Theatre Survey 49:2 (November 2008) # 2008 American Society for Theatre Research

doi:10.1017/S0040557408000136

Freddie Rokem

THE PHILOSOPHER AND THE TWO PLAYWRIGHTS : SOCRATES , AGATHON, AND ARISTOPHANES IN PLATOS SYMPOSIUM
It is characteristic of philosophical writing that it must continually confront the question of representation. Walter Benjamin, The Origin of German Tragic Drama 1

This article reects my current research, exploring the complex interactions between the discursive practices of theatre and performance on the one hand and philosophy on the other. Instead of beginning by trying to formulate the general principles for such an interaction, I examine actual encounters: direct face-to-face meetings and actual dialogues between philosophers and representatives of the Thespian professions. The earliest recorded encounter of this kind is in Platos Symposium depicting the banquet in Agathons house, celebrating his victory at the Lenaean theatre festival in 416 B.C. , during which the celebrants spent the whole night eulogizing Eros. On this occasion Socrates and the two playwrights, Agathon and Aristophanes, interacted directly on several occasions.2

Freddie Rokem is the Emanuel Herzikowitz Professor for 19th and 20th Century Art and teaches in the Department of Theatre Studies at Tel Aviv University, where he served as the Dean of the Yolanda and David Katz Faculty of the Arts (2002 6); he is also a permanent visiting Professor at Helsinki University, Finland. His Performing History: Theatrical Representations of the Past in Contemporary Theatre, published by University of Iowa Press (2000; paperback 2007), received the ATHE Prize for best theatre studies book in 2001. His most recent book, Strindbergs Secret Codes, was published by Norvik Press in 2004. He has also published numerous articles in scholarly journals and chapters in books. Rokem is editor of Theatre Research International (2006 9). This research has in part been funded by a grant from the Israel Science Foundation.

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Here I will examine and contextualize three such moments: the rst is in Socrates conversation with Agathon, after Agathons speech and before Socrates presents his own dialogue with Diotima; the second is Aristophanes protest against something Socrates said in this presentationbut because Alcibiades made his dramatic entry exactly at this point, we never learn what Aristophanes wanted to say; and the nal direct encounter between the philosopher and the playwrights is at the very end of the dialogue, when the celebration is over and Socrates wants them to agree that knowing how to compose comedies and knowing how to write tragedies must combine in a single person and that a professional tragic playwright was also a professional comic playwright (71, 223d ).3 In what follows I examine these direct encounters in reverse order, beginning and focusing in particular on the last one and presenting some of its intertexts. Socrates conversation with Agathon as well as Aristophanes protest are dealt with on a more cursory level, even if their consequences are perhaps more radical for the meaning of the dialogue as a whole. However, before examining these particular moments, I want to say something about the Symposium and how it combines narrative technique and philosophical ideas. Among Platos dialogues the Symposium no doubt stands out as an extraordinary case of literary sophistication. Not only the philosophical and ideological contents of the eulogies praising Eros have been highlighted but the complex relationships among the speakers themselves and their behaviorwhat they represent within the framework of the dialogue as well as in classical Greek culturehave been sharply placed in focus. These minute details are an integral aspect of Platos text, tightly weaving philosophical arguments and human behavior together, making them simultaneously reect and comment on each other on many levels. One of the literary issues, as Plato implies in his dialogue, that is most closely connected to its central philosophical ideas concerns the complex relationship between tragedy and comedy. The fact that Agathon wrote tragedies (though none of them have been preserved) and Aristophanes was a writer of comedies has major implications for the interaction between the philosophical and the thespian discourses presented in the dialogue. The relations between the Symposium and tragedy, and especially to Oedipus Tyrannos, draw additional attention to the complex interactions between these two discursive practices. After Aristophanes has nished his speech about the androgynes, he actually asks the other guests around the table to be cautious: As I said, Id be grateful if you didnt try to nd any humor in it (30, 193d). Seemingly trivial comments like this terse one must be taken into consideration if we want to understand the complexities of Platos dialogue more fully. What does Aristophanes, the writer of comedy, mean by asking his companions around the table not to treat his speech as comic? He is apparently drawing attention to the tragic dimension of the narrative and the images he has used, while from Platos perspective this small detail prepares the reader for the enigmatic ending of the dialogue. The Symposium is actually a brilliant poetic demonstration of Platos philosophy, showing that narratives are faint shadows of the events they depict (or are about), just as the objects in this worldlike, for example, the chairs and

