'the lion's whelp, who ought not to be reared in the city,' yet not without
a certain generosity which gained the hearts of men,--strangely fascinated
by Socrates, and possessed of a genius which might have been either the
destruction or salvation of Athens. The dramatic interest of the character
is heightened by the recollection of his after history. He seems to have
been present to the mind of Plato in the description of the democratic man
of the Republic (compare also Alcibiades 1).

There is no criterion of the date of the Symposium, except that which is
furnished by the allusion to the division of Arcadia after the destruction
of Mantinea. This took place in the year B.C. 384, which is the forty-
fourth year of Plato's life. The Symposium cannot therefore be regarded as
a youthful work. As Mantinea was restored in the year 369, the composition
of the Dialogue will probably fall between 384 and 369. Whether the
recollection of the event is more likely to have been renewed at the
destruction or restoration of the city, rather than at some intermediate
period, is a consideration not worth raising.

The Symposium is connected with the Phaedrus both in style and subject;
they are the only Dialogues of Plato in which the theme of love is
discussed at length. In both of them philosophy is regarded as a sort of
enthusiasm or madness; Socrates is himself 'a prophet new inspired' with
Bacchanalian revelry, which, like his philosophy, he characteristically
pretends to have derived not from himself but from others. The Phaedo also
presents some points of comparison with the Symposium. For there, too,
philosophy might be described as 'dying for love;' and there are not
wanting many touches of humour and fancy, which remind us of the Symposium.
But while the Phaedo and Phaedrus look backwards and forwards to past and
future states of existence, in the Symposium there is no break between this
world and another; and we rise from one to the other by a regular series of