What can Love be then? I said. A mortal?
"Far from it."
Well, what?
"As in my previous examples, he is half-way between mortal and immortal."
What sort of being is he then, Diotima?
"He is a great spirit, Socrates, everything that is the nature of a spirit is half-god and half-man."
Who are his parents? I asked.
"That is a rather long story," she answered, "but I will tell you. On the day that Aphrodite was born the gods were feasting, among them Contrivance [Cunning], the son of Invention; and after dinner, seeing that a party was in progress, Poverty [Need], came to beg and stood at the door.
Now Contrivance was drunk with nectar - wine, I may say, had not yet been discovered - and went out into the garden of Zeus, and was overcome with sleep. So Poverty, thinking to alleviate her wretched condition by bearing a child to Contrivance, lay with him and conceived Love. Since Love was begotten on Aphrodite's birthday, and since he has also an innate passion for the beautiful, and so for the beauty of Aphrodite herself, he became her follower and servant.
Again, having Contrivance for his father and Poverty for this mother, he bears the following character. He is always poor and far from being sensitive and beautiful as most people imagine, he is hard and weather-beaten, shoeless and homeless, always sleeping out for want of a bed, on the ground, on doorsteps, and in the street. So far he takes after his mother and lives in want. But, being also his father's son, he schemes to get for himself whatever is beautiful and good; he is bold and forward and strenuous, always devising tricks, like a cunning huntsmen."
- Plato, Symposium
Translated by Walter Hamilton