Misteria Biesiady

In Plato’s Symposium diverse literary styles are present: poetic, scientific and legal. Plato also uses the language of mysteries, by means of which Diotima describes the journey of love and the contemplation of the idea of Beauty. Moreover, allusions to the mysteries appear in the Alcibiades’ speech, making it in praise not of Eros, but Socrates. This paper examines the use of Greek religious mystery terminology in the Symposium and explores the mutual relationship between both spe- eches. The vision of the whole – the idea of Beauty from the Diotima’s mysteries – is complemented by the Alcibiades’ own mysteries and his experience and description of unique, atopic Socrates. Both experiences belong to the category of the ineffable (to arrheton).