Texts in Conversation
In Plato's Symposium, Diotima describes the soul rising past earthly beauty to find beauty itself. The Christian theologian Methodius echoes this in his dialogues, reshaping that eternal beauty to the life of virginity that lifts the soul to heaven.
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2500 BCE
1000+ CE
Plato Symposium 211b
Classical
"He who has been instructed thus far in the things of love, and who has learned to see the beautiful in due order and succession, when he comes toward the end will suddenly perceive a nature of wondrous beauty (and this, Socrates, is the final cause of all our former toils)-a nature which in the first place is everlasting, not growing and decaying, or waxing and waning; secondly, not fair in one point of view and foul in another, or at one time or in one relation or at one place fair, at another time or in another relation or at another place foul, as if fair to some and-foul to others, or in the likeness of a face or hands or any other part of the bodily frame, or in any form of speech or knowledge, or existing in any other being, as for example, in an animal, or in heaven or in earth, or in any other place; but beauty absolute, separate, simple, and everlasting, which without diminution and without increase, or any change, is imparted to the ever-growing and perishing beauties of all other things. He who from these ascending under the influence of true love, begins to perceive that beauty, is not far from the end.
Date: 385-370 B.C.E. (based on scholarly estimates)
Methodius Banquet of the Ten Virgins 8:1
Early Christian
Those who take a downward flight, and fall into pleasures, do not desist from grief and labours until, through their passionate desires, they fulfil the want of their intemperance, and, being degraded and shut out from the sanctuary, they are removed from the scene of truth, and, instead of procreating children with modesty and temperance, they rave in the wild pleasures of unlawful amours. But those who, on light wing, ascend into the supramundane life, and see from afar what other men do not see, the very pastures of immortality, bearing in abundance flowers of inconceivable beauty, are ever turning themselves again to the spectacles there; and, for this reason, those things are thought small which are here considered noble — such as wealth, and glory, and birth, and marriage; and they think no more of those things. But yet if any of them should choose to give up their bodies to wild beasts or to fire, and be punished, they are ready to have no care for pains, for the desire of them or the fear of them; so that they seem, while in the world, not to be in the world, but to have already reached, in thought and in the tendency of their desires, the assembly of those who are in heaven.
Date: 270-310 C.E. (based on scholarly estimates)
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Notes and References
“... dialogue in praise of virginity, entitled The Symposium. It was a barefaced pastiche of Plato's great work. Instead of portraying a gathering of sexually active Athenian gentlemen, however, Methodius' banquet brought together ten young girls to celebrate the beauty of their virginal resolve. Writing at the behest of a mysterious ‘Lady of Termessus,’ Methodius, the male teacher, remained a discreet presence. It was Saint Thecla who replaced Socrates; it was she who evoked the homing flight of a young girl's soul, as it thrilled with an innate love for spiritual beauty. But this eternal beauty was no longer to be found in the abstract realm of the Ideas; it was most present in the radiant purity of the virgin state. ...”
Brown, Peter
The Body and Society: Men, Women, and Sexual Renunciation in Early Christianity
(p. 184) Columbia University Press, 1988
* The use of references are not endorsements of their contents. Please read the entirety of the provided reference(s) to understand the author's full intentions regarding the use of these texts.
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