lisques apportioned to the
days of the year, while above swung the twelve signs of the zodiac. In
that picture Rome was to find the prototype of her Caesars, as in it
already Hellas has seen the supplanting of Aphrodite by Ishtar.

Greece, still young, lingered briefly, then without decrepitude, without
decadence, ceased, nationally, to be. Aphrodite, young too, died with her.
As Venus Pandemos Rome evoked her. The evocation was successful. Venus
Pandemos appeared. But even from Olympus, which together with Hellenic
civilization, Rome absorbed, Aphrodite had already departed. Those who
truly sought her found her indeed, but like the art she inspired only in
marble and story.

VI

THE BANQUET

It used to be a proverb that Apollo created AEsculapius to heal the body
and Plato to heal the soul. Plato may have failed to do that. But he
heightened its stature. It has been loftier since he taught. In his
teaching was the consummation of intellect. His mind was sky-like, his
speech perfection. Antiquity that thought Zeus must have revealed himself
to Pheidias, thought, too, that should the high god deign to speak to
mortals, it would be in the nightingale tongue of refinement which Plato
employed. The beauty of it is not always apprehensible. His views, also,
are not always understood. Yet an attempt must be made to supply some
semblance of the latter because of the influence they have had.

"I know but one little thing," said Socrates. "It is love." Socrates was
ironical. That which it pleased him to call little, Plato regarded as a
special form of the universal law of attraction. His theories on the
subject are contained in the _Phaedrus_ and the _Symposion_, two poetically
luxurious works produced by him in the violet-crowned city during the
brilliant Athenian day, before Socrates had gone and Sparta had come.

The _Symposion_ is a banquet. A few friends, Phaedrus and Pausanias, men of
letters; Eryximachus, a physician; Aristophanes, the poet; Socrates, the
seer, have been supping at the house of Agathon. By way of food for
thought love is suggested. Discussion regarding it follows, in which
Socrates joins--a simple expedient that enabled Plato to put in his
master's mouth the aesthetic nectar of personal views of which the real
Socrates never dreamed.

Among the first disputants is Phaedrus. In his quality of man of letters he
began with extravagant praise of Eros, whom he called the mightiest of all
gods,