Dionysus as Judge
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Socrates — σοφία, πολλοῦ τιμῶμαι τὴν παρὰ σοὶ κατάκλισιν· οἶμαι γάρ με παρὰ σοῦ πολλῆς καὶ καλῆς σοφίας πληρωθήσεσθαι. ἡ μὲν γὰρ ἐμὴ φαύλη τις ἂν εἴη, ἢ καὶ ἀμφισβητήσιμος ὥσπερ ὄναρ οὖσα, ἡ δὲ σὴ λαμπρά τε καὶ πολλὴν ἐπίδοσιν ἔχουσα, ἥ γε παρὰ σοῦ νέου ὄντος οὕτω σφόδρα ἐξέλαμψεν καὶ ἐκφανὴς ἐγένετο πρῴην ἐν μάρτυσι τῶν Ἑλλήνων πλέον ἢ τρισμυρίοις.
Agathon — ὑβριστὴς εἶ, ἔφη, ὦ Σώκρατες, ὁ Ἀγάθων. καὶ ταῦτα μὲν καὶ ὀλίγον ὕστερον διαδικασόμεθα ἐγώ τε καὶ σὺ περὶ τῆς σοφίας, δικαστῇ χρώμενοι τῷ Διονύσῳ· νῦν δὲ πρὸς τὸ δεῖπνον πρῶτα τρέπου.
Wisdom, I prize highly this reclining beside you for I think that I will be filled by you with much fine wisdom. Mine would be a poor sort, even doubtful, being like a dream, but yours is brilliant and has much room to grow, since, from you, young as you were, so intensely blazed out and became manifest just recently, before witnesses of the Greeks — more than thirty thousand. You're insolent, said Agathon, Socrates. This you and I will settle a little later, about our wisdom, with Dionysus as judge; but now, turn first to dinner.
Continuing Socrates' sentence from 175d: he finishes the comparison of wisdom to water leveling between vessels, then explains why he prizes his couch beside Agathon. Agathon, freshly triumphant at yesterday's tragic competition, calls him insolent and proposes they settle the question of wisdom later, with Dionysus presiding as judge, before turning everyone to dinner.
The joke reaches further than table talk. Agathon won first prize for tragedy only the day before, judged under this same god, whom Socrates now nominates, half in jest, to judge which of them possesses the greater sophia. A private dinner-table quarrel borrows the vocabulary of the public courts and the public stage at once — dikastēs, a juror; diadikazomai, to have a suit tried — as though wisdom could be settled the way a lawsuit or a tragedy is, by a verdict and a crowd. Socrates is needling the whole occasion: Agathon's brilliance was proved before thirty thousand witnesses, a number no one could argue with, while whatever Socrates knows has no such audience and no such certificate. The rest of the evening will, in fact, turn into exactly this kind of contest — speech answering speech in honor of Eros, staged the night after an actual dramatic competition — so the mock lawsuit over wisdom here quietly previews the real one already beginning.
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