I owe many thanks to Froma Zeitlin, and to my anonymous reader at Ramus for their kind and painstaking critiques of earlier versions of this piece, and for the suggestions and corrections they offered. Thanks too, as always, to Andrew Feldherr for his long-suffering toleration of whatever I present to him. Any mistakes or fanciful notions remain solely my own.

1. For an earlier discussion of this anomaly, see Burnyeat, M.F., ‘Socratic Midwifery, Platonic Inspiration’, BICS 24 (1977), 7–16Google Scholar, at 8; as he notes, here birth and intercourse are imaginatively equated. See too DM. Halperin, , One Hundred Years of Homosexuality (New York and London 1990), 113–51Google Scholar, esp. 140f.; for Halperin, the reversal has to do with the Greek (male) construction of female sexuality, in which a woman’s sexual and reproductive functions are amalgamated, and the moment of intercourse culminates in giving birth. My own reading in no way takes issue with these treatments, but approaches the problem from a different perspective.

2. Following the reading of Halperin (n. 1 above), this ambiguity would also form part of Plato’s attempt to envisage a new kind of male eros, one defined by equality and reciprocity between the two partners.

3. Eur. fr. 125; PI. Charm. 154c. It might be objected that in these other instances the beauty of the maiden or youth underlies the conceit, while the Silenus-image devised by Alcibiades offers anything but an alluring surface, whatever the charms of its depths. But, as I will be suggesting later, the statue must in many essential respects replicate the appearance of the original, and Socrates’ own satyr-like looks were notorious (cf. Xen. Symp. 4.19). Indeed, part of the humour of the conceit may lie in Alcibiades’ play on the clichéd analogy between the statue and the beautiful beloved.

4. ARV ² 177,3. There is some debate as to whether the painter is in fact showing a living youth or a victor statue (perhaps that of Leagros himself). In my reading whatever ambiguity the depiction contains is deliberate, a means of signalling the impact of amorous spectatorship. A still more patent ‘monumentalisation’ takes place on the surface of a cup attributed to the Antiphon painter (ARV ² 336, 14): here another nude and youthful athlete, and this one unmistakably alive, pours oil into his hand as he relaxes from his exertions. Inscribed on his thigh, exactly as if he were a statue, run the words AAXHE KAAOE (‘Laches is beautiful’).

5. On this occasion all the soldiers look at Socrates as he stands wrapped in thought, but Alcibiades privileges himself by observing that they fail to understand the significance of what they see.

6. For the objectifying powers that the verb θεάoμαι can itself include, see the illuminating discussion of Herodotus’ use of the verb in Konstan, D., ‘Persians, Greeks and Empire’, Arethusa 20 (1987), 59–73Google Scholar, at 63f.

7. A sequence still more explicitly spelt out in Antiphilus’ epigram on a representation of Perseus and Andromeda (GP 49 = Anth. Pl. 147).

8. Diotima has already noted how the act of contemplative viewing (θεᾱσθαι) travels hand-in-hand with sexual desire, a longing to ‘be with’ (σύvειvαι) the object on which the lover looks, and twice she joins the two activities into a single phrase (211d, 212a). But the combination includes a caveat: as long as the lover gazes on and seeks communion with impure, transient, earthly bodies, the two terms pull apart. As Diotima makes clear at 212a, the successful initiate learns to look not with his actual eyes, but with the more acute vision of the mind’s eye; this type of vision allows true communion with the realities he apprehends, while other lovers achieve a ‘being with’ that can never satisfy, that can only excite more desire in providing its very temporary gratification.

9. For a more extended discussion of how Alcibiades moves from the position of the closed ὲρέμεvoς,, the one who will not allow his bodily integrity to be breached, to that of the ἐρασ‘τής seized by a vehement longing to penetrate the other, see the illuminating description in Nussbaum, M., The Fragility of Goodness: Luck and Ethics in Greek Tragedy and Philosophy (Cambridge 1986sGoogle Scholar), esp. 188. As Nussbaum’s reading also shows, Alcibiades cannot be simply categorised as either lover or beloved since proximity to Socrates makes him aware of his own penetrability and exposure; it is he who suffers damage from the arrows with which he thinks to breach the other, and who acknowledges his sensation of ‘openness’ (218a, 219b, 216b).

10. For this, see Nussbaum (n.9 above), 189f. As her discussion argues, the ἀγάλματα contained within the statue can only be attained through penetration of both a mental and physical kind.

