Talk:Diotima of Mantinea

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I was looking at this site to gather more information and Diotima and notice a typo. It is not Plato whom diotima tutors but instead Socrates. Or at least that how I understand it, please comment.

Robotjon 02:52, 6 December 2006 (UTC)jon

You're absolutely correct. I just fixed it now. { Ben S. Nelson } _Lucidish 16:03, 6 December 2006 (UTC)

pronunciation

Does anyone know how to pronounce this in English? The Greek is Διοτίμα, but I can't find whether the iota in the penult is long or short, and without that can't tell where the stress goes (dye-O-t^-m^ or dye-^-TEE-m^). If anyone knows which vowels were long in Latin, that would work just as well. kwami 00:49, 9 May 2007 (UTC)

The i is long, so that the standard English pronunciation is dye-oh-TYE-muh. However, most Classicists and philosophers revert to the less English version in your second suggestion (and your first suggestion is fairly widely spoken as well). Wareh 16:11, 18 June 2007 (UTC)

Well, I have a degree in classics and once took a translation course on Plato’s Symposium. I had never heard the pronunciation indicated in the article. The typical pronunciation I had heard was along the lines of Dee-oh-TEE-mah, which closely matches the Greek and Latin. BTW, she’s almost certainly fictional. Antinoos69 (talk) 04:55, 26 May 2019 (UTC)

Important role?

Can she "play an important role" in the Symposium, if she wasn't there? Myrvin (talk) 12:47, 29 October 2010 (UTC)

Symposium the work of literature, not the dinner that the work narrates. CaveatLector ^{Talk Contrib} 19:42, 18 March 2014 (UTC)

"Mantinike"

The Greek form of this place, Mantinike, notably appears to contain the root mantis, which means “prophet, seer,” and strongly suggests that Diotima is herself a prophetess, or at least is somehow associated with prophecy. Diotima Mantinike thus would sound like “Diotima from Prophet-victory” is unsatisfactory. It appears there is no place called "Mantinike" either in ancient or modern Greek. But if Mantinike or Mantinice existed it would be in the nominative case, and could not mean (or "sound like") "from" anything. This paragraph looks spurious and should be deleted. Deipnosophista (talk) 17:09, 9 January 2017 (UTC)

Mantinike is her association to Mantinea or its territory. While the paragraph would still be dubious itself, it happens to explain a later sentence, so I've moved it there.Emelkaji (talk) 16:35, 17 November 2019 (UTC)

Now that I've seen the source, it seems the whole section was directly copied from it, which means it should be rewritten.Emelkaji (talk) 13:38, 24 November 2019 (UTC)

The offending paragraph has been rewritten. The rest of the section was not copied, at least not from that source. I would still suggest editing out the "nike" pun, which unlike the reference to "mantis" is not representative of the literature, or at least adding the source's interpretation for its ironic context which the article doesn't mention.Emelkaji (talk) 11:57, 1 December 2019 (UTC)

restructure

It seems like the majority of classical scholars have not accepted the arguments of Waite that Diotima was a real person, so I have restructured the article to present the arguments from Nussbaum, D'Angour, and Waite separately, without any uncited editorializing in between. To note, the website of the Women's classical caucus that bears her name characterizes her as "probably not real" so I'm inclined to believe that the scholarly consensus among classical scholars leans more in that direction. - car chasm (talk) 05:49, 18 January 2023 (UTC)

Yes, I'd agree that the scholarly consensus is "probably not real". That's Debra Nails' assessment of the majority view in People of Plato (2002), and I don't know that any more recent challenges to that view have been widely accepted – David Sasone's review of D'Angour for the Bryn Mawr Classical Review is skeptical of his thesis. Of major classical reference works, the latest edition of the Oxford Classical Dictionary calls her "actual or fictional" and Brill's New Pauly says that it's impossible to be certain if she was real. Caeciliusinhorto-public (talk) 12:55, 18 January 2023 (UTC)

She is mentioned outside of the Symposium, and separate from Aspasia

"τιμᾶν δὲ ἤδη καὶ Ἀσπασίαν μετὰ Σωκράτους τὴν ἐκ Μιλήτου τὴν ἐξ οἰκήματος ὡς Διοτίμαν ἐπαινεῖν τὴν σοφήν: ταῦτα γὰρ Ἀλκιβιάδης ἀπαιτεῖ παρ' ἡμῶν καὶ τοιούτοις ἥδεται" (=henceforth to honor Aspasia of Miletus at the same time as Socrates, just like praising the wise Diotima : this is what Alcibiades demands of us, this is the kind of things that make him happy) Libanius - Declamatio XII,2,38

"καὶ τοῦτο Τιμαίῳ γνώριμον καὶ εὐπαράδεκτον, εἰδότι τοὺς βίους τῶν Πυθαγορείων γυναικῶν, τῆς Θεανοῦς, τῆς Τιμύχας, τῆς Διοτίμας αὐτῆς" (=All this was well known and recognized by Timaeus, who knew well the lives of the Pythagorean women, Theano, Timycha, and this Diotima) Proclus: Commentary on Plato's 'Republic' 1, 248 2A02:1388:4096:86F2:5599:1F28:B9C3:9C62 (talk) 02:53, 5 June 2023 (UTC)

Libanius was born more than 700 years after the death of Socrates, and Proclus a century after that. It's not at all clear from those two quotes that either of them had any information separate from what was in Plato. Nor is it clear what if anything you are suggesting should change in this article. If you have suggestions for changes based upon modern secondary sources, please state them clearly (or boldly make them yourself - the article is not protected and unregistered users can edit it!). Please don't make changes based upon your own interpretations of single lines from two much later ancient sources, however. Caeciliusinhorto-public (talk) 15:41, 5 June 2023 (UTC)

I just checked Debra Nails' proposography - she actually says that all later references are derived from Plato, so I've updated the page to say that so it's more clear. - car chasm (talk) 16:06, 5 June 2023 (UTC)