ABSTRACT
To call something divine is to assert that it is a higher power, something not created by human beings and not within our control; we do not dispose of it, but it holds sway over us. For Plato, “any power, any force we see at work in the world, which is not born with us and will continue after we are gone could thus be called a god, and most of them were.”1 Clearly, one of the most prominent divinities in the Platonic universe is Eros, the god of love: this personified emotional force is mentioned repeatedly throughout Plato’s collected works and is the theme to which two of his greatest dialogues are largely devoted. In the Theages, a short dialogue having to do with his divine sign, the character Socrates admits that love is one subject about which he does have knowledge; in the Cratylus, which deals with the meanings of words, Socrates says that Eros flows into us from the outside; and there are passages in the Republic and the Laws that focus on the place of erotic love in the ideal society.2 But the primary sources for the Platonic discussion of Eros are two dialogues, the Symposium and the Phaedrus.
