Department of Classical Studies

Students develop their Greek skills by reading Plato’s Symposium, an account of a drinking party with such VIP guests as Socrates, Aristophanes, and Alcibiades. These guests compete in giving speeches praising Eros, the god and abstract principle of desire. What emerges is a multifaceted analysis of desire in all spheres of human activity, by turns comic, moving, and thought-provoking, one that sheds light on classical Greek gender and sexual norms and gives rise, through a Renaissance interpretation, to the modern idea of Platonic love.