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ΦΙΛΟΣΟΦΙΑ ἍΦΘΟΝΟΣ (Plato, Symposium 210d)
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 11 February 2009
Extract
Near the climax of the ascent passage of the Symposium, Plato describes how the lover turns to gaze at the great sea of the beautiful and 
. While the phrase 
has been variously interpreted by commentators and translators, none has regarded it as particularly significant. In what follows we examine the contribution that the immediate context makes to the meaning of the phrase and take note of the link between the adjective ἄφθονος and two subsequent uses of φθον⋯ω, both with reference to Alcibiades. We conclude that in the two final scenes of the dialogue the repetition of ἄφθονος and φθον⋯ω has the same effect as the repetition of the well-studied adverb ⋯ξα⋯φνης. By virtue of these contextual associations, we suggest, the prepositional phrase acquires a new significance. Furthermore, on the interpretation developed here the dialogue's two final scenes encapsulate the view of the incompatibility of jealousy and philosophy that Plato sets forth more explicitly and at greater length in the Phaedrus and Republic.
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References
1 See LSJ s.v. For discussion of such adjectives see Barrett, W. S., Euripides: Hippolytos (Oxford, 1966 2),ad 677–9.Google Scholar
2 Bury, R. G., The Symposium of Plato (Cambridge, 1932), p. 127.Google Scholar
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4 Groden, S. Q., The Symposium of Plato (Amherst, 1970); Nehamas, A. and Woodruff, R., Plato: Symposium (Indianapolis, 1989)Google Scholar; and Cobb, W. S., The Symposium and the Phaedrus: Plato's Erotic Dialogues (Albany, 1993). 
figures in a description of the abundance spontaneously generated by the earth during the Golden Age at Hes. Op. 118; cf. Aesch. fr. 196.5 Radt. Perhaps with these associations in mindGoogle Scholar, Joyce, M. (Plato's Symposium [London, 1935]) translates: ‘turning his eyes towards the open sea of beauty, [the lover] will find in such contemplation the seed of the most fruitful discourse and the loftiest thought, and reap a golden harvest of philosophy’.Google Scholar
5 Dover, K., Plato: Symposium (Cambridge, 1980), ad loc.Google Scholar
6 See, e.g., Pit. 272bl, Phlb. 40a 10, Leg. 677e 8, 736d 5, and 761c 2.
7 Dover's ‘ungrudging’ goes some way in this direction by implicitly linking the adjective to the verb 
. Moreover, his version, like those of Nehamas-Woodruff and Robin, aims to capture the force of the alpha-privative by means of a negative prefix. Moore J. D. notes in passing the etymological connection between 
and 
(‘The relation between Plato's Symposium and Phaedrus’, in Moravcsik, J. M. E. (ed.), Patterns in Plato's Thought [Dordrecht, 1973], p. 59).CrossRefGoogle Scholar
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9 On this point see Wackernagel, J., Vorlesungen über Syntax, vol. 2 (Basel, 1924), p. 293: ‘der privative Ausdruck… wird da angewandt, wo man das Fehlen von etwas Normalem oder Üblichem festzustellen hat, oder wo eine Erwartung getäuscht wird’.Google Scholar
10 Nussbaum, M. C. (The Fragility of Goodness: Luck and Ethics in Greek Tragedy and Philosophy [Cambridge, 1986], p. 197) takes note of Alcibiades' use of the vocabulary of slavery, but does not connect it to the earlier passage; indeed, she translates 
at 210dl not as ‘slave’ but as ‘servant’ (p. 180).Google Scholar
11 For other such uses of 
by Diotima, see 209b2, c3, 210cl, and 212a3. Additionally, she employs the verb in an earlier discussion of reproduction (206c3,4, and d5); 
, with the meaning ‘giving birth’, appears in this context at 206b7, c6, and e5.
12 On Plato's list of entities to which one who has made the Symposium's ascent will no longer be attached are not only beautiful boys, but also gold (21 Id). This stipulation is interesting in light of Rep. 5's provision for the abolition of private property in the case, at any rate, of rulers and auxiliaries. For the relation between the Symposium and Republic, see section IV.
