Taking its start from Ovid’s Ars Amatoria, this essay explores various possible antecedents in the philosophical tradition, Platonist and Stoic. It argues for a process of formalization, in the Hellenistic era and later, of the criteria for ‘noble’, or philosophical, erotic relationships, to be derived from such dialogues as Lysis, Symposium, Phaedrus, and, not least, Alcibiades I, based on Socrates’ claim, at the end of the Phaedrus, that he possessed an erōtikē tekhnē. Such a tekhnē would have theōrēmata, and these were listed as (1) selecting a suitable love-object, or axierastos; (2) commending oneself to him; and (3) guiding him to moral and intellectual self-improvement. I suggest that Polemon, in the Old Academy, may have been instrumental in developing such a theory, but we find it formalized only much later, in the Didaskalikos of Alcinous, while further information is forthcoming from the Platonic commentaries of Hermeias (on the Phaedrus) and Proclus (on the Alcibiades). I argue that the Alcibiades seems to assume a more central role than the other dialogues in later Platonist theory, and acknowledge the important role of the Stoics in its formalization.

This chapter investigates the apparent conflict in Plato presenting two apparently rather different things – fulfilling human nature and godlikeness – as the human telos. Fan argues that these two accounts are in fact compatible, if we understand the fulfilment of human nature as making the divine part in us flourish. If virtue is understood as a disposition to cope with evils that exist in the human condition but not in the divine life, it is hard to see how becoming virtuous fits with becoming godlike. In the Theaetetus, however, Plato understands becoming virtuous as a flight from the world. This has traditionally been understood as engaging in theory as opposed to praxis. However, such an understanding raises the problem that in the Theaetetus and in the Republic, justice, and thus being concerned with treating other people appropriately, is presented as a central virtue which speaks against understanding the flight idea merely in theoretical terms. Fan argues that instead of identifying the idea of fleeing from the world with withdrawing from practical affairs, we should understand it as a kind of self-transformation, in such a way that we are no longer rooted in the natural world, but in divine, transcendent reality.

Chapter One examines the representation of both choral and solo dance in Books 6–8 of the Odyssey, arguing that the representation of virtuosic Phaeacian dance in the eighth book of the poem underscores the tense relationship between Odysseus and his Phaeacian hosts and articulates distinctions between choral and solo dance that echo across Greek literature. While the Odyssey itself is much earlier than the late Archaic and Classical texts explored in subsequent chapters, the models of performance set forth in Archaic hexameter poetry retain their currency in Greek culture through the time of Plato and beyond. The chapter thus considers Homeric poetry as paradigmatic for the representation of both choral and solo dance. The chapter also advances a new reading of the role of dance in the Phaeacian books of the Odyssey, arguing that the Homeric poet presents embodied performance and action as a means by which Odysseus and the Phaeacians negotiate their fraught relationship. My analysis highlights the disruptive and competitive elements of dance that simmer beneath the surface of the poem, suggesting that the prevailing scholarly interest in choral dancing has occluded the unique and unusual elements of Phaeacian dance.