Diotima of Mantinea Essays

The Epic of Gilgamesh conveys numerous themes. Among those are the inevitability of death, the eminence of the gods, and strikingly the importance of love as an impetus. Love, defined in a consummate sense is intimacy, passion, and commitment. These traits are exemplified in Gilgamesh and Enkidu's relationship, and they are also implied between Enkidu and Sham hat. Despite the violent and abrasive nature of the happenings of this text, love is displayed blatantly throughout. From Enkidu's introduction

“Aria: Memoir of a Bilingual Childhood” by Richard Rodriguez highlights the differences between public and private language use. Within paragraph five of his essay, Rodriguez claims, “[i]t is not possible for a child–any child–ever to use his family’s language in school. Not to understand this is to misunderstand the public uses of schooling and trivialize the nature of intimate life–a family’s ‘language.’” Rodriguez builds his claim through the use of amplification throughout. With attention to

that it is not of his own creation, instead being a retelling of a conversation he had with Diotima. Socrates thus comes across as largely uninterested in sex and sexual desire, and instead puts forward an account of Erôs which revolves around Love as a collaborative striving for Goodness, similar to Eryximachus’ appeal to unity and wellness. Socrates speech comes from what he learned from Diotima of Mantinea, who was a priestess who believed that Love is a progressive force which moves one from considering