The Greatest Hop of All: Aristophanes on Mortal Nature in Plato’s Symposium

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THE GREATEST HOP OF ALL1

ARISTOPHANES ON HUMAN NAUTE IN PLATO’S SYMPOSIUM

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In recent years there has been a renaissance of scholarly interest in Plato’s

Symposium, as scholars have again begun to recognise the philosophical subtlety and

complexity of the dialogue.2 But despite the quality and quantity of the studies that

have been produced few contain an extended analysis of the speech of Aristophanes;3

an unusual oversight given that Aristophanes’ encomium is one of the highlights of

the dialogue. In contrast to the plodding and technical speeches that precede it, the

father of Old Comedy structures his own speech around a fantastic fable in which he

tells how humans, having originally taken the form of comically grotesque

“circlemen”,4 assumed their present shape after being divided in two for their impious

actions against the gods. This story forms the basis of his discussion of eros, which he

claims is nothing more than a desire to return to our original form (192e-193a).

One study on which commentators continue to draw heavily5 for their own

interpretation of Aristophanes’ encomium is Arlene Saxonhouse’s 1984 paper, ‘The

1 All quotes from Plato’s dialogues in this paper are from their respective translations 2 See especially Frisbee Sheffield, The Ethics of Desire (Oxford, 2006), C. D. C. Reeve, ‘Plato on Eros and Friendship’, in Hugh Benson ed, A Companion to Plato (United Kingdom, 2009), 294-307 and the collection of essays edited by James Lesher et al, Plato’s Symposium: Issues in Interpretation and Reception (Cambridge, 2006). 3 A notable exception to this is Paul Ludwig, Eros and Polis (Cambridge, 2002), which contains an extensive treatment of the political implications of Aristophanes’ conception of eros. 4 The term ‘circlemen’ is never used by Aristophanes in his encomium. I have adopted it here both for ease of use, and because it is conventionally used in commentaries on this passage. 5 The only other paper of comparable influence is K. J. Dover’s article, ‘Aristophanes’ Speech in Plato’s Symposium’, The Journal of Hellenic Studies 86 (1966), 41-50. Dover’s article focuses more on the imagery and structure of the fable, whereas Saxonhouse’s paper offers what could more properly be called a full philosophical reading of the speech.

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Net of Hephaestus: Aristophanes’ Speech in Plato’s Symposium’.6 As the name of her

article suggests, central to Saxonhouse’s analysis is her interpretation of the Net of

Hephaestus passage (192c-e), in which Aristophanes suggests that, if offered the

chance to be welded together with their beloveds, and so become circlemen once

more all humans would leap at the opportunity, thinking that this would be all of the

fortune that they could ever desire. For Saxonhouse this passage, more than any other,

demonstrates that, on Aristophanes’ view, our original nature is one of perfection.

According to Saxonhouse, our original form is the telos of human existence, and the

standard by which we judge the good life because she understands circlemen as being

self-complete beings, entirely free from desire and need (1984: 21-2).7 Put simply, to

be a circleman is to be a perfect being. Eros, on this reading, as the desire for

wholeness, is to be praised because it reminds us of our deficiency, and instills in us a

desire to actualize our potential for perfection. But unlike Socrates’ encomium, which

ends with the lover realising their potential by possessing knowledge of the divine,

Saxonhouse believes that the Net of Hephaestus passage lends a tragic end to

Aristophanes’ speech. For Saxonhouse it is Plato’s dirty trick that he turns

Aristophanes into a tragedian.

According to Saxonhouse the Net of Hephaestus passage highlights the

pitiableness of divided human existence, and then dangles, like a carrot in front of a

6 Interpretation, 13.1 (1984), 15-32. 7 Concerning the nature of circlemen Saxonhouse says the following:

Why then for Aristophanes is our ancient form our telos? It is a form without eros (pain) because it is self-complete. Its spherical shape indicates the absence of a beginning or an end. It requires nothing more to be complete. There is no interdependence among the spherical bodies. They do not need each other, even for the sake of procreation. The absence of need makes them divine rather than human. Their perfection makes them the models towards which humans can strive, that is, the gods we have now are inferior representations of perfection. The ancient spherical beings, our ancestors, are our true gods (1984: 21-2).

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mule, the possibility that the gods may show mercy, and grant us wholeness once

again. But as for the mule, Saxonhouse suggests, Aristophanes’ carrot also presents a

fool’s hope. Because the Net of Hephaestus is merely a poetic invention, rather than

an actual resource upon which people are able to draw, we recognise that the unity

that the Net offers can only be achieved through the destruction of our bodies, and

that while we live our desire for wholeness can never be satisfied. Aristophanes then

concludes his speech with the imperative that we must be pious, which Saxonhouse

reads as meaning that we must resign ourselves to the inescapability of our deficiency

(1984: 30).

I shall argue that Saxonhouse’s reading of the Net of Hephaestus passage is

mistaken, and misses the message of Aristophanes’ encomium. Far from being a

tragedy in which we are supposed to lament the impossibility of achieving perfection,

I suggest that the Net of Hephaestus passage is supposed to show us that “perfection”

is an illusory goal that is completely foreign to human nature, and that the moral of

his speech as a whole is that people can live a flourishing and satisfying existence, but

only if we give up on the desire to transcend our deficiency.

