Not only does Plato's Symposium hype up love between men as quite literally godlike, but it also provides us with the absolutely wild idea of Aristophanean soulmates... Help keep LTAMB going by subscribing to Liv's Patreon for bonus content!
CW/TW: far too many Greek myths involve assault. Given it's fiction, and typically involves gods and/or monsters, I'm not as deferential as I would be were I referencing the real thing.
Sources: Plato's Symposium, Penguin edition translated by Christopher Gill; public domain translation for long passages, translated by B. Jowett; "Erastes-Eromenos Relationships in Two Ancient Epics" by Morgan van Kesteren.
Attributions and licensing information for music used in the podcast can be found here: mythsbaby.com/sources-attributions.
But Orpheus, the son of Iagrius the harper, they sent empty away and presented to him an apparition only of her, whom he sought, but herself. They would not give up because he showed no spirit. He was only a harp player, and did not dare, like Alcestis, to die for love, but was contriving how he might enter Hades alive. Moreover, they afterwards caused him to suffer death at the hands of women as the punishment for his cowardliness. Very different was the reward of the true love of Achilles towards his lover, Patroclus his lover, and not his love. The notion that Patriclus was the beloved one is a foolish error into which Eschylus has fallen, For Achilles was surely the fairer of the two, fairer also than all the other heroes, and as Homer informs us, he was still beardless and younger, far and greatly. As the gods honor the virtue of love, still the return of love on the part of the beloved to the lover is more admired and valued and rewarded by them, for the lover is more divine because he is inspired by God. Now, Achilles was quite aware, for he had been told by his mother that he might avoid death and return home and live to a good old age if he abstained from slaying Hector. Nevertheless, he gave his life to revenge his friend, and dared to die not only in his defense, but after he was dead. Wherefore the gods honored him even above Alcestes and sent him to the islands of the blessed. O. Hi, hello there, how's it going? This is let's talk about myths, baby, and I am your host live. She who likes to recognize when she didn't do nearly a good enough job covering certain sources in the past and thus redoing them with detail and vigor today is no different, except that it kind of is, because it's Polato's Symposium, the piece of work most famous for introducing the idea of soulmates, but far more interesting than that. Not only does this work introduce the idea of soulmates, of people being like missing their other halves, and now, not only does it account for people whose other halves are whatever gender they longed for, regardless of their own, but it's also the dialogue famous for providing us with some seriously interesting and entertaining insights into how people of at least classical Athens saw the relationship of none other than Achilles and Patrickless. If you've been listening to this show for a while, particularly the conversation episodes, you have heard me and other guests mentioned the idea that the debate that raged in classical Athens wasn't whether or not Achilles and Patrickless were in a romantic or sexual relationship with each other, but instead which of them held the power, which of them was the top, which of them was the erastes, and which the eraminos. This, my friends and dear listeners, is where that debate comes from. And when I first tried to cover this story, I really had no knowledge to go off of, and so all I did was explain the basics and about the soulmate bits. But God's there is so much more to talk about, and it's so gay and so damned interesting, And of course this story is famous for laying out this idea of soulmates other halves and explicitly does so beyond the binary of gender and sexual attraction. And it does it all again by being generally pretty fucking gay. In the most interesting of ways this is Episode two fourteen, Plaino says being gay is absolutely divine. The Symposium, Part one, The work in question today is once again Plato's Symposium. Like all of Plato's work, it's written in the form of a dialogue between a number of men. Fortunately, though in this case it's presented as more of a narrative rather than a kind of script, which makes it far more fun and digestible when it comes to sharing it with you. All the basics are this. The conversation between these men takes place at a symposium. Symposia were parties, most famously from classical athens, where men would get together and drink. They would drink a lot. The ancient Greeks loved their wine. They would sometimes have women there, but as far as I understand it, they would basically always be HITTERI sex workers in order for them to be allowed to partake. And just like most of Plato's dialogues, this one features a number of recognizable names, as when I talked about Atlantis. We're not to take this work as suggesting that this conversation actually took place, but instead that Plato is using this fictional conversation between real men to present his theories, his philosophies, his ideas. Now, I won't pretend like I know even remotely enough about Plato and his work to tell you all what he's actually intending in the depths of this dialogue. I am, after all, someone who specializes in the mythology. Instead, what I'm going to do is just tell you what's included in