The Good Craftsman and the Heavenly Love
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Eryximachus — ῥυθμῷ τε καὶ ἁρμονίᾳ ἢ ποιοῦντα, ὃ δὴ μελοποιίαν καλοῦσιν, ἢ χρώμενον ὀρθῶς τοῖς πεποιημένοις μέλεσί τε καὶ μέτροις, ὃ δὴ παιδεία ἐκλήθη, ἐνταῦθα δὴ καὶ χαλεπὸν καὶ ἀγαθοῦ δημιουργοῦ δεῖ. πάλιν γὰρ ἥκει ὁ αὐτὸς λόγος, ὅτι τοῖς μὲν κοσμίοις τῶν ἀνθρώπων, καὶ ὡς ἂν κοσμιώτεροι γίγνοιντο οἱ μήπω ὄντες, δεῖ χαρίζεσθαι καὶ φυλάττειν τὸν τούτων ἔρωτα, καὶ οὗτός ἐστιν ὁ καλός, ὁ οὐράνιος, ὁ τῆς Οὐρανίας
to rhythm and harmony — either composing, which they call melic composition, or using rightly what has been composed, in melodies and meters, which was called education — here indeed it is difficult, and needs a good craftsman. For the same argument comes back again: toward the orderly among human beings — so that those not yet orderly might become more so — one must gratify and guard their love; and this is the noble love, the heavenly one, the one of Urania—
Continuing directly from 187c, where Eryximachus said that discerning the erotic elements grows hard only once rhythm and harmony must be applied to actual people, he now names the two ways that application happens — composing new music and using existing music rightly in education — and restates his refrain from the medical half of his speech: gratify and guard the love of the orderly, and this is the noble, heavenly love. The sentence breaks off mid-phrase, naming the Muse Urania, and runs on into 187e.
Eryximachus finally cashes out the application he flagged at the end of 187c. Bringing rhythm and harmony to actual people happens two ways: composing new music (melopoiía, a technical term for song-writing, the word later used of Pindar and the choral lyricists) or using already-composed melodies and meters correctly, which he says was called paideía — education, or more exactly the whole cultural shaping a free Greek was expected to receive. Both need a good dēmiourgós, a skilled craftsman. The word is deliberately unglamorous: Eryximachus is a doctor recommending that music be handled the way a doctor handles bodies, by competence rather than inspiration. Plato will later make dēmiourgós carry the whole weight of cosmic order in the Timaeus; here it names nothing grander than a decent music teacher, which is itself part of Eryximachus's argument — greatness in this domain is a craft problem, not a mystery.
He then states his refrain a second time, transplanted from medicine to music: gratify and guard the love of the already-orderly, and help the not-yet-orderly become more so. This, he says, is the noble love, the heavenly one — and the sentence breaks off naming not Aphrodite, as Pausanias did at 180d, but a Muse, Urania. Pausanias built his whole speech on two goddesses of desire; Eryximachus quietly swaps in a goddess of order and knowledge, so that the love he is defending sounds less like an appetite that behaves and more like an intellectual discipline. The move sets up the contrast still to come, when a second Muse arrives to govern the appetite that does not behave.
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