There was a woman in whom Socrates himself trusted: There was a woman whom he listened to as an equal – who in those times was already an avant-garde -, a woman who he immersed himself in the sphere of his affections and a woman who he made a category of. There Diotima of Mantineaone of the main representatives of feminine thought in a patriarchal world.

We are talking about the year 440 BC, when the politician and orator Pericles asks the priestess for help to rid Athens of the plague. It is during the purification ceremony when a 30-year-old Socrates is stunned by the wisdom of that bossdeeply imbued with the mysteries of Eros, which seemed clear to her.

Despite the tendency of Hellenists to take Diotima as a fictional character – created with the aim of expressing Plato’s idea of ​​Eros, and as a way of embodying his thesis of Platonic love -, to many others the existence of this philosopher is accredited in The banquet. Here is the core of the speech:

“Well, this is precisely the correct way to approach the things of love or to be led by another: starting with the beautiful things here and using them as steps to continually ascend, based on that beauty, from one to the other. two and two to all the beautiful bodies and from beautiful bodies to beautiful standards of conduct, and from standards of conduct to beautiful knowledgeand starting from these, end in that knowledge that is knowledge of nothing else but that absolute beauty, so that I finally know what beauty itself is.

(…)

In this period of life, dear Socrates, said the stranger from Mantinea, more than in any other, it is worth living for man.: when he contemplates beauty itself. If you ever see it, it will seem to you that it is not even comparable to gold…

But are you sure it was just his governess? It seems that this woman, so present in the political and philosophical life of the city, so secure, so autonomous, so annoying in her own way, created a somewhat more intimate relationship with the most relevant thinker of his time. Or so the liars say.

Love according to Diotima

Diotima showed Socrates the master’s genealogyr, explaining to him that this is the child of circumstance and necessity. According to his interpretation, love is not delicate, but rough or mean, master of deception, nocturnal, treacherous. His most important thesis was based on the fact that love, deep down, is a desire for immortality, and he referred to the fact that, while physical love attaches itself like a limpet to the person to search for descendants and thus transcend into the world through children, spiritual love – the most authentic and complex – is the one that truly gives birth to ideas and thoughts that are, by definition, immortal. Diotima operated in this type of love.

His figure was rescued by the magnificent Maria Zambrano in 1956, where the writer proves that the philosopher “was in possession of knowledge more typical of the pre-Socratics and the Pythagoreans.” Of her He refers to her as someone who lowered her voice “lowering toward the earth, like the hand of one who sows seed, bending as she used to at the same time over the earth and over the heart of the occasional listener”. The German poet Hördelin also named one of his love works after the priestess.

Socrates and Diotima

Socrates’ teacher (Espasa) is the first novel to be published about this exceptional woman, signed by Laura More, journalist and cultural expert. The work is based on historical documentation but does not allow itself to be crushed by it so as not to lose freshness and license: let us understand, therefore, from now on, that what Mas recreates are credible encounters and dialogues between Socrates and Diotima. “I’ve heard about you. You like to debate in the streets of Athens and contradict everyone” she says to him in their first meeting in the novel.

The book describes how Diotima was a child of exceptional intelligence who very soon felt called by the priestly vocation to serve Apollo, god of the Sun, beauty and reason. He taught classes to kings, thinkers, mathematicians and poets. When asked what Diotima was like physically, in the novel Socrates describes her face: “Her forehead looked smooth like a spotless snowy surface. Under her straight nose, her lips were a pink flower that opened in the middle of pale, thin skin that bordered on transparency.

Diotima and machismo

Diotima, in any case, was an authoritative voice that was problematic in a world of silenced women who had to be cordoned off at home. In a world of submissive women, Diotima was powerful, she was psychic, she was strong. Without going any further, for the Swiss jurist, anthropologist, theorist of matriarchy and philologist Johann Jakob BachofenDiotima was, along with the poet Sappho and the aristocrat Tanaquil -wife of Tarquinius Priscus, the first Etruscan king-, “the main representative of a culture of the feminine in a patriarchal world.”

Characters such as Aspasia of Miletus, Pericles, Callimachus, Chaerephon, Heiod or Giorgias and themes such as identity and foreignness are outlined -Aspasia and Diotima are outsiders and must face the suspicions of the Antenians-, gender inequalities and war. But the fundamental backbone is love: “What remains of a human being when he is stripped of all false truths? Do you have an answer for that? Maybe, when we strip away everything unnecessary, the only thing that remains is love,” says Diotima.

And there is more: “To love well, you must be aware that you need love like a poor person a plate of food; and, in turn, you must have your five senses open to recognize that this food is within your reach. “Every opportunity to love is unique, it comes only once,” he says. “To be able to love you do not need to find someone full of beauty, but rather contemplate your lover with beauty in your eyes.. If you do not cultivate that way of perceiving, no one will ever seem enough to you, and love will pass by your life, even if it is on the threshold of your house.”

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