches occur, i.e., the stage of the play, the special character of its place and time, and the dramatis personae and their relationships. In all these aspects the Symposium is different from other Platonic dialogues, and this difference is significant. In a text so carefully composed and structured, no point made, no information offered can safely be left unexamined; every single detail has to be considered, because none is accidental. All this could easily be the theme of a seminar throughout an entire term, and yet it is but preparatory work. Without it, however, any interpreta­ tion may be little more than a house of cards. An initial attempt at some such preparatory work will be presented in the following. Some of the dialogues are reports of past events, and so is the Symposium. But in this case the report is twice removed and lacks the foundation of a written record. Apollodorus, a com­ panion of Socrates for no more than three years, tells what he had heard from Aristodemus, one of the participants at a ban­ quet that was given a long time ago. For when Aristodemus gives his report to Apollodorus, it has been many years since the host, Agathon, has resided in Athens (172e). A rumor has spread that Apollodorus had been the recipient of a report more reliable than other accounts of that banquet about which many incorrect notions were in the air, and this rumor led others to appeal to him for information. The source is not Socrates, but Socrates has corroborated the correctness of some parts (173 B). The text we read is the report of a report of an event long past, at a time when the narrator Apollodorus and his interlocutor were children and Aristodemus was a young man. About the actual date, however, there is no uncertainty. Agathon gave the banquet the day after he had celebrated his first victory in a dramatic contest-and this was in the year 416. We know when Agathon left Athens: 407. Thus, Apollodorus' report can be dated to the very end of the fifth century. What significance such an elaborately-involved description of the event and its recounting in much later times may turn out to have, Plato impresses upon the reader the importance of both the date of the event and its remoteness, of its actual occur­ rence and its legendary fame, of what we can know and of what we cannot know for certain. The reliability of the report is even BLANCKENHAGEN, PETER H. VON, Stage and Actors in Plato's "Symposium" , Greek, Roman and Byzantine Studies, 33:1 (1992:Spring) p.51 PETER H. VON BLANCKENHAGEN 53 more doubtful if we consider the character of Apollodorus as described both in the Symposium and in Phaedrus: he is emotional to the point of madness. How much can we trust the testimony of such a man when he repeats what he had heard from another? Plato is writing, as it were, a historical novel or play, pretend­ ing to give the truth about the past. He is not a historian describing historical events as they actually happened. The Symposium resembles a portrait by a great artist; it is not akin to a photograph or a recording. We may say, therefore, that had such a banquet happened in 416 it would, according to Plato, have been as he describes it. The pretended historicity of that banquet is emphasized by the actual historicity of its participants. The persons in many Platonic dialogues are, of course, actual and identifiable people, most of them known in other contexts, some appearing in more than one dialogue. But nowhere else do two poets appear, one of tragedies, the other of comedies; nowhere else are oc­ casion and setting so richly described; nowhere does the narrative include so much atmosphere and so many novelistic details that seem at first to have no direct bearing on the speeches. Although the setting of each dialogue is significant, that of the Symposium is even more so. In neglecting the setting we always suffer a loss, little in some, not unimportant in others, essential in few, crucial perhaps only in the Symposium. The texts themselves indicate the importance of setting and dramatic date. The latter may be lacking altogether, but this is rarer than one might think; the former may be just barely mentioned or may be clearly determined; and the proportion between the core of a dialogue and the length and precision of the description of setting and dramatic date signifies the degree of their importance for the dialogue proper. This seems to me obvious, and this is why we have to visualize the setting of the Symposium in all its details and at the same time keep in mind the historical situation in 416 in relation to the participants. About these we must, of course, learn as much as can be known, first with respect to the information found in other Platonic dialogues, second as regards their