this dialogue, because not only does it feature a number of mythological characters that we care a lot about, but also names that you'll know and hopefully love from past episodes of the show. It's mythology adjacent anyway, because it uses a number of these very famous mythological characters to speak to this notion of not only other halves love generally and a lot of love between men. And there's enough Achilles in patrick list that gods only know you will love it happy pride. After all, The dialogue itself begins with a very convoluted explanation as to how the man telling the story of this conversation heard about it, because he wasn't there, And it's a whole thing that, like frankly, is entirely unnecessary to today's episode. So we're glossing right past it to dive straight into the fictionalized version of the real men who are taking part in this conversation. Firstly, a man named Fiedris who features in other Platonic dialogues. He's an Athenian aristocrat and close pals with Socrates the philosopher, who also features because this is Plato, and so of course he does. Then we have a man named Pausanius, not to be confused with the source Pausanius. Then Aristophanes, gods do we know him well? And Agathon, a man we learned about recently via that damned Aristophanes. Agathon was a tragic playwright of the time, though his work doesn't survive for us today. He was also, it seems pretty openly what we would now call gay. It's his party, his symposium that they're speaking at together. There's also Eric Simachus, a physician, and then then there's Alchibiides Oh, an Athenian politician and orator. He is extremely important historically. He features heavily in Assassin's creed Odyssey in the most entertaining of ways, and he was eventually exiled from Athens after being accused of sneaking around in the dead of night and shipping off all of the penises from all of the herms around town and stealing them. That's Alkibiides. And then finally there's also Aristodamos. He's the one telling the story, though through a roundabout way that I won't bother explaining. There are others there too, but I'm not going to bog you down with unnecessary names. These are the voices that we are concerned with today, and the conversation that these men have at this drinking party is all about love Arrows both the god and the concept, the very idea of love as it exists among gods and humans and everyone in between. But before they really dive into the love of it all, they have to discuss how exactly they plan to drink, and while it originally planned to just jump right into their relevant conversation, this bit is a bit too relatable. Once they finished eating their dinner all together, Pausanias turns to the group and he says, quote, well, gentlemen, what's the most und demanding way to do our drinking? I can tell you that I'm in a really bad state from yesterday's drinking and need a rest. I think that's true many of you, as you were there yesterday, So think about how to do our drinking in the most undemanding way. They're seriously hungover and they want to take it easy. After some talk of the intricacies of their forthcoming night of drinking and excess of wine, the conversation does finally turn to what concerns us love. We learn that Fedris is often concerned with this, this with love, with how the poets neglect the god and the concept of love, and thus why don't they all now give speeches on the topic of love in praise of love while they sip endless amounts of wine. Fiedris begins by saying, quote that Love was regarded by humans and gods as a great and awesome god for many reasons, especially his origin. He's speaking here of big love, that one I've told you about the version of Arros, that is primordial, who was born from the chaos itself, who has no true parents and just exists. Feedris goes quote, I would claim that there is no great benefit for a young man than a good lover, and none greater for a lover than a good boyfriend. And thus we're getting to the root of this conversation right at the top. While the idea of love between a man and a woman will come up briefly, the concern from Jump is that of men with other men. Still, the ultimate concern at this point in the speeches is the broader idea of love. So Feedris goes on to talk about how love is the greatest motivator, that there is nothing else else provides such guidance to humans on how to lead good lives. Surely a man who does something disgraceful cowardly would be more disturbed to have such acts witnessed by his boyfriend than his father or his friends. He says, the same applies to the boyfriend. It would be his lover's opinion that was most important. End quote. If there was any mechanism for producing a city or army consisting of lovers and boyfriends, there could be no better form of social organization than this, which is just a good quote, you know, just like a city an army of men who love each other. But particularly because Thebes does exactly this with their famed Sacred band. They were a band of warriors that were so effective that they were actually basically what Sparred wished they were, and they were all lovers buried together in death. Turns out it actually did work just as well as Fiedris suggested, And then finally, Fedris shifts to include women in his narrative about love. It's true for women as well as men, he adds, after a long and detailed examination on the devotion between lovers and their boyfriends. His example is none other than Alcestis, whose story I