In Plato’s Symposium Socrates recounts his initiation into the mysteries of Ἔρως at the hands of Diotima. At the climax of one’s ascent of the heavenly ladder to behold the Beautiful, she explains, the vision of this absolute and perfect Beauty radically changes one’s judgment of so-called beautiful things here below. “No longer,” Diotima tells Socrates, “will one’s vision of the beautiful take the form of a face, or of hands, or anything that is of the flesh … . And once you have seen it, you will never be seduced again by the charm of gold, of dress, or comely boys or lads just ripening to manhood” (Sym. 211a5–7 and d3–5). Plato confirms Diotima’s narration of the transformation wrought upon Socrates by this vision of immaterial Beauty through a speech by one of Socrates’ former lovers, the beautiful Alcibiades. At the end of the personally embarrassing account of the failure of his amorous advances toward Socrates, Alcibiades sums up Socrates’ attitude toward all worldly things and people, including the distinguished Athenians at Agathon’s symposium, “[Socrates] considers all these possessions [e.g., physical beauty, honor, wealth] beneath contempt, and that is exactly how he considers all of us as well” (216d8–e4). Such a transformation of one’s love, Gregory Vlastos contends, reveals Plato’s deeply problematic vision of human relationships grounded in his ontological hierarchy. When the transcendent Good is that “first love [πρῶτον φίλον] for whose sake … all other objects are loved” (Lysis 219d–220b), people are not loved for their own sake and therefore not truly loved.1