position, character, and biography gleaned from other sources. Eight people are mentioned by name; more were present. Four are famous Athenian personages: Socrates, Aristophanes, Agathon, and Alcibiades; two others are known both through Plato and other sources: Phaedrus and Eryximachus; one, BLANCKENHAGEN, PETER H. VON, Stage and Actors in Plato's "Symposium" , Greek, Roman and Byzantine Studies, 33:1 (1992:Spring) p.51 54 STAGE AND ACTORS IN PLATO'S SYMPOSIUM Pausanias, is mentioned in one other Platonic dialogue but is not otherwise identifiable; and the eighth is the silent, uninvited guest, on whose account the dialogue is based: Socrates' young companion Aristodemus. The guest most famous at the time arrived after the speeches: Alcibiades. Only a year later, in 415, he succeeded in persuading the Athenians to embark for Sicily. Suspected of complicity in the profanation of the Mysteries, he was recalled for trial, escaped to Sparta and committed high treason, to return to Athens only once, briefly in 407/406, before he was assassinated in 404. Athens' tragedy begins with that year, 415. Two other guests at Agathon's banquet, Phaedrus and Eryximachus, were also involved in the scandal of the mutilation of the herms. They were convicted and exiled; it is uncertain whether or not they ever returned. Agathon's banquet, then, is the last happy occasion for a social gathering of this particular group on the eve of catastrophic events that contemporary readers of the dialogue could and would remember. They would in all likelihood also be conscious that it was the last time Socrates and Alcibiades met. Before we turn to a closer view of Agathon and. his guests, let us try to gather some information on the settmg. How much can be deduced from the text as regards the room in which the banquet takes place and the arrangement of the couches? Agathon's house is that of a well-to-do gentleman, with entrance, courtyard, and many servants. We may assume that such a house would have a room designated as a dining room. It must have been large enough for more than the six named guests. After the first speaker, Phaedrus, "some others" spoke (180c), but Aristodemus did not remember their speeches. At the very end, a crowd of newcomers (223 B) rushed in, caused some disturbance, but did recline, as the text says explicitly. Evidence for special dining rooms in private houses in fifth­ century Athens does not exist, to my knowledge. There are edifices for public dining, of which the Prytaneion-examined in detail by Stephen Miller1-is the best and most common example. There is a certain variety in the shape of such public dining rooms; but one type, found both in Prytaneia and in private houses from the fourth century on, appears to be 1 Stephen G. Miller, The Prytaneion. Its Function and Architectural Form (Berkeley 1978). BLANCKENHAGEN, PETER H. VON, Stage and Actors in Plato's "Symposium" , Greek, Roman and Byzantine Studies, 33:1 (1992:Spring) p.51 PETER H. VON BLANCKENHAGEN 55 standard. It is the plan in which the couches are placed on a slightly raised platform lining all four walls of a rectangular room. On one wall the space for one couch is left free for the door. It follows that the doorway is off-center and the number of couches is an odd one. An odd number of couches also prevails in the literary sources. Private dining rooms of this type have been identified in Athens and elsewhere; the largest Athenian example, from the end of the fourth century, is oblong and could take nine couches. 2 Smaller rooms for seven couches are more frequent both in Athens and other places. According to archaeological evidence and literary sources, especially Demosthenes, private houses in fifth-century Athens were very modest, in contrast to the opulence of public buildings (as Thucydides implies at 1.10.2f). Even though Aga­ thon's house was a stately residence, it was surely not immense. There are many representations of reclining feasters on Attic red-figure vases. The evidence is rich, and I have not ex­ amined all of it. But from what I have seen, we can, I think, learn the following. The couches were placed in a row of two to three alongside each wall; single occupancy is more frequent than double; three to a couch is highly exceptional. In a double occupancy it is rare that both are bearded, mature men. In the very rare instances of three males on one couch, they are youths, not mature men. Double occupancy consists, as a rule, of the combination of a bearded man and either a youth or a woman. This means, of course, that such a banquet is an erotic one: the two are lovers. This type seems almost as frequent as single occupancy. One may therefore conclude that, where possible, one man to a couch is the prevailing custom unless fcasting and drinking are combined with lovemaking.) 