11. Note too that Euripides’ Helen preserves her chastity while her longed for εἴδωλov beguiles the Greek and Trojan armies, and Polyxena’s likeness to an ἄγαλμα at the moment when the assembled soldiers gaze on her nudity allows the victim to protect her virginal body at this moment of seeming self-exposure, of extreme openness to view (Eur. Hec. 558–61).

12. Eur. Ale. 348–52, Aesch. Ag. 416–19, Apollod. Bibl. 3.30.

13. As Vernant, J.-P., Myth and Thought among the Greeks (London 1983), 305–20Google Scholar, and Figures, idoles, masques (Peris 1990), 17–41Google Scholar, so amply demonstrates, references to ‘replacement’ statues regularly appear alongside the evocation of dreams and ghosts. See esp. Aesch. Ag. 414–26 where the ghost, statues and dreams appear in rapid succession.

14. Note that when Alcibiades first lies down on the couch, he doesn’t actually see Socrates (213c).

15. Of course dissimilitude belongs to Alcibiades’ εіκώv understood purely as simile, but artistic images in Greek tradition seem a prime site for explorations of this paradoxical blend of likeness and difference. The anecdotal tale of the first terracotta portrait preserved by Pliny succinctly makes the point: Pliny’s story features the daughter of a Sicyonian potter who, distressed at the coming departure of her betrothed, sketches a likeness of him on the wall; the girl takes her image not from the head of her lover, but from the shadow or umbra that he casts on the wall. Her father subsequently fills in the outline, and so produces the first terracotta image (HN 35.131). So too the effigy made after the death or departure of the loved one has the status of the representation of a shade, a memory, an εἴδωλov left in the eye. The absence of the archetype is also inscribed in the very first account of image-making, in Hesiod’s tale of the fashioning of Pandora. She is ‘like to a goddess’ (WD 62) and ‘like to a chaste maiden’ (WD 71), but neither one nor the other; as Loraux, N., The Children of Athena: Athenian Ideas about Citizenship and the Division between the Sexes (Princeton 1993), 82Google Scholar, explains, she is ‘a copy that did not have a model’.

16. For detailed discussion of the limbless, eyeless κoλoσσoί, see Steiner, D., ‘Eyeless in Argos: A Reading of Agamemnon 416–19’, JHS 105(1995), 175–82CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

17. Similarly the loss of the effigy of Protesilaus seems to Laodamia a second, and still more grievous, widowhood which drives her to the self-immolation she failed to perform on behalf of the husband himself. A late version of the Laodamia tale reported by Eustathius vividly signals the divergence between the effigy and original by having the two confront one another when the dead man returns (for this incident see Bettini, M., Il Ritratto dell’amante [Turin 1992], 14Google Scholar).

18. For the immobility and absence of sensation characteristic of statues, see the examples cited in Kassel, R., ‘Dialoge mit Stamen’, ZPE 51 (1983), 1–12Google Scholar, at 1.

19. It should be noted that no objects that conform to Alcibiades’ description have ever been found. Lissarrague, F., The Aesthetics of the Greek Banquet (Princeton 1990), 55CrossRefGoogle Scholar, finds the closest equivalent in some vessels equipped with intricate mechanical devices which similarly possess a double meaning, a surface appearance that belies the depth,

20. Alcibiades does refer to one occasion on which he saw the depths of the image (216e-217a), but nothing suggests that he has achieved this vision as a result of his having succeeded in the seduction.

21. Henderson, J., The Maculate Muse (New Haven 1975), 5, 64, 151–53Google Scholar, calls the verb a ‘primary obscenity’ in fifth-century comedy. For the combination of the sexual associations of the term with a statue, there is the joke that Aristotle assigns to the dramatist Philippus (De an. 1.3, 406b): ‘They say that Daedalus made mobile (κιvoυμέvηv) his wooden statue of Aphrodite, by pouring quicksilver into it’; on this, see Morris, S., Daidalos and the Origins of Greek Art (Princeton 1992), 225Google Scholar. The same double entendre returns in a Roman text equally concerned with a statue’s capacity to move and be moved; for the play on the verb moueri in Ovid’s Pygmalion story, see Sharrock, A.R., ‘The Love of Creation’, Ramus 20 (1991), 169–82Google Scholar, at 172.

22. Note too all the emphasis on manoeuvring at the dialogue’s end as Alcibiades and Agathon jockey for position around the unmoving Socrates (222d-e).

