The Body In Aristophane's Symposium

Throughout Symposium the body takes on a variety of roles, with equally varied importance. The first prevalent instance of physical aesthetic in Apollodorus’ accounts – albeit not firsthand, but perhaps made ever more significant by the detail being preserved throughout multiple retellings – occurs at the very start of Apollodorus’ speaking on the matter of Aristodemus seeing Socrates and thus attending Agathon’s party with him. What is significant about this, however, is that the first detail upon which Apollodorus places emphasis is the attire and aesthetic of Socrates, as he is described as, “fresh from the bath and wearing his best pair of slippers…he was bound in such fine trim,” (174 A). Thus even before ideas concerning the topic of

Both of these have an emphasis on the physical form, and both occur nearer the start of the piece than the end. Also common amongst them is their relative lack of significance. Aristophanes’ tale is not a widely accepted notion in ancient Greek mythology, and Socrates is widely accepted to have been an ugly man. Thus the usage of these two examples to define the importance of the body indicates a potential underlying lack of concern for physical form in comparison to its mental and soulful counterpart. Furthermore, their aforementioned placement near the beginning of the text – as compared to a greater emphasis on more abstract and less bodily desire nearing the conclusion of Diotima’s speech – indicates a potential overarching hierarchy of the ideas in the piece, shifting from less important but more concrete discussions of the body at the start towards more abstract and more significant discourse on the non-bodily aspects of Eros. If this is to be believed, that Plato expresses a certain disdain for the role of the body in desire – treating it as the object of desire’s basest form – then the introduction of Symposium’s final principle character has interesting