The Splendor of Beauty
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κάλλος δὲ τότ' ἦν ἰδεῖν λαμπρόν· ὅτε σὺν εὐδαίμονι χορῷ μακαρίαν ὄψιν τε καὶ θέαν
Of all the Forms, only beauty shows itself to the eye. Justice, wisdom, the good leave no image — you cannot see them, only reason toward them. Beauty shines through the beautiful thing, and that is why the sight of it can start the soul home. It is also why <em>eros</em>, for Plato, is not a distraction from philosophy but its doorway — the ascent the <em>Symposium</em> climbs rung by rung.
Socrates describes what the souls saw before their birth — traveling with the gods in the great circuit of heaven, beholding the Forms in the hyperuranian place. Beauty was there, radiant beyond anything on earth. Now, glimpsed again in a face, it carries the full weight of that vision.
The passage speaks in the language of the mystery cults: initiation, the blessed sight, the vision given to those who have been prepared. A Greek would have heard Eleusis in it. Even the word for that happiness, <em>eudaimōn</em>, is not our "happy" — it means well-spirited, having a good <em>daimōn</em>, a good divine power at work in you. Beauty, seen rightly, is a rite.
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