23. See Rosen, S., Plato’s Symposium (New Haven and London 1987), 304Google Scholar, who also observes the relationship betwen the episodes, but offers a different reading. The score of ancient sources who cite Daedalus as maker of moving statues are gathered in Overbeck, J.A., Die antiken Schriftquellen zur Geschichte der bildenden Künste bei den Griechen (Leipzig 1868Google Scholar), nos. 119–37. Numinous cult statues both Greek and Roman move of their own volition, but resist movement imposed by others.

24. For εἰκóvες, that work in this manner, Pl. Laws 898b, Tim. 37d, 92c. For additional examples, see Said, S., ‘Deux noms de l’image en Grec ancien: Idole et Icône’, Comptes Rendus de l’A-cadémie des Inscriptions et Belles Lettres (1987), 321fGoogle Scholar. For the relations between the eiiccov and the εἴδωλov, see the two rather different accounts in Said and in Vernant, J.-P., ‘Figuration et Image’, Métis 5 (1990), 225–38CrossRefGoogle Scholar. According to Saïd, Plato differentiates between the two terms; while the εἴδωλov is a mere simulacrum, the εἰκώv is like a paradigm which can reveal the truth. The εἰκώv of Socrates, I suggest, stands midway between the two terms as she defines them: it does reveal a reality previously hidden, and inaccessible by direct account, but remains implicated in its ‘imagistic’ nature (for which see the following note).

25. For the mixture of likeness and dissimilitude built into the εἰλώv, see Pl. Soph. 240a-c. As the discussion in the Sophist explores at much greater length (235b ff.), the ‘eikastic’ mode which Alcibiades deploys also forms a subdivision of the larger activity of image-making (εἰδελoπoιικὴ τέχvη), and remains tainted by its second-class rank. Rosen (n.23 above), 295f., observes the relevance of the Sophist’s discussion to Alcibiades’ conceit, and consigns the Silenus image to the ‘lowest segment of the divided line’. The Sophist also makes the point that what poses as an εἰλώv, an exact replica of the original, turns out on occasion to be an εἴδωλov (234c-d, 235d-e). Nussbaum (n.9 above), 185f., takes a more positive view of Alcibiades’ portrait as telling a truth of its own.

26. Nussbaum (n.9 above), 195.

27. Ibid.

28. For a fascinating discussion of the highly problematic equation of Socrates with a player on the αὐλóς, the instrument so frequently cast as the destroyer and opponent of logos, I am much indebted to Peter Wilson for showing me his forthcoming piece ‘The αὐλóς in Athens’. The potential ‘deconstruction’ of Socrates performed by Alcibiades’ simile, which Wilson explores, lies outside the scope of this paper. But for all the incongruity of his flute, we should also observe that Marsyas can constitute an appropriate figure for Socrates; he is a creature to whom various sources attribute both wisdom and sexual abstinence (e.g., Pind. fr. 157, Xen. Anab. 1.2.8, Diod. Sic. 3.58.3).

29. Numerous statues of Greek myth do immobilise and/or petrify; the idol of Samian Hera prevents the boat carrying her from putting out to sea (Athen. 15.672c), and the image of Artemis at Pellene renders things sterile (Plut. Arat. 32). To experience θαῡμα, as the gods’ and men’s reactions to the Pandora image show, is to be transfixed and held rooted to the spot (Hes. Theog. 588). In the majority of these stories, the individual suffers petrifaction as a result of encountering the image’s gaze, and it is striking that Alcibiades’ narrative dwells much more on the fact of hearing than of seeing Socrates. In this emphasis on listening to words, the speaker differentiates himself from Diotima for whom the critical sense was sight. For a very suggestive treatment of how the fantasy of an animate statue inevitably infects the living person with its own properties, see Gross, K., The Dream of the Moving Statue (Ithaca and London 1992Google Scholar).

30. Alhough Alcibiades actually shows himself a lesser Odysseus since the epic hero submits to being bound, and does actually listen to the Sirens’ song.

31. I return to this notion on p. 104 below.

32. As Nussbaum (n.9 above, 188) observes, Alcibiades, accustomed to the role of the closed ἐρώμεvoς, now experiences the sensation of openness, of penetrability so foreign to him; his desire to expose merely brings about his own exposure both to others and himself.

