Sara S
02-14-2012, 09:08 AM
from delancyplace.com:
In today's excerpt - symposia, the private banquets of the elite in ancient Athens.
They were often drunken and debauched parties, with male-only guests who were attended
to by flute boys and haetera, a sort of Greek geisha or call girl. Sometimes - as
reported by Plato in his masterwork Symposium - they were sober affairs with rarified
discussions of ideas by sophisticated guests. One such famous gathering was hosted
by Agathon and attended by Socrates. The subject of the evening's discussion was
the nature of Eros, the great god of desire. It is worth noting how esteemed homosexuality
was at this time:
"Agathon, in a grand rhe*torical flourish befitting a poet, concludes [the early
portion of the discussion by saying] that though all the gods are happy, Eros is
'the most happy, since he is the most beautiful and the best.'
"To this much, all the participants save the still-silent Socrates agree. But beyond
Eros's power and proximity to happiness, there is little else on which the guests
can establish common ground. One speaker, Pausanias, refuses to see Eros as a single
entity, claiming that he must be divided in two as Common Eros and Heavenly Eros
- the one, a seedy creature drawn by sexual appetite and so depraved that he will
even sleep with women; the other, a more transcendent being attracted by mind as
well as beauty, who finds his consummate expression in the higher love between
boys and older men. Eryximachus, on the other hand, views Eros as a pantheistic
force found not only in the hearts of gods and humans but 'also in nature - in the
physical life of all animals, in plants that grow in the ground, and in virtually
all living organisms.'
"Finally, Aristophanes maintains in a celebrated fable that human beings were originally
joined two at a time to form complete wholes. Overly powerful, these four-legged
creatures provoked the suspicion of the gods, who had them sundered to reduce their
strength; now each half walks the earth in search of its other. The fable explains
our sexual orientation, for men originally joined to men will seek their complement
in the same sex, while those origi*nally joined to women will seek their other half
accordingly. It also explains our sense of longing and loss, as we wander the earth
in search of the one who will make us whole. '[W]here happiness for the human races
lies,' Aristophanes concludes, is 'in the successful pursuit of love.' Eros is the
great benefactor who will '[return] us to our original condi*tion, healing us, and
making us blessed and perfectly happy.'
"A pantheistic force animating the world; a schizophrenic deity both plebeian and
patrician; a guide who leads us only to ourselves: Eros, clearly, is no simple god.
He is, Socrates contends, no god at all. Draw*ing together the strands of these
various reflections, Socrates main*tains that Eros is, rather, a 'great spirit'
who is 'midway between what is divine and what is human,' his ambiguous nature owing
to the strange circumstances of his conception. Sired at the birthday party of Aphrodite,
the goddess of beauty and love, Eros is the child of Pov*erty, who came to the festivities
uninvited as a beggar, and the god Plenty, a welcome guest who passed out there
drunk. How Plenty is able to perform in such a state, we are not told (presumably,
a feat of the gods), but perform he does, producing a son who is neither 'mor*tal
nor immortal.' Now fully grown, Eros takes after his mother. Con*stantly in need,
he is 'hard, unkempt, barefoot, homeless.' But, like his father, he is 'brave, enterprising,
and determined.' Having inher*ited 'an eye for beauty and the good,' Eros continually
searches for these two qualities through love, as befits one conceived in the pres*ence
of Aphrodite.
"Straddling the human and the divine, Eros is an emissary, con*ducting 'all association
and communication, waking or sleeping,' between the gods and men. His twofold nature
explains his defin*ing characteristic - desire itself. For what is desire but the
human acknowledgment that one is in need, that one is lacking? As Socrates explains,
'the man who desires something desires what is not avail*able to him, and what he
doesn't already have in his possession.' "
Author: Darrin M. McMahon
Title: Happiness: A History
Publisher: Atlantic Monthly Press
Date: Copyright 2006 by Darrin M. McMahon
Pages: 32-34
Happiness: A History
by Darrin M. McMahon by Atlantic Monthly Press
Hardcover
In today's excerpt - symposia, the private banquets of the elite in ancient Athens.
