Pausanias Calls for an Easier Pace
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Aristodemus — μετὰ ταῦτα, ἔφη, κατακλινέντος τοῦ Σωκράτους καὶ δειπνήσαντος καὶ τῶν ἄλλων, σπονδάς τε σφᾶς ποιήσασθαι, καὶ ᾁσαντας τὸν θεὸν καὶ τἆλλα τὰ νομιζόμενα, τρέπεσθαι πρὸς τὸν πότον· τὸν οὖν Παυσανίαν ἔφη λόγου τοιούτου τινὸς κατάρχειν. εἶεν, ἄνδρες, φάναι, τίνα τρόπον ῥᾷστα πιόμεθα; ἐγὼ μὲν οὖν λέγω ὑμῖν ὅτι τῷ ὄντι πάνυ χαλεπῶς ἔχω ὑπὸ τοῦ χθὲς πότου καὶ δέομαι ἀναψυχῆς τινος— οἶμαι δὲ καὶ ὑμῶν τοὺς πολλούς· παρῆστε γὰρ χθές— σκοπεῖσθε
After this, he said, with Socrates now reclining and the others having dined, they poured libations, and sang to the god the other customary rites, they turned to their drinking. Then Pausanias, he said, began some such speech: ‘Well, gentlemen,’ he said, ‘in what way can we most easily drink?’ For my part, I tell you that in truth I am quite badly off from yesterday's drinking bout, and I need some relief — I imagine most of you do too, since you were there yesterday — so consider…
Aristodemus’s narration continues: with Socrates now reclining and dinner finished, the company pours libations, sings a hymn, and performs the other customary rites before turning to wine. Pausanias opens the drinking with a proposal, admitting that he — like most of the room — is still feeling the previous night’s excess.
Pausanias asks for anapsychē, ‘refreshment,’ and the word shares its root with psychē, the soul: ana plus psychō, ‘to breathe cool again.’ What he wants from a slower pace tonight is literally a re-breathing, the same verb-stem that later gives Plato his word for the soul’s own breath of life. His complaint is ordinary — a bad head after last night’s wine — but it sets the terms for the evening: Eryximachus will shortly prescribe light drinking on medical grounds, and the speeches on erōs that follow all happen at a table of men who have agreed, for once, to go easy. Yesterday’s potos also carries, almost by accident, the root of symposion itself, ‘a drinking together’ — the word that gives this dialogue its title. The Phaedrus sets its talk of love and the soul outdoors under a plane tree, with no wine at all; here Plato places the same subject at the tail end of one drinking bout and the deliberate slowing of another.
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