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the tables in our homes and classrooms, according to Platos theory of Ideasare nothing but faded copies of the truth or the eternal Ideas of these objects. The narrative techniques of the Symposium mirrors this philosophical argument, showing in effect that not even Platos own philosophical dialogue can fully represent the truth. The narrative presented in the dialogue actually consists of a report about the celebration in honor of Agathon given by Apollodorus to an unknown interlocutor, based on what Aristodemus, who was present at the party, has reported to Apollodorus. And because Apollodorus had given an account of this celebration to another interlocutor called Glaucon a few days earlier, he considers himself quite an expert (3, 172a) to tell what happened at the party which Agathon, Socrates, Alcibiades, and all the other guests were at and to nd out how their speeches on love went (3, 172a b). In the opening section of the Symposium Apollodorus informs his interlocutor (and us) that he had heard about these events from Aristodemus one of Socrates ardent admirers, who had accompanied Socrates to the party, since he was one of the greatest lovers Socrates had at that time, I think (4, 173b). Through its narrative techniquehaving one narrator present a report he has heard from another narratorthe dialogue is actually twice removed from the banquet that took place in Agathons house during the second night after his victorywhich is the actual event, the source that the dialogue depicts. Plato also relates to works of art as being twice removed from the truth, being copies of copies. If Plato, on the other hand, had chosen to portray the banquet in a direct dramatic form, which he did in many of his other dialogues, the narrative would of course not have reected the Platonic theory of ideas in this particular way. In its present form, Apollodorus knowledge about the events of the banquet after Agathons victory can even be seen as an epistemological investigation in literary form based on a complex chain of testimonies, transmitting knowledge about some primal truth. Transmitted knowledge has to rely on earlier sources, which in some cases and for different reasons cannot be fully trusted. Platos text even sometimes openly admits that the memory of both narrators is not completely reliable. Before the rst speech eulogizing Eros, presented by Phaedrus, Apollodorus says: Now, Aristodemus couldnt quite remember every detail of everyones speeches, and I dont remember everything he told me either (10, 178a). And after referring to what Phaedrus said, Apollodorus adds: Several other speeches followed which Aristodemus couldnt quite remember, so he left them out and reported Pausanias speech next (13, 180c). Plato has thus composed a dialogue wherein Apollodorus, the narrator, can only give a partial account of what happened at the banquet, based on the already partial report given by Aristodemus. Furthermore, Socrates repeats this basic narrative gesture of relying on an earlier source by quoting Diotimas explanations about Eros and thus transmitting her knowledge about Eros to the men assembled around the table. But since this report is contained within Apollodorus report, it potentially suffers from the same incompleteness that the report as a whole (namely, the dialogue as Plato composed it) intentionally is subjected to by Plato himself, the author(ity) of this text. It is quite remarkable

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that even if Apollodorus, as Plato emphasized in a short remark, did not get the information about the banquet directly from Socrates, he had been ableafter initially having heard about it from Aristodemusto ask Socrates later about some of what Aristodemus told me, and the two accounts coincided (4, 173b). Plato obviously went to great efforts to convince his readers that Apollodorus got the details right by checking them with Socrates, even if the account given by Apollodorus in the dialogue itself is primarily based on what he heard directly from Aristodemus himself. The remarkable feature of the dialogue, to which I most want to draw attention, is that in spite of this carefully reported chain of information, there are some crucial details that are simply ignored or left outin particular in the direct interactions between Socrates and the two playwrights. THE ENDING OF THE SYMPOSIUM 4 The Symposium ends with a discussion among Socrates, Agathon, and Aristophanes about drama. This discussion is not at all reported with the same detail as the speeches eulogizing Eros are. We actually hardly learn anything about it except that it took place as the morning was already approachingafter the more formal part of the banquet with the speeches praising Eros was over, after Alcibiades had presented his ferocious attack on Socrates, and after most of the guests had already left. This discussion, where Socrates pressed the two playwrights to agree that knowing how to compose comedies and knowing how to write tragedies must combine in a single person and that a professional tragic playwright was also a professional comic playwright (71, 223d), served as the nale of the intensive night of discussions and speeches, and it is central for my interpretation of Platos dialogue. Apollodorus readily admits that his own report about the conversation between the philosopher and the two playwrights during these early morning hours is incomplete, as during this nal conversation he [Aristodemus, from whom Apollodorus got the report] fell asleep and slept for a long time (71, 223c). And when Aristodemus woke up, according to Apollodorus, he realized that he had only heard the key point of what Socrates had told the two dramatists and couldnt remember most of the discussion, because hed missed the start of it and anyway he was sleepy (71, 223d). However, Aristodemus reported to Apollodorus that he noticed Socrates was getting Agathon and Aristophanes to agree that the same man should be capable of writing both comedy and tragedy. They were coming to his point of view, but they were too sleepy to follow the argument very well; Aristophanes fell asleep rst, and Agathon joined him after daybreak (71 2, 223d). This is no doubt quite a remarkable passage. The discussion about the two dramatic genres between Socratesthe philosopher-hero of Platos dialoguesand the two dramatistsAgathon, the successful and apparently very handsome tragedian, and Aristophanes, the famous author of comediesis totally clouded in a concoction of alcohol and fatigue. Neither Aristodemus, the person on whose testimony Apollodorus (and our) knowledge of these events nally depends, nor the two dramatists themselves, who were supposed to learn

