# Apollodorus — Dialogues character guide

> Apollodorus in Dialogues by Plato.

**Role:** supporting

**Also known as:** Apollodorus of Cyzicus

**First appearance:** 0031-symposium

## Snapshot

A fervent, self-lacerating follower of Socrates who narrates the Symposium with breathless devotion and contempt for ordinary Athenian life.

## Who they are

Apollodorus walks the road to Athens retelling the speeches on love, insisting he knows them by heart because he has made it his daily business to know everything Socrates says and does. He calls his former self wretched and pities his companions for thinking they are doing something when they are doing nothing, a mixture of zeal and self-reproach that makes him both comic and touching. He matters because his obsessive memory preserves the Symposium for us, and his conversion from aimless businessman to philosopher shows what Socratic eros can do to a life.

## Links

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