2 Cf J. E. Jones, "Town and Country Houses of Attica in Classical Times," in H. Mussche, P. Spitaels, and F. Goemaere, edd., Thorikos and the Laurion in archaic and classical times. Papers and contributions of the Colloquium held in March, 1973, at the State University of Gent (=Miscellanea Graeca I [Ghent 1975]) 79. 3 Here are examples of each arrangement: men with youths, Munich inv. 8935, by Euphronios (AR V2 1619,3 bis; Paralipomena 322, 3 bis; Beazley Addenda 152; Euphronios der Maler [Berlin 1991J cat. no. 5); men with women, Basel, Antikenmuseum und Sammlung Ludwig K:i 415, by the Tarquinia Painter (AR V2 868, 45; Paralipomena 426, 45; Beazley Addenda 249); men with men, London, B.M. E 49, by Douris (ARV2 432, 52; Beazley Addenda 237). BLANCKENHAGEN, PETER H. VON, Stage and Actors in Plato's "Symposium" , Greek, Roman and Byzantine Studies, 33:1 (1992:Spring) p.51 56 STAGE AND ACTORS IN PLATO'S SYMPOSIUM Agathon's is a banquet of mature men. We read that two couches are occupied by two persons each. The uninvited guest, Aristodemus, the only youth present, is asked to lie on Eryximachus' couch; Socrates is to share a couch with the host, Agathon. What about the others? Do, for instance, Pausanias and Aristophanes share one couch or has each his own? Does Phaedrus, the first speaker, share his couch with one of those whose speeches have been forgotten? Or does he recline by himself? Some considerations seem to favor one alternative over the other. We should expect either double or single occupancy throughout unless there is a special reason for a mixed arrangement. The text gives us such a special reason for the double occupancy of two couches. Agathon wishes to be near Socrates for reasons he mentions explicitly (17Sc). There is no space prepared for Aristodemus, who is not expected and must be accomodated somewhere. He is Socrates' companion and that is why, I think, he is asked to take his place on Ery­ ximachus' couch, which is next to Agathon's. Originally Eryximachus must have been the sole occupant. It follows that in all probability each guest had his own couch. Given the composition and character of the banquet and the host's civilized and considerate manners, this is what we should expect anyhow. But there are other points that make this arrangement more probable: (1) it agrees with the prevailing visual evidence; (2) between Phaedrus and Pausanias there arc some unnamed guests; in a double occupancy scheme it would be strange that two lifelong friends, Phaedrus and Eryximachus, were not placed together, but Phaedrus is paired instead with an unknown, and Eryximachus, originally alone, later with Aristo­ demus; (3) when Alcibiades detects Socrates with Agathon he chides him for reclining with the KaAAl(J'to~ instead of with Aristophanes or any other y£AOlO~ (213c); Aristophanes and each of the others must then have been by themselves on their couches; (4) Alcibiades appears with a flute girl and some others (212D). We do not know if these stayed with Alcibiades, who was urged to remain. But we read that at the end quite a few komasts suddenly entered (223B) because someone left the door open. All these reclined; and heavy drinking began. Such additional guests could not have reclined if the couches had been occupied by more than one originally. True enough, Eryximachus, Phaedrus, and some others then left, clearly not BLANCKENHAGEN, PETER H. VON, Stage and Actors in Plato's "Symposium" , Greek, Roman and Byzantine Studies, 33:1 (1992:Spring) p.51 PETER H. VON BLANCKENHAGEN 57 to surrender their places but because the party became too drunk and disorderly for their taste. How many guests did Agathon invite? How many couches were in his dining room? We cannot be sure. In addition to the five couches the occupants of which we know, there was more than one between Phaedrus and Pausanias. We have to arrange an odd number of couches in a sizable but not enormous room; and thus we have, I think, the alternative of seven or nine couches. Rooms of both E1nUKAtVOt and EVVEOXAtVOt are mentioned in literature. The larger number seems to me less probable, for the number of unnamed guests whose speeches were not memorable would then be four, i.e., almost as many as those mentioned, and the size of the room would have been quite large. The atmosphere of the banquet seems to me more intimate, arguing for fewer than nine guests. I therefore prefer seven couches, which means only two unnamed guests. Recently, an edifice has been excavated in Eretria that may have been a private residence, as the excavators suggest,4 or a public one. Its date, affirmed by a find of Panathenaic am­ phorae, is the first half of the fourth century, Plato's time, earlier