The Final and Highest Mysteries
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Diotima — μυηθείης· τὰ δὲ τέλεα καὶ ἐποπτικά, ὧν ἕνεκα καὶ ταῦτα ἔστιν, ἐάν τις ὀρθῶς μετίῃ, οὐκ οἶδʼ εἰ οἷός τʼ ἂν εἴης. ἐρῶ μὲν οὖν, ἔφη, ἐγὼ καὶ προθυμίας οὐδὲν ἀπολείψω· πειρῶ δὲ ἕπεσθαι, ἂν οἷός τε ᾖς. δεῖ γάρ, ἔφη, τὸν ὀρθῶς ἰόντα ἐπὶ τοῦτο τὸ πρᾶγμα ἄρχεσθαι μὲν νέον ὄντα ἰέναι ἐπὶ τὰ καλὰ σώματα, καὶ πρῶτον μέν, ἐὰν ὀρθῶς ἡγῆται ὁ ἡγούμενος, ἑνὸς αὐτὸν σώματος ἐρᾶν καὶ ἐνταῦθα γεννᾶν λόγους καλούς, ἔπειτα δὲ αὐτὸν κατανοῆσαι ὅτι τὸ κάλλος
might be initiated. But the final and highest mysteries, for whose sake even these exist, if one pursues them rightly, I do not know whether you would be able. But I will speak, she said, and leave off no eagerness; try to follow, if you can. For one must, she said, going rightly toward this business, begin while young to go to beautiful bodies, and first, if the guide leads rightly, to love one body and there beget beautiful speeches, and then to observe that the beauty
Diotima marks a threshold. These, she says, are perhaps the erotic matters into which even Socrates might be initiated — but the final and highest mysteries (τὰ τέλεα καὶ ἐποπτικά), for whose sake the rest exists, she is not sure he can reach. Still she will spare no eagerness: let him try to follow. One must, going rightly, begin while young by going to beautiful bodies — first, under a right guide, loving one body and begetting beautiful speeches there, and then observing that the beauty on one body is akin to the beauty on any other. The sentence runs on into 210b.
The ascent begins on the lowest rung and with a crucial condition: ean orthōs hēgētai ho hēgoumenos, 'if the guide leads rightly.' Love, to climb, needs right guidance — the very role Socrates plays for Alcibiades and Diotima plays here. The first step is neither ascetic nor cynical: one begins young by loving one beautiful body and begetting 'beautiful speeches' in its presence (love is generative from the start). But the movement is already outward — from loving the body to producing in it, and then to the recognition, coming in 210b, that the beauty of this one body is one and the same as the beauty of all bodies. Each rung will loosen the lover's grip on the particular and widen his object: from one body to all, to souls, to laws and practices, to the sciences, and at last to Beauty itself. What looks like a cooling of passion is really its education — desire kept intact but redirected upward toward an ever less perishable, ever more beautiful object.
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