Читать книгу The Best of the World's Classics (All 10 Volumes) - Henry Cabot Lodge - Страница 30

[60] From "The Symposium." Translated by Benjamin Jowett. Mahaffy ranks this work "as greater and more brilliant" than the "Phædo." Being intensely Greek, it has, however, seemed alien, if not offensive, to many modern readers. Scholars have valued it highly as a vivid picture of the manners of the most refined society of Athens. It has sometimes been called "The Banquet." Under that name, the poet Shelley made a translation. The banquet described took place in the house of the tragic poet Agathon. Agathon was born about 477 b.c., of a rich and eminent Athenian family. He was remarkable for personal accomplishments rather than for high literary genius. He is believed to have died at the age of forty-seven.

[61] Diotima, a priestess, reputed to have been a Pythagorean, but some writers have doubted her existence.

[62] The wife of Admetus, a Thessalian king, who sacrificed her life in order to save that of her husband.

[63] Hesiod, whose home was in Bœotia, is thought to have lived about three centuries after Homer; that is, about 800 b.c. He was a shepherd in his youth, and began to write verses while tending his flocks.

[64] Lived probably in the ninth century b.c., and the traditional author of the laws by which Sparta was governed for several centuries.

[65] An Athenian, son of Pythocles, and friend of Plato, but of whom nothing more is known.