than Athenian examples. It contains two dining rooms, one very large, said to be suitable for eleven couches, a square of 6.7 m. x 6.7 m. The other, with a small anteroom beautifully decorated with mosaics, is much smaller, about 5 m. x 5 m. This is the size for seven couches. Both rooms have slightly raised platforms for the couches. The entrance to the smaller room is off-center. Just such a dining room was located in Athens at the South Stoa of the Agora and has been reconstructed by Piet de Jong. 5 I am inclined to imagine Agathon's dining room just like this one. As hypothetical as all these considerations must remain, they are not, I think, irrelevant and useless. A more concrete image of setting and arrangement helps us to explain the meaning of the double occupancy of the host's couch. Eryximachus shares his couch with Aristodemus in an emergency; Agathon shares his with Socrates by plan. The entire setting plays an important role in helping us better understand the actors on this stage. What more do we know about them? 4 P. Ducrey and 1. R. Metzger, "La maison aux mosalques a [~retrie," A ntK 22 (1979) 3-21, esp. 6. 5 M. Lang, Socrates in the Agora (=Agora Picture Book no. 17 [Princeton 1975]) fig. 15. BLANCKENHAGEN, PETER H. VON, Stage and Actors in Plato's "Symposium" , Greek, Roman and Byzantine Studies, 33:1 (1992:Spring) p.51 58 STAGE AND ACTORS IN PLATO'S SYMPOSIUM No fewer than six of them-Alcibiades, Socrates, Agathon, Pausanias, Phaedrus, Eryximachus-appear in one other Pla­ tonic dialogue. Of the persons named in the Symposium, only Aristophanes and Aristodemus are missing there. This particular dialogue also includes the largest number of persons who are famous historically and otherwise: it is, of course, Protagoras. Athens' jeunesse dorie has gathered together in the large house of one of the richest Athenian aristocrats, Calli as (whose sister, Hipparete, Alcibiades will marry), to listen to three famous guests: Protagoras, Hippias, and Prodicus. When Socrates arrives, three different groups surround each of them. In Hippias' circle there are Phaedrus and Eryximachus; with Prodicus there are, among others, Pausanias and with him a young boy of tender age and remarkable beauty, called Agathon (315D-E). Pausanias is said to be the boy's erastes ('lover'). AI­ cibiades arrives shortly after Socrates. In the opening sentence of Protagoras we are told that Alcibiades has now grown a beard, a recent event (309 A). This provides a rough dramatic date: just before the beginning of the Peloponnesian War. Many foreign luminaries are visiting Athens, and although Socrates is not yet famous, he is beginning to be known and respected, as Protagoras' closing words show, describing him as "the man I admire above any that I have met, and as quite an exception to men of your age; and I say I should not be surprised if you won high repute for wisdom" (Prt. 361 E).6 These and other indications concerning the time of the gathering in Callias' house are consistent and lead to the year 43213l. Agathon's banquet, then, is a reunion of old friends known to each other for more than fifteen years: Phaedrus and Eryxi­ mach us, whose friendship is also mentioned in Phaedrus (268A ), and Pausanius and his eromenos ('beloved'), Agathon, the youngest of the group-though he too is now a mature man, perhaps just this side of 30, while Alcibiades, Aristophanes, and Phaedrus are in their mid-thirties; they all were born in or close to 450. Eryximachus was probably a few years younger, according to the evidence Davies has assembled.7 Whether Phaedrus and Eryximachus once were lovers or always only friends we do not know for certain; the former seems intimated. But Pausanias and Agathon were and still are lovers. 6 Tr. W. R. M. Lamb (Loeb Classical Library: London 1924) 257. 7 J. K. Davies, Athenian Propertied Families (Oxford 1971) 462f. BLANCKENHAGEN, PETER H. VON, Stage and Actors in Plato's "Symposium" , Greek, Roman and Byzantine Studies, 33:1 (1992:Spring) p.51 PETER H. VON BLANCKENHAGEN 59 The identity of Pausanias has not so far been established. None of the historically-attested Pausaniases can have been he. There is little doubt, however, that he is not a fictional character but, on the contrary, must have been known to Plato's readers just as well as the others. It would have destroyed the illusion of reality, so carefully created, had Plato invented the personage he presents as the lifelong lover of Agathon; and Aelian testifies (VH 2.21) that he accompanied Agathon when he left Athens for the court of King Archelaus. For his part, Agathon was sufficiently famous to be regarded by Aristotle as the first tragedian to have invented a plot (Poet. 9.7,18.12-19). Our main source for Agathon's personality