The Love of Honour
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Diotima — καὶ ἥ, ὥσπερ οἱ τέλεοι σοφισταί, εὖ ἴσθι, ἔφη, ὦ Σώκρατες· ἐπεί γε καὶ τῶν ἀνθρώπων εἰ ἐθέλεις εἰς τὴν φιλοτιμίαν βλέψαι, θαυμάζοις ἂν τῆς ἀλογίας περὶ ἃ ἐγὼ εἴρηκα εἰ μὴ ἐννοεῖς, ἐνθυμηθεὶς ὡς δεινῶς διάκεινται ἔρωτι τοῦ ὀνομαστοὶ γενέσθαι καὶ κλέος ἐς τὸν ἀεὶ χρόνον ἀθάνατον καταθέσθαι, καὶ ὑπὲρ τούτου κινδύνους τε κινδυνεύειν ἕτοιμοί εἰσι πάντας ἔτι μᾶλλον ἢ ὑπὲρ τῶν
And she, like the accomplished sophists, know it well, she said, Socrates; since indeed, of humans, if you are willing to look at the love of honour, you would wonder at the unreason about what I have said, if you do not consider it, reflecting how terribly they are disposed by love to become famous and to lay up deathless glory for all time, and for this they are ready to run all dangers even more than for their
Diotima answers Socrates' astonishment with a teacher's confidence — 'know it well' — and turns to human ambition. If you will look at people's love of honour (φιλοτιμία), she says, you would marvel at its unreason, unless you grasp how terribly they are gripped by love to become famous and to lay up deathless glory (κλέος) for all time. For this they are ready to run every danger, even more than for their children — continued in 208d.
Kleos is the Homeric hero's word: literally 'what is heard,' the song of one's deeds that outlasts the body, the substitute the Iliad's warriors accept for a life they know will be short. Diotima's insight is to read this heroic ideal as a form of erotic desire — love of immortality, redirected from bodily offspring to lasting fame. The claim that people will brave more for glory than for their own children is deliberately provocative, and 208d will prove it with the canonical examples: Alcestis dying for her husband, Achilles choosing death to avenge Patroclus, Codrus giving his life for his sons' kingship. Each, Diotima argues, acted for the deathless memory of their virtue, not from calculation or even family love — evidence that the hunger for immortality through glory is the deepest human spring, and one more face of the single erōs she is anatomizing.
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