33. A point suggestively treated in Wilson (n.28 above), 7f. and 19–22.

34. Pind. Pyth. 12.18–22 offers the earliest extant account; for elaborations and additional details, Hdt. 7.26, Arist. Pol. 1341b ff.; Apollod. 1.4.2; Athen. 14.616e-f; Plut. Mor. 456b ff. Although most written accounts of the Marsyas story postdate Plato’s text, and their application to the Symposium may run the risk of introducing anachronistic readings, visual representations on vases (the index of ARV ² lists no Marsyas before the classical period, but some thirteen in it) and other media starting at the beginning of the fifth century attest to the popularity of the myth. For a defence of their applicability, see Frontisi-Ducroux, F., ‘Athena et l’invention de la flflte’, Musica e Storia 2 (1994), 239–67Google Scholar, at 241.

35. So Pind. Isth. 5.27, Ol. 7.12, fr. 94b.l4–16. For a discussion of Plato’s equation of the αὐλóς, with imitation, see Wilson (n.28 above), 59, with bibliography; as Wilson also shows (22), the sources describe how the body of the player itself becomes an additional ‘instrument’ of imitation in the performance.

36. For this version of the tale, see Trag. Adesp. 381 = Plut. Mor. 456b; Apollod. 1.4.2.

37. As noted in Leclercq-Neveu, B., ‘Marsyas, le Martyr de l’Aulos’, Métis 4 (1989), 251–68CrossRefGoogle Scholar, at 255.

38. A point elaborated on in Vernant, J.-P., Mortals and Immortals (Princeton 1991), 125Google Scholar, and Frontisi-Ducroux (n.34 above), esp. 245f. According to these analyses, the deformation of the face creates a homology between the flute-player, the satyr and the Gorgon. Particularly evocative is an early fifth-century Attic vase showing Perseus holding Medusa’s head in front of him on one side, and a flautist playing on the other (Munich 8725).

39. For discussion of the group, extant only in a Roman copy and fifth-century Attic vases, see Stewart, A., Greek Sculpture: An Exploration (New Haven 1990), 147Google Scholar.

40. It is tempting to conjecture Plato’s familiarity with the group. If Alcibiades’ Silenus εἰκώv takes off from real figures made by artisans, then Marsyas too would have his own figural counterpart.

41. Several additional pieces of evidence supply some context for this admittedly speculative reading of Marsyas’ role in Alcibiades’ address. A passing remark in Plato’s First Alcibiades (106e) reveals that the youth refused to learn how to play the flute, and Plutarch’s subsequent account of his distaste for an art that he deemed able to pervert the ‘bearing and appearance that were becoming to a free man’ (Alcib. 2.4–6) may be an elaboration on the earlier text (cf. Symp. 215e). But as Alcibiades’ association with Pronomos in other sources and his behaviour in the Symposium both suggest, flutes and flute-players enthralled as well as repelled the young man. The evocation of Socrates as Marsyas, and the background story of Athena’s own relations with the flute, serve as an accurate index of Alcibiades’ own ambivalent emotions, both the attraction and the repulsion he feels towards the individual whom he styles the most supreme αὐλήτης of all. For more on Alcibiades’ relations to the αὐλóς, see Wilson (n.28 above), 54f.

42. 1 borrow the phrase from Nussbaum (n.9 above), 183.

43. This reference to funerary monuments neatly models the plight of the individual deprived of three-quarters of the original self after that of the equally diminished figure of the dead.

44. See Nussbaum (n.9 above), 174f., for a discussion of the body/soul dichotomy that this wish touches on.

45. Od. 8.266ff.

46. In addition to Pandora, Greek myth ascribed many other figures to Hephaestus, chiefly statues worked in metal. On these, see Faraone, C.A., Talismans and Trojan Horses: Guardian Statues in Ancient Greek Myth and Ritual (New York and Oxford 1992), 18–21Google Scholar.

47. For a full account of this ‘indirect’ casting method, see Stewart (n.39 above), 38f. Intriguing for its echoes of Aristophanes’ tale is Diodorus Siculus’ account of two sixth-century sculptors, the brothers Theodoras and Telecles, who each completed their half of an image of Apollo in such a way that ‘when the parts were fitted together with one another, they corresponded so well that they appeared to have been made by one person’ (1.89.5–9).