told through Euripides' play by the same name and God's is that a good play. Alcestis famously died for her husband, even when his parents refused to die for him. Fiedris explains that the gods recognized Alcestus's sacrifice, how her love for her husband outweighed everything else, because they allowed her to return to the land of the living, something almost no other person had been granted. Even Orpheus, he goes on to explain, wasn't granted the same. They only showed him a phantom of his wife because he didn't have the courage to actually die in her place like Alcestis did. He entered the underworld still alive, thus not proving himself to the degree that true love requires True love, it seems, requires entire sacrifice, but returning once more to the obviously more important love between men, at least according to these men. Pheedris speaks of none other than Achilles and Patroclus. Achilles, you see, was willing to die for Patroclus. Feedris recounts that Achilles knew from the words of his mother Thetis, that if he went after Hector, if he killed Hector, he would die himself, and if he let Hector live, he would go on to live a long and happy life. None of that mattered to Achilles, though, after the death of Patriclus Quote, he had the courage to choose to act on behalf of his lover by avenging him. He not only died for him, but also died as well as him, since Patrickluss was already dead. This Feedris explains in his speech won him all the honors the gods could bestow. He proved how much he loved Patrickleuss, and was gifted with an after life on the isle of the Blessed in return for this sacrifice. Feedris's speech shifts here from reverence for the of Achilles and Patrickless Achilles' sacrifice of his own life after the death of Patrickless to a jab get none other than Eschylus. Eschylus, who was long dead by the time of this fictional conversation, but absolutely famous as all hell. Apparently, he wrote into one of his plays that Achilles was the lover, the elder of the two, and that Patrickless was the younger one, the boyfriend. Fidris notes how wrong this is because Homer made it so clear that Achilles was younger, was more beautiful than Patrickless, and that he was actually the most beautiful hero overall. This means he has to have been the boyfriend. He says that, of course Eschylus's version was nonsense, because Achilles was beardless and younger than Patrickless's obviously, which is when I must pause to address the elephant to the room. The overarching theme that's being discussed here when referring to men in relationships with other men, lovers and boyfriends as they're calling them, and that is pederaste. I've talked about this in passing often with guests, but it's it's deeply relevant here. Many ancient Greeks, particularly around this time period and heavily in Athens specifically practiced pederaste, also referred to as an Erastes Eraminos relationship. These were relationships between an older man the Erastes, and a much younger man or boy, the Iraminos. That's what Fiedris is referring to in his speech, all of this the lover boyfriend. The lover is the Erastes, the boyfriend is the Araminos. That's just how they're translated here as lover and boyfriend. But the power dynamic is obvious in all of his phrasing. That's what Feedris is complaining about. In regards to Eastcliff's version of Achilles and Patrick CLIs. This Escylis suggests that Achilles was the Erastes the lover, and Patrocles was the Erominos the boyfriend. Feedris, you see, is confident that this is nonsense, and that Achilles was indeed the Iromenos, and that that fact only heightened his importance and the gifts the gods gave him in death. There's a lot of debate as to what this type of relationship looked like in real life and just how troubling we might see it now. And I don't want to suggest that I know nearly enough to comment on the intricacies. Obviously, today it's horrifying, but the point is that it really was a common practice. The erastes Man was older, he was established, and the Erominos was younger, sometimes around puberty, basically, the point being that he didn't yet have a beard. They were particularly concerned with beards. Obviously, we again see a relationship like this now and there are like red flags everywhere, alarms airing in the distance. But while it's definitely got an ick factor, it was something practiced and understood to be a normal and loving relationship that benefited both parties. In the ancient world, apparently there might have been laws around age and consent to so that's nice, and we should remember that while the age thing sounds gross, I mean and it is, but the age at which girls and young women would marry older men was about the same, so it wasn't gender specific in terms of age, and just generally, you know, like an ancient world with entirely different morals than our own. We won't try to dwell too long on this factor because that's just not fun ultimately, and this is something that's going to come up a lot in Friday's conversation, which is all about Achilles and Patrick less The idea of an Erastes a Raminos relationship when it comes to those two is a bit silly, because almost certainly the stories of the Iliad were developed long before that was a tradition which really only serves to make the debate about who played which role, which again amounts to basically who was the top and who was the bottom. Just stay relevant, it doesn't matter. Just don't tell those men of the symposium that