Alcibiades’ Delayed Entrance in Plato’s Symposium. Poetic Praxis and Narrative Structure

Abstract

After Socrates’speech, Alcibiades bursts into Agathon’s house, the literary theater where Plato’s Symposium takes place. Alcibiades’ entrance changes the dramatic atmosphere: after Diotima’s philosophical reflection about Eros, Alcibiades produces the praise of Socrates. The presence of Alcibiades is announced starting from the first literary frame of Symposium, but it is delayed until the end of the ἐρωτικοὶ λόγοι. This narrative structure that comes from Homer, shows analogies with the literary praxis of the Greek tragedy and comedy; moreover, the presentation of Alcibiades seems a stage direction. The Symposium takes on the traits of drama and Alcibiades’ delayed entrance, between tragedy and comedy, preludes the reflection about the unity of dramatic poetry at the end of the dialogue: the reflection that crowns Plato as the good poet able to write tragedy and comedy, able to write the Symposium.