48. Nussbaum (n.9 above), 176, imagines the mode of existence that would result as the pair recapture their primal unity in terms that exactly evoke the (non)experience ascribed to statues in Greek thought: ‘What they thought they most wanted out of their passionate movement turns out to be a wholeness that would put an end to all movement and all passion. A sphere would not have intercourse with anyone. It would not eat, or doubt, or drink. It would not, as Xenophanes shrewdly observed, even move this way or that, because it would have no reason; it would be complete (B25)’. See too Gross (n.29 above), 133, for a discussion of the same ideas in explicit reference to statues.

49. Pandora has a ‘lovely maiden shape’ (WD 63), modesty (WD 71) and divinity (WD 62) outside, and a bestial and lascivious nature (WD 67, 77f.) within.

50. See Rosen (n.23 above), 139, 141.

51. The εἰκvες, that Alcibiades presents at the start of his encomíum might be read as his reaction to the rebuff he has received. Rejected as an ἐρώμεvoς, he now assumes a more active role, seeking to bifurcate the image, to turn the inside out, and make division between its levels. If opening the hinge fails to work, he perhaps intends a still more violent mode of assault: where Zeus instructs Apollo to use the skin as covering for the ugly wounds which his division has produced in the circle men, Alcibiades now proposes to emulate Apollo’s behaviour on a different occasion, and to treat the image as a Marsyas whose surface he would strip off. Rosen (n.23 above), 297f., notes these parallels between Apollo and Alcibiades, but gives them a different emphasis: for him Alcibiades would strip Socrates’ speeches of their skin of irony.

52. The very self-sufficiency of the εἰκώv that stands in for Socrates signals from the beginning of Alcibiades’ story the confusion of the roles in the relationship: according to the conventional division, the ἐαώμεvoς, is complete, the ἐραστής needy. As Nussbaum (n.9 above), 188, points out, Socrates elsewhere cites the example of the ὠαώμεvoς and ὠραστής, to illustrate the contrast between the complete and self-sufficient and the incomplete or needy (Phileb. 53d).

53. On the equation, see Zeitlin, F.I., Playing the Other: Gender and Society in Classical Greek Literature (Chicago 1996), 64–67Google Scholar, and Sissa, G., Greek Virginity (Cambridge MA 1990), 155fGoogle Scholar.; on woman more generally as jar, duBois, P., Sowing the Body: Psychoanalysis and Ancient Representations of Women (Chicago 1988), 46–49, 132fCrossRefGoogle Scholar. One Campanian vase representation, discussed by Sissa, depicts Pandora actually in the form of a jar watched over by a club-footed artisan.

54. As Zeitlin (n.53 above), 71, suggests.

55. Although the official indictment only accused Alcibiades of profaning the Mysteries (a crime also intimated at several points in Alcibiades’ speech and actions in the Symposium), popular belief current at the time when Plato was writing held him also responsible for the attack on the images. The chief ancient sources for the mutilation are Thuc. 6.27.2; Andoc. 1.36, 62; Plut. Alc. 18.8; for recent discussion of the affair, and Alcibiades’ role in it, see Dover, K.J. in Gomme, A.W., Dover, K.J., and Andrewes, A., A Historical Commentary on Thucydides IV (Oxford 1970), 264–88Google Scholar; MacDowell, D.M., Andokides, On the Mysteries (Oxford 1989), 173–93Google Scholar; Osborne, R., ‘The Erection and Mutilation of the Hermai’, PCPS n.s. 31 (1985), 47–73Google Scholar.

56. For the richest treatment of the links, and one to which I acknowledge considerable debt, see Nussbaum (n.9 above).

57. Dover, K.J., Plato: Symposium (Cambridge 1980Google Scholar), ad 215bl.

58. Nussbaum (n.9 above), 171 and n.18.

59. For a particularly vivid example, see the vase by the Boreas painter showing two celebrants lifting cups of wine to the herms’ mouths (Museo Civico Bologna Pell. 206); one of the two herms shown here actually wears a tania, the ribbon Alcibiades binds around Socrates’ head. For this and many other instances of herms shown with crowns and drink offerings, cf. Zanker, P., Wandel der Hermesgestalt in der attischen Vasenmalerei (Bonn 1965), 91–101Google Scholar, who also notes the particularly close connection that these vases establish between the images and the activities and amorous pursuits of young men (one example even shows the figure of Eros crowning a herm). Perhaps it is not over-fanciful to remember that Alcibiades’ first seduction attempt occurs at the gymnasium where herms, depictingihe god in his capacity as dytovioi; or evaycovioc, would regularly stand (e.g., ABV 448, 2 and ARV ² 416, 3). Suggestive too are the close associations and numerous interactions between satyrs and herms on Attic vases of the classical period. For these, see Zanker, op. cit. 101–3.

