The font and asteroid are news to me. I like to quote the work of dead poets extensively in my lyrics; it's something I've done in my previous bands (and on Dimensional), and I think it helps to lend an extra level of depth to the songs, as well as point curious listeners in the direction of some amazing writing that they might not have been aware of. Diotima of Manitea may or may not have been real. In any case, she is known to us only as a character in Plato's Symposium.
In that text she's a philosopher and teacher of Socrates responsible for the concept of Platonic love—not in the contemporary sense of a sexless relationship, but as the idea that the bonds between us are the bridge to higher consciousness, the sphere of Platonic ideals, referred to as the divine (though latter-day Christian overtones makes me wary of using that word). The song, however, refers more directly to Friedrich Holderlin's poem “Ode to Diotima,” in which she's a symbol of not only her central innovation but also the purity (in his opinion) of the Classical past, relative to his 18th century European life.
It's just the common idea that existence was somehow better in bygone eras—remember the lyrics to Death's "Altering the Future"? I don't necessarily share his view that things get worse or better, but I think our consciousness changes in important, if not fundamental ways as we change the physical ways in which we exist. Now, with the increasing ability to slingshot one's mind around the world and beyond with technology, I feel we may be on the verge of another big shift, so the song refers to three vantage points: that of the original Diotima, Holderlin's and my own.
An interesting detail I discovered after recording was that Diotima was also Holderlin's secret name for the wife of his boss, with whom he was in love; so we've got the lofty, intellectual side contrasted with base physicality and carnal hunger, which nicely mirrors the concept of Platonic love. A tidy conceptual circle!