The Symposium by Plato Analysis Essay

đź“ŚCategory: Books, Plato, Writers
đź“ŚWords: 926
đź“ŚPages: 4
đź“ŚPublished: 11 February 2022

The Classical and Hellenistic ages witnessed the emergence of priceless works in diverse fields, especially philosophy, which accomplished the most impressive and enduring achievements. The Symposium - an Ancient Greek masterpiece written by the renowned, exceptional philosopher Plato was among the foremost characteristic samples of that period. Plato created historic values by containing and preserving details of historical context together with portraits of thoughts and philosophical ideas of affection through the literary form of dialogue. This essay will demonstrate its historical context as a deluxe all-men night party in Ancient Greek and how traditional customs: drinking as a daily diet, party, women’s position, and homogenous love at that time be revealed.

The historical context of Ancient Greek was clearly identified in The Symposium. Plato completed the dialogue in around 385-380 BCE, but in fact, the historical context of the source was 416 BCE - a time filled with fluctuations within the play of the warfare (Peloponnesian war). Symposium means "drinking together", is that the most famous one in all those parties where high-class men drinking to test one's limit, the aim of the party is to drink the maximum amount as possible but remaining sober to check the manliness. The symposium is a story around a night party gathering male friends and fellows to celebrate poet Agathon's victory. Alcibiades appears within the middle of the party and folks start drunkenly entertaining themselves by delivering a speech in praise of affection to the person sitting next to them. Alcibiades must provide a speech to his lover Socrates, who is present at the party. Through this song of praise, Alcibiades indicates different aspects of love and articulates a distinction between the worth of an attractive appearance of himself and also the inner brilliance of Socrates. Plato's Symposium gains interest from modern readers who are inquisitive about the historical context as well as the discussion on abstract Form - Love with different ideas. He took the occasion of a drinking party to praise Love and then define and analyze it, but here the same-sex affection was displayed and discussed in the dialogue form. 

The dialogue first successfully depicts traditional customs in the daily life of Greeks which are party, drinking, and also the difference between male and female. Given that men and women always ate separately, the party is an all-male celebration, while women produce other positions like food preparation, flute-girl, or servants. The Greeks at that time tended to devalue the role that women played in it. Apart from that, drinking, however, was an indispensable part of daily diet and parties. The wine was always diluted with water and drunk each day, men in parties like Symposium consumed a large amount of wine, Alcibiades even drinks wine by cooling jar, which he reckoned could hold more than two quarts and he finishes it in just the once. He then fills the jar again with wine and sets it ahead of Socrates, Socrates drinks the wine until the last drop. As mentioned before, the Symposium is an occasion that men not only drink wine with joyfulness but also to demonstrate their strength, they drink as much as they can without getting drunk and even engage in conversation to praise Love to others. Although few can indeed be sober after drinking that much, Socrates was confirmed to own the flexibility to imbibe by everyone in Symposium.

  In The Symposium, affection was ingeniously demonstrated through a song of praise that Alcibiades expresses to Socrates. Plato mentioned and shed some light on Greek sentiment – Love, which was one of those Ideal Forms that he had termed. But in The Symposium, Plato wanted to manifest how homosexual love functioned and another side of affection like emotional chaos instead of ordinary love. Firstly, love of this nature is not all about traditional marriages which consist of a man and a woman, it simultaneously comes to the existence of homogeneous relationships like Alcibiades and Socrates or Socrates and Agathon in the Symposium. Plato once insisted that we are not merely animated flesh but eternal souls temporarily housed in physical bodies, the harmony in souls can create love between people notwithstanding sex and age. The feelings between a boy and a male adult-like Agathon with Socrates and Alcibiades seem to regularly happen in upper-class society, showing through as soon as Alcibiades settle down, he kisses Agathon in front of others or the way Agathon has a deep affection for Socrates. Secondly, Alcibiades's turmoil love for Socrates is a highlight and the basis of the dialogue. Throughout the speech, Alcibiades does mention his conflicting emotions towards Socrates, he describes that Socrates can cast his spells by using words alone and those words always have an infinite effect on him, which makes him feel like being hold captive forever. Although his praising method is stuffed with sarcasm and emphasizes the despair that he must suffer, Alcibiades still can do nothing but loving and tolerating. He also expresses "Sometimes I think I'd be happier if he were dead. But I know that if he were to die I would feel even worse. So you see, I can't live with him or without him”, the conflict caused by love was recognized and pushed to the climax, creating a thread of mental torments. This part of love was analyzed fairly early in the timeline of Ancient Greek literature. 

The Symposium helps readers to know more about Ancient Greek historical context, as well as traditional customs and homosexual love at that time. The historical context was clarified precisely through the dialogue's situation as a night party of high-class men. It did reveal the traditional customs of drinking, celebrations, and a distinction between males and females of Ancient Greek. Moreover, Plato used the speech of Alcibiades to discuss affection and expressed the concept of a homogenous love, likewise another aspect of love, which is emotional conflicts. There is no doubt that Plato has succeeded in bringing in both historic and philosophic values through an unusual form of exposition like dialogue in The Symposium.

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