guilt of corrupting the minds of prominent youths, which had, in fact, earned Socrates the death sentence in 399 BC. As a response to Aristophanes Aristophanes' comedy, The Frogs (405 BC), attacks the new tragedy of Agathon and Euripides, and opposes it to the old tragedy of Aeschylus. In The Frogs, Dionysus, the god of theatre and wine, descends into Hades and observes a heated dispute between Aeschylus and Euripides over who is the best in tragedy. Dionysus is engaged to be the judge, and decides the outcome, not based on the merits of the two tragedians, but based on their political stance regarding the political figure, Alcibiades. Since Aeschylus prefers Alcibiades, Dionysus declares Aeschylus the winner. That contest provides the basic structure on which the Symposium is modeled as a kind of sequel: In the Symposium, Agathon has just celebrated a victory the day before and is now hosting another kind of debate, this time it is between a tragedian, a comic poet, and Socrates. At the beginning of the Symposium, Agathon asserts that "Dionysus will be the judge", and Dionysus is, though Alcibiades performs as a surrogate for the god. So the character, Alcibiades, who was the deciding factor in the debate in The Frogs, becomes the judge in the Symposium, and he now rules in favor of Socrates, who had been attacked by Aristophanes in The Clouds. The Symposium is a response to The Frogs, and shows Socrates winning not only over Aristophanes, who was the author of both The Frogs, and The Clouds, but also over the tragic poet who was portrayed in that comedy as the victor. Synopsis The dialogue's seven main characters, who deliver major speeches, are: Phaedrus (speech begins 178a): an Athenian aristocrat associated with the inner-circle of the philosopher Socrates, familiar from Phaedrus and other dialogues Pausanias (speech begins 180c): the legal expert Eryximachus (speech begins 186a): a physician Aristophanes (speech begins 189c): the eminent comic playwright Agathon (speech begins 195a): a tragic poet, host of the banquet, that celebrates the triumph of his first tragedy Socrates (speech begins 201d): the eminent philosopher and Plato's teacher Alcibiades (speech begins 214e): a prominent Athenian statesman, orator, and general The story of the banquet is narrated by Apollodorus, but before the narration proper begins, it is shown that Apollodorus is telling the story to a friend of his that is not named, and also