2006/01/01 by Nancy Evans · 1 citation
Arts and Humanities · Social Sciences · #Classical Philosophy and Thought #Classical Antiquity Studies #Religious, Philosophical, and Educational Studies
paper · doi:10.1111/j.1527-2001.2006.tb01091.x
openalex publication_date 2006/01/01 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2026/07/23
Like the goddess Demeter, Diotima from Mantineia, the prophetess who teaches Socrates about eros and the “rites of love” in Plato's Symposium , was a mystagogue who initiated individuals into her mysteries, mediating to humans esoteric knowledge of the divine. The dialogue, including Diotima's speech, contains religious and mystical language, some of which specifically evokes the female-centered yearly celebrations of Demeter at Eleusis. In this essay, I contextualize the worship of Demeter within the larger system of classical Athenian practices, and propose that Plato borrowed Eleusinian language because it criticized conventional notions of the divine, thereby allowing him to reimagine the possibilities for the philosophical process among humans.