Analyze a literary device–most likely an image or metaphor–or series of devices you find in Plato, Sappho, or Catullus.

Throughout out the poems of Sappho, the literary element of imagery is used. The reference of flowers and nature is constantly used to portray women and the goddesses of that time. Whether Sappho is talking about a young women or an ancient Greek goddess, the reference to flowers is used. Of course different flowers are used to describe different women.  This is continued throughout many of the poem, and really shows how men of this time looked at women to be so beautiful.

Reading Sapphos’ dialect about love was illuminating and somewhat private. I felt like I was looking into her very soul by the way she poured her heart out. It was at times poignant and reflective yet portrayed emotions that I’m sure she had no idea that so many people in this century would identify with. There was definitely no boundaries when it came to her frank love and appreciation for the same sex and how she loved so strongly her lovers.  Her idea about love was at times frightening in it’s intensity and something I would ordinarily shy away from but I had no choice to read these.

I thought the theme of gender in Plato’s Symposium was very interesting, because of how little worth the characters associate with the love of women, and how valued love between men is. Phaedrus, who is the first speaker, begins his speech by saying that there are two kinds of love: “Common Aphrodite’s Love” (875) and “the Love of Heavenly Aphrodite” (875). He describes the “common” love as being “felt by the vulgar, who are attached to women no less than to boys” (875), whereas those who feel “heavenly” love “are attracted to the male: they find pleasure in what is by nature stronger and more intelligent” (875). He seems to be saying that if a man loves a woman as much as they love boys, his love is more about sexual pleasure, more superficial, than if he loved another man, as if it would be “to the body more than to the soul” (875). The reason for this is perhaps because when a man is in a relationship with another man, “they naturally pay no attention to marriage or to making babies” (883) – they have the opportunity to transcend those everyday activities and think about deep, philosophical things. Women, on the other hand, have to take care of all domestic activities such as cooking and childcare, leaving them less time for intellectual pursuits. They are seen as less educated and less aware of the possibility of a purer, more godly love – and thus, incapable of it.

Describe how Plato, Sappho, and/or Catullus conceive of love (and/or friendship). You can choose to only discuss one of the three works or compare two or three of them. You can also choose to compare their views on love with The Odyssey, Oedipus Rex, or Lysistrata. You can also choose to focus more specifically on either the lover or the beloved if you like.

Sappho’s poetry reveals the raw emotion and struggles of love expressed through pain, jealousy, and intense fire (passion) between the lover and the loved. Her eloquence lies in the truth and hardships of love, not just  the beauty and romanticism typically alluded to in other poems.  Love, for her, was a story experienced by the same sexes as well as between the sexes. Sappho’s poems introduced to her contemporaries an understanding of all relationships and the term we use today, lesbian.

Poem 94 illustrates the heartbreaking separation between two people as she begins by writing “I simply want to be dead. Weeping she left me.” Her partner, in tears, expresses how badly things have come between the both of them, leading to Sappho’s change in tone as she expresses the good and beautiful times they shared with images of woven garlands and flowers. Sappho focuses more on herself rather than her beloved in an attempt to express her deep sorrow and suffering to her lover and the reader. By expressing her emotional vulnerability, Sappho empowers women with independence. This same strength was seen in Lysistrata’s plot to end a war, using women as the negotiating tools by withholding sexual favors to evoke a truce. Her crazy scheme not only proved to be successful, but it revealed the power and influence that women share.

How do Catullus’s goals in writing his epyllion, or “little epic,” number 64 in the anthology, compare with those of Homer in The Odyssey and/or Virgil in The Aeneid? How and why are they similar or different?

While all epics wander, Catullus’s “little epic” wonders more than the rest.  Catullus seems to lose the point he is trying to make multiple times, like The Odyssey and The Aendeid, but it feels as though it takes longer to get back to the main story.  In The Odyssey and The Aendeid the authors used fate and other tools to bring the story back to it’s main plot.  Although with Catullus, it is hard to even tell what is the main plot.  Catullus talks about different myths, but he fails to relate them to the story.  I am not sure Catullus had any goals in any of his writing, let alone in his “little epic”.

