[196]
So if with feet and every way he is wont ever to get hold of the softest parts of the softest creatures,
196a
he needs must be most delicate. Youngest, then, and most delicate is he, and withal pliant of form: for he would never contrive to fold himself about us every way, nor begin by stealing in and out of every soul so secretly, if he were hard. Clear evidence of his fit proportion and pliancy of form is found in his shapely grace, a quality wherein Love is in every quarter allowed to excel: unshapeliness and Love are ever at war with one another. Beauty of hue in this god
196b
is evinced by his seeking his food among flowers: for Love will not settle on body or soul or aught else that is flowerless or whose flower has faded away; while he has only to light on a plot of sweet blossoms and scents to settle there and stay.
Enough has now been said, though much remains unsaid, of the beauty of our god; next shall Love’s goodness be my theme. The strongest plea for this is that neither to a god he gives nor from a god receives any injury, nor from men receives it nor to men gives it. For neither is the usage he himself gets a violent usage, since violence 196c takes not hold of Love; nor is there violence in his dealings, since Love wins all men’s willing service; and agreements on both sides willingly made are held to be just by
Enough has now been said, though much remains unsaid, of the beauty of our god; next shall Love’s goodness be my theme. The strongest plea for this is that neither to a god he gives nor from a god receives any injury, nor from men receives it nor to men gives it. For neither is the usage he himself gets a violent usage, since violence 196c takes not hold of Love; nor is there violence in his dealings, since Love wins all men’s willing service; and agreements on both sides willingly made are held to be just by
our city’s sovereign, the law.
1
Then, over and above his justice, he is richly endowed with temperance. We all agree that temperance is a control of pleasures and desires, while no pleasure is stronger than Love: if they are the weaker, they must be under Love’s control, and he is their controller; so that Love, by controlling pleasures and desires, must be eminently temperate. And observe how in valor
196d
not even the God of War withstands
2
him; for we hear, not of Love caught by Ares, but of Ares caught by Love—of Aphrodite. The captor is stronger than the caught; and as he controls what is braver than any other, he must be bravest of all. So much for justice and temperance and valor in the god: it remains to speak of skill; and here I must try my best to be adequate. First, if I in turn may dignify our craft as Eryximachus did his,
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the god is a composer so accomplished that he is a cause of composing in others: every one, you know, becomes a poet,
though alien to the Muse before,
3
when Love gets hold of him. This we may fitly take for a testimony that Love is a poet well skilled—I speak summarily—in all composing that has to do with music;
197a
for whatever we have not or know not we can neither give to another nor teach our neighbor.Symposium. Plato. Walter Rangeley Maitland Lamb (Translator). Cambridge, MA. 1925.
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