Agathon - Plato's Epigram

Plato's Epigram

Agathon has been thought to be the subject of Lovers' Lips, an epigram attributed to Plato:

Kissing Agathon, I had my soul upon my lips; for it rose, poor wretch, as though to cross over.

A looser translation reads:

Kissing Agathon, I found my soul at my lips. Poor thing! It went there, hoping--to slip across.

Although the authenticity of this epigram was accepted for many centuries, it was probably not composed for Agathon the tragedian, nor was it composed by Plato. Stylistic evidence suggests that the poem (with most of Plato's other alleged epigrams) was actually written some time after Plato had died: its form is that of the Hellenistic erotic epigram, which did not become popular until after 300 BC. According to 20th-century scholar Walther Ludwig, the poems were spuriously inserted into an early biography of Plato sometime between 250 BC and 100 BC and adopted by later writers from this source.