II

To begin my analysis it will be useful to consider the origins of the images on which

Aristophanes draws in the Net of Hephaestus passage in order to understand the

purpose of this part of his speech. The story of the Net of Hephaestus is first told by

the poet Demodocus to Odysseus in Book VIII of the Odyssey, where he describes

how Hephaestus, having discovered that his wife, Aphrodite, is cuckolding him with

his half-brother, Ares, devises the plan of chaining the two together on their love bed:

Just look at the two lovers … crawled inside my bed,

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locked in each other’s arms – the sight makes me burn!

But I doubt they’ll want to live that way much longer,

not a moment more – mad as they are for each other.

No, they’ll soon tire of bedding down together,

but then my cunning chains will bind them fast

till our Father pays my bride-gifts back in full (8.313-18, trans Fagels 1996).

Having executed his plan, Hephaestus then calls on all the other gods to observe the

lovers, now irrevocably tied in embrace. All of the male gods, though not the

goddesses, assemble to laugh at the lovers’ misfortune, and mock them for their

pitiable predicament. The only exception to this is Hermes, who, smitten by his erotic

desire for Aphrodite, exclaims: ‘Archer, bind me down with triple those endless

chains!/Let all you gods look down on, and all you goddesses too –/how I’d love to

bed that golden Aphrodite!’ (8.340-2, trans Fagels 1996).

According to Saxonhouse, Aristophanes, like Hermes, fails to understand that

the story of the Net of Hephaestus ends badly for the lovers, and that because of this

he inverts the tragedy of the story in his own speech (1984: 17). In the original story

the Net is something that one would wish to avoid at all costs, but Saxonhouse

suggests that the tragedy in Aristophanes’ use of the story is precisely that we do not

have recourse to Hephaestus’ Net. Saxonhouse argues this way because she

understands Aristophanes’ circlemen to be perfect, and thus believes that the promise

of the Net is desirable. But do we have any reason to think that Aristophanes misreads

this story so completely? And is this really the picture of human nature that

Aristophanes paints in his speech? I do not think that we have any reason to answer

these questions positively, as once we examine the fundamental premise of this

interpretation, the idea that Aristophanes’ circlemen are ‘perfect’, Saxonhouse’s

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reading falls apart. Let us begin by comparing the characters of the historical

Aristophanes’ plays to those of Plato’s ‘Aristophanes’.’

It is an understatement to say that the characters the historical Aristophanes

invents are far from perfect. Wholly unlike the great heroes of the Homeric poems,

and even the noble, but flawed figures of Aeschylus’ and Sophocles’ invention,

Aristophanes’ characters revel in farting, fight, and fornicating. Even those that we

would identify as the ‘best’ of them, such as Dikaiopolis or Trygaeus,8 are crass

immoderate self-interested simpletons who would greatly prefer the promise of food,

wine, and sex to the pursuit of lofty ideals such as glory, political position, or wisdom.

And this is true regardless of the social standing of the characters, their gender, age,

or even their divinity. The women of Lysistrata, for example, are only slightly less

sex-crazed than the men of the play (and the Hags of the Assemblywomen perhaps

slightly more); in the Frogs, when faced with the imposing figure of Hades’ doorman,

Aeacus, the god Dionysus proves himself as much of a coward as his slave Xanthius;

and similarly, in the Birds, when the Olympians are staring down the beak of an

ornithic coup, Poseidon’s and Heracles’ first thoughts concern their own advantage,

like those of the Priest and the Informer.9

In the Symposium also Aristophanes is the figure that reminds us most

forcefully of the realities of mortal deficiency. The poet’s hiccups, which interrupt the

orderly flow of the speeches, highlight the vicissitudes of the body, and the method by

which they are cured, Eryximachus’ sneeze treatment, shows that disorder, as much as

8 These figures are the main characters of Aristophanes’ Acharnians and Peace respectively. 9 For an extended discussion of the comic characters of Aristophanes’ plays see Cedric Whitman, Aristophanes and the Comic Hero (Cambridge, 1964) and Kenneth Reckford Aristophanes Old-and-New Comedy Volume 1 (Cambridge, 1987).

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order, is required to satisfy these needs.10 In Aristophanes’ speech also neediness is

very much the defining characteristic of us ‘halfmen’. Central to human existence are

the requirements of nourishment and shelter, and unless we can satisfy continually our

desires for such things we will all too quickly perish (191a-b).

Given the multitudinous and unending demands to which people must attend it

is little wonder that Saxonhouse supposes that Aristophanes would believe that the

telos of human existence is to become circlemen once more, since they are self-

complete. But if Saxonhouse is correct in her suggestion that circlemen are free from

desire and wholly perfect they would be unlike any of the historical Aristophanes’

poetic creations.11 It is also worth mentioning that the gods of Aristophanes’ fable in

the Symposium are very much like their counterparts in the comedian’s plays. In his

encomium they are shown to be needy beings, entirely dependent on the prayers and

sacrifices of mortals, both for their power and their immortality – a common trope in

Aristophanes’ plays;12 the dismal failure of their first attempt to bring humans under

their yoke demonstrates their questionable foresight (191a-b); and the reference to the

story of the Net of Hephaestus reminds us that the Olympians are lusty, vengeful,