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something important from Socrates arguments, were able to hear what Socrates had actually said and what his reasons were for his claims. This lack of information from the nal moments of the banquet, just before the sun rises, is sharply contrasted to the opening passages of the Symposium, where Plato very minutely has drawn our attention to the fact that the report Apollodorus has received from Aristodemus is based on his careful observation of everything that took place. Only later do we learn that Aristodemus does not remember everything that has been said. Moreover, in the nal section of the dialogue we learn that as Socrates was discussing tragedy and comedy with the two playwrights both Aristodemus as well as the two playwrights fell asleep. However, if Plato had wanted Apollodorus to be able to comment on Socrates remarks to the two playwrights about the relations between comedy and tragedy while they as well as Aristodemus were asleep, he could have given Socrates the opportunity to provide all the necessary additions when Apollodorus sought to check the details with him. On the one hand, Plato obviously chose to prevent Apollodorus (and us) from knowing the particulars of the nal discussion about comedy and tragedy, just as Aristophanes and Agathon were too tired to listen to Socrates arguments and fell asleep. Thus we are left with nothing but the knowledge that this important conversation had taken place and an understanding of its main point. Plato, as the author of this text, has in a sense even indirectly discredited Socrates for not supplying Apollodorus with these additions. Platos dialogue intentionally hides something that is crucial for the understanding of the larger issues that it raises. What did Socrates say to the two dramatists that they as well as Aristodemus were too tired to hear? And why did Plato so carefully and even artfully erase these details from the nal moments of the dialogue where supposedly Socrates nal triumph over the two dramatists took place. Since the ending of the Symposium is constructed as the nal contest in a series of consecutive and overlapping competitions, obviously in this case toothat is, in the discussion with the two playwrights, as in the contest of speeches eulogizing ErosSocrates was the nal victor, making a point that must have devastated both of them intellectually and creativelyas well as physically, by staying awake while they had obviously fallen asleep. Socrates possesses both the intellectual power and the physical strength to overcome his opponents on every possible level. He gets the privilege of telling the two playwrights that each one of them should know the craft of the other, while it seems that it is Socrates himself who knows how to combine tragedy and comedy in one inclusive discourse. What the Symposium implies, even if the dialogue itself never states this directly, is that Socrates philosophy, both in form and content, is able to unify elements of comedy and tragedy while the work of the two playwrights, each one representing only one genre, is incomplete. This is apparently the central point in Socrates lecture to the two playwrights.5 The claim is certainly not new that Platos dialogues were written by a philosopher who in different ways integrated dramatic-theatrical modes of writing within the philosophical discourse at the same time that he wished to outlaw the arts (and in particular, the theatre) from his ideal polisand that therefore his pronouncements about drama and theatre in the different contexts

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do not have to be fully consistent.6 Plato has set up his dialogue so that Socrates, the philosopher, has the ability to unify the tragic and the comic modes of expression. This makes him superior to both of the dramatists, who represent only half of this complete totality, writing in one of the genres only. Through philosophy, the writer of tragedy is able to nd his missing, comic half, while the writer of comedy nds his lost, tragic half. But without being aware of this, Socrates probably told the two drowsy playwrights, poets are apparently not able to nd their missing half. Socrates, on the other hand, has obviously found his missing half: rst in Diotima, who is the origin of his understanding of Eros and who through her female voice complements his knowledge (or rather his ability to ask the right questions) about its mysteries; and second, in discursive termsbecause, as Platos dialogue implies, the philosophical discourse personied by Socrates unies between tragedy and comedy in a higher, more inclusive sense, reaching fullness by searching for a missing half. This is also what Aristophanes in his speech about the androgynes sought to depict. Aristophanes speech eulogizing Eros begins by describing the rebellious four-legged creatures whose strength and power were terrifying, and they were also highly ambitious. They even had a go at the gods (26, 190b). Because of their rebelliousness they were punished:
Zeus and the rest of the gods met in council to try to decide what to do with them. They were in a quandary: they didnt see how they could kill them and blast them out of existence as they had the giants, because that would also do away with the veneration and sacricial offerings the human race gave them; but they also didnt see how they could let them get away with their outrageous behaviour. After thinking long and hard about it, Zeus said, I think I can see a way for the human race to exist, but to be weakened enough to start behaving with some moderation. What I am going to do is split every single one of them into two halves; then theyll be weaker, and at the same time therell be more in it for us because therell be more of them. Theyll walk about upright on two legs. If in our opinion they continue to behave outrageously, Zeus added, and they refuse to settle down, Ill cut them in half again, and theyll go hopping around on one leg. (26, 190c d)

