love is a puer which is an archetype of immortal youth. Love according to Agathon is the youngest god that was born to hate old age and will come nowhere near it. My question is where does Hermes fit it all of this because he is suppose to be the baby god. If he heard about love being the youngest I think he might throw a fit. Love makes his home in souls of men and gods wiht soft characters. Love is flowerly, fluent, and fragrant. Love promotes justice, moderation, bravery and wisdom and not even the great Apollo who invented archery, medicine, prophecy or the the Muses who invented music ignore the pleasure and power of love.
Diotima

Agathon
teaches Socrates about love. She assumes love is something between wisdom and beauty and ignorance and ugly, or betweenn man and god.
She believes that at Aphrodite's birth celebration Penia and Poros concieved love which was born to serve Aphrodite.

Diotima asks Socates a few questions about love.
What us is love to humans?
What is the point of loving beautiful things?
What does a man have when beautiful things have become his own?
At the end of these series of questions Diotima claims its not love humans and gods seek but the desire for happiness.

Immortailty: people really want good to be theirs forever
-preserve knowledge
-departing aging leaves behind something new
-Antigone acted for the sake of immortal virue and the glorious fame
Body/soul: No one can give birth to anything ugly or unharmonious
-beauty is in harmony with the divine
pregnant in soul (with wisdom and virtue)
makes co. with beautiful bodies>concieves birth to knowledge that has
been carried inside waiting to be released

(knowledge being shared)









Homer, Hesiod [Shakespeare] and other poets have envy and admiration for the offspring they left behind









"The love of the gods belongs to anyone who has given birth to virtue and nourished it, and if any human being could become immortal, it would be he."

In a story by Lord Byron from the romantic period of the 18th century Manfred is a man that believes himself better than the rest of society. He talks to the gods and has interactions with them like no other human being. He doesn't become immortal but comes very close. That is what this quote reminded me of.

Plato's Symposium

At a dinner hosted by Agathon Phaedrus wants to discuss the topic of love.
Phaedrus
begins by defining love whom he believes is the third god after chaos and earth. Love is better than public honor, kinship, wealth, and the best society would be run by one completely composed of lovers because no one would ever do anything shameful.
He discusses Alcestis who dies for her husband and was rewarded by the Gods by her soul being brought back from the dead proving that courage and love win over the highest honors of the gods.

Pausanias
the next man to give his opinions of love says that there are two types of love. Heavenly Aphrodite is also called Uranis, the motherless daughter of Uranus, god of heaven, and an older deity or goddess. This type of love is purely for males, and free from the lewdness of youth. This type of love is acted out by those more strong and intelligent.
Common Aphrodite is also called Pandemos. She is the daughter of Zeus and Dione and is a younger goddess than Heavenly Aphrodite. She strikes whenever she recieves a chance and is in it for the body more than the soul, usually being acted out by less intelligent partners.

According to Pausanius no love is more honorable of shameful than the other.

In Athens it is honorable to declare one's love rather than keep it a secret. Conquest is noble, while failure is shameful. Being in love with youth of a good family is a great accomplishment. It is shameful to yeild to quickly and for a man to be seduced by money or political power, which sounds just like a courtesan to me.
It is honorable if one puts himself at another's disposal to gain knowledge. It is also never shameful to be decieved in the act of love.
Eryximachus
Believes that once there was a type of man called androgynous which is a combination of man and woman, being an offspring of the moon because it shares in both. Male he claims are offspring of the sun while women are the offspring of the earth. The androgynous's were powerful with great ambitions that led them to attempt an ascent to heaven to attack the gods. Zeus cut all the Androgynous people in half making each half long with the other half in order to 'grow together.' Therefore love is born in every human being that wants to get back to their original nature. It is also a lesson for mankind to respect the gods unless we want to be split in half again.

Age & Youth and p. 242-3

George Steiner's Antigones p. 242-3.
Relations between generations are usually non-negotiable. Greek literature loves to
talk about complications of love and loathing, as well as imtimacy and enstrangement between old and young, parent and child. There is a lot of self-consciousness regarding kinship that determines social organization expressed through poetry which focuses on the power between father and son.

The most important aspects of Greek literature; political, moral, rhetorical practice are given imaginative formulation throughout every story.

On Wikipedia when I typed in "PRIAM" I found out that, similar to the story of Anitgone: "Hector is killed by Achilles, Achilles treats the body with disrespect and refuses to give it back. Zeus sends the god Hermes to escort King Priam, Hector’s father and the ruler of Troy, into the Achaean camp. Priam tearfully pleads with Achilles to take pity on a father bereft of his son and return Hector’s body. He invokes the memory of Achilles’ own father, Peleus. Deeply moved, Achilles finally relents and returns Hector’s corpse to the Trojans. Both sides agree to a temporary truce, and Hector receives a hero’s funeral. Achilles further goes on to give Priam leave to hold a proper funeral for Hector complete with funeral games. He promises that no Greek will engage in combat for 11 days, but on the 12th the war would resume."

How Greek sensibility knew and felt about life and death, the acceptance of tragic fate and the claims of mercy, uncertainties, the equivocations of intent and of mutual recognition which inhabit all speech between mortals is expressed in the Iliad originally. The reference to the rights of the dead which are central to Antigone is a central theme as well in Greek literature.