The sources of Symposium

1. Homer 3 authority 3 citations

   symposium 3 passages anchored here

   Homer is invoked as the source of the story of Ephialtes and Otus, used to lend mythic credibility to Aristophanes' tale.

   and the same story is told of them as Homer relates of Ephialtes and Otus, that scheming to assault the gods in fight they essayed to mount high heaven.

2. Hesiod 1 authority · 1 refuted 2 citations

   symposium 2 passages anchored here

   Agathon explicitly says he disagrees with the account making Love ancient, attributed to Hesiod and Parmenides.

   And though in much else I agree with Phaedrus, in this I agree not, that Love by his account is more ancient than Cronos and Iapetus:

3. Aeschylus 1 refuted 1 citation

   symposium

   Aeschylus is named explicitly and his claim is directly rejected: 'Aeschylus talks nonsense when he says...'

   And Aeschylus talks nonsense when he says that it was Achilles who was in love with Patroclus;

4. Aristophanes 1 neutral 1 citation

   symposium

   Alcibiades explicitly attributes the marsh-goose phrase to Aristophanes before using it.

   and I noticed, first, how far he outdid Laches in collectedness, and next I felt—to use a phrase of yours, Aristophanes—how there he stepped along, as his wont is in our streets, strutting like a proud marsh-goose, with ever a side-long glance, turning a calm sidelong look on friend and foe alike, and convincing anyone even from afar that whoever cares to touch this person will find he can put up …

5. Euripides 1 neutral 1 citation

   symposium

   Euripides's Melanippe is explicitly named as the source of Eryximachus's opening words.

   The beginning of what I have to say is in the words of Euripides’ Melanippe, for not mine the tale that I intend to tell;

6. Iliad Homer 1 extended 1 citation · 3 passages

   symposium 3 passages anchored here

   Homer is named explicitly multiple times as a source both playfully reworked and relied upon as authoritative evidence.

   and without doubt what Homer calls a fury inspired by a god in certain heroes is the effect produced on lovers by Love’s peculiar power.

7. Lycurgus 1 authority 1 citation

   symposium

   Diotima names Lycurgus directly and credits him with laws that saved Sparta and Greece

   Or only look, she said, at the fine children whom Lycurgus left behind him in Lacedaemon to deliver his country and—I may almost say—the whole of Greece;

8. Theogony Hesiod 1 authority 1 citation

   symposium

   Hesiod is named explicitly and quoted in substance (paraphrased as verse) to support the claim about Love's primordial birth.

   Hesiod says that Chaos came first into being— and thereafter rose Broad-breasted Earth, sure seat of all for aye, And Love.

Each stands at a single passage. The chapter carries the anchors.

symposium 10 sources

Philosophical-poetic account of divine origins (unspecified) · Rhetorical style/teaching (unspecified oratory) · a book praising the usefulness of Salt · eulogies of Hercules and other prose encomia · fragment on the bow and the lyre · laws of Solon · teaching of Diotima on Love · unspecified genealogical account · unspecified poem on Birth/origins · unspecified traditional story of the 'other half'

The harvest records where a citation is made: the paragraph in the citing book, and the chapter that paragraph stands in. It does not record which page of this book is meant. Where the citing text names a locus, you will find it in the quotation.

1. Stromata Clement of Alexandria 1 authority 1 citation

   book 1

   Explicitly named: 'And in the Symposium Plato, praising the barbarians... says...', followed by direct quotation.

   And in the Symposium Plato, praising the barbarians as having practised it surpassingly, says they alone truly philosophize, and "many others in many places, both among Greeks and barbarians, in whose honour many shrines have already arisen on account of such children.