Note 3 — Chapter XXVI · PHÆDRUS — SYMPOSION.

The beginning of the Platonic Charmidês illustrates what is here said, pp. 154-155; also that of the Protagoras and Lysis, pp. 205-206.

Xenophon, Sympos. i. 8-11; iv. 11, 15. Memorab. i. 3, 8-14 (what Sokrates observes to Xenophon about Kritobulus). Dikæarchus (companion of Aristotle) disapproved the important influence which Plato assigned to Eros (Cicero, Tusc. D. iv. 34-71).

If we pass to the second century after the Christian Era, we find some speakers in Athenæus blaming severely the amorous sentiments of Sokrates and the narrative of Alkibiades, as recited in the Platonic Symposium (v. 180-187; xi. 506-508 C). Athenæus remarks farther, that Plato, writing in this strain, had little right to complain (as we read in the Republic) of the licentious compositions of Homer and other poets, and to exclude them from his model city. Maximus Tyrius, in one of his four discourses (23-5) on the ἐρωτικὴ of Sokrates, makes the same remark as Athenæus about the inconsistency of Plato in banishing Homer from the model city, and composing what we read in the Symposion; he farther observes that the erotic dispositions of Sokrates provoked no censure from his numerous enemies at the time (though they assailed him upon so many other points), but had incurred great censure from contemporaries of Maximus himself, to whom he replies — τοὺς νυνὶ κατηγόρους (23, 6-7). The comparisons which he institutes (23, 9) between the sentiments and phrases of Sokrates, and those of Sappho and Anakreon, are very curious.

Dionysius of Halikarnassus speaks of the ἐγκώμια on Eros in the Symposion, as “unworthy of serious handling or of Sokrates”. (De Admir. Vi Dic. Demosth. p. 1027.)

But the most bitter among all the critics of Plato, is Herakleitus — author of the Allegoriæ Homericæ. Herakleitus repels, as unjust and calumnious, the sentence of banishment pronounced by Plato against Homer, from whom all mental cultivation had been derived. He affirms, and tries to show, that the poems of Homer — which he admits to be full of immorality if literally understood — had an allegorical meaning. He blames Plato for not having perceived this; and denounces him still more severely for the character of his own writings — ἐῤῥίφθω δὲ καὶ Πλάτων ὁ κόλαξ, Ὁμήρου συκοφάντης — Τοὺς δὲ Πλάτωνος διαλόγους, ἄνω καὶ κάτω παιδικοὶ καθυβρίζουσιν ἔρωτες, οὐδαμοῦ δε οὐχι τῆς ἀῤῥένος ἐπιθυμίας μεστός ἐστιν ὁ ἀνήρ (Herakl. All. Hom., c. 4-74, ed. Mehler, Leiden, 1851).