| Sumario: | Socrates at the end of Plato's Symposium says that it is the task of the same man to write both tragedy and Comedy. This should be understood at the light of the whole dialogue, which presents and agon between Philosophy, represented by Socrates, and Poetry, represented by Aristophanes and Agatho. Agatho, the tragic poet, is the most criticised, because from Plato's point of view in this dialogue the opposition between Comedy and Tragedy is irrelevant. Both Tragedy and Comedy forebode the search for happiness and liberation which can only be achieved by Philosophy; that is why all three genders are under the patronage of Eros, who is the symbol of this searching. Although Plato considers Drama as second to Philosophy, he has really profound views as to the outmost function of Drama. The Symposium when compared with other Platonic theories on Poetry such as they are found in the Republic and the Laws, with the Poetics of Aristotle and other texts, sheds great light on the study of the origins and evolution of Greek poetical theory from the Pythagoreans and Gorgias to Aristotle.
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