because they feel very strongly ricoff this. Feedris finishes his speech by emphasizing the sacrifice of both Alcestes and Achilles when it comes to love, though it's Achilles who wins out. He sacrificed more, and so he was rewarded with more for his love of Patroclus. And thus here is your official ancient Greek sourcing that confirms that Achilles and Patricus were seen as lovers in the ancient Greek world, and good, big, huge, important lovers at that, ones that philosophers would just philosophize about. They had the kind of love that surpasses everything, that overcomes anything in its path, that even the gods look upon with envy and respect. With Feedras's speech finished, it's Pausanius, who speaks now though he wishes to talk about the concept of love more broadly. He speaks about two kinds of love that stem from two kinds of aphrodite. The first is the goddess born of Urranos of the castration foam. The second is the one from Homer, daughter of Dione and Zeus. She is a common aphrodite, a lesser aphrodite. This is fascinating to me because it mirrors how I always talk about the two idea is of Aros, whereas I rarely pay much attention to the idea that Aphrodite was a daughter of Zeus, because for me, the castration foam is just far more interesting. Still, it comes out with the same result, like this big, all encompassing love and a little every day common love. But throwing a real wrench in all that respect I briefly had for this argument. Pausanius clarifies that this idea of common love simple love is for inferior people, people who like bodies rather than minds. This dialogue is just so gay in the most fascinating of ways. What you like women ew the other love, the big love, he explains, comes from the Oranos within aphrodite, because she has no mother, so there is only maleness in her, and so this kind of love is directed between men. His speech goes on and frankly it is primarily about the traditions of the erastes romanos relationships in the ancient world, defining the tradition and expanding upon it, talking about the lovers and the boyfriends and whose role is what and why? And well, given my lack of background the subject, it is a bit of a minefield, but ultimately this is a speech about the merits of love and men who love other men. Yes, it is an older man with a younger man, but Pausanias is very clear in his opinions on when this should take place. His ultimate point is that men who love other men in the ancient world could have long lasting and fulfilling relationships, and that that was well understood and accepted. He even says quote, I think that those who begin love affairs at this point show their readiness to spend their whole lives together and lead a fully shared life. The point that he mentions is when they're young, but he clarifies that it is explicitly when they can start to grow a beard, which he relates to intelligence having been developed enough to fully understand what he's getting into, what this man is getting into. He says that this is the only time when these young men should enter relationships, and that any earlier should be illegal. That when they begin their relationships at this time in their life, that's when they're going to last, and that's when it's going to be clear that they're not going to be messed with or strung along, that neither man in the relationship is going to leave the other. So for all, this speech has these issues of the ancient Greece. Of it all, he is ultimately advocating not only for strict rules governing the practice, but also that those strict rules and the relationships that come from them result in lasting and real love between two men. With this speech over, they turn to Aristophanes to speak next, but quote as it happened, he was having an attack of hiccups from overeating or some other cause, and he couldn't speak, And this is how we know that we're nearing Aristophanes's contribution, and thus the comedic aspect. There is a purpose to having certain men speak in this setting, and Aristophanes, as the resident comedic playwright will provide the necessary comedy for now, though he indicates that another Eric Simachus, can either kill time until he's ready and his hiccups have stopped, or take up the speech in his place. Fortunately, Eric Simmachus is the doctor among them, so he gives Aristophanes a tip before launching into his own speech about love. Quote, while I'm speaking, your hiccups might stop if you hold your breath for a long time. If they don't, gargle with some water. If they're really persistent, get something to tickle your nose with and make yourself sneeze. And so with that we get ancient Greek remedies for hiccups, alongside some screens about the power of love. Eric Simmachus speaks briefly in place of Aristophane as while he gets those hiccups in order. Being the physician in the room again, his take on love is a bit more pragmatic. He speaks of love beyond what he describes as quote responses of human beings to beautiful people. I like that descriptions of love. He wants to talk about love in the natural world, though in animals and plants, the earth itself and everything on it. He speaks of his own take on love, which is inextricably tied to medicine. He has some theories about the body and illness and disease and so much within that realm. But if I'm once again being honest trying to understand what he's actually talking about, giving its translated from ancient Greek and a class school view of medicine written by a philosopher about a