Note 58 — Chapter XXVI · PHÆDRUS — SYMPOSION.

Which of these two Symposia was the latest in date of composition we cannot determine with certainty: though it seems certain that the latest of the two was not composed in imitation of the earliest.

From the allusion to the διοίκισις of Mantineia (p. 193 A) we know that the Platonic Symposion must have been composed after 385 B.C.: there is great probability also, though not full certainty, that it was composed during the time when Mantineia was still an aggregate of separate villages and not a town — that is, between 385-370 B.C., in which latter year Mantineia was re-established as a city. The Xenophontic Symposion affords no mark of date of composition: Xenophon reports it as having been himself present. It does indeed contain, in the speech delivered by Sokrates (viii. 32), an allusion to, and a criticism upon, an opinion supported by Pausanias ὁ Ἀγάθωνος τοῦ ποιητοῦ ἐραστής, who discourses in the Platonic Symposion: and several critics think that this is an allusion by Xenophon to the Platonic Symposion. I think this opinion improbable. It would require us to suppose that Xenophon is inaccurate, since the opinion which he ascribes to Pausanias is not delivered by Pausanias in the Platonic Symposion, but by Phædrus. Athenæus (v. 216) remarks that the opinion is not delivered by Pausanias, but he does not mention that it is delivered by Phædrus. He remarks that there was no known written composition of Pausanias himself: and he seems to suppose that Xenophon must have alluded to the Platonic Symposion, but that he quoted it inaccurately or out of another version of it, different from what we now read. Athenæus wastes reasoning in proving that the conversation described in the Platonic Symposion cannot have really occurred at the time to which Plato assigns it. This is unimportant: the speeches are doubtless all composed by Plato. If Athenæus was anxious to prove anachronism against Plato, I am surprised that he did not notice that of the διοίκισις of Mantineia mentioned in a conversation supposed to have taken place in the presence of Sokrates, who died in 399 B.C.

I incline to believe that the allusion of Xenophon is not intended to apply to the Symposion of Plato. Xenophon ascribes one opinion to Pausanias, Plato ascribes another; this is noway inconceivable. I therefore remain in doubt whether the Xenophontic or the Platonic Symposion is earliest. Compare the Præf. of Schneider to the former, pp. 140-143.