13 For the notion of ‘pederasty combined with philosophy’, cf. Phdr. 249a2. For pederasty as an Athenian institution, see Halperin, D. M., ‘Why is Diotima a woman? Platonic Erôs and the figuration of gender’, in Halperin et al. (edd.), Before Sexuality: The Construction of Erotic Experience in the Ancient Greek World (Princeton, 1990), pp. 258–259.Google Scholar
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16 For Plato, structural and dramatic considerations take precedence over verisimilitude. Alcibiades takes up themes from Diotima's speech even though he was not present to hear it; with equal implausibility, Diotima alludes (205d 10) to the speech of Aristophanes.
17 On 
see Fantham, E., ‘
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18 The parallels between the two passages are also underscored by Plato's attention in 210c-d and 213d to the activities of looking and speaking
19 Of course, the earlier speeches of Phaedrus, Pausanias, and Aristophanes also contribute to this contrast, since they emphasize in various ways the nature and intensity of lovers' attachments to the individual objects of their affection.
20 The recurrence of this term is noted by Harder, C., Platons Ausgewählte Dialoge (Berlin, 1915), p. 165. Cf. Nussbaum (n. 10), pp. 182,184,192, and 198.Google Scholar
21 To Nehamas and Woodruff ([n. 4], p. xxii), the instance at 212c6 suggests that Plato is ‘marking explicitly a reversal in the atmosphere which Diotima had created by her own reversal of the mood that had prevailed earlier when she introduced the Form of Beauty, which also … comes “all of a sudden” into view (210e)’.
22 For comparative discussion of the two speeches, see Ferrari, G. R. F., Listening to the Cicadas: A Study of Plato's Phaedrus (Cambridge, 1987), pp. 95–102CrossRefGoogle Scholar
23 There is clearly a change of perspective at 239a-b, although critics disagree about how radical it is. According to de Vries, G. J. (A Commentary on the Phaedrus of Plato [Amsterdam, 1969], p. 91), ‘the Platonic overtones … are not entirely absent’,Google Scholar while Rowe, C. J. (Plato: Phaedrus [Warminster, 1986], p. 159) believes that Plato refers here more directly to ‘philosophy in the narrow sense’. On the interpretation of Ferrari ([n. 22], p. 101), ‘it is no accident that in this speech we hear for the first time of the ideal of “divine philosophy” … since by positing a struggle in the soul the non-lover has at least made an opening for a philosophically mature approach to the ethical issues raised by his suit, and a genuine advance on the thesis of Lysias' persona’. All of these commentators acknowledge the presence of at least an allusion to philosophy in the technical sense, which is what concerns us here.Google Scholar
24 Regarding the lover's jealousy, cf. 240a5
25 For additional relevant passages involving jealousy, see Rep. 580a3, Leg. 679cl, 731a3, 5, 863e7, and 934a5
26 For example, Plato does not merely require that children born to guardians be taken over by officials chosen for this task (460b7–8) since this arrangement is compatible, at least in principle, with parents' still having some relationship with progeny they know to be their own. Plato insists that this recognition itself must not take place, prescribing that ‘no parent will know his own offspring, nor will any child know its parent’ (457d2–3). He adds that when nursing mothers are brought to the creche in which their infants have been placed, the presiding officials ‘will go to great lengths to ensure that they do not learn who their children are’ (460c9–dl). For further discussion of Rep. 5's handling of kinship relations, see Levin, S. B., ‘Greek conceptions of naming: three forms of appropriateness in Plato and the literary tradition’, Classical Philology 92 (1997), 52–6.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
27 In particular, a full treatment of 
is only possible in light of the articulation of soul, and specifically of 
, presented in Rep. 4–7.
28 Moravcsik J. M. E., ‘Reason and Eros in the “ascent”-passage of the Symposium’, in Anton, J. R and Kustas, G. L. (edd.), Essays in Ancient Greek Philosophy (Albany, 1971), p. 293Google Scholar
29 Ibid., p. 293
30 Vlastos, G., ‘The individual as an object of love in Plato’, in Platonic Studies (Princeton, 1982 2), p. 31.Google Scholar