| Summary: | The aim of this paper is to reconsider Diotima’s speech, in Plato’s Symposium, from the point of view of the question of enunciation applied to a woman. We start studying the particularly complex device of enunciation, in the light of the theory of èthos exposed in Republic (book 3). One notices that, in direct discourse, Socrates, a 53-year-old man, becomes the spokesman of a mature woman and of a young man having some similarities with Agathon, the well-known effeminate young composer. As being the ultimate relay in the device of enunciation, Apollodorus shows himself capable of imitating all kind of voices, including the most opposite. We may notice too, through many indices, that Plato did not want us to believe in Diotima’s reality. The complementary analysis of the content of the speech makes us understand that the male control of delivery coincides with the withdrawal of ejaculation and consists in giving birth to logoi. The analysis of the myth of Eros, which is confronted to Hesiod’s myth, suggests that the paederastic relation turns into a relation between a midwife and a mother who delivers « beautiful discourses ». The paper ends by drawing the consequences of the comparison of the function of the midwife in the Symposium and in the Theaetetus.
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