10 Commentators have suggested a wide range of implications for Aristophanes’ hiccups, most of which center around the issues I have suggested here concerning the needs and deficiencies of the human body. For more extended discussions of the significance of Aristophanes’ hiccups see R. E. Allen, Plato’s Symposium (New Haven, 1991), 20, Allen Bloom, ‘The Ladder of Love’, in Plato’s Symposium, Seth Benardete (ed) (Chicago, 2001), 96, Martha Nussbaum, The Fragility of Goodness (Cambridge, 2007), 172, and Arlene Saxonhouse, (n.56), 16. 11 At this point it should be noted that the story Aristophanes tells in his speech in the Symposium is different in important respects to that of the historical Aristophanes’ works. K. J. Dover (n.5) argues that, both stylistically and in his focus on the “beginnings of things” (i.e., the beginning of present human nature), Aristophanes’ tale of the circlemen is more akin to an Aesopic fable than the comedian’s plays. But we ought not doubt from this that Plato is making some considerable effort to replicate Aristophanes’ world-view, and Dover himself suggests that it is likely that Plato chose to have Aristophanes tell an Aesopic fable due to the similarities between the values that fables and Aristophanean comedies often share. 12 See especially Peace, 848-9, Birds, 187-193, 1515-24, and Wealth, 1112-16.

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jealous creatures (as we shall see below), as ripe for ridicule as the silliest human. It is

important to note that these points in themselves do not lend any weight either way to

the question whether the circlemen of Aristophanes’ encomium are perfect, and I do

not wish to suggest that they should be used as arguments for my position. They will,

however, be illuminating when we consider Aristophanes’ views of human nature in

§4 – and they may be interesting for those like K. J. Dover13 who are interested in

Plato’s approach in appropriating and adapting Aristophanes’ style. To resolve this

issue it will be necessary to examine Saxonhouse’s arguments concerning the

perfection of circlemen.

Aristophanes does state that circlemen are ‘complete wholes’ (Symposium,

192e), but ought we understand “wholeness” here, as Saxonhouse does, to have both

physical and metaphysical significance, thus implying both physical unity as well as

total liberation from need and deficiency?14 In her article Saxonhouse gives two

pieces of evidence in support of her view: first, that circlemen do not procreate; and

second, that they are not subject to the demands of mortal existence listed above. Let

us consider each point in turn.

Prima facie, the question of whether the species procreates appears to lend

little support either way to the assertion that circlemen are perfect. However,

Saxonhouse sees great significance in this detail, particularly when read in the light of

13 (n.5). 14 Although circles and circular motion have important metaphysical significance for Plato, particularly in his later dialogues (see particularly the Timaeus and Laws X), we must be careful not to attribute too much significance to Aristophanes’ use of these images, as he is not a philosopher, but rather a poet, and one who sees himself as anti-philosophical (see particularly his portrayal of Socrates and Chaerephon in the Clouds). We should not dismiss, however, the very likely possibility that Plato is having his Aristophanes play with the expectations of his semi- philosophically literate audience (something that he does at several other points in his speech, as I shall show in §5), and actively undermining the idea of circularity as indicative of perfection – a possibility that will become more likely in light of my discussion in §4.

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the “Myth of the Backwards Turning Cosmos”, a memorable passage from Plato’s

Statesman (269a-274e). Here the Eleatic Stranger tells the story of the Golden Age of

the world, in which time ran backwards, and all of the people’s needs were provided

for without any effort on their part. Significant for Saxonhouse is that during this time

there was no reproduction, as people simply sprang from the earth, fully grown, and

returned to it at the end of their lives, having regressed to the state of a newborn baby.

Following Seth Benardete’s analysis15 of this passage Saxonhouse suggests that

humans did not engage in reproduction at this time because they lacked potentiality;

that is they were born as complete as they could be (1984: 25). From this she

concludes that, because circlemen do not reproduce, they too are in a similar state of

completion as those in the Golden Age. Ignoring the issue that to be ‘as complete as

one can be’ does not necessarily entail either perfection or the absence of need – and,

indeed, it does not even for those in the Golden Age, who still have needs; they

merely require no effort to be satisfied –,16 Saxonhouse still cannot appeal to this

point to justify her claim that circlemen are self-complete as there is good reason to

think that circlemen do engage in procreation, even though she is right to say that they

do not engage in sexual reproduction.

In his fable Aristophanes distinguishes between three periods in the

development of human nature. In the first (T1) people took the form of circlemen, but 15 Seth Benardete, ‘Eidos and Diaeresis in Plato’s Symposium’, Philologus 107 (1973), 193-226. 16 Significant problems also attend the attempt to interpret this passage in the Symposium through appealing to the myth in the Statesman. Besides the general hazards of attempting to interpret a passage in one dialogue through that of another, and the particular difficulties posed in the interpretation of myths, in another passage from Plato’s later dialogues, in his discussion of marriage in the Laws (4.721b-d) Plato advances a position that appears to be in direct opposition to that of the Statesman, as here he argues that perfection for humans lies in the continuation of the species through procreation. The conflicting evidence of the Statesman and the Laws shows us that we shouldn’t be turning to them to interpret Aristophanes’ speech in the Symposium if we don’t have to.

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in the next two (T2 and T3) people were of the shape of halfmen. T3 is distinguished

from T2 by the introduction of sexuality, when Zeus moved people’s genitals to the

front, and created internal reproduction. “Before then [that is, sometime before T3]”,

Aristophanes tells us, “they used to have their genitals on the outside, like their faces,

and they cast seed and made children, not in each other, but in the ground, like

cicadas” (Symposium, 191b-c). For Saxonhouse’s reading to be correct Aristophanes

would have to be referring here to T2, as then the agents of this cicada-like

reproduction would be halfmen. But this cannot be the case. Aristophanes tells us

that, at the beginning of T2, the gods divided humans in half, and turned their faces

inwards, so that they may see their navel, and remember this grizzly surgery (190e).

