R. G. Bury, The Symposium of Plato

φύσει...ἀναγκάζονται. Hug, on quite insufficient grounds, expunges these words. It is true that there was, so far as is known, no law at Athens to enforce matrimony, though there was such a law at Sparta, according to Stob. (Serm. 65 p. 410) and Pollux (VIII. 40), by which citizens were liable to a γραφὴ ἀγαμίου (or ὀψιγαμίου). But, as Hommel notes, νόμος covers not only law but custom; and it appears that “certain disabilities attached, at Athens, to the state of celibacy; those who entered public life, as ῥήτορες or στρατηγοί, were required παιδοποιεῖσθαι κατὰ τοὺς νόμους (Deinarch. c. Demosth. p. 99 § 72)”: see Smith D. A. I. 43 a. And it is to be noticed that it is precisely public men who are spoken of in the text. The antithesis φύσει )( νόμῳ derives from the Sophists (Hippias v. Protagoras), see my Philebus p. xxviii n., Adam R. T. G. pp. 279 ff., Gomperz G. T. I. pp. 401 ff.

φιλεραστὴς. This applies to the ἐρώμενος; cp. the use of φιλεραστία in 213 D. Those who are παιδερασταί in manhood were φιλερασταί in boyhood (φιλοῦσι τοὺς ἄνδρας 191 E), so that the words here are put in chiastic order, as Stallb. observes. Hommel absurdly suggests that π. τε καὶ φιλεραστής may denote “virum qui neque alios vituperet amatores puerorum, et ipse pueros amet.” The point is also missed by Rückert's “amicorum amator,” and Wolf's “sodalium amator.”

αὐτῷ...ἡμίσει. This refers to 191 D, ζητεῖ δὴ ἀεὶ τὸ αὑτοῦ ξύμβολον.

ἄλλος πᾶς. This is a short way of referring comprehensively to the segments of the other ὅλα, viz. the androgynous and the “Doppelweib” (191 D, E).

θαυμαστὰ ἐκπλήττονται κτλ. Cp. 211 D.