So Great a God, Thus Neglected
Read the full text in our reader
Phaedrus — συχνὰ ἴδοις ἂν ἐγκεκωμιασμένα— τὸ οὖν τοιούτων μὲν πέρι πολλὴν σπουδὴν ποιήσασθαι, ἔρωτα δὲ μηδένα πω ἀνθρώπων τετολμηκέναι εἰς ταυτηνὶ τὴν ἡμέραν ἀξίως ὑμνῆσαι· ἀλλʼ οὕτως ἠμέληται τοσοῦτος θεός.
Eryximachus — ταῦτα δή μοι δοκεῖ εὖ λέγειν Φαῖδρος. ἐγὼ οὖν ἐπιθυμῶ ἅμα μὲν τούτῳ ἔρανον εἰσενεγκεῖν καὶ χαρίσασθαι, ἅμα δʼ ἐν τῷ παρόντι πρέπον μοι δοκεῖ εἶναι ἡμῖν τοῖς παροῦσι κοσμῆσαι τὸν θεόν. εἰ οὖν
You would see many things praised yet while so much earnest effort has gone into such things, no one among men has yet dared, to this very day, to hymn Eros worthily. But so utterly has this great god been neglected. Phaedrus seems to me to put this well indeed. So I want to contribute my share to him and gratify him, and at the same time on this occasion it seems fitting to me for us who are present to honor the god. So, if…
Still inside Phaedrus's quoted complaint (reported by Eryximachus, within Aristodemus's narration), continuing from 177b's book praising salt: the list of trivial things given lavish praise closes with the point that no one has ever dared to hymn Eros worthily. Eryximachus then returns to his own voice, endorsing Phaedrus's complaint and proposing to contribute his own encomium as a shared honor to the god.
The verb Eryximachus reaches for, κοσμῆσαι, is a quiet preview of his own speech to come. Its root, kosmos, means order as much as ornament — the same word that will later name the arrangement of the whole physical universe in Presocratic thought. A physician, Eryximachus is about to build his entire speech around the claim that health, music, and the seasons all answer to one principle of cosmic balance; here, before he has said a word of that theory, his instinct already reaches for the vocabulary of order to describe paying honor to a god. His other image is homelier. An eranos was a potluck contribution — the dish or coin each guest brought to a shared meal rather than leaving one host to cover everything — and casting an encomium to Eros as an eranos turns the whole night of speeches into exactly that kind of meal, each speaker bringing his own dish to the table. It is also the last sentence before Phaedrus is named, half in jest, father of the discussion to follow — a running joke in the Symposium that credit for its best ideas keeps sliding onto somebody else's account.
Read the full commentary — and tap any word for its dictionary entry — in the interlinear reader.
Open Plato, Symposium 177c in the full reader
Always open passages in the reader
You are reading a page of the Plato, Symposium — the whole book is free in our interlinear reader.
The Great Library Project presses the classics in their original languages, glossed word by word — free to read, always. Browse the whole library.
Also on our shelves:
Plato, Symposium 177c — The Great Library Project interlinear edition · greatlibraryproject.com/book/symposium/177c/