And, Aristophanes added, It was their very essence that they had been split in two, so each half missed its other half and tried to be with it; they drew their arms around each other in an embrace and longed to be grafted together (27, 191a). Aristophanes does not personify Eros as many of the other speakers have done but depicts him/it in terms of the energies and desires that aspire to reconstitute an original, mythical wholeness that has been cut in half. The aim of Eros, as such a force, is to bring about the reunication of these two halves, not necessarily to bring about any offspring of the union between them. This becomes even more evident a little further on in Aristophanes speech when he says:

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So thats how, all that time ago, our innate sexual drive arose. Love draws our original nature back together; he tries to reintegrate us and heal the split in our nature. Turbot-like, each of us has been cut in half, and so we are human tallies, constantly searching for our counterparts. (27 8, 191d)

Aristophanes goes on to explain that the search for these counterparts depends on the mix of genders of the original four-legged creature, expressing three distinct possibilities of union between humans: man and woman, woman and woman, and man and man. Besides being the source of the sexual preferences of every two-legged individual, the desire for the missing halves serves as an implied metaphor for the unity of tragedy and comedy for which Socrates is advocating in his discussion with the two drowsy playwrights. The ending of the Symposium implies that the philosophical discourse has to align and integrate the performative practices of the tragic and the comic represented by Agathon and Aristophanesin order to re-create its own fullness. This also means that philosophy, just like the four-legged creatures before they were cut in half, is perceived as a rebellious, even subversive form of discourse. The four-legged creatures in Aristophanes myth had been so rebellious that Zeus cut them in half, just as philosophyrepresenting that total, two-sided discourse, encompassing both the tragic and the comic modesno doubt could be. And Socrates, as every reader of the Symposium is aware, had to pay with his life for being a philosopher. Therefore, the full argument Socrates presented to the two playwrightswhich they, as well as Aristodemus, were apparently too tired to graspmust, I believe, have pointed out this subversive totality, which Plato obviously could not openly acknowledge in the dialogue itself.

ONE VOICE AND MANY LEGS Aristophanes speech about the four-legged creatures that are cut in half to become human beings as we know them today can be seen as an answer not only to the question of what Eros is but also to the issue of what constitutes a human being. A human being is dened as a two-legged creature who is searching for his missing half. This speech, presented by the archetypal writer of comedies, is also intertextually connected to Sophocles Oedipus Tyrannos, canonized by Aristotle as his prime example of tragedy in the Poetics. As mentioned before, Aristophanes, after he is through with his speech, emphasizes that he does not want his words to be considered as a comedy or as containing humor.7 Sophocles Oedipus Tyrannos is also based on a narrative about the transformation of the number of legs of man presented in the riddle of the Sphinx. But instead of referring to this transformation in terms of the autochthonous birth of the human, as Aristophanes does in Platos textthat is: that man is originally not born from other humans but through a cut whereby the mythological four-legged creatures become two-legged humansthe riddle of the Sphinx presents the transformation of the number of legs as an expression vi-Strauss has pointed out in his analysis of of the human life cycle. As Claude Le this mythical narrative, one of its central ironies is that Oedipus behaves as if he

