| Summary: | This study investigates the reason why, in Plato’s Symposium, Socrates delivers his lesson on Eros by reporting a dialogue between two characters, Diotima, and Socrates when he was younger. I show first that each character of this embedded dialogue can be considered as a mix of the two characters of the framing dialogue (Agathon and Socrates as an accomplished philosopher): Diotima is the dialectician Socrates considered from the point of view of a poet and a follower of the sophists, whilst the young Socrates is Agathon dressed up as a dialectician. Drawing on this description, I argue that the mask of Diotima, and more generally the whole dialogue narrated by Socrates, are literary devices designed to provide, besides a theory of love, a lesson in communication that prompts the reader to interpret correctly the lesson on eros: (1) Plato shows that the dialectician must adapt his lesson to his addressees, (2) he brings out the limits of a lesson on eros delivered in the form of a didactic monologue, and (3) he vindicates the necessity of teaching through reported dialogue, whether orally or in writing.
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