CHRISTOPHER P. LONGpolitical legacy of Aristophanes, his comic poetry was held in part re-
sponsible for the accusations against Socrates that led ultimately to his
death sentence at the hands of the Athenian democracy.^18 By bringing
fi gures with such histories together in the Symposium, Plato implicitly
enjoins us to consider the relationship between eros and politics. This
becomes strikingly obvious when the speech given by Diotima through
Socrates is brought into relation to that offered by Alcibiades. A con-
sideration of these two speeches and their relation to one another not
only lends insight into the methodological signifi cance of Alcibiades’
political background, it also illustrates the sophisticated way in which
Plato brings the distancing and grounding strategies together to signifi -
cant demonstrative effect: it at once shows something important about
Plato’s method and illustrates the substantive philosophical stance Plato
seeks to establish.
If Leo Strauss is correct in characterizing the comical as that which
treats the impossible as possible, then the speech Diotima gives through
Socrates on eros is high comedy indeed.^19 It represent s not hing less t han
the impossible possibility that a human being could come to possess a
“pure, clear and unmixed” vision of the beautiful itself and become, as
Diotima puts it herself, “a friend of the gods” (212a). The comedy is,
however, tragic as well, for it represents human beings as divine, thus
transgressing the fundamental Delphic principle to “know thyself,” that
is, to know one’s position as a mortal and not madly to presume pure ac-
cess to things divine. However, the tragicomic dimensions of the speech
are eclipsed if the distancing and grounding strategies Plato deploys in
presenting it are not recognized and the speech is taken as straightfor-
ward Platonic doctrine. In fact, Plato distances himself from the speech
in two ways, fi rst by putting it into the mouth of Socrates and second by
having him insist that it is received from a priestess, Diotima. The reli-
gious aura of the speech is reinforced by Socrates’ own purifi ed fi gure:
he has arrived at Agathon’s fresh from a sort of inspired trance, beauti-
fi ed and wearing socks (174a– 175 c).^20 This complex, multilayered dis-
tancing strategy has a twofold effect. It at once disassociates Plato from
the ideas presented in the speech and implicitly alerts the audience to
be on guard against its mystical, nonrational, and perhaps even hyper-
bolic dimensions. If these textual clues are not heeded, the authoritative
aura of the speech could give rise to a profoundly unphilosophical sort
of erotic madness that is incapable of recognizing its own fi nitude—the
height of tragic hubris.
Precisely this danger is embodied in the fi gure of Alcibiades, who
appears suddenly after Diotima’s speech. He is drunk and crowned
with a wreath of ivy and violets—symbols of both Dionysus and Ath-