Plato's "Symposium" opens with Apollodorus saying "Oh, if that's what you want to know, it isn't long since I had occasion to refresh my memory." Apollodorus's friend wants to know what happened at a famous "symposium" (literally, a "drinking together") that had taken place some years earlier, and Apollodorus had recently related them to another friend, Glaucon.
Apollodorus had heard this story from Aristodemus, who was present at the drinking party held at Agathon's house to celebrate Agathon's prize in a playfest. Apollodorus then narrates, second-hand, the events of that evening. What follows are a series of discourses on love told in succession, in our version, by Phaedrus, Pausanius, Eryximachus, the playwright Aristophanes, the philosopher Socrates and the drunken latecomer to the party, Alcibiades.
That's the narrative frame of the piece. All this can be a little confusing to pick through, coming as it does at the very beginning, but once you figure it out, all you have left to get a handle on is the philosophy!
Another piece of advice comes from John M. Cooper, editor of Plato: Complete Works (Hackett Publishing, 1997). Cooper writes of the Platonic dialogues: "It is in the entire writing that the author speaks to us, not in the remarks made by the individual speakers" (p. xxiii).
It is a good idea, at any rate, to take a pencil and write in the name of each speaker (e.g. "Pausanias:") in order to keep straight whose words are whose.
Pronunciation Guide to the Characters of the Dialogue
AG-a-thon
Al-ci-BY-a-deez
A-pol-o-DO-rus
Ar-is-TOF-a-neez
Dy-o-TEE-ma
Er-ix-IM-a-kus
GLAU-con
Pau-SAN-i-as
FEE-drus
(This guide comes from Plato: Five Great Dialogues, B. Jowett, trans., Louise Ropes Loomis, ed., New York: Walter J. Black, 1942)
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