Classics and the Western Canon discussion
Plato, Symposium & Phaedrus
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Symposium: Preliminaries and the Five Speeches
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Thomas wrote: "So this is a story heard second-hand about a gathering that happened years ago. Why does Plato use such a complex narrative framework?"I am not sure why he needs to go so far back in time, unless there is some desire for distance from the story I have not learned yet. Also, the fact that when asked when the party took place, Appolodorus replied, “When we were still children. Maybe this might be a clue in a story about grown men taking young boys under their wing as lovers?
Other than that speculation, the narrative framework seems to serve a few purposes:
1. It turns what could have otherwise been a dry treatise of opinion into a more Interesting and relatable play.
2. It also creates opportunities for the characters to comment on each other's speeches and provide additional context or insight, and comic relief.
3. For me, it serves as a reminder of the oral transmission of information of the time. I am amazed at the detail Apollodorus recalls after so many years.
I’ve always found Aristophanes’ speech to be the most interesting in the dialogue, so much so that I quote it on my wedding invitations. 😀What do people think Plato meant by having the dialogue as a competition of speeches to be judged by Dionysus?
David wrote: "3. For me, it serves as a reminder of the oral transmission of information of the time. I am amazed at the detail Apollodorus recalls after so many years. ."It seems very suspicious to me. But at least Apollodorus has taken the trouble to confirm some of the details with Socrates. It makes me wonder though, if Socrates is alive and able to tell the story directly, why rely on the account of Aristodemus?
Thomas wrote: "if Socrates is alive and able to tell the story directly, why rely on the account of Aristodemus?"I have not ascertained anything from the reading yet, but I can speculate. Plato may have wanted to highlight the importance of mentorship and passing down knowledge through the generations.
Since Aristodemus was young when the events in the story occur, maybe Plato is using him to tell the story to implicitly demonstrate the legacy-preserving benefit of the mentorship aspect of these love relationships between older and younger men?
This suggests that the men could not or would not believe that women, their wives or daughters, were capable of this. I can also speculate a relationship with a young man may serve as a substitute son, of sorts, for those men without one, but what about the sons of those men who have them?
Thomas wrote: "It makes me wonder though, if Socrates is alive and able to tell the story directly, why rely on the account of Aristodemus?."Sometimes the way a person tells a story is just as important as the story, itself. It reveals a lot about the person--what he/she chooses to omit, to emphasize, etc.
Apollodorus says at one point that Aristodemus didn't remember all the speeches. So there were other speeches that Aristodemus did not deem to be important enough to remember. Since Socrates allows Aristodemus to tell the story, perhaps it is his way of gaining greater understanding of Aristodemus by seeing what he omits, includes, emphasizes, etc.
Since this is Apollodorus repeating Aristodemus' narrative, we get a story within a story. Just as Aristodemus has been selective in remembering the contents of specific speeches, it is possible that Apollodorus has been similarly selective in remembering parts of Aristodemus' narrative. And then there is the issue of oral transmission. A story transmitted orally is never exactly the same story even if it is told by the same individual. It always changes depending on the situation, the person telling the story, the nature of the audience, the time that has elapsed since the story was first told, etc. etc. And then there is the issue of memory and how it distorts, changes, fades with time.
Of course, none of this maybe relevant to the discussion, but I can't help but wonder how reliable are these narrators?
David wrote: "Other than that speculation, the narrative framework seems to serve a few purposes:1. It turns what could have otherwise been a dry treatise of opinion into a more Interesting and relatable play..."
I agree with David. The structure of the narrative is effective in generating interest. The asides, Aristophanes' hiccups, the interruptions, etc. lend an air of authenticity to the gathering. It is not just a bunch of people spouting speeches. I also think the technique draws the reader in as if we are watching a scene unfold before our eyes and listening to the speeches as they are told.
The structure reminds me a lot of Shahrazad, the ultimate storyteller in the 1001 Nights. A story is embedded within a story and a thread is picked up from one story (in this case, a speech) which then takes us to another story/speech. All very interesting.
I suspect that memory has something to do with the narrative framework. Plato's theory of knowledge relies on memory and the recollection, or recovery, of knowledge that is in the soul eternally. Dialectic is the method of recovering this knowledge, but we don't see much of that in the first part of Symposium. We get speeches, some not very good, in the tradition of the sophists. (Phaedrus is a student of the sophist Hippias, and Pausanias was affiliated with Prodicus.) My feeling is that we are supposed to approach these speeches with some caution.
