- Halperin says that "The formal literary structure of the Symposium, then, is that of a dialogue which contains within it a series of inset narratives, each of them containing another dialogue and each of them taking the reader further away in time from the dramatic date of the conversation between Apollodorus and his acquaintances." When reading this, I thought of the use of mise en abyme in Greek epics, and was wondering what people would consider to be the difference in effect between the use of this structure in dialogues referencing other dialogues versus epic myths referencing art that tells the story of the myth.
- Halperin discusses the patterns of return and loss of eros that are mimicked in the process of dialogue. When Aristodemus is introduced as one of Socrates's "lovers," using the word ἐραστὴς, which often refers to the younger, male lover in the social form of pederasty, even though he is older and seemingly not a lover of Socrates in the sexual sense, but as a devoted follower and lover of his wisdom. How does the concept of eros move not only through the dialogue but through the relationships and interactions between the people attending Agathon's dinner? In what was is knowledge itself a vessel for eros?
- take this quote into account "'whenever we hear other logoi from some other speaker-even a very good orator-virtually no one cares anything about them; but when anyone, whether a woman or a man or a little boy, hears you [Socrates] speak or hears your logoifrom another speaker, even if the speaker is a very poor one, we are seized and swept away by them'"
- "It would indicate that Socrates' discourses are so excellent that they transcend their specific verbal medium: they effectively trump any rhetorical strategy used to convey them and overcome any rhetorical ineptitude on the part of the speaker, acting as a kind of universal solvent on the words in which they are transmitted." Does this feel realistic? When we think about conversations in the modern day, have you ever experienced someone without much storytelling ability conveying a story or joke, no matter how well written it is, and managing to keep the same effect as the original teller? I ask this because I wanted to think about whether Socrates's words transcend rhetorical ineptitude because of the words themselves, or because he has transcended and become almost a mythological figure in the eyes of his followers? Or perhaps a bit of both?