A Firmer Friendship Than of Children
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Diotima — τὸν ἄνδρα τὸν ἀγαθὸν καὶ ἃ ἐπιτηδεύειν, καὶ ἐπιχειρεῖ παιδεύειν. ἁπτόμενος γὰρ οἶμαι τοῦ καλοῦ καὶ ὁμιλῶν αὐτῷ, ἃ πάλαι ἐκύει τίκτει καὶ γεννᾷ, καὶ παρὼν καὶ ἀπὼν μεμνημένος, καὶ τὸ γεννηθὲν συνεκτρέφει κοινῇ μετʼ ἐκείνου, ὥστε πολὺ μείζω κοινωνίαν τῆς τῶν παίδων πρὸς ἀλλήλους οἱ τοιοῦτοι ἴσχουσι καὶ φιλίαν βεβαιοτέραν, ἅτε καλλιόνων καὶ ἀθανατωτέρων παίδων κεκοινωνηκότες. καὶ πᾶς ἂν δέξαιτο ἑαυτῷ τοιούτους παῖδας μᾶλλον γεγονέναι ἢ τοὺς
the good man, and what he should practise, and he undertakes to educate him. For touching the beautiful and consorting with it, he brings to birth what he was long pregnant with, and begets, both present and absent remembering it, and rears together what is begotten in common with that one, so that such people have a far greater partnership than that of children with one another, and a firmer friendship, having shared more beautiful and more immortal children. And everyone would choose for himself to have such children born rather than
The lover educates the beloved — the good man, and what he ought to practise. Touching and consorting with the beautiful, he gives birth to what he was long pregnant with, and (present or absent) remembers it, rearing the offspring in common with the beloved. So such people share a far greater partnership and a firmer friendship than parents share, having brought forth more beautiful and more immortal children. And everyone would rather have such children born to him than human ones. Continued in 209d.
This is Plato's transfiguration of Greek pederasty into philosophy. Where custom made the lover a pursuer and the beloved a prize, Diotima makes them co-parents of virtue, bound by a philia firmer than marriage because their children — insight, character, works — are 'more beautiful and more immortal' than any child of the body. The claim that one would rather beget such offspring than human children is the hinge that turns the whole erotic tradition toward the mind. And it sets up the roll-call of the truly fertile in 209d–e: Homer and Hesiod, whose poems are their deathless children; Lycurgus and Solon, whose laws saved Sparta and Athens; the founders honoured with shrines for the virtue they begot. These are love's real heirs — and the ladder that begins at 210a will climb from this shared begetting in a single beautiful soul toward the beauty that could father such offspring without end.
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