Section 1
The frame
Apollodorus tells a friend what Aristodemus told him about a party Aristodemus attended years earlier. The frame is deliberate: Plato is preserving the evening across distance. The party itself takes place in Agathon's house the night after his prizewinning debut. Socrates, on his way there, picks up Aristodemus and brings him along uninvited. Then Socrates stops on a neighbor's porch, falls into one of his standing trances, and refuses to come in until the meditation finishes. Aristodemus arrives alone, is welcomed warmly anyway, and the host orders that Socrates be left in peace until he is ready. By the time Socrates joins them, dinner is half over. Eryximachus suggests they dismiss the flute-girl and take turns, instead, making speeches in praise of Eros.
Section 2
Phaedrus
Phaedrus, having proposed the evening, speaks first. His argument is heroic and slightly conventional: Eros is the oldest of the gods — older than memory, older than Hesiod's Chaos and Earth — and is therefore the source of the greatest goods. Above all, Phaedrus says, Eros makes lovers brave. A man will not act shamefully in front of his beloved; an army of lovers, if such a thing existed, would be invincible. He cites Alcestis, who chose to die in her husband's place when no one else would, and Achilles, who chose to die avenging Patroclus. Love makes the willing sacrifice possible. It is the highest proof of virtue and the source of every noble action.
Section 3
Pausanias
Pausanias rises and immediately corrects Phaedrus. The question is wrongly framed, he says. There is not one Eros to praise but two, corresponding to the two Aphrodites Greek religion already recognizes — Aphrodite Pandemos (Common) and Aphrodite Ourania (Heavenly). Common Love is indiscriminate, drawn to bodies regardless of soul, satisfied in the moment and gone. Heavenly Love is older, drawn to mind and character, slow to begin and slow to end; it makes both lover and beloved better. Pausanias spends most of the speech defending the kind of attachment he himself is in — long, mentor-like, with Agathon — and criticizing Athenian ambivalence about the practice. The speech is partly philosophy and partly self-justification.
Section 4
Eryximachus
Aristophanes was supposed to go next but is incapacitated by hiccups, so he swaps places with Eryximachus the doctor and asks for medical advice — sneeze, says Eryximachus, that should clear it. Eryximachus then takes Pausanias's distinction between two Eroses and expands it into a universal theory. Love is not only the principle of attraction between souls but the principle of harmony in everything. In medicine, music, farming, astronomy, even divination — wherever opposites must be reconciled, that is Heavenly Love. Common Love produces sickness and discord. Eryximachus speaks at the great length of a man with a theory that fits everything.
Section 5
The split halves
Aristophanes, hiccups cured, takes a different approach. He will not analyze Eros philosophically; he will tell a story. Once there were three sexes, not two — male, female, and the combined androgynous form. Each was a sphere with four arms, four legs, and two faces, immensely strong, and proud enough to challenge the gods. Zeus, threatened, split each one in half and had Apollo turn each face toward the wound so it would always be visible. Ever since, every human walks the earth as half of something, longing for the other half. When two halves find each other they cling. That clinging, says Aristophanes, is what we call love — and it is also why we sometimes love men, sometimes women: depending on which original whole we were cut from.
Section 6
Agathon
Agathon, the host, gives the speech immediately before Socrates. It is exactly the speech a young prizewinning tragedian would give — balanced clauses, mythological flourishes, wave after wave of poetic praise. Eros, he says, is the youngest of the gods, the most beautiful, the most delicate, the most just, the source of every fine thing in heaven and on earth. The audience applauds warmly. Then Socrates rises and asks three quiet questions. Is Eros love of something, or of nothing? — Of something. Does Eros desire what he has, or what he lacks? — What he lacks. Then if Eros is love of beauty, can Eros himself be beautiful? — He cannot. The speech is undone in three exchanges.
Section 7
Diotima's ladder
Socrates reports the teaching he received from the priestess Diotima of Mantinea. First, the demotion: Eros is not a god. A god possesses the good and beautiful; Eros only longs for them, which means he does not yet have them. Eros is a great spirit between gods and men, a daimōn — born of Plenty and Poverty at Aphrodite's birth-feast, always hungry, always resourceful. What Eros wants, finally, is immortality. Mortals reach for it through generation: bodies generating children, souls generating works. Then Diotima describes the ascent — from one beautiful body, to bodies in general, to the beauty of souls, of laws, of knowledge, and finally to Beauty itself.
Section 8
Alcibiades
Alcibiades arrives propped up between a flute-girl and another reveler, very drunk, garlanded with ivy and violets. He is settling in to crown Agathon when he sees Socrates already there and flinches. He cannot praise Eros after Socrates has just spoken about him; instead, he will praise Socrates. The speech that follows is the most personal thing in all of Plato. Alcibiades compares Socrates to a Silenus statue — ugly outside, hiding a god within. He recounts Socrates's superhuman endurance on campaign and tells the story he has been carrying alone: the night he tried to seduce Socrates and was gently and devastatingly refused. At dawn, Socrates is still arguing. He gets up and walks to the Lyceum to begin his ordinary day.