My reading of Plato's Symposium

Eros' (Love's) role is to transform one's aspiration, one's attraction towards the "beautiful" and the "good" into perpetual possession through procreation (relating to both body and soul.) He achieves this transformation by inspiring one to contemplate the intelligible and the beautiful. This contemplation (assimilated to "birth giving divinities") in turns gives birth to beautiful speeches about knowledge and virtue (philosophy), nice verses (poetry), etc... Indeed, education is no longer seen as the acquisition of a skill relative to sensible, material things, but rather as a conversion: the teacher helps the student to look at the world of ideas (made up of "intelligible forms" which are considered to be the real truth) as a model of which sensible things are merely images. So finally, procreation gives access to immortality on two levels: on the species level (related to the body) and on the individual level (related to the soul.)

SENECA LVCILIO SVO SALVTEM

Here is what I remember (and try to apply to my daily life) from the few Moral letters to Lucilius (written by Seneca) I studied in high school:

1. About friendship: you should be able to say anything to a true friend. You should talk to a true friend in the same way as you talk to yourself.
2. About knowledge: it is useless to have more books in your library than the ones you are actually able to read and digest.
3. About material things: you should be able to treat dishes made of clay as if they were dishes made of silver, and dishes made of silver as if they were dishes made of clay.

Vale.