Music as the Science of Erotic Harmony
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Eryximachus — βραδέος, ἐκ διενηνεγμένων πρότερον, ὕστερον δὲ ὁμολογησάντων γέγονε. τὴν δὲ ὁμολογίαν πᾶσι τούτοις, ὥσπερ ἐκεῖ ἡ ἰατρική, ἐνταῦθα ἡ μουσικὴ ἐντίθησιν, ἔρωτα καὶ ὁμόνοιαν ἀλλήλων ἐμποιήσασα· καὶ ἔστιν αὖ μουσικὴ περὶ ἁρμονίαν καὶ ῥυθμὸν ἐρωτικῶν ἐπιστήμη. καὶ ἐν μέν γε αὐτῇ τῇ συστάσει ἁρμονίας τε καὶ ῥυθμοῦ οὐδὲν χαλεπὸν τὰ ἐρωτικὰ διαγιγνώσκειν, οὐδὲ ὁ διπλοῦς ἔρως ἐνταῦθά πω ἔστιν; ἀλλʼ ἐπειδὰν δέῃ πρὸς τοὺς ἀνθρώπους καταχρῆσθαι
the slow — formerly at variance, but later, come to agreement, has arisen. Agreement in all these cases — just as medicine does there, music instills here, producing love and concord between them. And music, in turn, is the science of the erotic matters in harmony and rhythm. And in the very constitution of harmony and rhythm, it is nothing difficult to discern the erotic elements, nor is the double love present here yet; but whenever one must apply it to human beings —
Continuing directly from 187b, where a scale's harmony was shown to arise only once its high and low pitches move from discord into agreement, Eryximachus completes the same claim for rhythm's fast and slow, then states his general thesis: music, like medicine, produces homología by instilling love and concord, making music itself a science of the erotic matters at work in harmony and rhythm. He adds a boundary that will matter for what follows — the 'double' love Pausanias distinguished earlier is not present in harmony and rhythm considered in themselves, only once they must be applied to actual people — and the sentence breaks off there, running on into 187d.
Eryximachus finishes the rhythm half of his parallel: just as a scale's pitches move from discord to agreement, so the fast and the slow, once at variance, settle into homología before rhythm itself exists. He then states his thesis as a definition — music is the epistēmē of erotic matters at work in harmony and rhythm — repeating the same move he made with medicine three lines earlier. Homología, like homónoia at 186e, is borrowed from outside music: it is the ordinary word for the terms two parties reach in a treaty or a legal dispute. Applying it to a resolved musical interval lets him treat a tuning problem and a political settlement as the same kind of event, asserted rather than argued.
He then draws a boundary that matters for what follows. Inside the bare structure of harmony and rhythm — pitches and durations considered simply as pitches and durations — there is nothing difficult about the erotic elements, and ho diploûs érōs, the double love Pausanias spent his whole speech distinguishing, is not yet present. Only when someone has to apply that structure to actual people, Eryximachus says, does the difficulty begin. This quietly relocates Pausanias's distinction between the common and heavenly Aphrodite: it turns from a claim about desire into a claim about use, something a skilled composer or teacher manages rather than something a soul answers for. The sentence breaks off exactly at the point where that application starts, just before 187d names what the good craftsman has to handle.
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