Page:A History of Ancient Greek Literature.djvu/326

 302 LITERATURE OF ANCIENT GREECE Plato's brother, the story of the Banquet. Not that he was there himself ; it was long before his time, as it was before Glaucon's ; but he heard it from Aristodemus, " a little unshod man " who had followed Socrates. So, by indirect memories, we reach the Banquet. We hear the various accounts of the origin and meaning of Love, at last that learnt by Socrates from the Mantinean prophetess Diotima. Love is the child of Poverty and Power {tropo'i) ; the object of Love is not Beauty but Eternity, though it is only in that which is beautiful that Love can bear fruit. The lover begins by loving some one beautiful person ; then he feels bodily beauty everywhere, then ^^ beautiful souls and deeds and habits," till at last he can open his eyes to "///^ great ocean of the beautiful" in which he finds his real life. The passion of his original earthly love is not by any means dulled, it persists in intensity to the end, when at last he sees that ultimate cause of all the sea of beautiful things, Perfect Beauty, never becoming nor ceasing, waxing nor waning ; " it is not like any face or hands or bodily thing ; it is not word nor thought ; it is not in something else, neither living thing, nor earth nor heaven ; only by itself in its own way in one form it for ever Is (aurb Ka6' aino fxed' avTov fMovoecSe'i del 6v)." If a man can see that, he has his life, and nothing in the world can ever matter to him. Suddenly at this point comes a beating on the door, and enters Alcibiades, revelling, " with many crowns in his hair" ; we have his absorption into the Banquet, and his speech in praise of Socrates, the brave, wise, sinless. Then — we hear — came a second and louder noise, an inroad of cold night air and unknown drunken revellers. Most of the guests slipped away. Aristodemus, who was waiting for Socrates, drew back and fell asleep, till he