Uninvited to a Wise Man's Feast
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Socrates — τὰ πολεμικά, τὸν δὲ Μενέλεων μαλθακὸν αἰχμητήν, θυσίαν ποιουμένου καὶ ἑστιῶντος τοῦ Ἀγαμέμνονος ἄκλητον ἐποίησεν ἐλθόντα τὸν Μενέλεων ἐπὶ τὴν θοίνην, χείρω ὄντα ἐπὶ τὴν τοῦ ἀμείνονος. ταῦτʼ ἀκούσας εἰπεῖν ἔφη
Aristodemus — ἴσως μέντοι κινδυνεύσω καὶ ἐγὼ οὐχ ὡς σὺ λέγεις, ὦ Σώκρατες, ἀλλὰ καθʼ Ὅμηρον φαῦλος ὢν ἐπὶ σοφοῦ ἀνδρὸς ἰέναι θοίνην ἄκλητος. ὅρα οὖν ἄγων με τί ἀπολογήσῃ, ὡς ἐγὼ μὲν οὐχ ὁμολογήσω ἄκλητος
at war, but Menelaus a soft spearman — while Agamemnon was sacrificing and feasting, he made Menelaus come to the banquet uninvited — the lesser man, at the feast of the better. Hearing this, he replied, perhaps, though, I too run the risk — not as you say, Socrates — but as Homer says — an ordinary man, going uninvited to a wise man's feast. So mind, since you're bringing me, what defense you'll make — since I, for my part, won't agree that I came uninvited…
Socrates is still finishing the joke he began at 174b, turning an old proverb inside out by way of Homer's Agamemnon and Menelaus, as he and Aristodemus walk to Agathon's house. Aristodemus, hearing where the logic leads, turns it straight back on Socrates: if the rule is that the lesser goes uninvited to the feast of the better, it is he — ordinary, unphilosophical — who is the uninvited guest here, not Socrates.
Aristodemus answers with a lawyer's word. He will not have to apologēsēi — make his apologia, his formal defense — because he never claimed to come on his own. It sounds like dinner-party banter: since you dragged me here, you explain it. But apologia is not a casual word; it names a set defense speech given before a jury, and it is the very word Plato will later put in the title of his own account of Socrates' trial. Years before any courtroom, over a squabble about who deserves an invitation to Agathon's house, Plato has Aristodemus hand his friend, lightly and in jest, the vocabulary of the defense Socrates will someday have to give in earnest. The Phaedrus plays a related game with anticipation — Socrates there predicts his own excess of speech before it happens to him. Here the foreshadowing is smaller and funnier, but the habit is the same: Plato lets an ordinary word carry a weight its speaker doesn't yet feel.
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