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were an autochthonous creature who had grown like a tree and who, while being cut off from the ground, received the scar on his leg, also reected in his name.8 It is worth noting that Aristophanes also takes into consideration the scars from the cut that transforms the four-legged creatures into two-legged humans, mentioning the physiological changes that had to be made after the original four-legged creatures were cut in half, just as people cut sorb-apples in half when theyre going to preserve them, or cut an egg in two with a hair (26, 190d e). After they had been cut in half Zeus also told Apollo to turn the heads around, the idea being that the sight of their own wounds [that is, seeing the stomach where each two-legged individual was connected to his or her partner] would make people behave more moderately in the future (26, 190e). In addition, Zeus asked Apollo to heal their wounds on what we now call the stomach leaving only a small scar consisting of a few wrinkles, the navel, as a reminder of what happened all that time ago (27, 191a). Only later, when Zeus realized that these divided creatures are gradually dying out because they refused to do anything without their second half, he took pity on them /. . ./ and changed the position of their genitals round to the front, (27, 191b) so that in the male female relationships they could procreate, and so that the male male relationships would at least involve sexual satisfaction, so that people would relax, get on with their work and take care of other aspects of life (27, 191c). Aristophanes narrative in the Symposium is no doubt an intertextual mirror of Sophocles play. The riddle of the Sphinx is a crucial component of the Oedipal narrative and of negotiating the transformation of the number of legs a human undergoes. Initially, Oedipus solution to the riddle of the Sphinx led to his triumph. It made him the ruler of Thebes and the husband of the widow-queen according to what could be considered a traditional riddling situation at weddingswhere the future husband, possessing abstract, philosophical knowledge, is rewarded with the carnal knowledge of the nuptial bed and frequently also with political power. In solving the riddle of the Sphinx, a riddle dealing directly with the human body and the identity of man, Oedipus in fact draws attention to the crucial differencewhich for him becomes fatalbetween his abstract, philosophical understanding of human identity and his own self-knowledge. Although Oedipus successfully solved the intricate intellectual puzzle of mans universal identity, which lies within the realm of philosophy, he did not know who he himself really wasmost forcefully expressed by his inability to identify his own father at the place where the three roads meet or his own mother in the nuptial bed after marrying her. Oedipus was thus incapable of fullling the famous dictum attributed both to Socrates and to the oracle at Delphi: Know thyselfGnothi seauton. The riddle text functions as a hidden philosophical subtext which has to be revealed and discovered and then, when the rst solution is found, has to be radically redened and resolved at different junctions in Sophocles playjust as the legs of man, according to Oedipus solution to the riddle, undergo a constant transformation. The riddle also emphasizes the dialectical tension between the transformations of the many legs as opposed to the constant unity of the voice:

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a feature absent from Aristophanes story, where the notion of unity is related to the reunication of the separated halvesa situation where there are four legs. The riddle of the Sphinx was not included in Sophocles play. However, the repeated references to it in the text must mean that it was known among the audiences and readers of Sophocles play. The unity of the voice is no doubt also important, because all the known versions of the riddle present a creature that has one voice and many legs. This is apparently an important aspect of human identity as dened by the riddling Sphinx.9 The riddle can be formulated in terms of the dialectics between unity and multiplicity. This opposition between the one and the many on which the riddle text is based (and which is echoed in the Symposium) is also a central issue in the plot of Sophocles play, being directly related to Oedipus possible responsibility for having killed his father, the old king, Laius. This responsibility actually depends on the exclusive opposition between one and manybecause the herdsman who witnessed the murder of Laius had, in order to protect Oedipus, always claimed that there were several murderers, while Oedipus himself knew that he had been alone when killing an unknown man at the place where the three roads meet and therefore he had not been considered or considered himself to be the murderer of the former king. When this difference becomes crucial in the play itself, Oedipus tries to defend himself against any possible accusation that he is the murderer by making the following proverbial statement, which also has obvious philosophical implications: The one and the many cannot be one and the same.10 Because of the new, hitherto hidden evidence brought forward by the herdsmanchanging his previous testimony, through which he wanted to protect Oedipus, from many murderers to oneOedipus will soon discover his own involvement in this crime. From a strictly logical perspective the one and the many cannot be one and the same because one and the many are mutually exclusive. But this contradiction seems to be overruled by the riddle of the Sphinx, asking what has one voice and many legs at the same time. There is also another opposition or reversal between one and many in Sophocles play itself, which is directly related to the paradox of containing both. Initially there was only one witness (the herdsman) of the many robbers who had supposedly killed Laius. However, in the play itself we learn that Tiresias had also been a witnessat least he knows who did itand that there was only one murderer: Oedipus himself, not many. One of the central developments of the play is therefore a reversal where the one witness turns out to be more than one and the many murderers become reduced to one. The multileveled interactions between the one and the many and the fact that the one and the many cannot be identical is clearly not only an issue that has to be solved on the level of the dramatic plot in Oedipus Tyrannos; it is one of the central issues that ancient Greek philosophy confronted as well. The ux of the material world stands in a constant opposition with the attempts to nd the unifying philosophical or metaphysical principle of being. The opposition between Parmenides indivisible one and Heraclites universe of constant, multiple uxesthe panta reiis an obvious example of this opposition as it was formulated by the pre-Socratic philosophers. However, the teachings Plato