However, it was not until T3 that their genitals were also made to face inwards. The

only time in which both people’s faces and genitals faced outwards, as described in

the quote in question, is at T1, when people took the form of circlemen. Saxonhouse,

then, cannot appeal to their lack of reproduction as evidence of the circlemen’s

perfection, as this quote shows that they too engage in reproduction, and presumably

in the same way as the very needy and deficient halfmen of T2. The form of

reproduction in which humans engage, therefore, has nothing to do with their being

more or less perfect. A fortiori, if Saxonhouse view of perfection is correct – that

perfect beings do not reproduce – the fact that circlemen do reproduce lends support

to the idea that they are deficient creatures.

Although she does not explicitly advance the idea in her article, it is strongly

implied in Saxonhouse’s analysis that circlemen are perfect because they are free

from the needs and desires that plague people’s divided existence (1984: 22). In his

speech Aristophanes mentions three desires felt by halfmen: those for nourishment,

shelter, and unity (eros). Although it follows necessarily that, if people become

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circlemen once again they would no longer feel eros, and even if we grant that it also

means an end to our need for food and shelter – something for which there is no

evidence either way in Aristophanes’ encomium –, it does not follow that circlemen

are free from desire, and therefore deficiency, altogether. In arguing this way

Saxonhouse has conflated the distinction between the basic needs of survival and

desire in general, which covers a far wider range of longing.

At the beginning of his fable Aristophanes tells us that circlemen, being

supremely arrogant, made an attempt on the gods, and assaulted Olympus (190b).

This story suggests that circlemen do feel at least on desire: they desire the position of

the gods. However, because Saxonhouse understands circlemen as perfect she is

forced to give the somewhat bizarre reading that the circlemen made their attack, not

because of any desire on their part, but purely out of arrogance (1984: 22). However,

Saxonhouse leaves the question unanswered as to why even the most supremely

arrogant would attack the gods if they do not desire anything at all. We do have some

evidence in the fable to explain the actions of the circlemen, as Aristophanes

highlights their questionable character. The circlemen are described by Zeus by the

unflattering terms of ‘a0selgh/v’ and ‘a0ko/lastov’ at 190c9 and 190c11 respectively,

so in addition to being hugely strong and celeritous, circlemen are fundamentally

‘licentious’ and ‘intemperate’ creatures, whose behaviour is both undisciplined and

brutal. We need not conclude that the circlemen attacked the gods out of arrogance

alone, and that they desired nothing in doing so. Instead, we have good reason to

think that they engaged in this warmongering due to their licentious nature, and that

they desired the position of the gods. Like the pitiful halfmen and the capricious gods

of Aristophanes’ fable, the circlemen too fall far short of perfection, being licentious

and arrogant. And just like these figures (and all of the various characters and

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creatures of the historical Aristophanes’ plays), circlemen too are creatures that

desire, and so are not free from deficiency.

III

In response to the conclusion of the previous section one may argue that, even though

circlemen may not be perfect, perhaps they are still something which we halfmen

ought to envy, as being a circleman may be better than the state in which we find

ourselves. The question we must answer, then, is whether unity is an ideal for which it

is good for halfmen to strive. In entertaining the line of argument, of course, we must

be careful not to fall into Platonic language and say that, in becoming circlemen, one

becomes more like a god, as we should not forget that the gods, in Aristophanes’

fable, although powerful and immortal, are jealous, wicked, and capricious creatures,

and enviable only if one is happy to accept such vices in exchange for power. Prima

facie, however, one may argue that there is some reason for thinking that

Aristophanes believes that unity is a goal towards which it would be good for us

halfmen to strive when we consider the lovers’ expectations of the results of being

reunified in the Net of Hephaestus passage.

It is certainly true, and should be noted, that the lovers of the Net of

Hephaestus passage firmly believe that in accepting the Net they will possess

everything they could ever want, and see unity as a state that they ought to pursue:

Surely you can see that no one who received such an offer would turn it down;

no one would find anything else that he wanted. Instead everyone would think

[oi1oite] he’d found out at last what he always wanted: to come together and

melt together with the one he loves, so that one person emerged from two

(Symposium, 192e, my emphasis).

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The uniformity of the lovers’ expectations appears to lend justificatory force to their

view, but there is evidence in the text that ought to make us feel hesitant about giving

too much weight to their beliefs. Fundamental to the interpretation of this quote is the

force of the verb ‘oi1oite’. In Plato’s dialogues, oi!esqai, “to think”, does not typically

carry the same cognitive force as verbs such as “e0pisth/nai” or “ei0de/nai”, or even

“gigno/skein”, all of which are usually translated as “to know”. So someone may

think that there are chocolates in the grocery bags on the counter, but because they do

not know this for certain they may well be mistaken. It should be noted, however, that

not even Plato’ Socrates uses these terms as consistently as a philosopher like

Aristotle, so we may wonder, particularly if we agree that Plato here is trying to

represent Aristophanes’ own linguistic style as faithfully as possible, how much

significance we can expect to yield from Aristophanes’ use of the term. Considering

the word in isolation, not very much, but in light of other evidence from this passage

we can get a clearer sense of its force.

