Symposium

The Symposium is Plato's dialogue on the nature of love — set at a drinking-party in Athens at which Socrates, the comic poet Aristophanes, the tragic poet Agathon, and others each in turn deliver a speech in praise of Eros. It is one of Plato's most read and most translated dialogues.

The centrepiece is Socrates' report of the teaching of the priestess Diotima, in whose voice Plato delivers the famous "ladder of love" that climbs from physical desire to the contemplation of the Form of Beauty. The dialogue ends with the drunken arrival of Alcibiades, whose speech in praise of Socrates complicates and humanises everything that has gone before.