Beauty, the Goddess of Birth
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Diotima — ἀνάρμοστον δʼ ἐστὶ τὸ αἰσχρὸν παντὶ τῷ θείῳ, τὸ δὲ καλὸν ἁρμόττον. Μοῖρα οὖν καὶ Εἰλείθυια ἡ Καλλονή ἐστι τῇ γενέσει. διὰ ταῦτα ὅταν μὲν καλῷ προσπελάζῃ τὸ κυοῦν, ἵλεών τε γίγνεται καὶ εὐφραινόμενον διαχεῖται καὶ τίκτει τε καὶ γεννᾷ· ὅταν δὲ αἰσχρῷ, σκυθρωπόν τε καὶ λυπούμενον συσπειρᾶται καὶ ἀποτρέπεται καὶ ἀνείλλεται καὶ οὐ γεννᾷ, ἀλλὰ ἴσχον τὸ κύημα χαλεπῶς φέρει. ὅθεν δὴ τῷ κυοῦντί τε καὶ ἤδη σπαργῶντι πολλὴ ἡ πτοίησις γέγονε
And the ugly is discordant with all that is divine, but the beautiful concordant. So Beauty is the Fate and Eileithyia of birth. For this reason, when the pregnant thing approaches the beautiful, it grows gracious and, gladdened, relaxes and gives birth and begets; but when at the ugly, sullen and grieved it contracts and turns away and coils up and does not beget, but holds back the embryo and bears it with pain. Whence, to the pregnant and already swelling one, great agitation arises
The ugly, Diotima says, is discordant with everything divine; the beautiful is concordant. So Beauty herself is the Fate and Eileithyia — the goddess of childbirth — that presides over generation. That is why, when the pregnant draws near the beautiful, it grows gracious, dissolves in gladness, and gives birth; but near the ugly it frowns, contracts, turns away, and painfully holds its burden back. Hence the pregnant and swelling soul feels great agitation around the beautiful. Continued in 206e.
The physiology is vivid and deliberately erotic: the pregnant soul, near beauty, diacheitai — pours out, relaxes, opens — and gives birth; near ugliness it syspeiratai, coils and shrinks and cannot deliver. This is why beauty provokes such ptoēsis, fluttering excitement, in the lover: not because beauty is the thing wanted, but because it is the release that lets the pregnant nature at last bring forth what it carries. Plato has turned the ache of desire into the pang of labour: the lover's agitation before beauty is the pressure of something ready to be born. The point lands in 206e, where Diotima corrects Socrates outright — love is not of the beautiful, but of generation and birth in the beautiful, because generation is the mortal's share of the immortal.
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