Plato’s Symposium
“This book is basically the Ancient Greek equivalence of a reddit thread.” That is the first thing I thought after I finished The Symposium by Plato, because that is probably the most entertaining book I’ve read in a long time. It wasn’t just funny; it was absolutely OUTRAGEOUS.
Gender roles in history is a topic I am really interested in, and The Symposium provides a deep dive into what Greeks thought about sex and gender. The first thing I want to point out is that there is no way people still think that Akhilleus and Patroklos from the Iliad were hetero-bro-buddies. If Plato is out here calling them lovers, then we should be too. Also, the speculation of who was the ‘lover’ and who was the ‘boyfriend’ (I’m reading the Christopher Gill translation) is what makes this read like a reddit thread. Like, these are things you’d expect fans to be discussing in the comments under posts about their favorite ships.
The gender wars are also fascinating in this text; the concept of Common Love was basically bashed by everyone in the room, and this quote describes the people who practice Common Love:
“People like this are attracted to women as much as boys… They are attracted to partners with the least possible intelligence.”
The fact that it was believed in Ancient Greece that love can’t exist between a man and woman is actually hysterical (though the bit about underaged boys is unsettling), and their immediate dismissal of a woman’s intelligence is revealing of the gender expectations of the time.
There was one story in The Symposium though that I thought was exceptionally beautiful. The creation of human beings, according to Aristophanes, started with large creatures that were like two humans merged together. They came in three genders: male, female, and androgynous. Apparently, they were so powerful and dangerous that the gods decided to cut them all in half and weaken them. Because of this, humans always search for what is quite literally their other half; being in love is the closest we will ever get to being whole. An example of this is given about Hephaestus offering to merge two lovers together forever:
“We know that no one who heard this offer would turn it down and it would become apparent that no one wanted anything else.”
Additionally, this story also explains human sexualities. Those who were cut apart from the androgynous gender were straight, people cut apart from the female gender were lesbian, and people cut apart from the male gender were gay. I find it fascinating how different Greek writers have different creation myths, each explaining different aspects of the human experience; I mean, I don’t remember reading this story in Hesiod’s works.
The philosophies expressed in The Symposium were insightful, funny, and beautiful (with the exception of the second half, which was basically everyone accusing each other of inappropriate touching), and this book will go down as one of my absolute favorite historical works.
Update: This book is a 9/10 for me!