Socrates was used as a literary mouthpiece by many of the so-called 'Socratics', followers of the infamous 'Gadfly' who themselves went on to have illustrious careers as writers and thinkers. Several of these - chiefly Plato, Xenophon and Aeschines - depicted their master as a philosopher and fine connoisseur of that greatest of human pleasures and agonies: love.