fictional conversation, so I both do not feel qualified to explain to you everything he's talking about, and also do not have the brain space to try to parse it out. I barely studied science back in high school when it was forced upon me, and that was almost two decades ago, So just no. The doctor in the room talks doctor things. He does mention as Sclepias, which is great because there's some myth for me to latch onto. Everything medical comes from Mcsclepias, and thus Eric Simmachus talks about Asclepias's contributions to medicine, in that he contributed all of it. At least he gave us the hiccup remedy. That's fun and was easy for me to understand the point of this episode is going to be the Achilles in Patrickless and the Soulmate's bit, so don't worry. Eric Simmachus, though, does transition into a discussion of love and relation to harmony, concord, and even music composition, and eventually how even that relates to medicine as well. He relates love to everything, and medicine to the weather and how it can be t multuous, to astronomy, to the muses. Love, he argues, is in and around and involved in everything, and certainly that is why they're the most incredible and powerful of God's He closes by saying quote, so love as a whole has great and mighty, or rather total power when you put all this together. But it is the love whose nature is expressed in good actions, marked by self control and justice at the human and divine level that has the great power and is the source of all our happiness. Eric Simmachus is finished now, and fortunately so are Aristophanes's hiccups. It's his turn to speak, but not until he's spoken directly about those hiccups and how he had to apply quote the sneeze treatment to them. It's finally Aristophanes's time to speak. Hiccups are gone, and we're back to Aristophanes, that guy. I almost wish I wasn't covering this close to my episode on theths before I adds you side, if only because I was really mean to Aristophanes. And yet here in plato Symposium he is about to give us everything that we have been waiting for. So let's remind ourselves that I was deeply biased in reading that play because I just did not know what to do with myself, and I love Eurypitdies too much. But maybe the real Aristophanes was a fine guy actually, or at least this very this Platonic idea of Aristophanes is fun and funny and weird in the most satisfying way. So let's hear what he has to say, because again it's Aristophanes whose speech on love is going to give us the idea of soulmates other has and so much more. But first, he's Aristophanes. So he begins his speech by suggesting that everyone who has spoken before him has entirely failed to grasp what love means. Not only that, he says that people generally humanity fail to grasp the power of love. Otherwise quote, they'd have built the greatest temples and alters to him and made the greatest sacrifices. Love Aros, Aristophanes says, deserves everything in the world. He loves humans more than anything. He helps them, guides them, shows them what they need. He is their greatest happiness. But he's getting ahead of himself. First, Aristophanes wants to explain human nature and the history behind it, because, as he sees it, humans and humankind are so much more than they seem. Quote. Long ago, our nature was not the same as it is now, but quite different. For one thing, there were three human genders, not just the present two male and female. There was also a third, a combination of these two. Aristophanes is very clear about what he's saying here. People exist beyond the traditional bine hairy of gender, and he's even got his own historical theories to explain how it all happened. His concern is here primarily to discuss what he sees as the history of humanity and how they became what he sees now. But still the fact that he lays out a third gender right off the bat is important. He clarifies that this was originally the meaning of androgynist. Both the combination of the two genders and simultaneously someone who is beyond them entirely. He even adds that unfortunately, now that word is used as an insult, when it was once just a descriptor of facts. But he is here to make it weird. So Aristophanes goes on to speak of his theory of the history of humanity by noting that in this past humans didn't really look like the humans that exist now. They were, but well, they are basically two humans smushed together to create a kind of weird round ball that had four arms and four legs, and yeah, I mean, I'm getting biblically accurate angel vibes, even though the number of eyes would also fortunately be limited to four. He goes on to explain that quote they had one head for both the faces, which were turned in opposite directions, four ears, two sets of genitals, and everything else was as you would imagine from what I've said so far. My favorite part about this dialogue is that before Aristophanes gets to the meat of his argument, that some people are just born divinely inspired even to be sexually and romantically attracted to the same sex or gender, and that basically that means that the entirety of the spectrum of romantic love and gender is valid and beautiful and godly. Before he gets into that, he has to just make it seriously, wildly, fucking bizarrely weird because and frankly, it seems entirely unnecessary to me, but then this is a fictional Aristophanes. He first goes on to explain exactly how everything functioned when these humans were one bizarre double human ball. He tells us