The work opens as Apollodorus recounts a famous banquet hosted by the tragic poet Agathon to celebrate his victory in 416 BC. Following a decision to limit heavy drinking, the guests agree to deliver successive speeches in praise of love. Phaedrus begins by celebrating love's antiquity and its power to inspire courage and virtue in lovers. Pausanias follows by distinguishing between the vulgar love of the body, directed toward women and young boys, and the heavenly love of the mind, which seeks wisdom and moral improvement. After a brief interruption due to hiccups, the physician Eryximachus expands this dual nature of love across the entire physical universe, arguing that medicine, music, and astronomy are all arts of reconciling opposing forces into harmonious balance.
Aristophanes offers a whimsical yet profound myth about human origins, describing how primeval humans were once round creatures with two sets of limbs and faces before Zeus split them in half as punishment for their hubris. Consequently, every individual spends life searching for their lost counterpart, seeking an ultimate reunion that defines the true nature of love. Agathon then delivers an eloquent, highly rhetorical speech praising love as the youngest, fairest, and most virtuous of the gods, who brings peace, grace, and creativity to both gods and mankind.
Socrates speaks last, shifting the format into a dialectical exchange by questioning Agathon and demonstrating that love must inherently lack the beauty and goodness it desires. He then shares the teachings of the mysterious prophetess Diotima, who defines love not as a god, but as a great spirit operating as an intermediary between the mortal and divine. According to Diotima, love is fundamentally the desire for the everlasting possession of the good through birth in beauty, moving from physical attraction up to the contemplation of absolute, eternal beauty itself.
The proceedings are dramatically disrupted by the arrival of a drunken Alcibiades, who staggers into the house crowned with ivy. Instead of praising love, Alcibiades delivers a passionate and unsparing encomium of Socrates himself, comparing him to a Silenus satyr whose outwardly crude appearance conceals divine wisdom and irresistible moral power. Alcibiades recounts his own unsuccessful attempts to seduce Socrates, praising his absolute self-restraint, military endurance, and unique philosophical magnetism. As the night draws to a close, most of the revellers either leave or fall asleep, leaving only Socrates, Aristophanes, and Agathon drinking into the early dawn, with Socrates maintaining that the genius of tragedy and comedy is ultimately the same.