Illuminating for our present purposes is Aristophanes’ description of the

mindset of the lovers at the beginning of the Net of Hephaestus passage, only a few

lines before the quote in question: ‘These are people who finish out their lives

together and still cannot say what it is they want from one another. No one would

think [do/ceie] it is the intimacy of sex’ (Symposium, 192c). Aristophanes’ use of the

verb “do/ceie”, from “dokei=n”, “to suppose”, is significant for two reasons. First, on a

purely semantic level it lends weight to the idea that the thoughts of the lovers in this

passage fall into the realm of belief and opinion (do/ca), rather than that of knowledge

(e0pisth/mh). Second, Aristophanes here, as with the verb oi1oite, uses the optative

mood to describe the lovers’ thought processes. Indeed, roughly a third of the verbs in

this passage are in either their optative or subjunctive forms. This suggests that

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Aristophanes’ use of the word “think” in the original quote signifies merely the

wishes and hopes of the lovers being offered the Net. That is, though they believe that

in becoming circlemen they will possess everything they could ever want, this is not

something that they know for certain.

Aristophanes here does give us some reason to think that the lovers’

expectations have been warped, and also hints as to why this is the case. It is

important to recall that, of all of the gods who looked upon Ares and Aphrodite, the

only god who could not recognise their misfortune was Hermes, and this is because he

was overcome by desire for Aphrodite. In the Net of Hephaestus passage it is

important to note that do/ceie here is in the aorist, rather than the present form of the

optative of dokei=n. As it is impossible to translate do/ceie in this sentence in the past

tense, we must conclude that the use of the aorist here indicates aspect, rather than

tense. For Aristophanes, then, the lovers’ belief that in becoming circlemen they will

be free from deficiency is not one that they persistently hold, but one that is felt only

at particular times. If we look to the original story we have some indication as to why

the lovers hold this belief in this passage. It should be noted that in the Net of

Hephaestus passage the divine smith does not approach lovers merely at any time,

such as when they are at work, or having an afternoon chat; instead, we are told that

the offer is given when the lovers are lying in bed together (192d), although whether

in this moment they are immediately pre-coital or post-coital, or currently engaging in

coitus is not made clear. Regardless, like Hermes, it seems that the lovers of

Aristophanes’ story have been led by their eros into overestimating the promise of

Hephaestus’ Net, and that they may find that their lot does not improve at all when it

is accepted. At other times, when their desire is less strong, it is reasonable to assume

that their thinking may be clearer.

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From this we can conclude that the beliefs of the lovers lend no support to the

idea that circlemen are an ideal towards which we halfmen ought to strive. And in

light of our discussion in the previous section we have strong reasons to doubt this

idea. Like the gods of the comedian’s fable, Aristophanes’ circlemen are immoderate

warmongers who plunge the entire cosmos into strife for their own ambitions.

Although stronger and quicker than halfmen, circlemen have greater tendencies

towards licentiousness and brutality than present humans, and are more likely to

commit acts of impiety. As we learnt above we cannot even claim that circlemen are

free from the need for food, drink, nourishment, and all of the rest of the requirements

that constantly threaten our divided existence, as Aristophanes is silent as to whether

circlemen themselves are free from these requirements or not. The best that we can

derive from Aristophanes speech is that we halfmen have the choice of either

remaining beings who must struggle to meet the requirements of life, or to rid

ourselves of these needs, but at the cost of becoming more arrogant and violent.

Aristophanes gives us no reason to think that such a trade is at all desirable. In his

speech, therefore, Aristophanes neither demonstrates that circlemen are perfect, nor

does he put forward circular existence as a state that we should idealize. All of the

figures in Aristophanes’ fable, therefore, whether gods, circlemen, or halfmen, share

strongly in deficiency, and no figures possess a nature particularly more enviable in

this respect than any other.

IV

Although Aristophanes clearly does utilise the story of the Net of Hephaestus for his

own purposes, in the previous two sections we have seen that there is no evidence in

the text to indicate that he inverts the message of the story in the way that Saxonhouse

suggests. But when we reject the idea that circlemen are perfect we can give a reading

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of this passage that is much more in line with that of the original story. The appeal of

the story of the Net of Hephaestus for Aristophanes, I suggest, is the irony of the

lovers’ predicament. Aphrodite and Ares desired to come together and embrace, but

when Hephaestus brought about the permanent ‘satisfaction’ of their desire, they

found their lot was not improved at all, and that, if anything, they were worse off than

when their yearning for each other was still unsatisfied. Before the two gods came

together they were needy beings, full of desire, and being encased in Hephaestus’ Net

did nothing to change this fact. Their desire for unity was merely replaced by an

equally strong desire for separation.