Aristophanes’s speech is interesting in the sense that is based on the myth to give explanation to the love among men, but somehow modifies the myth and find an razonable explanation. According to him, before there were two sexes there was only one ( androgynous) the gods were angry with those beings brcause they contradict his orders so he split them in half, now both beings needed each other to reproduce and survive, thus was born the love or as the Greeks: the instinct of Eros. Aristophanes also briefly explains homosexual tendencies in the greek world were not frowned upon and were common.

In my opinion, Sappho uses descriptive language effectively to create emotions and images. In one of her pieces, she states that her “tongue is frozen in silence” and that “trembling seizes my body.” The reader can easily assume from this vividly described scene that the speaker is feeling anxiety, just through the description of actions. She did not have to explicitly state that she was anxious or feeling shattered about her lover speaking to a man, the audience could automatically draw the conclusion. This indicates her successful use of imagery within her piece. On a side-note, I noticed that all of the pieces we read this week use a lot of figurative elements when speaking about love, almost as if it is too “unreal” or too much of a difficult concept to grasp, which is why it can only be discussed figuratively.

•  “Ladder of Love”

The “Ladder of Love” has a lot of different aspects that come together and define what love basically is. The first step is that a person loves their body and loves everyone’s bodies. They need to find bodies beautiful, all types of bodies. After they have found the physical beauty, the person must learn to find the beauty of the souls that are within the bodies. This allows for a love that’s deep that the physical being. This leads to the love of certain types of thinking and certain types of mentality, since when you fall in love with a soul you are finding beauty in their unique thinking. This brings love to its final step of knowledge or which is also known as beliefs. Furthermore, in today’s time people are beginning to love their thick bodies because they are loving their bodies and finding themselves to be beautiful on the inside regardless of what society labels them as. By reading Symposium by Plato, Diotima’s explanation of “Ladders of Love” to Socrates will enable the reader to see true beauty in everyone and everything in its true initial form.

Plato’s Symposium incredibly describes the points of view of six historical people regarding Love. They take a turn to give speeches to praise Love, conveying different philosophies and viewpoints.
Phaedrus, who delivers the first speech mentions that Love can inspire a person with courage that he/she even can die for his/her beloved one. Later, in his speech Socrates mentions the speech of Diatema, who assures that people will not die for their lovers if they don’t expect the memory of their virtue to be unforgettable and immortal. Diatema also says that mortals always seek to live forever, and the only way to live forever is by reproduction, by always leaving behind a new young one. It is also interesting how Diotema describes the parents of Love, who are Penia the poverty, and Poros the resource.
Agathon in his speech describes love to be delicate and beautiful, which lives only in young body and soul. Socrates in turn, addresses to his speech by stating that love is neither beautiful nor ugly, but rather something in between. He mentions that Love is tough and far from being delicate like his mother, but brave, impetuous and intense like his father. Virgil’s Aeneas’ love to Dido can be example of Love described by Socrates; Love is so tough that Aeneas is forced to leave his beloved Dido, which later results in her death.
Aristophan in his speech tells a story about how three kind of creatures were cut into two by Zeus and some become lesbians and gays. He says that Love is a sense of belonging and desire to not be separated from each other. He also describes love as the desire for each other in his play Lysistrata.
Pausanias in his speech mentions two types of Love; common love and heavenly love. He describes common love as attraction to the body not the soul and as a desire for sexual act. Heavenly god he says is the love between males, which is in contrast free from vulgarity. Homer’s Odysseus’ love to women he meets throughout his journey can be example of common love as he feels only sexual desire towards them. Odysseus always mentions that his love belongs to his wife but he indecently involves in sexual affairs with other women. Eryximachus describes love as attraction to human soul, not the beauty and he says that only love can deliver harmony to opposed to each other elements like hot and cold and wet and dry.