Socrates in the Doorway
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Aristodemus — ὄπισθεν ἐμοῦ ἄρτι εἰσῄει· ἀλλὰ θαυμάζω καὶ αὐτὸς ποῦ ἂν εἴη.
Agathon — οὐ σκέψῃ, ἔφη, παῖ, φάναι τὸν Ἀγάθωνα, καὶ εἰσάξεις Σωκράτη; σὺ δʼ, ἦ δʼ ὅς, Ἀριστόδημε, παρʼ Ἐρυξίμαχον κατακλίνου.
Aristodemus — καὶ ἓ μὲν ἔφη ἀπονίζειν τὸν παῖδα ἵνα κατακέοιτο· ἄλλον δέ τινα τῶν παίδων ἥκειν ἀγγέλλοντα ὅτι Σωκράτης οὗτος ἀναχωρήσας ἐν τῷ τῶν γειτόνων προθύρῳ ἕστηκεν, κἀμοῦ καλοῦντος οὐκ ἐθέλει εἰσιέναι.
Agathon — ἄτοπόν γʼ, ἔφη, λέγεις· οὔκουν καλεῖς αὐτὸν καὶ μὴ ἀφήσεις;
He was coming in right behind me, just now; but I myself am wondering too where he can be. Won't you look, he said, boy, said Agathon, and bring Socrates in? And you, he said, Aristodemus, recline next to Eryximachus. And, he said, a servant washed him so he could recline; and another servant came announcing that this Socrates had drawn back and was standing in the neighbors' doorway, and, though I called, he won't come in. That's strange indeed, he said, what you're saying. Won't you call him, and not let him go?
Still relaying Aristodemus's account, Apollodorus continues: pressed by Agathon on where Socrates has gone, Aristodemus admits he doesn't know — Socrates was right behind him a moment ago. Agathon sends a servant to fetch him and seats Aristodemus next to Eryximachus, unbothered — but the servant comes back with a strange report: Socrates has stopped in the neighbors' doorway and, though called, won't come in.
This is the dialogue's first glimpse of a habit Plato returns to at length: Socrates periodically stops still, absorbed in thought, indifferent to who is waiting on him. Agathon calls it atopon — literally placeless, outside the ordinary categories, strange — the very word Alcibiades will use of Socrates again and again near the end of the evening (215a, 221d), when he tries and fails to find any human being Socrates actually resembles. No one here suspects yet what the stillness is for. Later, at Potidaea, a whole day and night of the same trance turns out to be Socrates working a hard thought through to its end. The joke Agathon makes lightly at his own front door names, in miniature, the very thing that will leave Alcibiades speechless: measured against ordinary men, this one simply does not fit.
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