The situation for the lovers of Aristophanes’ speech begins in much the same

way as for the divine lovers of Demodocus’ story. They too are drawn together by

their desire for unity, that is, by their eros, although they differ somewhat in having

the further belief that in being permanently unified they will find everything they ever

wanted. Aristophanes’ allusion to the story of the Net of Hephaestus leads us to

understand that the lovers’ fortunes will be little better than that of Aphrodite and

Ares. Although their erotic desires for unity will be permanently satisfied, even in

becoming circlemen they will not free themselves from deficiency and desire. The

best that they will be able to achieve is to replace the desires they already have with a

range of different desires. It is not – in terms of Aristophanes speech – simply that the

means by which they attempt to achieve unity is imperfect; instead, the ideal that they

struggle for, unity, is itself not a state which is absent of deficiency.17 Far from

17 It is important to note that Socrates criticizes Aristophanes’ conception of eros, not because the comedian posited it as the desire for unity achieved (or not) through sexuality, but instead because its goal is not the good (250e). If Saxonhouse is correct, and unity is indeed indicative of perfection, then Socrates’ criticism is moot, as in Aristophanes’ speech also eros, as a desire for unity, would be a desire for the good. On the reading I offer here, however, Socrates’ criticism is effective precisely because he, of all of Aristophanes’ audience, recognized that, in being a desire for unity, eros

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showing that the telos of human nature is perfection, and that people cannot realise

this potential due to the caprice of the gods, the Net of Hephaestus passage

demonstrates that perfection is completely foreign to human nature. Aristophanes’

portrait of the circlemen, and even the gods, as deficient beings shows that no matter

how ‘high’ we raise ourselves, we will never attain this goal. The moral of the Net of

Hephaestus is that deficiency – being a subject of desire and need – is the salient and

inescapable feature of human nature.

In one important respect this reading of the Net of Hephaestus passage

parallels that of Saxonhouse’s: on this interpretation also this passage shows us that

we cannot overcome our deficiency. However, we need not draw the conclusion that

Saxonhouse does, that this passage lends a tragic end to the comedian’s speech. For

Aristophanes, a deficient state is hardly a pitiable one, or something that should be

feared. Despite all of their flaws – and they have many – the heroes of Aristophanes’

plays have quite valuable quotidian virtues. They are pacifists and humanitarians,

who, despite often insulting each other, care for their loved ones; while primarily self-

interested, they also have a strong concern for the welfare of the wider community;

though often cowards, they are willing to stand up to tyrants; and despite their lack of

wisdom, they can spot a “bullshit artist” from a mile away. In his speech in the

Symposium, also, Aristophanes is not so ready to look down upon deficiency as his

fellow symposiasts, Phaedrus, Agathon, and particularly Socrates, all of whom

contrast the deficient hoi polloi to those who are either truly virtuous, entirely

beautiful, or wholly wise. In Aristophanes’ speech all people share in deficiency, a

state that none can rise above, and all are subject to the same desires and needs as

each other. In his encomium halfmen can only be compared to circlemen and gods, is not a desire for the good, but merely for unity with one’s other half – a state no less deficient than the one in which lovers already find themselves.

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and neither of these beings are particularly different in nature to halfmen in respect to

their deficiency. Though they may be stronger or quicker than halfmen, circlemen too

are deficient creatures, filled with desire. In the Net of Hephaestus passage

Aristophanes makes light of the ideals that the other speakers set as the telos of

human existence, showing them to be illusory goals, wholly foreign to human nature.

But by offering nothing with which to contrast deficiency, deficiency, in

Aristophanes’ speech, loses its negative value, as sickness would without health, or

weakness if there was no such thing as strength. Deficiency, for Aristophanes, falls

outside the realm of value, and so it would make as much sense to criticise a person

for being deficient as for having two, rather than four eyes. Both are mere facts of

human nature.

V

With our analysis of the Net of Hephaestus passage in place we now have a clear

understanding of Aristophanes’ conception of human nature: deficiency is the salient

feature of our existence. In light of this, in the final section of this paper I wish to say

a few words about the role that Aristophanes sees for eros, as a desire for wholeness,

in human life. Given what we have learnt in the previous section it would be

reasonable to assume that Aristophanes would have few good things to say about

eros, but this is not the situation we find in his speech. In the preamble to his

encomium Aristophanes calls Eros the ‘great healer’ of mankind (189d), and in

concluding his speech he claims that eros promises the “greatest hope of all”

(Symposium, 193e): that one day the gods may restore our original nature, so that we

may finally attain eudaimonia. In this section I will attempt to reconcile these claims

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with the conclusions of the previous section, and to do this it will be useful to turn to

Aristotle’s Poetics.

Unfortunately, the second book of Aristotle’s Poetics, which concerned the

nature of comedy (that is, Old Comedy), is lost, however he does make some

references to comedy in the extant first book, and particularly relevant to our

discussion is his etymological analysis in chapter IV.18 Here Aristotle says that the

‘iambic’ metre got its name because it was the rhythm of choice for comic poets, who

‘lampoon’ (i0ambi/zein) one another (1448b30-35). Regardless of whether Aristotle is

correct in this assertion, what is important here is that Aristotle identifies comedy as

the poetic form in which poets lampoon, parody, and satirize one another, and in the

Symposium there is good reason to think that Aristophanes follows this tradition.

Unlike Phaedrus, whose encomium of eros was most likely pre-prepared,

Aristophanes’ speech appears to be (at least in part) an off-the-cuff satire of the

speeches that precede it. This point is well recognised in the literature, and it is often

argued by commentators that Aristophanes’ description of Eros as a “healer" at the

beginning of his speech, and his descriptions of surgery and welding throughout his

encomium, is added to mock the doctor Eryximachus; and that, despite Aristophanes’

weak protestations to the contrary (193c), in his discussion of “manly” halfmen –

those who are the halves of wholly male circlemen – at 192a he is indeed poking fun

at Pausanias and Agathon – a fact for which we can be left in no doubt after

Agathon’s own encomium, in which he argues himself the “softest” and “gentlest” of

18 In his book Aristotle on Comedy (London, 1984) Richard Janko attempted a reconstruction of the second book of Aristotle’s Poetics. In this reconstruction there are several comments regarding the nature of comedy, but the points that concern us here are more clearly stated in the extant first book, so I shall not be utilizing Janko’s work here.