Mike wrote: "I’ve always found Aristophanes’ speech to be the most interesting in the dialogue, so much so that I quote it on my wedding invitations. 😀What do people think Plato meant by having the dialogue as a competition of speeches to be judged by Dionysus?"
At this point Aristophanes has definitely delivered the most entertaining speech, well deserving of quotation!
When Socrates finally comes in from the porch, Agathon teases him a little and asks him to sit next to him so his wisdom may flow from to him by his touch. Socrates responds to this with ironic humility, saying that his own wisdom is "disputable as a dream", but Agathon's is "bright and full of promise," as an audience of 30,000 Greeks has just testified to. Agathon finds this outrageous (hubristic) and says that later on their claims about wisdom will be judged by Dionysus. Why would Dionysus be chosen to judge claims about wisdom? Maybe this is meant to contrast with Eros?
I'm not sure, but one of the things to notice is that each speaker has a different conception of Eros. Phaedrus thinks of Eros as a god, the eldest of them all; Pausanias thinks of Eros as two gods; Erixymachus makes Eros a pair of natural forces, Aristophanes a single force...
The Symposium is a literary tour de force. All the speakers speak with their own uniquely identifiable voices, and at one point Socrates inserts in his own speech a speech he recalls from another speaker whose voice is also recognizable as different from that of Socrates. The events pass in a lifelike fashion, as we are led along what appears to be a philosophical demonstration of the nature of love. Or is it? The more I read this dialogue, the more questions I have.The manner of retelling the events is one that feels deliberately designed to bring up the question of the reliability of oral transmission. And in relation to this, one thing I have always wondered is: why did Socrates never write anything down? You'd think if he felt he had things to teach he would have put them in writing. That's certainly what Plato did. I know I'm getting ahead of ourselves, but there is some discussion of this in Phaedrus, where Socrates says: "Writing, Phaedrus, has this strange quality, and is very like painting; for the creatures of painting stand like living beings, but if one asks them a question, they preserve a solemn silence. And so it is with written words; you might think they spoke as if they had intelligence, but if you question them, wishing to know about their sayings, they always say only one and the same thing. And every word, when once it is written, is bandied about, alike among those who understand and those who have no interest in it, and it knows not to whom to speak or not to speak; when ill-treated or unjustly reviled it always needs its father to help it; for it has no power to protect or help itself."
So Socrates clearly finds oral transmission a more reliable method of handing along truth than writing.
I think it's important to put The Symposium in some historical context. Athens was engaged in the long and destructive Peloponnesian War with Sparta from 431 -- 404. The date on which this drinking party takes place can be clearly identified as 416, the date of Agathon's first dramatic triumph. This was just prior to the calamitous Sicilian Expedition of 415 which led to the defeat of Athens. Not much is known of Agathon, since none of his plays have survived, but judging by Aristophanes' depiction of him in The Thesmophoriazusae he seems to have been a dramatist much along the line of Euripides. There are other historical figures in this dialogue.
Alcibiades, who is depicted by Thucydides and Plutarch and Plato in this dialogue as a charismatic, courageous and very handsome nobleman was a strong supporter of the expedition, but just before it set off, there was a sacrilegious mutilation of the city's protective statues, called 'herms', and it was suspected that Alcibiades was responsible. Whether this was the case, or it was just a pretext his enemies used to destroy him, Alcibiades was recalled to Athens to stand trial, but instead, he defected to the Spartans. This led to a long tumultuous career of defections to Sparta, then Persia, then back to Athens. In 405 he attempted once more to return to Athens and, according to Plutarch, was murdered by the Persians in 404. Consult Plutarch's life for details. Alcibiades was also thought to have been a student of Socrates, and this was undoubtedly in the background when Socrates was tried and condemned in 399. I think one thing Plato attempted to demonstrate in The Symposium was that Alcibiades was a free spirit who was not directed by Socrates.
