Note 48 — Chapter XXVI · PHÆDRUS — SYMPOSION.

Pontianus, one of the speakers in Athenæus (xi. 504), touches upon some points of this comparison, with a view of illustrating the real or supposed enmity between Plato and Xenophon; an enmity not in itself improbable, yet not sufficiently proved.

Athenæus had before him the Symposion of Epikurus (not preserved) as well as those of Plato, Xenophon, and Aristotle (xv. 674); and we learn from him some of its distinctive points. Masurius (the speaker in Athenæus, v. init.) while he recognises in the Symposia of Xenophon and Plato a dramatic variety of characters and smartness — finds fault with both, but especially with Plato, for levity, rudeness, indecency, vulgarity, sneering, &c. The talk was almost entirety upon love and joviality. In the Symposion of Epikurus, on the contrary, nothing was said about these topics; the guests were fewer, the conversation was grave and dull, upon dry topics of science, such as the atomic theory (προφήτας ἀτόμων, v. 3, 187 B, 177 B. Ἐπίκουρος δὲ συμπόσιον φιλοσόφων μόνον πεποίηται), and even upon bodily ailments, such as indigestion or fever (187 C). The philosophers present were made by Epikurus to carry on their debate in so friendly a spirit, that the critic calls them “flatterers praising each other”; while he terms the Platonic guests “sneerers insulting each other” (μυκτηριστῶν ἀλλήλους τωθαζόντων, 182 A), though this is much more true about the Xenophontic Symposion than about the Platonic. He remarks farther that the Symposion of Epikurus included no libation or offering to the Gods (179 D).

It is curious to note these peculiarities in the compositions (now lost) of a philosopher like Epikurus, whom many historians of philosophy represent as thinking about nothing but convivial and sexual pleasure.