Plato: Symposium (Cambridge Greek and Latin Classics) (Greek Edition)

There are three good commentaries I know of on the Symposium. There is Rosen's, whose virtue is scholarly depth. Allen's, which unlike Rosen's, is good as an introduction and for those who simply want to enjoy the Symposium without getting entangled in scholarship. Finally there is this one, whose primary virtue is as a commentary of the Greek. This book, unlike Allen's, contains no English translation. If you want to read Symposium in Greek and need help or if you want to look up various terms in Greek, this is the book for you. If, on the other hand, you don't read Greek, or are uninterested in Greek there is a high likelihood you will be disappointed by this book.

Wonderful comments. Great for reading The Symposium in the original.

I am in my third year of studying Ancient Greek at university and this semester our class is reading Plato's Symposium. This is the edition our professor wanted us to get and I am glad to say, Amazon was extremely helpful. I have (only occasionally) come across books on Amazon where, according to various reviews, the book being sold is different from the product description in some way: thinner paper, lots of typos, etc., and I was excited to find that this was not the case. The physical book is great! It's small and durable, but still very easy on the eyes in terms of the layout and spacing of letters and words. With regard to the actual content of the book, I have to agree with the editorial review provided by "Greece and Rome" about how "This commentary...does three things superbly" in the main section of the product page. By all measures this is an excellent text for anyone looking to read Plato's Symposium in the original Greek, although you should definitely have Liddell & Scott's intermediate lexicon handy. Hopefully this review was helpful!

GREAT TRANSLATION OF A GREAT BOOK!

Dover offers an excellent edition of the Greek text, with a brief but probing introduction, and extensive notes on vocabulary and grammar. The notes, as always in the Cambridge editions, seem hard to scan for a particular passage. Dover at least had the foresight to group his notes into smaller clumps, set in accord with the Stephanus numbers. This makes searching for the note on some particular line or phrase far more straightforward.

The supplemental notes are good, sometimes it doesn't help you through difficult passages, and other times it gives you information you should know already, but otherwise good. A vocab list would have been nice though.