Lesesaal

Symposium

Plato

At the house of the poet Agathon, celebrating his victory in the tragic contest of 416 BC, the guests deliver speeches in honour of Eros: Phaedrus, Pausanias, the physician Eryximachus, Aristophanes with the myth of spherical beings cut in two, Agathon, and Socrates, who relays the teaching of the priestess Diotima on the ladder of love, from one beautiful body to Beauty itself. It closes with the entry of a drunken Alcibiades, who delivers a eulogy of Socrates. A literary masterpiece and source of the whole Western mysticism of love.