ABSTRACT

Plato's theory of love, as developed brilliantly and engagingly in his two philosophical dialogues The Symposium and Phaedrus, can come across as original and insightful even today. This chapter considers Regina Stefaniak's discovery in order to highlight the cryptic Platonic allegory that she has identified but almost immediately recontextualized as a historical allegory of Venice. Understandably, Giorgione may be assumed to have deliberately buried the cryptic Platonic subtext out of a sense of justifiable caution. All three—Miranda, Marion, and Miss McCraw—are described as being possessed by divine passions that, for Plato, are signs of their qualification for being initiated into the highest mysteries. The Athenian cultural subtext of Platos' Phaedrus involves a general toleration and even acceptance of pederasty as an educational as well as a sexual relationship between an older man and a boy, youth, or younger man.