¹ ‘Immortality in Plato’s Symposium’, CR 64 (1950), 43–5.

² Hackforth’s view undermines that of Markus, R.A. ‘The Dialectic of Eros in Plato’s Symposium,’ Downside Review 73 (1955), 219–30,CrossRefGoogle Scholar who thinks that desire for the beautiful itself is desire ‘to give rather than to receive, a kind of generosity rather than a kind of need’ (227); equally vulnerable is Rist, J.M. Eros and Psyche (Toronto 1964):CrossRefGoogle Scholar the philosopher’s creativity ‘is not desired for any ulterior motive of obtaining immortality’ (36)

³ The clear analysis of Santas, G. ‘Plato on Love, Beauty and the Good’ in Drew, D.J. (ed.),The Greeks and the Good Life (California State University 1980), 33–68,Google Scholar is sensitive to the problem in the distinction made on 44 and n. 12, between the aims and the object of love. Likewise Vlastos, G. ‘The Individual as an Object of Love in Plato,’ (Princeton U.P. 1973) 3–42,Google Scholar especially n.26: ‘only through the immortalizing effect of “birth in beauty” can one fulfill the desire to possess the good in perpetuity’. But neither of these excellent accounts pursues the question of the soul’s immortality.

⁴ See Neumann, H. ‘Diotima’s Concept of Love,’ AJPh 86 (1965), 33–59.Google Scholar

⁵ The clear analysis of Luce, J.V. ‘Immortality in Plato’s Symposium,’ A History of Greek Philosophy 4 (Cambridge 1975), 387ff.,Google Scholar with reference among others to the basic article of Neumann, H. ‘Diotima’s Concept of Love,’ CR 2 (1952), 137–41.Google Scholar Another good discussion on similar lines is Robinson, T.M. Plato’s Psychology (Toronto 1970), 125ff.Google Scholar Closer to the line which I take is the contention of Dover, K.J. ‘The Date of Plato’s Symposium ,’ Phronesis 10 (1965),16ff.,CrossRefGoogle Scholar that Diotima’s thesis that ‘it is only by generation that mortal nature can be immortal’, is compatible with an impersonal formulation of immortality, namely ‘there is in me something which will exist when I am dead’. Present purposes further require consideration of the mode of existence of this‘ something’ and of how, being immortal, it can be creative.

⁶ The hedonism of the Protagoras is similarly explicable in terms of a recommendation of Socratic moral doctrines on the basis of values which Socrates does not necessarily accept but which are implied in the views of Protagoras and other sophists; seeJHS 96 (1976), 32–45.

⁷ Sir Thomas Browne, Hydriotaphia, 44, quoted by R. Lattimore, Themes in Greek and Latin Epitaphs (Urbana 1942), 246.

⁸ Lattimore, op. cit, 342.

⁹ Rohde, E. Psyche (English translation, London 1925),170.Google Scholar

¹⁰ Burial at home: Demosthenes 57.70; adoption of an heir‘ … to bury him and do what was customary for him in time to come’: Isaeus 2.10; happiness of the dead: Aristotle EN 1101bl-9,

¹¹ Op. cit, 119. In 422 B.C. the people of Amphipolis transferred heroic honours from Hagnon, their founder, who was probably still alive at this date, to Brasidas, lately dead (Thucydides 5.11.1); in 367–6 B.C. the democrats of Sicyon paid similar honours to the murdered Euphron (Xenophon, HG 7.3.12).

¹² Sophocles Fr. 753N:

.