60. Sim. 542.1–3, with PI. Protag. 339a-347a. For the ‘complete’ (τελεíα) nature of the foursquare shape, see Arist. Rhet. 1411b.26; cf. Eth. Nic.ll00b.20. The fullest treatment of the sculptural metaphor underpinning Simonides’ conceit belongs to Svenbro, J., La parole et le marbre: aux origines de la poétique grecque (Lund 1976), 153–57Google Scholar.

61. E.g., PI. Tim. 33e and Phileb. 51c.

62. See the examples listed in LSJ s.v.

63. For the equation of αὐλóς, and phallos in satyr plays, see Seaford, R., ‘The “Hyporchema” of Pratinas’, Maia 29–30 (1977-78), 81–94Google Scholar, at 84f.

64. The focus on these two parts of the herm and statues’ bodies also recapitulates the two ‘zones’ at which Alcibiades directs his amorous quest; if the wondrous head of Socrates (213e) could have quenched Alcibiades’ intellectual thirsts, then the αἰδo[001]α of the image would have appeased his concomitant physical desires. Nussbaum (n.9 above), 188, also links the two parts of the body when she notes that the ἐραστἠς, depicted on vase representations would touch the head and genitals of the beloved in greeting him.

65. For this point, see Osborne (n.55 above), 52f.; Frontisi-Ducroux, F., Le Dieu-Masque: Une Figure du Dionysos d’AthϨnes (Paris and Rome 1991Google Scholar), esp. 280–90, also explores the parallels between the mask and herm.

66. Museo Civico Bologna Pell. 206.

67. Osborne (n.55 above), 54. For instances of the very close identification between viewer and viewed established by vase representations of herms, see Zanker (n.59 above), esp. 93.

68. Thuc. 6.27.1, Paus. 1.24.3.

69. Hipparch. 228b-229e; Harpocration s.v. Hermai. See too Suda s.v. Hermai and Hesychius s.v. Hipparcheios Hermes. (For a fresh assessment, see the recent discussion in Shapiro, H.A., Art and Cult Under the Tyrants in Athens [Mainz am Rhein 1989], 127f.Google Scholar) On the authorship of the Hipparchus, see Guthrie, W.K.C., A History of Greek Philosophy V (Cambridge 1978CrossRefGoogle Scholar), 383 and 389.

70. Thuc. 6.27.3,28.2, 53.3,60. If we read Plato’s own oblique references to the mutilation as a deliberate echo of Thucydides, then it is striking that on both occasions a frustrated eros indirectly prompts the turn to tyranny.

71. One historical incident seems to suggest a particularly close equation between herms and a democratic regime: after his victory at Eion in 475 (?), Cimon was allowed to dedicate three metrically inscribed stone herms, but was expressly forbidden to put his name on them (Aeschin. 3.183–85 and Plut. Cim. 7); in fourth-century references to the affair, it is the demos that has decided that no names should figure on the monuments. For this, and other suggestions of the politically charged nature of the herms, see Osborne (n. 55 above).

72. For Alcibiades as potential tyrant, see PI. Alcib. I 104c.2, 105a.6-c.4; cf. Alcib. II 141a.5ff., with Rosen (n.23 above), 280. Thuc. 6.28.2 notes that Alcibiades’ rivals, in associating him with the attack on the Herms, ‘offered as proof his licentiousness, especially his undemocratic habits’.

73. Rosen (n.23 above), 307.

74. See particularly Hdt. 3.37,29,16.

75. For the tyrant and eros, understood both as sexual desire and desire for power, see Hartog, F., The Mirror of Herodotus (Berkeley and Los Angeles 1988), 330Google Scholar; for the eros that reifies, D. Konstan (n.6 above). The paradigmatic tale of Candaules, Gyges and the Queen that stands at the beginning of Herodotus’ text (1.8–12) explores the way in which the despot’s gaze objectifies the beloved, and asserts possession by displaying her to another viewer.

