Latest / The History of Greece: Philosophy, Empire, and Endless Reinvention — Fexingo History / Diotima and the Priestess Who Taught Socrates About Love
Transcript
- Lucas: We've talked a lot about Athenian democracy, warfare, and empire in recent episodes, but today I want to turn to something a bit different—philosophy, but with a twist. We're going to look at one of the most intriguing figures in all of Plato's dialogues, a woman who might have been a real priestess, and who Socrates himself says taught him everything he knows about love. I'm talking about Diotima of Mantinea. Luna: Diotima — from Plato's Symposium, right? The one who talks about the Ladder of Love? Lucas: Exactly. The Symposium is a dinner party where a group of Athenian men give speeches in praise of Eros, the god of love. And when Socrates gets his turn, instead of giving his own speech, he says he'll repeat what he learned from a wise woman named Diotima. He calls her a mantis — a seer or prophetess — and says she delayed the plague of Athens by ten years through her sacrifices. Lucas: Now, right away that raises questions. Was she a real person? Plato wrote dialogues, not memoirs, and he often used fictional characters to make points. But the way Socrates talks about her is oddly specific. He gives her a hometown — Mantinea, in Arcadia — and a technical title, mantis. That's not typical for a purely invented figure. Luna: And the plague of Athens was real. It struck early in the Peloponnesian War, around 430 BCE. So if she delayed it by ten years, that would put her intervention around 440. Lucas: Right. And Plato's audience would have known the plague story. Some scholars think Diotima might have been a historical priestess, perhaps connected to the cult of Athena or even a foreign cult from Arcadia. Women did serve as manteis in Greece — they weren't just Pythias at Delphi. There's evidence of prophetesses in several cities, and Mantinea was known for its religious traditions. Lucas: But there's another layer. Diotima's name means 'honored by Zeus' or 'gift of Zeus.' And Mantinea means 'prophetess' — it's almost too perfect. Plato might have chosen that name deliberately to signal that she's a mouthpiece for divine wisdom. So the debate among scholars is lively: was she real, or is she a literary construct? Luna: What does she actually say about love? Lucas: Her speech is the philosophical core of the Symposium. She starts by correcting Socrates: love isn't a god, she says, because gods are perfectly beautiful and good, but love desires those things, so love lacks them. Love is a daimon — an intermediate spirit between gods and humans. She calls this the metaxy, the in-between state. Lucas: And then she describes the Ladder of Love. You start by loving one beautiful body, then you realize beauty is the same in all bodies, so you love all beautiful bodies. Then you move to loving beautiful souls, then beautiful institutions and laws, then beautiful ideas, and finally you glimpse Beauty itself — eternal, unchanging, pure. Luna: That's the origin of 'Platonic love' — not just non-sexual love, but love that ascends from physical to abstract. Lucas: Exactly. And what's remarkable is that Plato puts this entire metaphysics into the mouth of a woman. In a culture where women were generally excluded from public intellectual life, Diotima is the expert. She teaches Socrates. She's the one with direct knowledge of the divine, because as a mantis, she deals with the realm between gods and humans. Lucas: Some scholars argue that Plato uses Diotima to distance himself from Socrates' own views — he's saying 'this isn't my idea, it came from a priestess.' Others, like Martha Nussbaum, think Plato is genuinely engaging with the possibility of female wisdom. Mary Lefkowitz, on the other hand, is more skeptical; she argues that Diotima is a literary device that actually reinforces male authority by making female wisdom exotic and otherworldly. Luna: So even the interpretation is contested. That's fitting for a figure who lives in the metaxy. Lucas: It is. And this idea of the metaxy — the intermediate — runs through Diotima's whole teaching. Love isn't a god, it's a daimon. Humans aren't wise or ignorant, they're lovers of wisdom — philosophers. She gives Socrates a vocabulary for thinking about how humans reach toward the divine without ever fully getting there. Lucas: And there's a practical side too. Diotima talks about 'giving birth in beauty' — both physical children and intellectual creations. She says the highest form of love is the desire to give birth to ideas, to virtues, to lasting works. That's how poets, lawmakers, and philosophers achieve immortality: through their creations. Luna: That must have resonated in Athens, where the city itself was a kind of collective creation. Lucas: Absolutely. The Symposium was written around 385 BCE, just after Athens had lost the Peloponnesian War and was rebuilding its democracy. For Plato, the idea that love could produce virtue and good laws was a way to think about cultural renewal. And who delivers that message? A woman from a city that had been destroyed by Sparta a few decades earlier — Mantinea was dismantled by Sparta in 385. Luna: So there's a political subtext too — a voice from a defeated city teaching Athenians about regeneration. Lucas: Exactly. And speaking of regeneration and keeping ideas alive, that's really what we're doing with this show. We try to bring these voices from the past into the present, and it takes time to research and produce these episodes. If you've been walking through ancient Greece with us episode by episode, and you'd like to help keep these conversations going — ad-free and independent — there's a simple way to do it. Luna: Yeah, a small contribution really does help cover the costs of research and recording. Lucas: If you're able, you can support us at buy me a coffee dot com slash fexingo. That's buy me a coffee dot com slash fexingo. No pressure at all — every bit helps, and we're grateful for everyone who listens and shares the show. Lucas: So back to Diotima. One of the most fascinating things about her is that she has no voice of her own outside of Plato's dialogue. We don't have any writings by her, no inscriptions, no other ancient references. She exists only in the Symposium, and yet she's had an enormous influence on Western ideas about love. Luna: She inspired the whole tradition of Neoplatonic love, from Plotinus to the Renaissance. Lucas: Right. Thinkers like Marsilio Ficino in the 15th century built entire systems around Diotima's Ladder. And in the 20th century, the feminist philosopher Luce Irigaray wrote about Diotima as a model for a feminine philosophy that doesn't erase the body. Irigaray argues that Diotima's emphasis on giving birth in beauty — on creation as a form of love — offers an alternative to the abstract, bloodless rationality of traditional philosophy. Luna: So she's been reclaimed as a feminist icon, even if she might be fictional. Lucas: Yes. And that raises another question: does it matter whether she was real? If she's a fiction, she's a fiction that does real philosophical work — she challenges the all-male symposium, she elevates the voice of a priestess, and she gives Socrates a teacher who is both a woman and a religious authority. Plato could have written the same ideas as Socrates' own, but he chose not to. Lucas: There's a moment in the dialogue where Socrates says, 'I was convinced, and I try to convince others.' That's Diotima's legacy — not just a set of ideas, but a way of being convinced, of being transformed by love. Whether she was a historical figure or a literary creation, Diotima remains one of the most compelling teachers in the history of philosophy, and she still has things to teach us about the nature of desire, beauty, and the human longing for something beyond ourselves. Luna: It makes you wonder what other voices from the ancient world we've lost — women, priests, poets whose words didn't survive. Lucas: Exactly. Diotima is a reminder that the record is full of gaps, and sometimes we have to read carefully to hear the voices that are almost silent. Thanks for listening, and we'll see you next time.