The Names of Eros
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τὸν δ᾽ ἤτοι θνητοὶ μὲν ἔρωτα καλοῦσι ποτηνόν· ἀθάνατοι δὲ Πτέρωτα· διὰ πτεροφύτορ᾽ ἀνάγκην
The whole verse turns on a pun no translation can carry. Mortals call this force <em>érōs</em>, "winged love"; the gods, Socrates says, call it <em>Ptérōs</em> — "the Winged One" — because the two words rhyme, and because love is precisely the thing that grows the soul's wings back. He credits the lines to secret verses of Homer, almost certainly his own invention dressed as ancient authority.
Socrates seals his praise of love's madness by quoting two verses he claims are secret lines of Homer — one name mortals give this force, and the name the gods give it.
Plato has spent the palinode building one image — love as the regrowth of the soul's lost feathers — and here he seals it with wordplay, as if the language itself confessed the doctrine. Naming the driving force <em>anánkē</em>, necessity, gives it a hard edge: this wing-growing is a compulsion, something that happens to the lover rather than a thing chosen. The <em>Symposium</em> makes eros a ladder climbed deliberately, rung by rung; here it is closer to being seized.
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