actions of men, he regards as varying according to the manner of their
performance. Like the sophists and like Plato himself, though in a
different sense, he begins his discussion by an appeal to mythology,
and distinguishes between the elder and younger love. The value which
he attributes to such loves as motives to virtue and philosophy is at
variance with modern and Christian notions, but is in accordance with
Hellenic sentiment. The opinion of Christendom has not altogether
condemned passionate friendships between persons of the same sex, but
has certainly not encouraged them, because though innocent in themselves
in a few temperaments they are liable to degenerate into fearful evil.
Pausanias is very earnest in the defence of such loves; and he speaks of
them as generally approved among Hellenes and disapproved by barbarians.
His speech is 'more words than matter,' and might have been composed by
a pupil of Lysias or of Prodicus, although there is no hint given that
Plato is specially referring to them. As Eryximachus says, 'he makes a
fair beginning, but a lame ending.'

Plato transposes the two next speeches, as in the Republic he would
transpose the virtues and the mathematical sciences. This is done partly
to avoid monotony, partly for the sake of making Aristophanes 'the cause
of wit in others,' and also in order to bring the comic and tragic
poet into juxtaposition, as if by accident. A suitable 'expectation' of
Aristophanes is raised by the ludicrous circumstance of his having the
hiccough, which is appropriately cured by his substitute, the physician
Eryximachus. To Eryximachus Love is the good physician; he sees
everything as an intelligent physicist, and, like many professors of his
art in modern times, attempts to reduce the moral to the physical; or
recognises one law of love which pervades them both. There are loves
and strifes of the body as well as of the mind. Like Hippocrates the
Asclepiad, he is a disciple of Heracleitus, whose conception of the
harmony of opposites he explains in a new way as the harmony after
discord; to his common sense, as to that of many moderns as well as
ancients, the identity of contradictories is an absurdity. His notion of
love may be summed up as the harmony of man with himself in soul as well
as body, and of all things in heaven and earth with one another.

Aristophanes is ready to laugh and make laugh before he opens his mouth,
just as Socrates, true to his character