Not Unrehearsed
Read the full text in our reader
Apollodorus — δοκῶ μοι περὶ ὧν πυνθάνεσθε οὐκ ἀμελέτητος εἶναι. καὶ γὰρ ἐτύγχανον πρῴην εἰς ἄστυ οἴκοθεν ἀνιὼν Φαληρόθεν· τῶν οὖν γνωρίμων τις ὄπισθεν κατιδών με πόρρωθεν ἐκάλεσε, καὶ παίζων ἅμα τῇ κλήσει, ὦ Φαληρεύς, ἔφη, οὗτος Ἀπολλόδωρος, οὐ περιμένεις; κἀγὼ ἐπιστὰς περιέμεινα. καὶ ὅς, Ἀπολλόδωρε, ἔφη, καὶ μὴν καὶ ἔναγχός σε ἐζήτουν βουλόμενος διαπυθέσθαι τὴν Ἀγάθωνος συνουσίαν
I think I am not unrehearsed about what you are asking. In fact, the other day I happened to be going up to town from home in Phalerum; and so someone I knew spotted me from behind, a long way off, and called out, joking at once in his shout: Hey, Phalerian! he said, you there, Apollodorus — won't you wait up? And I stopped and waited. And he: Apollodorus, he said, actually, just now I was looking for you, wanting to find out about the gathering at Agathon's
The opening words of the dialogue. Apollodorus is answering friends who have asked him about the famous drinking party at Agathon's house, and he begins by assuring them the story is ready to hand — then tells how he came to have it ready. The section breaks off in mid-sentence; the friend's request runs on into 172b.
That makes the dialogue's opening move a claim about memory, and it is exactly the claim its companion dialogue worries at. In the Phaedrus Socrates complains that written words are like painted figures, which keep a very solemn silence when you ask them anything (275d), and prefers the speech written in the soul of a learner (276a). Apollodorus has nothing on a page. What he offers is still a set piece, smooth from repetition, and Plato leaves it undecided whether that is the living word or a recitation. The rest of the section is comedy at the narrator's expense: the friend hails him down the street with a flat nominative rather than a vocative — ō Phalēreus, 'You there, Phalerian' — the brusque street-shout, and only when he has Apollodorus stopped does the real vocative, Apollodōre, arrive.
Read the full commentary — and tap any word for its dictionary entry — in the interlinear reader.
Open Plato, Symposium 172a in the full reader
Always open passages in the reader
You are reading a page of the Plato, Symposium — the whole book is free in our interlinear reader.
The Great Library Project presses the classics in their original languages, glossed word by word — free to read, always. Browse the whole library.
Also on our shelves:
Plato, Symposium 172a — The Great Library Project interlinear edition · greatlibraryproject.com/book/symposium/172a/