One of those taking part in a symposium could be appointed Master of Drinking, or symposiarch. He was chosen by the throw of a die and would usually not be the host. He was a lord of rule, rather than of misrule, for he set the regulations for the evening. He determined the amount of water to be mixed with the wine and the number of cups to be drunk. His decision obviously influenced the tone of the party. It could be a serious discussion group that debated the issues of the day and indeed aristocratic symposia gained a reputation for antidemocratic activism. Alternatively, songs were sung, with well-known poems supplying the lyrics. The occasion could be something of a knees-up; entertainment was often laid on in the shape of a flute girl or two, or there could be dancing. Slaves, sometimes chosen for their good looks, went around serving wine from a large mixing bowl. On racier occasions clothes might be loosened or discarded.
Games could be played. One of these, kottabos, called for considerable skill. The rules differed, but in a popular version, a wooden pole was set in place, with a small figurine on its apex. Halfway down was a plate or pan; toasting an attractive young man, a player would flick some wine from his cup and try to knock down the figurine so that it fell on the pan and made a musical sound.
Another game demanded a good knowledge of Greek literature and casts light on the high level of cultural awareness among upper-class Athenians. The first player recited a famous line from a poem, and the second had to cap it by quoting the following line. The third had to quote from a passage on a similar theme by another poet.
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Socrates was, unconsciously if we are generous, the most unreliable of guests. On this occasion, he had taken the trouble to have a bath and put on shoes, both quite rare events with him. But then he became lost in his thoughts and asked a friend whom he had met on the way to walk ahead, gate-crash the party, and tell his host that Socrates would be along later.
Agathon took all this in good part and welcomed the unbidden guest. After waiting for a time, he sent out a servant to find Socrates. The philosopher was standing under a neighbor’s front porch, but was deaf to the man’s entreaties to come in. Eventually everyone lay down to dinner and, about halfway through, Socrates arrived, without a word of apology. Then the usual libations were poured and hymns sung.
There was general agreement that after the previous day’s excesses nobody was at all eager for serious drinking, so a symposiarch was not appointed. It was agreed that each man should drink as little or as much as he chose. Socrates was excluded from consideration, for he had an iron constitution and was impervious to alcohol.
A specially hired flute girl was sent away. “Let us entertain ourselves today with conversation,” a doctor called Eryximachus said. “My proposal is that each of us, going from left to right, should make the best speech he can in praise of love.”
Socrates concurred. “Love,” he said, “is the only subject I understand.”
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One by one the guests delivered their opinions. Eros was the Greek word for the passionate, primarily sexual, engagement between two human beings. As a god he was the oldest divinity and inspired lovers to great sacrifices. Love at its finest was that between man and boy, semi-educational, semi-erotic. Nobody spoke up for love between a man and a woman. According to the good doctor, love was a spirit or force that permeated and guided everything in the universe.
The contribution of Aristophanes was a tour de force. Plato allowed him to invent a comical myth to explain the power of love. It exactly suited the playful, fantastical mind of the historical playwright.
In the beginning of things, he said, there were three sexes—male, female, and a hermaphroditic combination of the two. Human beings in that early time were shaped like a circle with two backs, four hands and four legs, and two faces on one head looking in different directions. They could walk backwards or forward but when they wanted to run, Aristophanes said that they “used all their eight limbs, and turned rapidly over in a circle like gymnasts performing a cartwheel.”
These eccentric hominids attacked the gods and Zeus was at a loss what to do with them. After much thought, he decided neither to exterminate them nor to let them carry on regardless, but to weaken them by slicing them in two. He proclaimed: “They will walk upright on two legs. And if there is any further trouble from them and they don’t keep quiet, I will bisect them again and they will have to hop about on one leg.”
Men and women yearn for a return to their primal condition when they were complete, for, according to Aristophanes, “love is simply the name for the desire and pursuit of the whole.” They fall in love with their other halves when they can find them or their equivalents. Those who are halves of a male whole pursue other men, while women who are halves of a female whole are lesbians and fall in love with other women. Those men who seek women and vice versa come from a hermaphroditic whole.
Beneath the fantasy and the joking Aristophanes was making a serious point. Everybody loves what is akin to them and most nearly restores their original oneness. Love is a need that transcends sexual attraction. It is a longing for fulfillment, for a return to vanished happiness. These are themes that Socrates picks up later in the evening.
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Perhaps the most surprising aspect of Aristophanes’ speech was that he was given the opportunity to deliver it at all. One would have thought that he and Socrates were on the worst possible terms and unlikely to have attended the same social event. As a writer of satire he had savaged the philosopher in one of his political comedies, The Clouds. He not only destroyed his character, but got his character wrong. A saint would have been offended.
Some years previously, in 423, Aristophanes’ The Clouds received its premiere at the Great Dionysia. It flopped, but the author was proud of the play and revised it. The final version was finished about the time of Agathon’s dinner party.
The protagonist is Strepsiades, a fraudulent farmer who is getting on in years. He has been bankrupted by his expensive wife and a wastrel of a son, Pheidippides, who spends all his money on horses. He believes that Socrates, who is well known for “making the worse cause seem the better,” would show his son how to bamboozle his creditors.
Socrates runs a school, the Phrontisterion, or Thought Shop, and is happy to oblige. But Pheidippides refuses to enroll, so his father takes his place. Strepsiades learns of Socrates’ scientific achievements. These include a new unit of measurement for working out how far a flea jumps, the cause of a gnat’s whine, and a new use for a large pair of compasses (to remove cloaks from pegs on gymnasium walls).
Strepsiades begs to be introduced to the great man, who appears like a god in a tragedy suspended in a basket from a rope—the better to scrutinize meteorological phenomena. “I am walking on air,” he says, “and attacking the mystery of the sun.”
The comedy contains some dangerous allegations. Socrates is made to claim that rain clouds are divine. He tells Strepsiades: “The Clouds are the only goddesses, all the others are pure nonsense.” The old duffer replies: “But Zeus! Come on now, doesn’t the Olympian god exist?” “Who’s Zeus?” asks Socrates. “You’re talking rubbish, there is no Zeus.”
A joke is a joke, but the Athenians like other Greeks were pious and resented religious innovations. If this was what Socrates really believed, he was a malefactor and breaker of taboos.
After various comings and goings that involve father and son, the play ends with Strepsiades losing faith in Socrates and blaming the Thought Shop for his troubles. He arms his slaves with torches and spades and leads a frenzied attack on the school. Socrates and his students run away.