The Image of Achilles in Plato’s Symposium

Elizabeth Belfiore

1 Introduction: Images for Socrates

Alcibiades begins his speech in Plato’s Symposium by saying that he will praise Socrates ‘by means of images [eikonôn]’ (215a4–5).1 Socrates is most like, most the image of (eioikenai: 215b4), a silenus-figure that opens up to reveal images (agalmata) of the gods, or of virtue (215a6–b3, 221d2–222a6), or like the satyr Marsyas (215b3–d1). Socrates, he says, is like Marsyas in form (eidos: 215b5), and in other respects, especially in being hybristic (215b6–7). Alcibiades returns to the image of the silenus-statue at the end of his speech, saying that Socrates’ words are also most like these statues, for they appear laughable at first, like the skin of an hybristic satyr, but when opened up are found to be most divine, and filled with images (agalmata) of virtue (221d7–222a6). The image of Socrates as satyr has received considerable attention. Another kind of imagery, however, has not been sufficiently studied, that used to char- acterize Socrates as unlike heroic models. The two kind of images are closely related, for Alcibiades says that he must resort to the satyr image because of Socrates’ strangeness (atopia: 215a2, 221d2).2 This strangeness makes the usual comparisons to heroic models impossible. ‘With a man such as Achilles was’, says Alcibiades, ‘one might compare [ἀπεικάσειεν] Brasidas, and others, and with such a man as Pericles … one might compare [ἀπεικάζοι] Nestor and Antenor’, but Socrates is so strange that he can be compared with no other human, ancient or modern (221c6–d4). The word I have translated as ‘com- pare’ is apeikazein, literally, ‘to make an image’, cognate with eikôn, ‘image’, as Brisson’s translation nicely brings out: ‘de ce que fut Achille on peut trouver une image chez Brasidas’.3 Thus, what Alcibiades says is that Socrates is not the image of anyone else, and, in particular, that he is not the image of Achilles, who is first on Alcibiades’ list of heroic figures. Achilles, as he is represented in Homer’s Iliad, the story of the destructive wrath of this hero (Iliad 1.1–2), is not presented in the Symposium as a positive model for Socrates, but, instead,

1 This passage is further discussed by Ford, in this volume. Unless otherwise noted, all transla- tions are my own, and for the Symposium I follow the text of Burnet (1901). 2 On Socrates’ strangeness and resemblance to a satyr see Belfiore (2012), 161–168, 187–196, with bibliography. 3 Brisson (1998), 175.

© koninklijke brill nv, leiden, 2017 | doi: 10.1163/9789004345010_004 30 belfiore as a negative heroic prototype. That is, Plato’s Socrates is an image of Homer’s Achilles, not in the way in which a likeness (eikôn) resembles its object, but in the way in which a reflection in a mirror resembles the object reflected, with right and left sides reversed. Socrates is the reverse, or mirror-image of Achilles.

2 Mirror Images

Achilles is mentioned by name five times in the Symposium: 179e1, 180a4, 180b4, 208d3, and 221c6.4 The first three mentions occur in the speech of Phaedrus, where Achilles is said to have been honored by the gods for dying in order to ‘help’ (βοηθήσας: 179e5) his lover Patroclus (179e1–180b5). The fourth men- tion of Homer’s hero appears in Diotima’s speech, where his act of dying after Patroclus is given as an example of love of honor (philotimia: 208c2–d4), and the fifth mention occurs in Alcibiades’ speech, in the passage discussed in the Introduction (221c6–d4). This last passage, in which Alcibiades explicitly states that Socrates is not an image of Achilles, invites the audiences, internal and external, to test this statement by comparing (apeikazein) for themselves the Socrates of Alcibiades’ speech with the figure of Achilles in the other four pas- sages in which the epic hero is mentioned by name. It further encourages them to compare other significant words and actions of Socrates in the Symposium with those of Achilles in the Iliad.5 These comparisons, I contend, reveal that Socrates is indeed not an image of Achilles in the sense of a likeness.6 He is, on the contrary, an Achilles in reverse, whose words and deeds, in similar situations, are just the opposite of those of Achilles.That is, he is a mirror-image of Achilles, in the sense of an image that is

4 According to Brandwood (1976). 5 Labarbe (1987) provides detailed data on some 150 fragments from Homer used in the dialogues that proves how familiar Plato was with Homeric epic (see especially 395–409). Clay (2010) argues that Plato had similar expectations for his readers concerning Homer and other poets: ‘when Plato quotes from a poet he often has in mind and expects his readers to have in mind the full context of the passage he quotes’ (328). On the extensive knowledge of poetry among educated Greeks of Plato’s society see Halliwell (2000), especially 95–96. 6 Important sources for Plato’s concept of the image are Soph. 236b–c, where he discusses two kinds of image-making (εἰδωλοποιική): likeness-making (εἰκαστική) and appearance-making (φανταστική); Rep. x.598–599 on mimesis as the making of eidola, and 596d–e on mimesis as mirror, and Laws 2.669a–b. On the terminology (eikôn, eidolon, phantasma, etc.) see Patterson (1985), 30–31, “mirror images” in index, and Appendix 2, 171–179, on the views of Allen (1965) and Lee (1966). The concepts of eikôn and phantasma in Rep. and Soph. are discussed by Van Riel in this volume.