For the comment, without reference to Diotima, see Roloff, D. Gottähnlichkeit, Vergöttlichung und Erhöhung zu seligem Leben (Berlin 1970), 180;CrossRefGoogle Scholar ‘Selbst wenn der Mysten in Jenseits nichts anderes als die Fortführung des hiesigen Lebens erwartete, hatte er damit die Grenzen des Menschlichen gesprengt: Er allein besitzt wahrhafte Unsterblichkeit, weil ja das Schattendasein des gewöhnlichen Toten nicht als Fortleben gelten kann, und schon durch diese blosse Unsterblichkeit ist der Eingeweihte den Göttern nähergerückt’

¹³ Bernhardt, J. Platon et le matérialisme ancien (Paris 1971), 208–11,Google Scholar notes the imperfect parallelism of body and soul in respect of procreation: the body reproduces its substance, the soul only its dispositions and insights. But his conclusion that this implies that the soul, unlike the body, maintains within itself a principle of unity analogous to that of the divine is not supported by Phaedo 87d-e (the soul abides behind and directs the processes of physical renewal), for the Symposium explicitly declares the individual soul to be subject to constant renewal also (207e ff.).

¹⁴ That is, offspring are not proxies for their parents, but efficient causes of the continued existence of the psyche of a deceased parent. There is no reason why such attitudes should be confined to human beings, certainly the expression (207d), with its reference to the definition of eros already established, must imply the dependence of the desire for immortality on the desire for everlasting happiness, for the animal kingdom as well as for mankind.

¹⁵ Thus the offspring of the philosopher will secure his immortality and welfare not by remembering him themselves, as human children would, and not as poetry and lawcodes would, by constantly bringing the authors to the minds of men, but by a combination of the latter way — for the pupils of the philosopher will remember him for the virtue he produced in them — and the witness of a third party, the gods, who see and approve. Of course, his ideas become immortal through being transmitted, and each successive possessor of those ideas achieves the summit of human happiness (Phcir. 277a); but the immortality of the psyche and its posthumous happiness are not merely imaginary projections of these.

¹⁶ The importance of this fact for rendering acceptable the notion of posthumous existence is brought out by Warner, M. ‘Love, Self and Plato’s Symposium’ Philosophical Quarterly 29 (1979) 329–39:Google Scholar if an individual life is analysed as a series of discontinuous states, then the discontinuity imposed by death is less problematic for the claim of continuity of identity. However, I believe that this account does not allow for the centrality in Diotima’s argument of the priority of the desire for eternal well-being, which can hardly be said to be satisfied in view of the discontinuity of death. Rather things are the other way round: it is because individual life is like this that personal immortality via the assistance of others is possible.

¹⁷ Humphreys, S.C. The Family, Women and Death (London 1983),153.Google Scholar For a discussion of Hellenistic funerary cults (from a social viewpoint) see Schmitt-Pantel, P. ‘Evergétisme et mémoire du mort,’ in Gnoli, G. and Vemant, J-P. (edd),La mort, les morts dans les sociétes anciennes Cambridge 1982), 177–88.Google Scholar

¹⁸ . England, ad loc, softens the force of to ‘of every kind’, but we should rather understand the desire for immortality to be behind every earthly desire. This is the force of in the parallel passage at Symposium 208d.

¹⁹ Dover, op. cit. 18, argues against Morrison, J.S. ‘Four Notes on Plato’s Symposium,’ CQ 14 (1964), 42–53,CrossRefGoogle Scholar that Plato has in mind here not the immortality of the human species, but that of every individual human being. It seems rather that the immortality of both is in view, the individual achieving his by latching on through memory to that of the race. Surely the expressions ‘coeval with time’ and ‘leaving behind children of children while being one and the same always’ refer to the race, existing unchanged while its constituents are replaced, and not to the posthumous survival of an individual.

²⁰ 6.773e, while referring to our passage, deals not with the individual’s own survival, but with his contribution to the cosmic economy.

²¹ For Empedocles, see Claus, D.B. Toward the Soul (New Haven and London 1964), 119;Google Scholar for other fifth-century views (the Potidaean inscription, Euripides) see Guthrie, W.K.C. The Greeks and their Gods (London 1968), 261–4.Google Scholar

²² I wish to record my appreciation of comments made on earlier drafts of this essay by various critics, including Dr. H. Gottschalk of Leeds University.