The other major historical figure in the dialogue is Aristophanes. Of course, Aristophanes had satirized Socrates in The Clouds in 423, but I think a play that resonates much more clearly in this dialogue is The Frogs, written in 405. At this time, Athens was nearing defeat. In fact, it was just six months after the play was produced that Athens finally succumbed. Sophocles and Euripides had both died just the year before. It must have been a very bleak time, and it's a remarkable testament to the Athenian spirit that they relished this comedy as much as they did. One thing it's interesting to keep in mind about the Athenian dramas is that they were lavish productions which were produced only one time. All the great Athenian tragedies were written, mounted and then seen only once. Subsequently in the fourth century BC dramatic troupes arose that put the plays on, but there is only one play of which it has been recorded that it was given a second production, and that was The Frogs. In The Frogs, Aristophanes presents a trip by Dionysus to Hades to bring back one of the great Athenian dramatists to inspire the city. Aeschylus (who had died approximately 50 years earlier) and Euripides both contended in a series of speeches. Ultimately, Dionysus chose Aeschylus, because Aeschylus favored restoring Alcibiades to fight the Spartans.
In The Symposium, we have another series of speeches, and once again Dionysus is said to be the judge. Who will win for giving the best speech?
It is thought that Plato could not have written The Symposium while Aristophanes was still alive. Aristophanes died in 386, so 385 is usually assigned as the most likely year for its composition. Is Plato taking a somewhat ironical look at the verdict given in The Frogs?
This note has turned out to be longer than I expected, but I thought it was important to provide some context, because all these events would have been very much in the mind of Plato and his readers. Plato would have been 11 years old when the Symposium took place, so if it was an historical event he would have been in a position to know something about it. The events of that time would have had a lasting impact on him, and one can't help but wonder why he chose to set this particular set of speeches between just these people, taking place at this specific time.
Does the frame he provides give his readers more a feeling of the veracity of the events he narrates?
Aristophanes claims there were originally three sexes—the male, the female, and the androgyne. Each half wants to connect with his or her other half after Zeus split them apart. Am I misreading him or is he advocating tolerance for the choice of a beloved, including tolerance for men who are attracted to women instead of attracted to other men, because all anyone is doing is trying to return to his/her ancient nature?
Tamara wrote: "Aristophanes claims there were originally three sexes—the male, the female, and the androgyne. Each half wants to connect with his or her other half..."Zeus is thought to have declared,
. . .But if I find they still run riot and do not keep the peace,” he said, “I will cut them in two again, and they’ll have to make their way on one leg, hopping.”I sure hope that Zeus doesn't split us up again. Adding right and left would create so many new types of couples that the streets must fill to excess with enough bakeries to ensure there is at least one that is willing to make each a wedding cake.
Thomas wrote: "(Phaedrus is a student of the sophist Hippias, and Pausanias was affiliated with Prodicus.) My feeling is that we are supposed to approach these speeches with some caution."I was wondering if the first people to give a speech were like the first attempts at an interlocutor trying to define something to Socrates when he was playing at not knowing anything but poking holes in their definitions.
Phaedrus sounds like a Romeo for having a young man's idealized and romanticized view of love. He claims love is the oldest and most powerful god, inspiring great acts of virtue and heroism in humans. Since when does the oldest and most powerful make it so great, and when is co-dependency a good thing?
My picture of Aristophanes' fable is that lesbians come from splitting the original two-headed, four-armed, four-legged women, homosexual men from splitting the original men, and heterosexual couples from splitting the androgynes.
Tamara wrote: "Am I misreading him or is he advocating tolerance for the choice of a beloved, including tolerance for men who are attracted to women instead of attracted to other men, because all anyone is doing is trying to return to his/her ancient nature?."I think that's right -- Eros is the force that compels each half to find its other half in order to become whole again. Whether that other half is male or female depends on the original nature of the whole. Their original nature was also to be violent and jealous of the gods, so much that they conspired to usurp the gods. Which makes me wonder if Aristophanes is suggesting that the desire to return to an original nature expressed by eros is also a desire for power. (Freud was quite fond of this story, btw.)
When Eryximachus claims there must be balance and harmony between beautiful eros and vulgar eros for a body to remain healthy, it sounded to me a lot like the importance of balance between the four humors that we come across in Shakespeare and that I think was first suggested by Hippocrates.