is, of course, the cruel caricature Aristophanes drew only five years after he was Agathon's guest. Thesmophoriazusae satirizes both Euripides and Agathon-'Aya8wv 6 KAEtv6~, as Aristophanes makes Euripides say (29). At once, at the beginning of the play, even before Agathon appears, allusions are made to his effeminacy, allusions of the most obscene and graphic character. Agathon then appears in a woman's dress-a necessary aid, as he ex­ plains, for the piece he is about to write, but obviously quite suitable for his conduct and personality, as eloquently described by Euripides when he tries to persuade Agathon to mingle with the women, disguised as one of them (182-85). Euripides' companion makes vulgar remarks about Agathon's passive homosexuality. Although Agathon turns down Euripides' request, he is willing to lend his razor (217f)-associated with women, of course, not men-along with various female accoutrements and dresses he owns (247-50). In modern slang, Agathon is a drag queen. Although Aristophanes' description is a caricature and not a portrait, it is clear that Agathon must have been known as a notoriously effeminate man whose beard was so radically clipped that he appeared to be beardless, like a woman. He could be suspected of shaving his body hair like a woman, and might even be presented in women's clothing. His appearance, voice, and manners make it possible for him to be mistaken for a woman, even by other women on the occasion of their festival. Thus one may imagine him behaving like a woman sexually, as well as poetically and socially. In fifth-century Athens, Agathon is a figure of derision, contemptible and ridiculous: he is not a man. It is interesting to compare Aristophanes' satire of Agathon with his treatment of other intellectuals-Euripides or Socrates. Crazy, wrong-headed, and BLANCKENHAGEN, PETER H. VON, Stage and Actors in Plato's "Symposium" , Greek, Roman and Byzantine Studies, 33:1 (1992:Spring) p.51 60 STAGE AND ACTORS IN PLATO'S SYMPOSIUM even dangerous for the city as Socrates may appear in Clouds, staged in 423, his manliness is not questioned. Whether or not there was some truth in the attack on the natural philosopher Socrates,S Clouds merely shows how funny any philosopher must appear in public daily life. Thus you may invite to the same banquet both Aristophanes and Socrates-though it seems improbable that Agathon would have invited Aris­ tophanes after 411, the year of Thesmophoriazusae. If there is some similarity between Aristophanes' cruel carica­ ture and the real Agathon-and there must be some-we ought to be more astonished than most readers seem to be that he is the host of this banquet, that Socrates and all the others came, that the speeches in praise of Eros were delivered in his dining room. The Platonic Agathon is, at first sight, a person very different from the Aristophanic one. Above all, he is exquisitely polite, civilized, and well-mannered. To the unexpected appear­ ance of Aristodemus he reacts beautifully by saying that he had looked for him the day before to invite him. Obviously this is untrue, but it is the kindest, socially most accomplished manner of welcome. He is considerate in yielding to Aristodemus' re­ quest to leave Socrates alone wherever he may tarry. He asks Aristodemus to take his place near Socrates to make him com­ fortable. He is polite to his servants, perhaps ostentatiously so. We meet in him a perfect host, endowed with all graces, who at the same time betrays the calculation characteristic of a society host: he has invited both aristocrats (such as Phaedrus and Eryximachus, and surely the unnamed guests also) and intellectual celebrities-a combination typical of socially ambitious hosts in all times. There is some pretentiousness and vanity in such ambition; and this we sense at once in Plato's portrait of Agathon, for instance in Agathon's manner of flattering his guests in different ways, especially in urging Socrates to share his couch so that he may enjoy the benefit of the thought that had detained Socrates (17Sc). With Socrates' elaborate reply, a particular kind of banter begins (175D). It runs through the entire Symposium and its theme is Agathon's youthful appearance. Again and again Agathon is teased with unmistakable irony. His guests refer to him as if he were still a 8 Plato reports in Phaedo (96A-98B) that the young Socrates was indeed fascinated with problems of nature, but in the Apology (19c-D) he makes him say that he has nothing to do with physical speculations and that the man Aristophanes calls Socrates is not the real Socrates. BLANCKENHAGEN, PETER H. VON, Stage and Actors in Plato's "Symposium" , Greek, Roman and Byzantine Studies, 33:1 (1992:Spring) p.51 PETER H. VON BLANCKENHAGEN 61 V£aVl