Symposium
...that you find the least persuasive and compare the two. What do the speeches you selected tell us about Greek attitudes regarding love and relationships?
Each of the seven people in Plato’s Symposium has interesting views on love and how to reach true love. Some stories are more convincing than others, for instance Aristophanes and Phaedrus stories. Of course some were more farfetched like Diotima’s and Eryximachus’. Reading the Symposium gave me a remarkable insight of what Greek’s attitudes regarding love were. My Personal favorite love story was that of Aristophanes and his three gender theory, on the opposite end of the spectrum, my least favorite was Pausanias and his Heavenly and common idea of love.
In the Symposium Aristophanes had not only my favorite story on love but it is the one that makes the most sense to me in present time. His story goes as followed; Humans once had four legs, four arms, two heads, and so on, he says. Some were male, with two sets of male sexual organs; some were females; and some were hermaphrodites, with one set each of male and female sexual organs. We were twice the people we are now, and the gods were jealous, afraid we would overthrow them. Zeus decided to cut us in half to reduce our power, ever since we have been roaming Earth trying to rejoin with our other half. When one finds their other half we cling to them and that is what true love is (Plato, xxiv/xxv). Aristophanes story is obviously not true, however it is ironic because we now have a saying “opposites attract”, which is exactly his idea of what true love is, being reunited with your other half. He mentions that there are men, females, and hermaphrodites (mixture), which is true today. Although hermaphrodites are not accepted today like they were back in Greek culture, they still exist to this day.
My least favorite love story in the Symposium...
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