Pausanias' speech also sounds more like rhetoric, and a defensive one at that, than a definition. First he admits that some of those more virtuous suitors are moved by physical attraction:That’s why those who are inspired by her Love are attracted to the male: they find pleasure in what is by nature stronger and more intelligent. But, even within the group that [d] is attracted to handsome boys, some are not moved purely by this Heavenly LoveNext he admits the bad apples have turned some against the custom:
These vulgar lovers are the people who have given love such a bad reputation that some have gone so far as to claim that taking any man as a lover is in itself disgraceful.The rest of Pausanias' speech is spent attempting to distinguish and distance his, and I assume his present audience, proper relationships from the bad. He seems to be arguing that their customs are proper and that any disapproval of them is unfounded.
Donnally wrote: "The Symposium is a literary tour de force. All the speakers speak with their own uniquely identifiable voices, and at one point Socrates inserts in his own speech a speech he recalls from another s..."Thank you for providing this historical context; it is really useful. I think part of the reason for the distanced narrative-within-a-narrative may be to convey the radical distance--in terms of the changes in Athens--from the time when the symposium took place to when Plato is writing. I also love the ideas people have suggested that Plato wants to make us aware of the importance of oral transmission to cultural memory and its relation to mentorship.
This at least is what I gather from reading the Symposium chapter in the online book Approaching Plato (Mark Anderson & Ginger Osborn, at PhilArchive). Here's what I took from reading that source:
Plato's Symposium has a complex historical framework. Those who recount the dialogue “were children” when it took place. It was a different time, before some of the speakers fell from grace. Alcibiades gets exiled, but returns to Athens triumphant, yet is later assassinated. The symposium takes place in the past; the narrative takes place just after the assassination of Alcibiades. Soon after, Apollodorus will be among those who mourn the death of Socrates. What has mediated between the "then" of the symposium and the "now" of the frame is the Peloponnesian War and how Athens has dealt with the men of that generation. As in most of Plato's dialogues, it is also about an intergenerational relationship – young people reconstructing the past of their polis – and a judgment about those years and their consequences.
And here are a couple of quotations from that resource (Approaching Plato, Mark Anderson & Ginger Osborn, at PhilArchive)."The historical leverage of the Symposium must have been emotionally significant, for when the Athenians nested this dialogue within their collective memory, it presented them with a vivid and compelling image of their city’s mercurial character over time. Agathon has fled; Alcibiades has been murdered; Socrates has been executed."
"There were no newspapers or history books for the youth to consult for reliable information. Athenian adults were starkly divided in their opinions concerning the previous decade and the men involved, both on ideological grounds and because the years in question coincided with the tumultuous Peloponnesian War. This long war caused ruptures in the Athenian's sense of his city's past and greatly increased his anxiety for her future. His city's inexplicable attitude towards these men together with recent events would perplex any youth trying to discover how to establish and take up a viable place in the city."
David wrote: "Pausanias' speech also sounds more like rhetoric, and a defensive one at that, than a definition. First he admits that some of those more virtuous suitors are moved by physical attraction:That’s..."
Pausanias distinguishes between a divine Eros and a vulgar Eros, which muddles his argument from the beginning but raises an important question: what exactly is Eros? He suggests that Eros is a how rather than a what, which is an escape that only leads to another trap.
It seems at the start that divine Eros is virtuous in nature -- the beloved (an adolescent boy) is right to sexually gratify the lover because he will receive the gift of virtue from him. On the other hand, it is wrong for a boy to gratify a lover who only wants sex. But both lovers clearly want sex as part of the transaction. How is the boy to distinguish between the virtuous lover and the vulgar lover? I think the answer for Pausanias is appearances. If they believe it to be virtuous Eros, then it is.
For it is held by us that if someone is willing to serve someone in the belief that through him he will become better, in respect either to some kind of wisdom or to any other part of virtue whatever, this voluntary servitude is on the contrary not shameful, nor is it flattery.
Even if the boy is deceived, it is the belief that makes it virtuous. Socrates would quickly point out that if virtue is whatever anyone thinks it is, then it is incapable of definition and is therefore not a thing at all. And if that's the case, Pausanias' argument fails before it even gets started.
Tamara wrote: "Am I misreading him or is he advocating tolerance for the choice of a beloved, including tolerance for men who are attracted to women instead of attracted to other men, because all anyone is doing is trying to return to his/her ancient nature?"Of course he is, but this would not have been seen as 'tolerance' at that time, the way it seems today. The ancient Athenian conceptions of sexual orientation were much more fluid than those we have today and a lot of people nowadays (and in Victorian times) see them as shocking.
