Study Questions on Plato's Symposium In the Symposium, Plato gives us one of the most close-up and personal pictures of Socrates we have. Socrates himselfnever wrote a line that we know of; all that we know of him (his personality, his views, his biography) we get through Plato's eyes and pen. We cannot, therefore, know how accurate or embellished this account is. The elaborate way Plato introduces the"story" of the Symposium may lead you to believe that it is a fiction, just as the other works we will read this semester are.You can decide that for yourself.The Greek word "symposium" means something like "drinking party," but it also means something like "a convivial [look it up]evening of drinking and intellectual conversation." It has been borrowed into English. Look it up in your dictionary. You mighttranslate it "feast." Notice that the work begins in medias res. Who is Apollodorus speaking to as the work opens? We learn that there was asupper at the home of Agathon, at which Socrates was a guest. Aristodemus (an uninvited guest at that dinner) laterdescribed that evening to Phoenix, as well as to Apollodorus. Phoenix passed on the story to "another person," who in turntold Glaucon about the occasion. Apollodorus then recounted it in detail to Glaucon, and later to his unnamed "companion."It is this last account that we are reading. Why all this elaborate spaghetti of accounts? One effect is surely to lend anaura of verisimitude [look it up] to the events--to make it sound like it really happened. (Note on p. 2 that Socrates laterconfirmed some of th e details of this story.) Another is perhaps to "cover" any objections to the details of this account--infact to call into question the absolute accuracy of the account. In any case, it is not simply a clumsy, boring opening. Thewriter (Plato) has a strategy in mind.Who is Agathon? What is this symposium in celebration of? How long ago did it take place? What does that tell you about...
