The Mantic Art and Love's Greatest Power
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Eryximachus — μαντικὴ φιλίας θεῶν καὶ ἀνθρώπων δημιουργὸς τῷ ἐπίστασθαι τὰ κατὰ ἀνθρώπους ἐρωτικά, ὅσα τείνει πρὸς θέμιν καὶ εὐσέβειαν. οὕτω πολλὴν καὶ μεγάλην, μᾶλλον δὲ πᾶσαν δύναμιν ἔχει συλλήβδην μὲν ὁ πᾶς Ἔρως, ὁ δὲ περὶ τἀγαθὰ μετὰ σωφροσύνης καὶ δικαιοσύνης ἀποτελούμενος καὶ παρʼ ἡμῖν καὶ παρὰ θεοῖς, οὗτος τὴν μεγίστην δύναμιν ἔχει καὶ πᾶσαν ἡμῖν εὐδαιμονίαν παρασκευάζει καὶ ἀλλήλοις δυναμένους ὁμιλεῖν καὶ φίλους εἶναι καὶ τοῖς κρείττοσιν ἡμῶν θεοῖς. ἴσως μὲν
The mantic art of friendship between gods and men is a craftsman, by knowing the erotic matters of human life, so far as they tend toward what is right and pious. So great and wide, or rather, all-embracing, is the power that, taken together, the whole Love possesses; but the Love fulfilled toward the good, with temperance and justice, both among us and among the gods, this Love has the greatest power and provides us with all happiness, letting us associate with one another and be friends, and with the gods who are stronger than we are. Perhaps, indeed —
Continuing directly from 188c's unfinished ‘ἔστιν αὖ ἡ…’, Eryximachus names divination itself as a craft of friendship between gods and men, since it knows which human erotic impulses tend toward what is right and pious. He then delivers his speech's summary sentence: vast, or rather total, is the power of Love taken as a whole, but the Love that is fulfilled with temperance and justice, among mortals and gods alike, holds the greatest power of all and secures every happiness for us, letting us be friends with one another and with the gods who surpass us. The unit breaks off mid-sentence at ‘ἴσως μέν,’ which 188e continues.
Eryximachus closes the run of crafts he has been walking through since medicine at 186c — gymnastics, music, astronomy — by folding divination into the same argument. The mantic art is a dēmiourgós of friendship between gods and men because it knows which human erotic impulses tend toward themis and eusébeia, a diagnostic craft exactly like medicine except that its patient is the whole relation between mortals and gods rather than one body. The summary sentence that follows performs its own correction as it goes: Eryximachus first calls Love's power “great and wide,” then catches himself — mâllon dé, “or rather” — and revises upward to pâsan, all of it, entire. A speaker who has spent his whole speech insisting that his own craft measures things exactly is caught measuring his own sentence twice.
Themis is a specific choice here, not a stand-in for the dikaiosýnē the very next clause supplies for human and divine Eros together. In Hesiod's Theogony, Themis is a Titan who becomes one of Zeus's consorts and bears him three daughters, the Horai — literally the Seasons, the same ὧραι whose balance of hot and cold, wet and dry Eryximachus made his example only a few lines earlier, at 188a. Divination, on this telling, aligns human desire with the same order that ordains the seasons' round: the goddess of sanctioned right is, by genealogy, the mother of the very seasons the doctor has just finished diagnosing. Eryximachus never names Hesiod in this stretch, but the word he reaches for carries the connection with it, pulling medicine, astronomy, and prophecy back into one family the way his whole speech has been arguing they belong.
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