Note 41 — Chapter XXVI · PHÆDRUS — SYMPOSION.
Reading edition
Plato, Sympos. p. 219. See also, respecting the historical Alkibiades and his character, Thucyd. vi. 15; Xenoph. Memor. i. 1; Antisthenes, apud Athenæum, xii. 534.
The invention of Plato goes beyond that of those ingenious men who recounted how Phrynê and Lais had failed in attempts to overcome the continence of Xenokrates, Diog. L. iv. 7: and the saying of Lais, ὡς οὐκ ἀπ’ ἀνδρός, ἀλλ’ ἀπ’ ἀνδρίαντος, ἀνασταίη. Quintilian (viii. 4, 22-23) aptly enough compares the description given by Alkibiades — as the maximum of testimony to the “invicta continentia” of Sokrates — with the testimony to the surpassing beauty of Helen, borne by such witnesses as the Trojan δημογέροντες and Priam himself (Hom. Iliad iii. 156). One of the speakers in Athenæus censures severely this portion of the Platonic Symposion, xi. 506 C, 508 D, v. 187 D. Porphyry (in his life of Plotinus, 15) tells us that the rhetor Diophanes delivered an apology for Alkibiades, in the presence of Plotinus; who was much displeased, and directed Porphyry to compose a reply.