Context
Plato sets the action in a symposium hosted by the poet Agathon to celebrate his first victory in a dramatic competition, the Dionysia of 416 BC. There he develops a discussion between the guests on the theme of love. Aristodemus, who was present, reported the conversation to Phoinix and Apollodorus. Phoinix told it to another, unnamed person; meanwhile Apollodorus checked it with Socrates, who was present. The unnamed person has told it to Glaucon (Plato's brother, an interlocutor in the Republic), but has given him an unreliable version and has left him uncertain how long ago the discussion took place. Glaucon has now obtained a better version from Apollodorus, who is thus primed to tell the story again to a friend. From this point on, he will be quoting Aristodemus (172a-174a). The dramatic date of the frame conversation, in which Apollodorus speaks to his unnamed friend, is estimated to be between 401 BC (fifteen years after Agathon won his prize) and the time when Socrates was tried and executed in 399 BC.
Andrew Dalby considers the opening pages of the Symposium the best description in any ancient Greek source of the ramifications of an oral tradition. Plato has set up a multitude of layers between the original symposium and his written narrative: he heard it fourth-hand (if we are to identify him with Apollodorus's friend), so it comes to us fifth-hand. In addition, the story Socrates narrates was told to Socrates by Diotima, creating one more layer between the reader and the philosophic path that Socrates traces. Other scholars, like Walter Hamilton think that the content of the dialoge is fictitious, though set in historical time, and with historical characters.
Read more about this topic: Symposium (Plato)
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