DIOTIMA

Diotima (i.e. the one who honors Zeus) was a priestess from the ancient Mantineia of Arcadia, she is mentioned in the Platonic "Symposium" as a wise woman, who taught Socrates, according to his own confession, the mysteries of Eros as desire and as a motivation for the beautiful and the true. A connoisseur of Pythagorean numerology, according to Xenophon she was not inexperienced in the most difficult geometric theorems. Diotima was the priestess who cleansed the Athenians after the plague of 429 BC.