Abstract

Mommsen is reputed to have said: ‘In spite of his beautiful style, Renan was a true scholar’. Books on the Symposium are rare, perhaps because it is thought that its beauty takes from its philosophical earnestness. Rosen’s work is all the more welcome for that reason, but he also manages to throw light on much else in Plato’s thought. He tries to show that the cliché about Plato’s style being an important part of his meaning is to be taken seriously. Rosen goes through the prologue and the various speeches in the dialogue analysing them and showing their relationship to Platonic and a wide range of other philosophic thought.