Plato would probably frown upon many of our modern notions about inversion, involved as they are with concepts of neuroses, effeminacy, etc. Overt feminism in the male was very probably understood and accepted in the society. of Plato to a far greater extent than it is in many societies of today. However, as a glance at Greek sculpture should show, effeminacy was scarcely a problem among the typical Greek warriors and athletes, who were usually endowed with superb bodies, and who constantly sought to excel in masculine beauty, strength, and endurance. Compared to the Platonic conception of homoeroticism, modern. psychoanalytic theories of inversion seem puny and spiritless in the extreme. Perhaps this is because Plato was far less concerned with microscopic, stuffy questions about "Why inversion . . . ?" than he was with the problem of how to build strength and beauty in human character upon the already-existing fact of inversion, which stands, as we now know, among other given and unarguable qualities of the human personality. It is towards this latter, and far more practical approach that homosexuals of modern times are finally turning. ONE's Editors hope that this series of extracts from THE SYMPOSIUM will encourage many of ONE's readers to study and embrace the idealism with which Plato infused the actualities of homoerotic feeling. With such resourceful leadership, this should not be difficult; for whether he was dealing with the subject of government, or of love, or whether he was investigating the qualities of beauty, truth, or goodness, Plato knew how to polish each facet of their meanings, bringing to his students then, and to his readers now, a splendid treasure of understanding. -Robert Gregory

Extracts from THE

SYMPOSIUM

by

Plato

(as translated by W. HAMILTON)

FROM THE TRANSLATOR'S INTRODUCTION:

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"The kernel of the dialogue is of course the speech of Socrates, but the earlier speeches are so arranged as each to contribute something to the philosophy of love expounded by Socrates. . . The love with which the dialogue is concerned, and which is accepted as a matter of course by all the speakers, including Socrates, is homosexual love . . . In approaching the Symposium, we must set aside our personal views as irrelevant and accept this state of affairs as an historical fact, if we are to achieve much understanding either of this aspect of Plato's thought or of the character of Socrates.

"(Plato)... certainly seems to have held... that homosexual love, like heterosexual love with us, has a range which extends from the crudest physical passion to a marriage of noble minds with no physical manifestation at all. The earlier speeches in the Symposium deal with various gradations in this scale, and the ideal is finally put forward, and sensuality entirely transcended and sublimated in the speech of Socrates."

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