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Xenophon
Xenophon

Xenophon , son of Gryllus, of the deme Erchia of Athens, also known as Xenophon of Athens and Xenophon of Thebes, was a soldier, mercenary and a contemporary and admirer of Socrates....
's Symposium
Symposium

Symposium originally referred to a drinking party but has since come to refer to any academic conference, or a style of university class characterized by an openly discursive rather than lecture and question–answer format....
 (S?µp?s???) records the discussion of Socrates
Socrates

Socrates was a Classical Greece Philosophy. Credited as one of the founders of Western philosophy, he is an enigmatic figure known only through the classical accounts of his students....
 and company at a dinner given by Callias
Callias III

Callias , son of Hipponicus by the ex-wife of Pericles, an Alcmaeonidae and the third head of one of the most distinguished Athens families to bear the name of Callias, was said to be notorious for his extravagance and profligacy....
 for his eromenos
Eromenos

In the Pederasty in ancient Greece of Athens, the eromenos was an adolescence boy who was in a love relationship with an adult man, known as the erastes ....
 Autolycus
Autolycus

In Greek mythology, Autolycus was a son of Hermes and Chione . He was the husband of Neaera, or according to Homer of Amphithea. Autolycus fathered Anticlea and several sons of whom only Aesimus is named....
, son of Lycon. (Some commentators identify this Lycon with the Lycon who was one of Socrates' prosecutors. However, others doubt the identification; John Burnet
John Burnet (classicist)

John Burnet was a Scotland classics....
, for example, claims it "is most improbable".) 421 BC is the dramatic date of Xenophon's Symposium.

While Plato's Symposium
Symposium (Plato)

The Symposium is a philosophical dialogue written by Plato sometime after 385 BC. It is a discussion on the nature of love, taking the form of a group of speeches, both satirical and serious, given by a group of men at a symposium or a wine drinking gathering at the house of the Tragedy#Greek tragedy Agathon at Athens....
 consists of a series of lengthy speeches in praise of love, Xenophon's is dominated by witty repartee.

A contest of words emerges between Socrates and Callias, and each of the symposiasts is asked to describe the thing which he prides himself on most.






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Xenophon
Xenophon

Xenophon , son of Gryllus, of the deme Erchia of Athens, also known as Xenophon of Athens and Xenophon of Thebes, was a soldier, mercenary and a contemporary and admirer of Socrates....
's Symposium
Symposium

Symposium originally referred to a drinking party but has since come to refer to any academic conference, or a style of university class characterized by an openly discursive rather than lecture and question–answer format....
 (S?µp?s???) records the discussion of Socrates
Socrates

Socrates was a Classical Greece Philosophy. Credited as one of the founders of Western philosophy, he is an enigmatic figure known only through the classical accounts of his students....
 and company at a dinner given by Callias
Callias III

Callias , son of Hipponicus by the ex-wife of Pericles, an Alcmaeonidae and the third head of one of the most distinguished Athens families to bear the name of Callias, was said to be notorious for his extravagance and profligacy....
 for his eromenos
Eromenos

In the Pederasty in ancient Greece of Athens, the eromenos was an adolescence boy who was in a love relationship with an adult man, known as the erastes ....
 Autolycus
Autolycus

In Greek mythology, Autolycus was a son of Hermes and Chione . He was the husband of Neaera, or according to Homer of Amphithea. Autolycus fathered Anticlea and several sons of whom only Aesimus is named....
, son of Lycon. (Some commentators identify this Lycon with the Lycon who was one of Socrates' prosecutors. However, others doubt the identification; John Burnet
John Burnet (classicist)

John Burnet was a Scotland classics....
, for example, claims it "is most improbable".) 421 BC is the dramatic date of Xenophon's Symposium.

While Plato's Symposium
Symposium (Plato)

The Symposium is a philosophical dialogue written by Plato sometime after 385 BC. It is a discussion on the nature of love, taking the form of a group of speeches, both satirical and serious, given by a group of men at a symposium or a wine drinking gathering at the house of the Tragedy#Greek tragedy Agathon at Athens....
 consists of a series of lengthy speeches in praise of love, Xenophon's is dominated by witty repartee.

A contest of words emerges between Socrates and Callias, and each of the symposiasts is asked to describe the thing which he prides himself on most. All their answers are playful or paradoxical: Socrates, for one, prides himself on his knowledge of the art of pimp
Pimp

A pimp finds and manages clients for prostitutes and engages them in prostitution in order to profit from their earnings. Typically, a pimp will not force prostitutes to stay with him, although some have been known to be abusive in order to keep their prostitutes submissive or to maximize profits....
ing.

The story comes to a climax when Socrates praises the love Callias had for Autolycus.

Relationship to Plato's Symposium

There has been some dispute about whether Xenophon's or Plato's work was written first. Henry Graham Dakyns, a Victorian-era scholar who translated many works by both Plato and Xenophon, believed that Plato knew of this work, and that it influenced him to some degree when he wrote his own Symposium.

However, most later scholars have taken the argument against an army of lovers in Socrates' final speech as proof that Xenophon had based his work on Plato's, since this concept is mentioned in Plato's work. The speech seems to parody or pastiche the erotic speeches in both Plato's Symposium and Phaedrus
Phaedrus

Phaedrus , Roman Empire fabulist, was probably a Thracian slave, born in Pydna of Macedonia and lived in the reigns of Augustus Caesar, Tiberius, Caligula and Claudius....
.

Though some scholars have argued that the long speech of Socrates contains later additions, and opinion is divided as to which author was first to write a Socratic symposium, a work considered the standard study of this piece as of early 2000 holds that Xenophon wrote the Symposium in the second half of the 360s, benefiting from Plato's former Socratic literature.

As for being informative historical sources about Socrates, Xenophon's Symposium and his Oeconomicus
Oeconomicus (Xenophon)

The Oeconomicus by Xenophon is a Socratic dialogue principally about household management and agriculture. It is one of the earliest works on economics and a significant source for the social and intellectual history of classic history of Athens....
 are regarded by most scholars today as practically worthless.

External links

  • Project Gutenberg
    Project Gutenberg

    Project Gutenberg, abbreviated as PG, is a volunteer effort to digitize, archive and distribute cultural works, as founder Michael Hart said "To encourage the creation and distribution of eBooks."....
     has the e-text of