The Control of Cups in Plato's Symposium

Plato is notorious for his denigration of painted images (e.g. Republic 377e, 596e-603c; Phaedrus 275d). Dangerous for their inability to engage in dialogue and for the falsehoods they propagate, mimetic paintings frustrate access to philosophical truth. Although many scholars have investigated the complex esthetic interplay between image, representation and truth in Plato’s works (e.g. Gordon; Halliwell; Janaway; Keuls; Smith), none has fully recognized the contributions the Symposium has to make. This paper asserts that Platonic concerns about mimetic images inform the Symposium’s carefully timed rejection and subsequent reintroduction of spirited wine-drinking and, by association, the painted images on the wine vessels. By attending to this under-examined aspect of the text, we gain new insights into the relationship of painting to the Platonic ascent to truth in general and into Plato’s Symposium in particular. Early in the Symposium, those celebrating Agathon’s victory all but banish the mixed wine essential to symposia; citing hang-overs, they dismiss the proscribed rounds along with the flute-girl (176a-177a). Notably, this decision is directly preceded by Socrates’ analogy of knowledge-sharing to water flowing from one kylix to another, conducted by a string (175d-e). Although the kylix was the winedrinking cup par excellence (Miller), here Plato reappropriates it as a container for water. By thus relegating wine-drinking to the background, Plato also effectively excises the accoutrements used to store, mix, pour and drink the wine - and the painted figural images along with them - from this symposium. Since we understand these decorated objects broadly as visual cues for the all-important verbal exchanges within a symposium (Murray), their absence is significant for the speeches about Eros and absolute Beauty that follow. As a corrective to the attendants’ earlier attempts to define Eros, Socrates/Diotima makes the revelatory claim that Love and Beauty are not accessible via the visible, the tactile, the physical: Those ascending to the truth of Love and Beauty must relax their passion for physical love and instead make passionate philosophical speeches and deep contemplations (209e-211d). In contrast, visual representations of Eros himself or of erotic acts (Frontisi-Ducroux), or inscriptions designating someone as kalos (Slater) - such as commonly appeared on sympotic pots - locate love, beauty and attraction firmly in the physical world, accessible to and excited by sight or touch. Thus, in an exercise of narrative control, Plato ensures that Socrates and his interlocutors make sober philosophical speeches and paves the path to truth free from competing mimetic narratives offered by painted imagery. Plato’s fictive gathering, however, is not wholly without its signature ingredient. Near the Symposium’s conclusion, the drunken Alcibiades calls for a large drinking cup (megan ekpōma) and an oversized cooler (psykter) holding more than eight cups (kotyles) (213e-214a). So, too, the final scene captures Agathon, Aristophanes and Socrates in deep debate over a large bowl of wine (megalē phialē) (223c). I contend that by this point Plato is at liberty to admit wine and its painted vessels. Precisely because Socrates/Diotima has already shown the way to Love and Beauty, the intoxicating effect of mimetic representation poses no threat to the truth of Eros. Frontisi-Ducroux, F. 1996. “Eros, Desire, and the Gaze.” Trans. N. Kline. In Sexuality in Ancient Art, ed. N. B. Kampen. 81-100. Cambridge. Gordon, J. 2007. “In Plato’s Image.” In Philosophy in Dialogue: Plato’s Many Devices, ed. G. A. Scott. 212-237. Evanston, IL. Halliwell, F. S. “Plato and Painting.” In Word and Image in Ancient Greece, ed. N. K. Rutter and B. A. Sparkes. 99-116. Edinburgh. Janaway, C. J. 1995. Images of Excellence: Plato’s Critique of the Arts. Oxford. Keuls, E. C. 1978. Plato and Greek Painting. Leiden. Miller, W. 1932. Daedalus and Thespis: The Contributions of the Ancient Dramatic Poets to Our Knowledge of the Arts and Crafts of Greece. Painting and the Allied Arts, Vol. 3. Columbia, MO. Murray, O., ed. 1990. Sympotica: A Symposium on the Symposion. Oxford. Slater, N. W. 1999. “The Vase as Ventriloquist: Kalos-Inscriptions and the Culture of Fame.” In Signs of Orality. The Oral Tradition and its Influence in the Greek and Roman World, ed. E. A. Mackay. 143-161. Leiden. Smith, N. D. 2007. “Plato’s Book of Images.” In Philosophy in Dialogue: Plato’s Many Devices, ed. G. A. Scott. 3-14. Evanston, IL.