Love. It's a word often used, yet little understood. Can it really be defined? Perhaps not, but that has not kept people from trying.

    Today, a "symposium" is a meeting with several speakers exploring a single topic in front of an audience--not an appropriate setting for discussing love. But Plato's "Symposium" is a party, and addresses the question when Socrates says, "I propose that each of us in turn, going from left to right, shall make a speech in honor of love."

    The seven participants then take turns giving their thoughts on love. Briefly, Phaedrus, an aristocratic philosopher, says that Love inspires the lover to great feats, such as bravery on the battlefield, as cowardice would shame him to his lover. He claims that "A handful of such men, fighting side by side, would defeat practically the whole world."

    Pausanias, a legal expert, naturally takes an analytical view, dividing a more noble from a baser kind of Love, the former being what we now call "Platonic love," and the latter being sexual.

    Eryximachus speaks out of turn, because the next speaker in the circle, Aristophanes, has the hiccups. Eryximachus says love affects the entire universe, including plants and animals. As a physician, he believes that love can cure illness, and he calls love "the source of all happiness."

    Aristophanes the famous comic playwright is now ready to speak, and tells an allegory of how lovers were originally a single creature with two heads and four arms and legs which was split by the gods and now goes about seeking its "other half."

    Now Agathon, the host and a tragic poet, says in praising love all the speakers have neglected to mention the god love himself, an error he sets out to correct.

    Next is Socrates himself, who examines Agathon, then defines Platonic love: an ascent from loving a beautiful person, to loving beauty in general, then moral beauty, then wisdom, and finally absolute and divine beauty.

    Alcibiades enters the party late--and drunk--and proceeds to praise Socrates as a paragon of love.

    There is no conclusion about the nature of love, as the party breaks up when a large group of intoxicated men arrive.

    Vocabulary: Which word above means

    1. acts of bravery or skill

    2. drunk

    3. without condition or limitation

    4. simple story containing great truths

    5. climb, rising up

    6. of the upper class

    7. perfect example

    8. Situation

    9. people who join an activity

    10. suggest

    ANSWERS: 1. feats 2. intoxicated 3. absolute 4. allegory 5. ascent 6. aristocratic 7. paragon 8. Setting 9. participants 10. propose