More too than in
any other of his Dialogues, Plato is emancipated from former philosophies.
The genius of Greek art seems to triumph over the traditions of
Pythagorean, Eleatic, or Megarian systems, and 'the old quarrel of poetry
and philosophy' has at least a superficial reconcilement. (Rep.)
An unknown person who had heard of the discourses in praise of love spoken
by Socrates and others at the banquet of Agathon is desirous of having an
authentic account of them, which he thinks that he can obtain from
Apollodorus, the same excitable, or rather 'mad' friend of Socrates, who is
afterwards introduced in the Phaedo. He had imagined that the discourses
were recent. There he is mistaken: but they are still fresh in the memory
of his informant, who had just been repeating them to Glaucon, and is quite
prepared to have another rehearsal of them in a walk from the Piraeus to
Athens. Although he had not been present himself, he had heard them from
the best authority. Aristodemus, who is described as having been in past
times a humble but inseparable attendant of Socrates, had reported them to
him (compare Xen.
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