Alcibiades

In Plato’s Symposium, Plato uses Alcibiades’ dialogue to display his frustration with the social expectations for love and his inability to meet those expectations. Alcibiades inability to involve himself in a productive sexual relationship demonstrates the impotence caused by the overemphasis of eroticism. The tragic nature of the character of Alcibiades is that he realizes he is unable to gain virtue through sexual relations, and therefore is forced to remain mortal and yet he is unable to change himself.
The Symposium is set during the Dionysian festival, immediately following the poet and playwright, Agathon’s victory in a play contest. The pageantry of this festival for Dionysus, the goddess of wine and fertility, emphasizes the Athenian expectations Alcibiades must confront. Athenians celebrated fertility and the reproduction of human life. Therefore heterosexual relationships were justified by its creative power. This emphasis created a social expectation that sexual ...