Plato and the Other Companions of Sokrates, 3rd Ed. Volume 3

George Grote's monumental Victorian study approaches Plato not as a remote classical text but as a living philosophical conversation. This third volume centers on the Symposium and Phaedrus, those twin dialogues where ancient Athenians gathered to discuss Eros. Grote guides readers through the escalating speeches before Socrates takes the podium, revealing how each speaker's conception of love reveals something about their soul. Then comes Diotima's revolutionary teaching: that eros is not a god but a daimōn, a bridge between human longing and divine wisdom, propelling the philosopher upward from admiration of a single beautiful body to the contemplation of Beauty itself. The Phaedrus extends this into rhetoric and the soul's charioteer, that mythic image of reason guiding two horses, one noble, one unruly. Grote, writing from the height of British empiricism, treats these texts as arguments to be wrestled with rather than monuments to be worshipped. This is for readers who want to understand how one of history's greatest historians read one of history's greatest philosophers.