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all people (195e).19 In light of our previous analysis we have good reason to think that

Aristophanes’ comments in praise of eros are similarly farcical.

In the preamble to his own speech in the Symposium the tragedian Agathon

argues that the previous speakers have not praised Eros in his own right, but only for

the benefits that he bestows upon mankind. And the first three speakers are liberal

with their praise, indeed. Phaedrus suggests that eros is a perfectly adequate substitute

for virtue, and can inspire courage in even the most miserable cowards (178e);

Pausanias argues that eros – or rather, Uranian Eros – can excuse a lover from even

the most disgraceful or shameless behaviour, such as using subterfuge to lure his

beloved to bed, or debasing himself entirely before the object of his affection,

provided that he does it because of eros (184c); and Eryximachus even goes so far as

to state that eros brings peace and harmony to the entire cosmos (188d).

Aristophanes’ claims that eros can lead us to wholeness, and therefore eudaimonia,

mirror the fantastic claims of the previous speakers, but through his allusion to the

story of Demodocus in the Net of Hephaestus passage, Aristophanes shows the

hollowness of such unrestrained praise. Eros can no more do the things that the

previous speakers suggests than being welded together with their beloveds can make

people perfect. Aristophanes’ suggestion that eros offers us the greatest hope of all is

one thick with irony. However, I do not believe that Aristophanes’ assertion ought to

be taken wholly as a joke. Although the comedian clearly does not believe that eros

offers humans the promise of perfection, I wish to suggest that Aristophanes does see

an important and genuinely praiseworthy role for eros in human life (and so satisfies

Phaedrus’ agenda that all speakers should praise eros), though for far more modest 19 For discussions of the farcical elements of Aristophanes’ encomium see especially R. G. Bury, The Symposium of Plato (London, 1909), xxxi, K. J. Dover, Plato: Symposium (Cambridge, 1980), 113, R. E. Allen (n.10), 28, and Frisbee Sheffield (n.2), 22.

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reasons than the first three speakers in the Symposium would have us believe. In order

to demonstrate this it will be necessary to consider which people Aristophanes

considers to be the most likely to achieve eudaimonia.

Despite his belief in the uniformity of human nature, Aristophanes, like the

other symposiasts, does paint some of the characters in his speech in more positive

light than others. Unlike the other speakers, however, who praise those who attempt

to overcome their deficiency, it is precisely these people who come in for particular

ridicule in Aristophanes’ speech. The lovers of the Net of Hephaestus passage are

mocked for their absurd belief that in being welded together they will possess

everything they could want; the gods are portrayed as jealous oligarchs, whose

primary interest is to be undisputed rulers of the cosmos; and we have little sympathy

for the arrogant circlemen, whose hopeless and pointless warmongering doomed, not

only them, but all future humans, to a divided existence. 20 And in typical

Aristophanean style the audience of his speech does not escape criticism either.

Towards the end of Aristophanes’ encomium Plato has the comedian make an

anachronistic reference to the division of Arcadia by the Spartans in 385 B.C.E., an 20 In his plays also Aristophanes has certain characters who are the objects of particular ridicule or out-and-out hostility. Of those in the previous group the most prominent examples are Socrates and Chaerephon, the administrators of the Thinkery in Aristophanes’ Clouds, who attempt to gain divine knowledge of those things in the sky and below the earth. As for the lovers in the Net of Hephaestus passage, here too Aristophanes ridicules such people for their attempt to overcome their deficiency. The absurdity of the manner and objects of the studies of the sophists – who are shown to spend their time suspended in baskets, investigating the movement of the planets, or dipping flees in wax in order to determine the average length of their jumps – highlights the insurmountable distance that separates these people from their goal. But even people such as these are not subject to the out-and-out hostility that he reserves for some figures. In his plays Aristophanes’ favourite examples of such people are the proponents of the Peloponnesian War, and Cleon, the Athenian demagogue, comes in for particularly harsh treatment in the Acharnians and in the Knights. Cleon is shown to be perfectly happy to plunge the entire Greek peninsula into peril in order to attain political position and personal glory. The story of the circlemen’s warmongering most likely is an allusion to the historical Aristophanes’ treatments of the Peloponnesian War.

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event that took place thirty years after the dramatic date of the Symposium.21 This

reference would have made the story of the circlemen all the more poignant for an

Athenian audience, as it reminds the readership of their own suffering, which came

about because of the desire of some Athenians and Spartans to unify all of Greece

under their own military hegemony.

