Let Him Be
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Aristodemus — καὶ ὃς ἔφη εἰπεῖν μηδαμῶς, ἀλλʼ ἐᾶτε αὐτόν. ἔθος γάρ τι τοῦτʼ ἔχει· ἐνίοτε ἀποστὰς ὅποι ἂν τύχῃ ἕστηκεν. ἥξει δʼ αὐτίκα, ὡς ἐγὼ οἶμαι. μὴ οὖν κινεῖτε, ἀλλʼ ἐᾶτε. ἀλλʼ οὕτω χρὴ ποιεῖν, εἰ σοὶ δοκεῖ, ἔφη φάναι τὸν Ἀγάθωνα. ἀλλʼ ἡμᾶς, ὦ παῖδες, τοὺς ἄλλους ἑστιᾶτε. πάντως παρατίθετε ὅτι ἂν βούλησθε, ἐπειδάν τις ὑμῖν μὴ ἐφεστήκῃ— ὃ ἐγὼ οὐδεπώποτε ἐποίησα— νῦν οὖν, νομίζοντες καὶ ἐμὲ ὑφʼ ὑμῶν κεκλῆσθαι ἐπὶ δεῖπνον καὶ τούσδε τοὺς
And he said, 'By no means — let him be. For this is a habit of his: sometimes he steps aside, wherever he happens to be, and just stands. He'll come presently, I think. So don't disturb him — just let him be.' 'Well, we must do it that way, if that's how it seems best to you,' said Agathon. 'But wait on the rest of us, boys. In any case, serve whatever you like, since no one is presiding over you — a thing I've never done — so now, considering that you've invited me too, by you, to dinner, and these others too—
Continuing directly from 175a: told that Socrates has withdrawn to the neighbors' porch and won't come in when called, Agathon wants him fetched. Aristodemus, who has seen this before, talks him out of it — it is a habit of Socrates' — and Agathon takes it in stride, turning at once to brief the serving-boys on running the dinner without him for now.
The Greek keeps stacking verbs of saying — ephē eipein here, ephē phanai two sentences later — because the account is nested three tellers deep: Apollodorus is retelling what Aristodemus told him, and inside that report Aristodemus repeats what Agathon said. English collapses all of it to a single "he said"; Plato's syntax keeps the relay visible, each speaker's words folded inside the next one's telling. It is the same architecture the whole Symposium is built on — Apollodorus opens the dialogue by admitting he wasn't even at the dinner himself, only heard about it from Aristodemus — and here, for one sentence, a reader can feel that machinery actually turning. Agathon's aside to the slaves is a smaller pleasure: "something I've never done," he admits, handing his household free rein for the night, a small tell that this is still a young poet's party, not yet worn comfortably into the role of host.
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