Homer, Hesiod, Lycurgus, Solon
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Diotima — ἀνθρωπίνους, καὶ εἰς Ὅμηρον ἀποβλέψας καὶ Ἡσίοδον καὶ τοὺς ἄλλους ποιητὰς τοὺς ἀγαθοὺς ζηλῶν, οἷα ἔκγονα ἑαυτῶν καταλείπουσιν, ἃ ἐκείνοις ἀθάνατον κλέος καὶ μνήμην παρέχεται αὐτὰ τοιαῦτα ὄντα· εἰ δὲ βούλει, ἔφη, οἵους Λυκοῦργος παῖδας κατελίπετο ἐν Λακεδαίμονι σωτῆρας τῆς Λακεδαίμονος καὶ ὡς ἔπος εἰπεῖν τῆς Ἑλλάδος. τίμιος δὲ παρʼ ὑμῖν καὶ Σόλων διὰ τὴν τῶν νόμων γέννησιν, καὶ ἄλλοι
human ones, and looking to Homer and Hesiod and the other good poets, envying what kind of offspring they leave behind them, which provide for them deathless glory and memory, being themselves such. Or, if you wish, she said, what sort of children Lycurgus left behind in Lacedaemon, saviours of Lacedaemon and, so to speak, of Greece. And Solon is honoured among you too for the begetting of the laws, and others
Diotima gives the roll-call of the truly fertile. One would rather have such children than human ones, she says, looking to Homer and Hesiod and the other good poets, envying the offspring they leave behind — which win them deathless glory and memory, being immortal themselves. Or, if you like, the children Lycurgus left in Sparta, saviours of Sparta and, one might say, of Greece; and Solon, honoured among you Athenians for the begetting of the laws — and others besides. Continued in 209e.
The courteous asides — 'so to speak, of Greece,' 'among you too' (to the Athenian Socrates) — keep the teaching intimate while its claim is sweeping: the makers of poems and laws are the great parents of the human race, and it is for these deathless offspring, not for flesh-and-blood children, that shrines are built and honour paid (209e completes the point). Plato is ranking the works of the soul above the body's, and civic and poetic creation above private life — the same hierarchy that structures the Republic. And he is pointing beyond even this: the poets and lawgivers begot their virtue in response to some beauty; the ascent (210a ff.) will ask what beauty could father the highest offspring of all, and lead the lover from a single beautiful soul, through laws and knowledge, to the vision of Beauty itself, in which one gives birth not to images of virtue but to true virtue.
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