The Project Gutenberg eBook of Symposium
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Title: Symposium
Author: Plato
Translator: Benjamin Jowett
Release date: January 1, 1999 [eBook #1600]
Most recently updated: November 7, 2008
Language: English
Other information and formats: www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/1600
Credits: Produced by Sue Asscher, and David Widger
Produced by Sue Asscher
SYMPOSIUM
By Plato
Translated by Benjamin Jowett
INTRODUCTION.
Of all the works of Plato the Symposium is the most perfect in form, and may be truly thought to contain more than any commentator has ever dreamed of; or, as Goethe said of one of his own writings, more than the author himself knew. For in philosophy as in prophecy glimpses of the future may often be conveyed in words which could hardly have been understood or interpreted at the time when they were uttered (compare
Symp.)--which were wiser than the writer of them meant, and could not have been expressed by him if he had been interrogat…