how they ran, how they supported themselves and their eight limbs, cart wheeling and tumbling around. We do love a visual. He goes on to explain why there were three genders. Quote, the parent of the male gender was originally the Sun, that of the female gender, the Earth, that of the combined gender the moon, because the moon is a combination of the Sun and the Earth. This is why they were round and weird too, he says, because they took after their very round parents. Again, unnecessarily weird, but at least he's funny. But don't go thinking that these big, round, cartwheeling combo humans were nice and chill. No, No, they were terribly strong and ambitious as hell. They even once tried to attack Olympus tried to conquer the world of the gods for themselves. Aristophanes explains that the story of Otis and Felts, which I've told before on the show, was actually the story of these early humans and when they tried this, when they went as far as to threaten the gods themselves, they were a fan ually a problem that had to be solved. Zeus brought all the gods together to discuss this new and weird and cartwheeling threat. But they couldn't just kill the humans like they'd done with the giants when they threatened them. They needed humans. Humans keep the gods going, and they're sacrificing and their worship. They just they can't lose that or they'd be fucked themselves. No, the gods had to just make the humans less of a threat, so Zeus decided that the only way to do that was to cut them in half. Nerds are resorts cliffhanger kind of sort of. God, how's this bit of the symposium is the weirdest and the best fictional Aristophanes is even weirder than the real Aristophanes. I really just I mean, the Patrick list in the Achilles bit is so good. And then the soulmate bit is so good and it's wild. Next week we'll cover the rest of the story, how they get to be, the concept of soulmates, other haves, though. I imagine you can see it coming if you haven't already listened to the ten minute version of this story that I told you so many years ago. That's gonna be good. I'm excited. Also, others have to speak about the idea of love, one of them being Agathon, who is both an interesting character in general, but also was so famously pretty fambuoyantly gay in Aristophanes. As before, he adds a sigh, and was even apparently rumored to have been loved by your Ripanies. So everyone can't wait to hear what he has to say about love too. There's lots more to come. Cannot wait. The quotes referenced throughout this episode are from the Penguin edition of Plato Symposium, translated by Chris for Gill, whereas the passage I read at the top was a translation by Benjamin Jowett. Everything's in the episode's description. As always, I've looked at a couple of articles in preparation for these. They're also listed in the episode's description. This Pride month, I'm gonna try to focus where I can, at least on the ancient ideas of gender and those beyond the binary. I know this bit of fictional Aristophanes isn't necessarily the best example, since the combined gender is kind of seemed to have been split intwo, but it still gives us an example of the idea of someone beyond the binary, someone who's gender is all and nothing and God's this whole symposium is just a fucking ode to sexual and romantic relationships between men, that much is certain. They're not a fan of ladies here. But after next week's wrapping up of this symposium, we're gonna look at trans stories from Avid because they're there and they're important, especially right now. And then we're gonna look at Heracles and his sexy boyfriends. So stay tuned. Also, Gods, I've got a couple of specifically queer conversation episodes coming up. You're all gonna love. It's fascinating shit. I love it as always. Thank you all so much for listening and just partaking in the show in whatever way that you do. It means the whole world to me. I know, sometimes these non mythological episodes can be a bit in the weeds, but especially with this one, like I really wanted to cover at least as much of the symposium as I can. I've been asked about it a lot, with experts on the show referencing it and things, and I think we just need to have a better grasp on what exists in this piece and related. Let's finish as we always do, with a reading of a five star review from one of you amazing listeners. Thank you all for leaving these They seriously make me so happy. This one is from a user called Patty thirty nine from my own Canada. Love this show. I've just started listening to this podcast and love it so much. I think Live is so entertaining and love how she makes these stories so much fun, straightened to the point. Thank you, Patty, I love it. Let's talk about this baby is written and produced by me Live Albert Mikayla Smith is the Hermes to my Olympian's Gods. She does so many things. She found me a bunch of articles on Plato Symposium because she has access to such things like that, and she'll go looking when I ask her to, and thus she's the best. Stephanie foleyworks to transcribe the podcast for captions and accessibility. YouTube captions is the word I usually say there. Thank you. The podcast is hosted and monetized by iHeartMedia. Help me continue bringing the world of Greek myth and the Agent Mediterranean by becoming a patron, we'll get bonus episodes and more. Visit patreon dot com slash myths Baby, or click the link in this episode's description. Thank you. You are all super cool. I am live and I love this shit.