Symposium (1996)
Symposium is a 1996 Greek-language love book written by Plato.
Athens, 416 BC. At a drinking party held to toast a friend's prize-winning play, the guests agree to take turns praising Eros, the god of love. The comic playwright Aristophanes offers a myth of split souls forever seeking their other halves. Socrates recounts what the priestess Diotima taught him about a ladder that climbs from desire for one beautiful body toward beauty itself. Then a drunken Alcibiades bursts in and praises Socrates instead of love. Plato turns an evening of wine and speeches into the West's founding meditation on desire, friendship, and the philosophic life.
Quick answers
What is Symposium about?
Athens, 416 BC. At a drinking party held to toast a friend's prize-winning play, the guests agree to take turns praising Eros, the god of love. The comic playwright Aristophanes offers a myth of split souls forever seeking their other halves. Socrates recounts what the priestess Diotima taught him about a ladder that climbs from desire for one beautiful body toward beauty itself. Then a drunken Alcibiades bursts in and praises Socrates instead of love. Plato turns an evening of wine and speeches into the West's founding meditation on desire, friendship, and the philosophic life.
When was Symposium published?
Symposium was published in 1996.
Who made Symposium?
Symposium was written by Plato.
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Explore Symposium guides
A few thoughts on Symposium
The spirit of the dialogue, brilliant talk over food and wine, carries into My Dinner with Andre, a film that is little more than two friends arguing about how to live. For the ladder of love rendered as restless philosophical animation, Waking Life chases the same questions about desire and meaning.
Stories where talking about love becomes the whole plot
Symposium is a room of people trading speeches on what love is, and these works run a version of that experiment. Waking Life drifts through one philosophical conversation after another, My Dinner with Andre spends its runtime on two men talking across a table, To the Moon uses a dying man's memories to ask what love means, and Doki Doki Literature Club turns its cast into an argument about attraction.
Romance built on the idea that you're searching for your missing half
Aristophanes tells the room every lover hunts for the other half of a soul split in two, and this shelf of romance runs on that premise. The Time Traveler's Wife, Unravel Me, and Ignite Me treat one person as fated and irreplaceable, If You Could See the Sun and Naledi His Love build plots around a predestined bond, and God of Wrath pushes the idea darker and more possessive.
Coming-of-age stories about the confusing, giddy pull of first attraction
Alcibiades barges into the party still drunk on his feelings for Socrates, and that same giddy, embarrassing rush drives this set. Call Me by Your Name follows a summer crush that reshapes how its narrator understands himself, Hana-Kimi and My Love Story!! wring comedy and tenderness from a crush nobody can hide, and Teasing Master Takagi-san and Nodame Cantabile turn ordinary classmates into the center of someone's whole world.