They were often drunken and debauched parties, with male-only guests who were attended
to by flute boys and haetera, a sort of Greek geisha or call girl. Sometimes - as
reported by Plato in his masterwork Symposium - they were sober affairs with rarified
discussions of ideas by sophisticated guests. One such famous gathering was hosted
by Agathon and attended by Socrates. The subject of the evening's discussion was
the nature of Eros, the great god of desire. It is worth noting how esteemed homosexuality
was at this time:
"Agathon, in a grand rhe*torical flourish befitting a poet, concludes [the early
portion of the discussion by saying] that though all the gods are happy, Eros is
'the most happy, since he is the most beautiful and the best.'
"To this much, all the participants save the still-silent Socrates agree. But beyond
Eros's power and proximity to happiness, there is little else on which the guests
can establish common ground. One speaker, Pausanias, refuses to see Eros as a single
entity, claiming that he must be divided in two as Common Eros and Heavenly Eros
- the one, a seedy creature drawn by sexual appetite and so depraved that he will
even sleep with women; the other, a more transcendent being attracted by mind as
well as beauty, who finds his consummate expression in the higher love between
boys and older men. Eryximachus, on the other hand, views Eros as a pantheistic
force found not only in the hearts of gods and humans but 'also in nature - in the
physical life of all animals, in plants that grow in the ground, and in virtually
all living organisms.'
"Finally, Aristophanes maintains in a celebrated fable that human beings were originally
joined two at a time to form complete wholes. Overly powerful, these four-legged
creatures provoked the suspicion of the gods, who had them sundered to reduce their
strength; now each half walks the earth in search of its other. The fable explains
our sexual orientation, for men originally joined to men will seek their complement
in the same sex, while those origi*nally joined to women will seek their other half
accordingly. It also explains our sense of longing and loss, as we wander the earth
in search of the one who will make us whole. '[W]here happiness for the human races
lies,' Aristophanes concludes, is 'in the successful pursuit of love.' Eros is the
great benefactor who will '[return] us to our original condi*tion, healing us, and
making us blessed and perfectly happy.'
"A pantheistic force animating the world; a schizophrenic deity both plebeian and
patrician; a guide who leads us only to ourselves: Eros, clearly, is no simple god.
He is, Socrates contends, no god at all. Draw*ing together the strands of these
various reflections, Socrates main*tains that Eros is, rather, a 'great spirit'
who is 'midway between what is divine and what is human,' his ambiguous nature owing
to the strange circumstances of his conception. Sired at the birthday party of Aphrodite,
the goddess of beauty and love, Eros is the child of Pov*erty, who came to the festivities
uninvited as a beggar, and the god Plenty, a welcome guest who passed out there
drunk. How Plenty is able to perform in such a state, we are not told (presumably,
a feat of the gods), but perform he does, producing a son who is neither 'mor*tal
nor immortal.' Now fully grown, Eros takes after his mother. Con*stantly in need,
he is 'hard, unkempt, barefoot, homeless.' But, like his father, he is 'brave, enterprising,
and determined.' Having inher*ited 'an eye for beauty and the good,' Eros continually
searches for these two qualities through love, as befits one conceived in the pres*ence
of Aphrodite.
"Straddling the human and the divine, Eros is an emissary, con*ducting 'all association
and communication, waking or sleeping,' between the gods and men. His twofold nature
explains his defin*ing characteristic - desire itself. For what is desire but the
human acknowledgment that one is in need, that one is lacking? As Socrates explains,
'the man who desires something desires what is not avail*able to him, and what he
doesn't already have in his possession.' "
Author: Darrin M. McMahon
Title: Happiness: A History
Publisher: Atlantic Monthly Press
Date: Copyright 2006 by Darrin M. McMahon
Pages: 32-34
Happiness: A History
by Darrin M. McMahon by Atlantic Monthly Press
Hardcover