Nobody Is Fit to Drink
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Pausanias — οὖν τίνι τρόπῳ ἂν ὡς ῥᾷστα πίνοιμεν.
Aristodemus — τὸν οὖν Ἀριστοφάνη εἰπεῖν,
Aristophanes — τοῦτο μέντοι εὖ λέγεις, ὦ Παυσανία, τὸ παντὶ τρόπῳ παρασκευάσασθαι ῥᾳστώνην τινὰ τῆς πόσεως· καὶ γὰρ αὐτός εἰμι τῶν χθὲς βεβαπτισμένων.
Aristodemus — ἀκούσαντα οὖν αὐτῶν ἔφη Ἐρυξίμαχον τὸν Ἀκουμενοῦ
Eryximachus — ἦ καλῶς, φάναι, λέγετε. καὶ ἔτι ἑνὸς δέομαι ὑμῶν ἀκοῦσαι πῶς ἔχει πρὸς τὸ ἐρρῶσθαι πίνειν, Ἀγάθων ος.
Agathon — οὐδαμῶς, φάναι, οὐδʼ αὐτὸς ἔρρωμαι.
So, in what way might we drink as easily as possible. Then Aristophanes said, This indeed you say well, Pausanias — to arrange in every way some ease for the drinking; for I myself am one of those soaked yesterday. Having heard them, Eryximachus, the son of Acumenus, said: Indeed, you speak well. And I still need to hear from one more of you how he stands as regards being fit to drink — Agathon. Not at all, he said, not even I myself am fit.
Continuing Pausanias's sentence from 176a: he has just asked the company to think over how they might drink most comfortably tonight. Aristophanes answers first, then Eryximachus the physician puts the same question to Agathon, their host.
The verb Aristophanes reaches for is baptizō — the same verb that, in the Gospels four centuries later, becomes "baptize." Here it means only "dunked" or "soaked": the word has not yet acquired a drop of religious meaning, and Plato's comic playwright uses it exactly the way we would say someone was "drowned" in wine last night. Eryximachus's little medical poll fits his character. He is a doctor by trade, and asking each man in turn how his body stands toward drink is the same habit of mind he will bring to his own speech on Eros later in the evening, where he treats desire as a matter of bodily mixture and prescription rather than romance. Agathon's one-word confession identifies him as the host who has been drinking the hardest, which will matter again when his own turn to speak arrives.
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