76. E.g., Tiberius (Pliny HN 34.19.62), Nero (HN 34.82), Caligula (HN 35.17–18; this time the object in question is a painting on plaster that the emperor tries to remove). Note too that in the early Greek versions of the Pygmalion story, the hero is ruler of Cyprus enamoured of an image of Aphrodite. For the most extended treatment of the topos, see Cicero on Verres in in Verr. 4, where despotism, sexual depravity and passion for statues are closely combined. Bettini (n.17 above), 82f., briefly addresses the topos of statue-loving tyrants; it is one I explore in greater detail in a forthcoming study of statues and eros.

77. Here I follow Osborne (n.55 above), 51, who suggests that this combination of image and text was the original purpose of the herm. While many votive offerings and other statues included a text sometimes inscribed on the actual limbs of the piece, Hipparchus’ creations are unique insofar as the space of the inscription must inevitably be the body of the herm.

78. Note too that the herms represented on Attic vases are frequently shown with open mouths as though in the act of speech. The inscribed message would invite the passer-by to stop and enunciate it, thereby forcing him to assume not just the statue’s face and person, but also his voice as he pronounces the words. For the mechanics of this ‘speaking’ inscription, see Svenbro, J., Phrasikleia: anthropologic de la lecture en grϩce antique (Paris 1988), esp. 53–73Google Scholar.

79. An effect obviously impossible to achieve if the reported ‘dialogue’ were presented (as in the Theaetetus) as an actual conversation going on before the reader.

80. The ending of the Symposium, where Socrates argues that a single dramatist should be author of comedy and tragedy both (223d), suggests that the dialogue’s two levels are inseparable, just like the Silenus image. Note too the remarkable banishment of the flute-player (176e), an essential ornament to any symposiastic gathering, as though the speeches themselves would supply the two normally antithetical sets of values that lie beneath the signs of αὐλóÂ, and λóγoς.

81. Here I follow the reading proposed by D. Halperin, ‘Plato and the Erotics of Narrativity’, in R. Hexter and D. Selden (eds), Innovations of Antiquity, esp. 115. Nor does the herm prove irrelevant here: by suggesting the links between Socrates, the Silenus statue and the sculpted stelae of the god, Plato positions the figure of Hermes behind both the εἰκώv and his text. As god of communication, of revelation and obfuscation both, his is the hermeneutic enterprise in which all the viewers/readers of the herm, satyr and text must engage. For Hermes as the god who simultaneously reveals and hides meaning, Aesch. Choeph. 815–18; see too Kahn, L., Hertnès passe ou les ambiguitis de la communication (Paris 1978Google Scholar).

82. Halperin (n.81 above), 115 and 116f., traces out some of the implications of the conflation of lover/beloved and reader. Following the analogy between interpretation and an erotic enterprise that he suggests, penetrating the text would also mean the satisfaction of an erotic longing. More broadly, he proposes that ‘the perpetual loss and renewal of understanding on the part of the interpreter…reflects a familiar erotic operation, namely the dialectic of presence and absence that structures the phenomenology of desire’.

83. These are ideas much more fully expounded in Socrates’ discussion at Phaedrus 275dff. Like the εἰκώv which, I have suggested, can only exist in the absence of an archetype, so the text, the Phaedrus teaches, stands orphaned of its generator. Cross (n.29 above), 16, offers some very relevant reflections on the fate of individuals and ideas transformed into statues, and on the codification, censorship and restrictions that result.

84. Halperin (n.81 above), 108, lists the numerous moments in the text when Plato calls attention to the lacunae that the reported version of events includes.

85. Both Alcibiades’ speech and his implication in the mutilation of the herms involve forms of attack; as Nussbaum (n.9 above) traces, Alcibiades’ speech does prove an effective refutation of Socrates’ teachings via Diotima, presenting a very different and no less convincing account of what it is to love. The subsequent mutilation of the herms, which Plato links with the speaker, takes one step further and ‘physicalises’ the challenge issued by Alcibiades’ words.

86. Halperin (n.81 above), 110 and 121, also reflects on the idolatrous nature of these two ‘disciples’. Cf. also Penwill, J.L., ‘Men in Love: Aspects of Plato’s Symposium’, Ramus 7 (1978), 143–75Google Scholar, at 166f.

87. Osborne (n.55 above), 53f.

88. Later sources, explored in Leclercq-Neveu (n.37 above), even suggest that Marsyas engages in a curious mode of autonomous reproduction; although he himself is sterile, satyrs are supposedly bom from his blood after his death ([Plut.] defluv. 10; cf. Philostr. VA 6.27).