The Educational Merits of Banquets and Wine Consumption in Plato’s "Symposium" and "Laws"

Abstract

In this paper, I endeavor to demonstrate that the similarities between the Symposium and the Athenian’s normative agenda about banquets in the Laws are so close and so many that it can justifiably be argued that in the Symposium Plato follows a system of values which we also find in its entirety in the Laws. I argue that this agenda is inextricably related in Plato’s mind to the virtue of courage, the other part of which entails practicing keeping in check one’s fears in battle. Socrates, although not the most appropriate candidate for the position of a banquet’s head, undoubtedly resists more than anyone else in the Symposium the “enemies” he confronts at the party and thereby emerges as not only the most moderate but also as the most courageous of all.