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has presented in his Socratic dialogues, where the oneness of the Idea transcends the multiple appearances of the material world, is no doubt the most elegant philosophical formulation in the Greek world of thought bridging this gap between unity and multiplicity, transforming the logical opposition into a dialectical metaphysics and explaining the ux of the world in relation to the eternal Ideas. Therefore the coexistence of unity and multiplicity in the riddle of the Sphinx foreshadows the dialectics between unitythe eternal Ideasand multiplicitythe individual objects partaking in themin Platos philosophy. The philosophical and the thespian discursive practices share a desire to nd a solution to the basic opposition between the one and the many. In Sophocles drama the riddle of the Sphinx accommodates this opposition and leads to the ultimate tragedy, whereas Plato solves the logical contradictions through metaphysical premises. According to Plato, when the search for true knowledge has reached its goal, the opposition between the one and the many is supposedly given a philosophical resolution, just like the perception of the human being in the riddle. There is, however, a radical difference between the philosophical and the thespian discourses. The philosopher becomes illuminated and puried by resolving this opposition, whereas, according to Sophocles drama, Oedipus faces the nal consequences of his tragic fate exactly by solving the riddle where the one and the many coexist and nally nding out who he himself is. Oedipus too is one and many: one person who is both the son and the husband of Jocasta as well as the brother and the father to his four children. Oedipus Tyrannos can be seen as a parody on the dictum Know thyself, where the tragic aw of Oedipus is not only that he does not know who he is but also that he does not really know his own legsin spite of the fact that he has solved the riddle of the Sphinx: the leg riddle. Oedipus own body, and in particular his legs, are the riddle which he has to look at, interpret, and solve. The inscription of his feet in Sophocles text is of crucial importance. Several critics have drawn attention to the fact that Oedipus is the man with the swollen (oidos) foot who, punning on his name, knew (oida) how to solve the foot-riddle riddle of the Sphinx. However, in spite of the fact that Oedipus himself, who is the rst speaker in the play, uses his own name already in the eighth line, he never asks why he has this name, why he has swollen feet (as we may perhaps conclude from this name), or why he suffers from some kind of blemish or scar on them as a result of what his parents did to him after he was born. Not even when Jocasta mentions that the baby born to her and Laius was exposed with pinned feet on the mountain of Kithairon does Oedipus look down on his own feet. Oedipus failure to look at himselfhis feet and his namein order to solve the riddle of his own identity is connected both to his metaphorical blindness (which, after the painful discovery, is willfully transformed into a real physical blindness) and his problematic status as a human beingas someone who has broken one of the most signicant social taboos by marrying his mother. Oedipus obviously lacks what the spectators in the theatre must possess: an ability to see and to judge. Sophocles has pointed at this philosophical hubris even before philosophy had fully crystallized itself as a full-edged discursive

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practice. In the Symposium, on the other hand, Plato presented a philosopher who appropriates this multivalent theatrical discourse within his own philosophical system, arguing that knowing how to compose comedies and knowing how to write tragedies must combine in a single personSocrates himself. ARISTOPHANES PROTEST After Socrates has nished the speech where he presents the wisdom of Diotima, Apollodorus describes what happened in the following way:
That was Socratess speech. During the applause, Aristophanes was trying to get a word in, because at one point Socrates had referred to his speech, when suddenly there was a loud knocking at the front door. It sounded like people from a street-party, and they could hear a pipe-girls voice. (56, 212c)

