Xenophon: Symposium

This Symposium has lived so much in the shadow of the famous one by Plato, so much so that it has not received a full commentary in English for well over a hundred years. Yet it is a work as useful for its Greek as it is precious for its content.Socrates is the hero of each Symposium, but most of our understanding of him is usually owed to Plato; we risk assuming that his portrait of Socrates is right. Xenophon saw the man differently: his picture is independent, and it is the only significant surviving alternative view.Moreover, the scene that Xenophon paints in his Symposium has a vigour and a wit of its own; the work is a document of prime importance for classical Greek society which we study most and know best: it is set in the male heart of it.Thirdly Xenophon's Greek is lucid and unforced. The editor has been using the text for a number of years to help students bridge the gap between what they learn from a beginners' course and the richer Greek of more fashionable texts. Hence an unprecedented amount of help with the language is provided, and a large vocabulary, as well as the notes on the content which are usual in this series.

Anthony Bowen is an Emeritus Fellow of Jesus College, Cambridge. From 1993 to 2007 he was Orator of the University. His publications include 'Aeschylus: Suppliant Women' and 'Plutarch: The Malice of Herodotus' for the Aris & Phillips Classical Texts series, as well as the translation of 'Lacantius: Divine Institutes' (Liverpool University Press, 2004).

This Symposium has lived so much in the shadow of the famous one by Plato, that it has not received a full commentary in English for well over a hundred years. Yet it gives the only alternative view of Socrates and has a wit and vigour of its own which paints a picture of a Greek society that makes it a document of prime historical importance.

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