Agathon Praises the God Himself — Symposium

Socrates tells Eryximachus that anyone waiting to speak after Agathon would be in a great strait. Agathon says Socrates is casting a spell so the expectation will unsettle him. Socrates answers that Agathon faced a vast theatre undismayed, so a few friends should not flutter him. Agathon replies that a few good judges frighten a sensible person more than many fools. Socrates asks if he would be ashamed before a wise person and not before the many. Phaedrus stops them. If Socrates gets a partner, especially a good-looking one, the plan will be forgotten. Agathon agrees to speak now.

Earlier speakers, he says, congratulated people on Love's benefits instead of praising the god. He will praise the god first, then the gifts. Love is the youngest of the gods, always fleeing age, not older than Iapetus and Kronos as Phaedrus claimed. Old violence among the gods was Necessity, not Love. Love is tender. He walks in hearts and souls, not on the ground or on skulls, and he leaves where there is hardness. He is flexible enough to enter a soul unseen, and he dwells among flowers.

People serve him freely, so he is just. No pleasure masters him. Ares is captive to the love of Aphrodite, so Love is the braver of the two. He is a poet, and he makes poets of others, because no one gives what he lacks. Love set the empire of the gods in order through the love of beauty, and he has no concern with deformity. Every good in heaven and earth, Agathon says, has sprung from that. Love is the fairest and best in himself, and the cause of what is fairest and best in all other things. The speech is half playful and still serious, offered to the god as well as he can offer it.