Don't try to read too deeply into Aristophanes' speech. It is intended as sheer buffoonery, and makes a pretty good joke, much in keeping with Aristophanic comedy in general.
Thomas wrote: "Even if the boy is deceived, it is the belief that makes it virtuous. Socrates would quickly point out that if virtue is whatever anyone thinks it is, then it is incapable of definition and is therefore not a thing at all. And if that's the case, Pausanias' argument fails before it even gets started."I can see Socrates saying that, and he probably does, but I have not got that far yet. However I am not sure that Pausanias is saying that virtue is based on personal belief. Instead he argues that a person acting with virtuous intentions should not be shamed if they are deceived by another, as they are acting in accordance with true love and motivated by virtuous, i.e., honorable intentions.
The case of two non-virtuous loversI guess the premise to question is whether or not virtuous intentions are always honorable? The vulgar forms are still potentially present no matter how virtuous by any standard the intention is, for example, if the youth is deemed too young. In writing this response I see how slippery the definition of virtuous is because I felt obliged to add by any standard.
Suppose, for example, that someone thinks his lover is rich and accepts him for his money; his action won’t be any less shameful if it turns out that he was deceived and his lover was a poor man after all. For the young man has already shown himself to be the sort of person who will do anything for money—and that is far from honorable.
The case where a virtuous lover is deceived
By the same token, suppose that someone takes a lover in the mistaken belief that this lover is a good man and likely to make him better himself, while in reality the man is horrible, totally lacking in virtue; even so, it is noble for him to [b] have been deceived. For he too has demonstrated something about himself: that he is the sort of person who will do anything for the sake of virtue—and what could be more honorable than that?
The conclusion
It follows, therefore, that giving in to your lover for virtue’s sake is honorable, whatever the outcome.
Having just read Mill, it is interesting to note by contrast that intentions do not play a part, only consequences.
David wrote: "Instead he argues that a person acting with virtuous intentions should not be shamed if they are deceived by another, as they are acting in accordance with true love and motivated by virtuous, i.e., honorable intentions."The logical problem is that the virtuous beloved is acting with virtuous intentions without knowing what virtue is. The beloved wants to learn virtue from the lover, but how can he act virtuously if he hasn't learned what virtue is yet? I think I agree with your reading of Pausanias, that the beloved is still virtuous if the beloved believes the lover to be virtuous. But this makes virtue a subjective concept which may not even objectively exist. "By any standard" is a great term to apply here -- it reminds me of Protagoras' saying: "Man is the measure of all things."
Thomas wrote: "The logical problem is that the virtuous beloved is acting with virtuous intentions without knowing what virtue is."and
But this makes virtue a subjective concept which may not even objectively exist.
In response to the problem of the virtuous beloved, we can turn to Plato's theory of knowledge as recollection. This theory posits that knowledge is not something that can be taught in the traditional sense, but rather it is something that we already possess within our souls, and we need only to remember it through philosophical inquiry. Therefore, the virtuous beloved already possesses some innate knowledge of virtue, which explains how he is able to act virtuously even before he more fully understands what virtue is.
So does the problem for Pausanias start near the beginning of his arguement when he claims,
The reason for [distinguishing between the common vs. heavenly love] applies in the same way to every type of action: considered in itself, no action is either good or bad, honorable or shameful. . .how it comes out depends entirely on how it is performed. If it is done honorably and properly, it turns out to be honorable; if it is done improperly, it is disgraceful.While it is true that the goodness or badness of an action can depend on how it is performed, Pausanias' claim that no action is either good or bad in itself is a false dilemma that leaves out objective good. From previous readings of Plato in this group, we learned that Plato/Socrates argues for his theory of Forms or Ideas, i.e., that there are objective Forms or Ideas that do exist that represent the perfect, unchanging essence of things, including the Form of the Good. Without entangling his theory in those objective Forms, Pausanias' argument becomes suspect.
How does Pausanias, or any of the speakers, distinguish between sex and love?
I’m intrigued by this thought, that the narrative form is related somehow to Plato’s theory of knowledge. Knowledge as recollection, as I understand it, pertains to knowledge of the Forms and mathematical truths, right? This dialogue is presented as historical knowledge rather than recollection of universals. Does anyone know what Plato’s philosophy of history was? Did he explicitly address the issue elsewhere? If so, it might help inform how we interpret his layered memory-upon-memory narrative form.On a related note, I agree with Tamara that the reliability of the narrators is worth thinking about. I realize that it’s generally a modern problem in fiction, but considering the importance of knowledge and memory in Plato’s work more generally, it’s hard to ignore when looking at the Symposium’s narrative structure. I look forward to covering the section Donnally quoted from the Phaedrus, and maybe I’ll pick up the topic again then.