Of all of the characters in Aristophanes’ speech the only ones that escape

ridicule are those halfmen that he mentions at 191d, who after sex are able to stop

embracing and attend to the needs of life. Aristophanes finds such people

praiseworthy, I suggest, because they are (temporarily) free from the absurd desire to

perfect themselves, and are thus able to attend to those things that truly matter in

human existence. In the Symposium Socrates describes Aristophanes as someone who

‘thinks of nothing but Dionysus and Aphrodite’ (Symposium, 177e), and the

comedian’s own behaviour at the feast confirms this. In the dialogue Aristophanes is

shown to be a man concerned primarily with wine, food, and revelry: he is happy to

go “over his head” at a celebration, and return again to indulge in a second day of

merriment (176b); and Aristodemus places the blame for the comedian’s hiccups on

Aristophanes’ liberal indulgence in food (185c). In reading his plays we also get the

strong impression that Aristophanes believes that, through the grace of the two gods

with whom Socrates associates the comedian, people are able to live perfectly happy

and valuable lives, even within the boundaries of our deficient nature – satisfaction of

needs, rather than rising above need, is what is important here. Although we are

creatures full of desire, provided that we are well supplied with food and wine, love

and sex, and shelter and peace, we can live a eudaimon life. And the comedian is no 21 The general consensus in the literature is that the dramatic date of the Symposium is either 415 or 416 BCE. See John Anton, ‘The Secret of Plato’s Symposium’, The Classical Journal 58.2 (1962), 277-294 and K. J. Dover, ‘The Date of Plato’s Symposium’, Phronesis 10.1 (1965), 2-20.

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ascetic: the more we have of these things, and the greater our ease of access to them,

the happier we will be. In being able to temporarily free themselves from the hopeless

task of achieving unity the halfmen of 191d are the people in Aristophanes’ speech

who give the most thought to these basic needs of life, as they do not spend their time

pursuing the unattainable goal of perfection, and so are the ones most likely to

achieve eudaimonia.22

For Aristophanes there are many psychological states that distract people from

attending to the basic needs that are so important for a happy life, and instill in them a

desire for a more ‘elevated’ existence. In his plays some recurring examples of such

pathe are greed and jealousy, and another example prominent in his speech in the

Symposium also is ambition. In both his plays and his encomium of eros Aristophanes

leaves us in little doubt that he has a great distaste for such feelings, but regardless of

the considerable negative consequences that follow from acting on these desires –

both for the subject of these feelings and others –, at the time in which humans were

first split in two (T2), the worst of all was eros. At this time, Aristophanes tells us,

people would die of hunger and idleness, as their eros drove them to neglect all other

concerns than being wrapped in embrace with them beloved (191a-b). At this point

there was nothing more antithetical to eudaimonia than eros. With the invention of

sexuality, however, the situation changed dramatically. Through sexual congress 22 This position is an even more radical departure from the typical Greek understanding of eudaimonia than Socrates’ heavily intellectualized view given at the beginning of the Republic. Whereas the latter still advances perfection as a central concept to eudaimonia (though he limits its scope merely to the perfection of the soul), Aristophanes abandons the idea of perfection altogether in the flourishing life. In doing this, the comedian also strips from eudaimonia the idea of a telos or endpoint; for Aristophanes, it is the living of life itself, rather than any ‘goal’ one attaches to life, that is the essence of eudaimonia. Given Aristophanes’ radical view it is little wonder that Socrates feels the need to respond to the comedian’s speech explicitly in his own speech (205e). Perhaps Socrates also sees it as a conception of eudaimonia that may be potentially more attractive to the average Greek than his own.

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people were able temporarily to satisfy their desire for unity, and having done this

they stop embracing, and now, free from the constant pull of their erotic desires, they

are able to attend to the “needs of life” (191c-d) – those desires whose satisfaction is

central to eudaimonia. In sexuality humans have a benign outlet for their absurd

desire for unity. Of course, sexuality itself is not a perfect solution to the problems

that eros poses. First, our erotic desires are only temporarily satisfied, and will return

eventually; and second, sexuality leads to a number of new complications, including

the tribulations that attend entering (and leaving) relationships, and particularly as

children are often the result of such unions. All of these issues at times pose some

impediment to the pursuit of the happy life. We must remember, however, that for

Aristophanes something ought not be criticised for being imperfect; instead, we

should simply acknowledge that the trials of love and sexuality are less harmful than

the results of other expressions of our desire to overcome deficiency, such as jealousy,

greed, and ambition. For Aristophanes, eros is praiseworthy because, in sexuality, it is

a desire that negates itself in its satisfaction. That is, eros is a desire for unity that

leads to sexual intercourse, which in turn liberates us from our desire for perfection.

Although Eros cannot raise us to a world in which there is no possibility of being shat

on every now and again, it at least ensures that we are not looking up, so we will not

be hit in the eye.

In his commentary on the Symposium Richard Hunter23 suggests that in one

important stylistic respect the speech Plato creates for Aristophanes differs from the

historical comedian’s plays. Where the latter frequently end with a celebration of now

happy heroes, Aristophanes’ encomium ends – he argues, in parallel with

Saxonhouse’s interpretation – with a hope that cannot be fulfilled: that one day we

23 Richard Hunter, Plato’s Symposium (Oxford 2004).

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may become perfect (2004: 70). Although Hunter is right in his assessment that

Aristophanes believes that perfection is beyond human endeavour, he is wrong in his

assessment of the mood at the end of Aristophanes’ encomium. For the attentive

reader the message of the comedian’s speech is that we ought not to busy ourselves

pursuing a state that is wholly contrary to our nature. But eros does offer humans the

greatest hope of all, as in its propensity to nullify itself we find the means to put our

desire for unity to one side for a while, and attend to those desires the satisfaction of

which can make us truly happy, and lead us to eudaimonia. Although his speech does

not end in the same way as the Acharnians or Lysistrata, the lives of those who have

understood Aristophanes’ speech will, as, if one follows the advice of the comedian,

and embrace one’s deficiency, one’s life will be a happy one, one that is an orgy of

food, wine, and sex.

The University of Sydney Anthony Hooper

[email protected]