With the entry of Alcibiades the dialogue takes on a completely new turn, and Aristophanes never gets a chance to say what had bothered him in Socrates presentation. Plato only indicates that it was related to Socrates reference to what Aristophanes had said, but the dialogue gives no specication what he wanted to protest. On the ctional level, this is the kind of moment where Aristodemus has not been able to give a full report to Apollodorus of what actually took placea gesture that is repeated when Socrates lectures about tragedy and comedy to the two drowsy playwrights. But it seems that Aristophanes inaudible protest has an even greater effect on the interpretation of Platos dialogue than those nal moments when the two playwrights and Aristodemus fell asleep. With Aristophanes protest Plato has undermined and perhaps even subverted Socrates authority. The point Aristophanes tries to make apparently refers to a short reference Socrates has made to the two-legged creatures searching for their missing half that had been central in Aristophanes speech. But it is actually not Socrates who made this point. Socrates has quoted Diotima, who in their conversations had supposedly asked him about the idea one hears that people in love are looking for their own other halves? (47, 205d). Without waiting for Socrates reaction, she adds that her own view is that love isnt a search for a half or even a whole, unless the half or the whole happens to be good (47, 204e). Regardless of whether such a half is good or not, Diotima seems to know more than is reasonable within the context created by the dialogue itself. Aristophanes protest raises a number of issues. The rst question that has to be asked is how it could be possible within the ctional universe created by Plato for Diotima to make a reference to Aristophanes idea about the androgynes. Aristophanes had already told the myth of the androgynes when Socrates presents his conversations with Diotima. If they had been commonly known and frequently discussed, this would arguably not cause any problems, because then Diotima would be referring to something most people at the time would know. However, Aristophanes myth does not exist in any other contemporary Greek source, and could even be Platos own invention, put in the mouth of Aristophanes. Therefore, if this is a myth that Plato wanted his readers

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to hear for the rst time in the Symposium, it is quite strange that he has made Diotima, who obviously was not present at the banquet and was quoted by Socrates, refer to it directly.11 This slippage was no doubt also intentional in a text where every single detail seems to be subordinated to a more comprehensive authorial vision. So, why has this detail been included? Aristophanes, who was an experienced author of comedies, no doubt knew that if a character has not witnessed a certain event or has not been given a report about it, he or she cannot make any direct reference to it. Plato was obviously also aware of this, and it is therefore quite likely that he intentionally wanted to undermine Socrates credibility, implying that Socrates had invented some of the things he is quoting Diotima as having said, and even (and I write this with great hesitation, even trepidation) that Plato hints at the possibility that Socrates has invented Diotima. But even if Diotima is Socrates ction, fabricated in order to mystify the sources of his own philosophy, this does not necessarily mean that Plato wanted to undermine the philosophical ideas presented by Socrates in his (at least partially imagined) dialogue with Diotima. Nevertheless, it denitely places his character in quite a different light than that in which he is usually interpreted in Platos dialogues, and it cannot be easily integrated within the more comprehensive theory of climbing the mystical ladder that Diotima has taught her pupil. But these subversive textual moves can already be discerned in Socrates interrogation of Agathon, after Agathon has given his speech and before Socrates has begun his own presentation. Here, in the mode of irony typical of Socrates, he says in reaction to the rhetorical exaggerations Agathon has just ve that I thought the point of any eulogy was to tell the presented that I was so na truth about the subject (37, 198d). A little later he adds that Agathon has described his subject in the most generous and glowing terms, whether or not theres any truth to them. It neednt bother you if youre making it up (37, 198e). Since it is likely that Socrates has also invented much of what he will just begin to tell from his dialogue with Diotima, Plato has prepared us for his subversion of the Socratic irony as well as the authority of his teacher-hero. Finally, with his dramatic entry, it becomes Alcibiades task to draw attention to the enigmatic contradictions of Socrates character, while Aristophanes is not given the opportunity to expose Socrates deceptions. Obviously, Aristophanes protest, had it been heard, would have been much more effective in upsetting Socrates argumentation than the emotionally charged accusations that Alcibiades will re at him. However, Alcibiades allegations, which even if they seem to be less reliable than what Aristophanes protest would have been, are nally much more dramatic and theatrical.

ENDNOTES
1. Walter Benjamin, The origin of German Tragic Drama, trans. John Osborne (London: Verso, London, 2003), 27.

