Love, Athenian Style

[Shelley] chose this dialogue because he found it "the most beautiful and perfect of all the works of Plato." The work was not published in Shelley's lifetime and remained in manuscript form until 1840, when the poet's widow Mary, working from the transcript she had done in 1818, collaborated with Leigh Hunt to produce a bowdlerized version of the translation. Since male love was unmentionable in 19th-century England, they changed "men" to "human beings," "love" to "friendship," and "his beloved" to "the other"; and they eliminated entire passages in which sex was apparent. For almost a century, this was the version the world knew. It was not until 1931 that Roger Ingpen, the general editor of the complete works of Shelley, obtained the original text from a descendant of the poet and published the correct translation, producing a private edition of only a hundred copies. This is substantially the work that the Pagan Press edition offers, though with some changes reflecting more recent scholarship. An "Afterword" by Donald M. Mader provides a helpful discussion of the 17th-century story's printing history, authorship, and much-debated intent. He defends his own reading of the work as a "homosexual" text, concluding that it constitutes "the first clear expression of a homosexual identity and subculture in the modern West." At one point [Antonio Rocco] has [Alcibiades] ask his mentor, "Cannot men, all of the same age, give themselves together to this pastime?" And while Philotimes replies, "The true love of the male is the love of a boy," it is interesting to note that Rocco at least contemplated a different model of homosexual relations. In presenting The Banquet, [John Lauritsen] does not overstate the excellence of Shelley's language. However, when he states, based on the poet's correspondence, that Shelley "had no serious thought of publishing" the dialogue and his "Discourse," the facts paint a more nuanced picture. In 1821 Shelley did write to a friend that he had "no intention of publishing" his translation. But that was not his original thought. His 1818 statement, "Not that I have any serious thought of publishing either this discourse or the Symposium," is followed immediately by: "at least til I return to England, when we may discuss the propriety of it." In 1818, publication did seem a possibility, even though Shelley realized that a text which spoke so directly about p...derasty presented enormous difficulties.