What other sources do we have outside of Plato to understand the ancient Athenian conception of love and sex? I’ve read little from this period besides Plato but I also realize that if some guy in the year 4300 reads only author from 19th/20th century Europe, he’s going to get a very different idea of sexuality if his choice of author is Jane Austen or Marcel Proust.I guess I’m wondering if Plato’s presentation of the mature man and young boy relationships is 1) mostly just an insight into Plato’s sexuality, 2) an insight into certain artistic and intellectual circles at the time, or 3) the general practice of the time. My intuition tells me it wouldn’t be easy to tell if most of our sources are from artists and intellectuals. As is always the case in historical studies, sampling and survivorship bias is a problem.
Jacob wrote: "I’m intrigued by this thought, that the narrative form is related somehow to Plato’s theory of knowledge. Knowledge as recollection, as I understand it, pertains to knowledge of the Forms and mathe..."I'm intrigued as well. Plato seems intent on letting us know that this story is imperfect with the narrative form, as well as a number of anachronisms. I'm starting to wonder if the dialogue exists in a sort of middle ground between truth and fiction, a story that may not be entirely factual but still true in the way that a myth can be true. Plato else where calls this sort of thing an "eikos mythos," a "likely story." It guides the listener to the truth via a fiction.
Thomas wrote: "Jacob wrote: "I’m intrigued by this thought, that the narrative form is related somehow to Plato’s theory of knowledge. Knowledge as recollection, as I understand it, pertains to knowledge of the F..."It also leaves open the question of whose side Plato is on. We may be accustomed to Plato siding entirely with Socrates, so to speak, but if this Apollodorus's version of what he heard from Aristodemus and partly confirmed with Socrates (but which parts did he confirm?), then maybe we ought to take this Socrates as a slightly historical and slightly re-imagined Socrates. It could be something of a mask for Plato to begin tweaking the ideas he had received from his teacher, making them more his own.
Thomas wrote: "Why does Plato use such a complex narrative framework?..."Thomas wrote: "I'm starting to wonder if the dialogue exists in a sort of middle ground between truth and fiction, a story that may not be entirely factual but still true in the way that a myth can be true. ..."
This elaborate framework seems unnecessary... unless Plato is using it to distance himself as much as possible from the narrative AND from the dialogue itself.
How much of the dialogue is satirical? So far, everything - if you ask me. I have the feeling that Platon is making fun of those guys and of the social classes they represent.
Now I am curious how Socrates will respond.
Thomas wrote: "I'm starting to wonder if the dialogue exists in a sort of middle ground between truth and fiction, a story that may not be entirely factual but still true in the way that a myth can be true."it would fit the theme of being in-between mortality and immortality, wisdom and ignorance, making the work itself one more example of an improved but imperfect work created by love somewhere between truth and fiction, still striving up the ladder from the physical reflections to the true reality of Forms.
So this is a story heard second-hand about a gathering that happened years ago. Why does Plato use such a complex narrative framework?
The story begins with Aristodemus and Socrates on their way to the party. Socrates is dressed up and even wearing shoes for a change. But when Aristodemus arrives he discovers that Socrates has fallen behind, distracted by his thoughts, and is no longer with him. Eventually Socrates is persuaded to come in to the party by Agathon's servants. What does this say about Socrates?
After deciding that they would only drink in moderation, Erixymachus proposes that they deliver praises to the god Eros, an idea suggested to him by Phaedrus. Socrates urges Phaedrus to go first.
Phaedrus speaks, followed by Pausanias. Aristophanes is set to go next, but he is suffering from a bout of hiccups, so Erixymachus, a doctor by profession, offers some remedies and takes his place. Aristophanes recovers and tells the most interesting story of the bunch. Agathon, the victorious dramatist, follows.
Which of the speeches is most effective? Do the speeches reflect the personalities of the speakers, at least based on what we know of them? Is the order of any importance?
The goal of almost every dialogue is to outline, if not define, what something is. Do any these speeches succeed in defining Eros?