Pregnant in Body
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Diotima — ὦσι, τοσούτῳ μᾶλλον· τοῦ γὰρ ἀθανάτου ἐρῶσιν. οἱ μὲν οὖν ἐγκύμονες, ἔφη, κατὰ τὰ σώματα ὄντες πρὸς τὰς γυναῖκας μᾶλλον τρέπονται καὶ ταύτῃ ἐρωτικοί εἰσιν, διὰ παιδογονίας ἀθανασίαν καὶ μνήμην καὶ εὐδαιμονίαν, ὡς οἴονται, αὑτοῖς εἰς τὸν ἔπειτα χρόνον πάντα ποριζόμενοι· οἱ δὲ κατὰ τὴν
they are, by so much the more; for they love the immortal. Now those pregnant, she said, in respect of their bodies, turn more to women and are lovers in this way, through childbearing providing for themselves immortality and memory and happiness, as they think, for all time to come; but those pregnant in respect of the
Diotima sorts lovers into two kinds. Those pregnant in body turn more to women and are lovers in that way, providing for themselves — through childbearing — immortality, memory, and happiness (as they suppose) for all time to come. But those pregnant in respect of the soul — the sentence opens into 209a.
The phrasing is careful and a little cool toward the bodily route: such lovers seek immortality 'as they think' (hōs oiontai), a hint that children give only a lesser, imagined permanence. The real weight of the passage falls on the second class, introduced here and developed in 209a: those pregnant kata tēn psychēn, in soul, who bring forth not children but wisdom and virtue. That higher pregnancy — whose offspring are poems, inventions, laws, and the great ordering of cities called sōphrosynē and dikaiosynē — is the bridge from ordinary generation to the ascent. By ranking the soul's births above the body's, Diotima prepares the reader to follow love upward, away from particular bodies and toward the beauty in souls, in laws, in knowledge, and finally in Beauty itself.
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