INTRODUCTION

It is to the latter of these subdivisions, in which the narrator is not an eye-witness but reports the matter only at second-hand, that the Symposium (together with the Theaetetus and Parmenides) belongs.

It is noteworthy also that, with the exception of the Phaedo and Parmenides, ours is the only dialogue in which the narrating witness is not Socrates himself. The reason for this is obvious: since eulogy of Socrates is one of the main purposes of the dialogue, it would be unfitting to put the story into his mouth and make him the trumpeter of his own praises. Instead, Plato selects as the sources of the narrative persons of such a character as to produce the effect of verisimilitude. The way in which Aristodemus, the primary source, and Apollodorus, the secondary source, are described is evidently intended to produce the impression that in them we have reliable witnesses. Apollodorus Apollodorus appears also in Phaedo 59 A, B as one of those present with Socrates "on the day when he drank the poison in the prison"; he is characterized by his intense grief and is described as a native of Athens. In the Apology 34 A, he is present at the trial of Socrates., "the fanatic," is put before us not only as a worshipper of Socrates, imbued with a passionate interest in philosophical discourses, but also as an intimate disciple who had "companied with" Socrates for the past three years and had made it his peculiar task to study every act and word of the Master (172 E). Moreover, he had diligently studied the story of the special occasion in question (172 A, 173 C).

Aristodemus For Aristodemus, see also Xenophon's Memorabilia I. 4. 2, where Socrates converses with "Aristodemus the Little," observing that he neither sacrificed to the gods nor used divination, and mocked those who did., the primary source and actual narrator, is spoken of by Apollodorus as "an old disciple" and one of the most intimate with the Master in earlier years. In his own narrative, he represents himself as following Socrates with dog-like fidelity, showing the closest familiarity with his ways and habits—a man so single-hearted and engrossed in matters of fact as to be constitutionally incapable of tampering with the truth. As the "minute biographer," Aristodemus is the prototype of all later Boswells A reference to James Boswell, the famous biographer of Samuel Johnson..