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2. The encounter among Socrates, Agathon, and Aristophanes serves as my point of departure for a more comprehensive study of a number of such meetings/dialogues that have been documented or left other forms of traces. So far I have published a study on one such meeting, between Walter Benjamin and Bertolt Brecht during Benjamins rst visit to Brecht in Denmark in the summer of 1934, and in particular their discussion of Franz Kafkas short story The Next Village, analyzing in detail the implications of this discussion for Brechts theatre: Freddie Rokem, Philosophy and Performance: Walter Benjamin and Bertolt Brecht in Conversation about Franz Kafka, Bertolt Brecht: Performance and Philosophy, eds. Gad Kaynar and Linda Ben-Zvi (Tel Aviv: Assaph Books, 2005), 122. 3. Plato, Symposium, trans. Robin Watereld (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1998). All references will be indicated in parenthesis after the quotation. 4. The ending of the dialogue has received ample critical attention by philologists, philosophers, as well literary scholars, drawing attention to its enigmatic, unresolved ironies. In this context I want to mention in particular Diskin Clay, The Tragic and Comic Poet of The Symposium, Arion, n.s. 2 (1975): 238 61; C. Kahn, Plato and the Socratic Dialogue: The Philosophical Use of a Literary Form (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996); Frisbee C. C. Shefeld, Platos Symposium: The Ethics of Desire (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2006). 5. The views about poetry and drama presented by Socrates in The Republic are diametrically opposed to the arguments Socrates has supposedly used to convince the exhausted playwrights in the Symposium. In the Republic Socrates quotes himself (because he is also the narrator of this dialogue) as having said that, It is unlikely therefore that anyone engaged on any worthwhile occupation will be able to give a variety of representations. For the same writers are incapable of equally good work even in two such closely allied forms of representation as comedy and tragedy. /. . ./ Nor can the same people be reciters and actors, or actors in tragedy and comedy. /. . ./ And human nature seems to be more nely subdivided than this, which makes it impossible to play many roles well, whether in real life or in representations of it on the stage (89). Pronouncements like this, and there are quite a few of them in the Republic, express a very outspoken animosity toward the theatre and in particular toward the art of acting. In book X of the Republic, when he is arguing that poetry should be banned from the ideal polis, Socrates reminds us again of the ancient quarrel between philosophy and poetry (351). However, at the same time, he continues, let us freely admit that if drama and poetry written for pleasure can prove to us that they have a place in a well-run society, we will gladly admit them, for we know their fascination only too well ourselves (351). Platos ambivalence toward the arts can not be easily accommodated. 6. See, for example, James Arieti, Interpreting Plato: The Dialogues as Drama (Savage, MD: Rowman & Littleeld, 1991); and Max Statkiewicz, Platonic Theater: Rigor and Play in the Republic, MLN 115 (2000): 101951. 7. My reading radically differs from K. J. Dover, Aristophanes Speech in Platos Symposium, Journal of Hellenic Studies 86 (1966): 4150, who claims that Plato means us to regards the theme and framework of Aristophaness story as characteristic not of comedy but of unsophisticated, subliterate folklore (45). vi-Strauss, The Structural Study of Myth, in Structural Anthropology 8. Claude Le (Chicago: Anchor, 1983), 206 31, at 212. 9. One source, Euripides, Phoenician Women, trans. Elizabeth Craik (Wiltshire: Aris & Phillips, 1988), 61, included the following poetic formulation: Riddle: There is on earth a creature with two legs, four legs and one voice: three legs too. Alone it changes in form of creatures who exist on earth, in air, on sea. But when it goes resting on more feet then the strength of its limbs is weaker. Answer: Listen, like it or not, ill winged songstress of death

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to my voice, which will end your folly. You mean man, who crawling on the ground at rst is four footed, a babe from the womb then in old age leans on a stick as third foot, with a burden on back, bent double in old age. This is also the formulation quoted by Jebb in Sophocles, The Plays and Fragments, trans. and ed. Richard C. Jebb (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1914), 6, and Charles Segal, Tragedy and Civilization (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press 1981), 214 and 454 n. 20. Cf. the formulation in Apollodorus, The Library, trans. James George Frazer (London: Heineman, 1967): What is it that which has one voice and yet becomes four-footed and two-footed and three-footed?; and in Athenaeus, Deipnosophistae, trans. Charles Burton Gallick (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1961), 4: 569: There walks on land a creature of two feet, of four feet, and of three; it has one voice, but sole among the animals that grow on land or in the sky or beneath the sea, it can change its nature; nay, when it walks propped on most feet, then is the speed in its limbs less than it has ever been before. In my article One Voice and Many Legs: Oedipus and the Riddle of the Sphinx, in Untying the Knot: On Riddles and Other Enigmatic Modes, eds. Galit Hasan-Rokem and David Shulman (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1966), 255 70, I also tried to speculate on the wrong answers to the riddle. 10. This is the translation given by S. Goodhart in his article, Leistas ephaska: Oedipus and Laius Many Murderers, Diacritics 8.2 (1978): 55 71, at 56. Line 934 in Robert Fagless translation reads: One cant equal many. Sophocles, The Three Theban Plays, ed. Bernard Knox (New York: Penguin Books, 1984), 208, line 934. The translation given by Jebb is somewhat less pointed: If then, he still speaks, as before, of several, I was not the slayer: a solitary man could not be held the same with that band (8445). In his notes, however, Jebb says that one cannot be made to tally with (cannot be identied with) those many. Sophocles, The Plays and Fragments, trans. Richard C. Jebb (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1914). 11. See Plato: Selected Myths, ed. Catalin Partenie (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2004).

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