Banquet

And so, Callias, if you are proud of your ability to make people more righteous, I have a better right than you to claim that I can influence men toward every sort of virtue. For since we handsome men exert a certain inspiration upon the amorous, we make them more generous in money matters, more strenuous and heroic amid dangers, yes, and more modest and self-controlled also; for they feel abashed about the very things that they want most.

Madness is in those people, too, who do not elect the handsome men as generals; I certainly would go through fire with Cleinias, and I know that you would, also, with me. Therefore, Socrates, do not puzzle any more over the question whether or not my beauty will be of any benefit to men.

But more than that, beauty is not to be contemned on this ground, either, that it soon passes its prime; for just as we recognize beauty in a boy, so we do in a youth, a full-grown man, or an old man. Witness the fact that in selecting garlandbearers for Athena they choose beautiful old men, thus intimating that beauty attends every period of life.

Furthermore, if it is pleasurable to attain one’s desires with the good will of the giver, I know very well that at this very moment, without uttering a word, I could persuade this boy or this girl to give me a kiss sooner than you could, Socrates, no matter how long and profoundly you might argue.

How now? exclaimed Socrates. You boast as though you actually thought yourself a handsomer man than me. Of course, was Critobulus’s reply; otherwise I should be the ugliest of all the Satyrs ever on the stage. Now Socrates, as fortune would have it, really resembled these creatures.[*](This is regarded by some as a comment interpolated in the text, though doubtless true enough. Plato (Symp. 215 A, B, E; 216 C, D; 221 D, E; cf. 222 D) represents Alcibiades as likening Socrates to the Sileni and particularly to the Satyr Marsyas. Vase paintings and statues give an idea of the Greek conception of their coarse features. They regularly formed the chorus in the Satyr-plays that were given in connection with tragedies.)

Come, come, said Socrates; see that you remember to enter a beauty contest with me when the discussion now under way has gone the rounds. And let our judges be not Alexander, Priam’s son,[*](Usually called Paris; the judge of beauty when Hera, Athena, and Aphrodite appealed for a decision.) but these very persons whom you consider eager to give you a kiss.

Would you not entrust the arbitrament to Cleinias, Socrates?Aren’t you ever going to get your mind off Cleinias? was the rejoinder. If I refrain from mentioning his name, do you suppose that I shall have him any the less in mind? Do you not know that I have so clear an image of him in my heart that had I ability as a sculptor or a painter I could produce a likeness of him from this image that would be quite as close as if he were sitting for me in person?