The Custom as Judge of the Contest
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Pausanias — ἡμέτερος νόμος εὖ καὶ καλῶς βασανίζειν, καὶ τοῖς μὲν χαρίσασθαι, τοὺς δὲ διαφεύγειν. διὰ ταῦτα οὖν τοῖς μὲν διώκειν παρακελεύεται, τοῖς δὲ φεύγειν, ἀγωνοθετῶν καὶ βασανίζων ποτέρων ποτέ ἐστιν ὁ ἐρῶν καὶ ποτέρων ὁ ἐρώμενος. οὕτω δὴ ὑπὸ ταύτης τῆς αἰτίας πρῶτον μὲν τὸ ἁλίσκεσθαι ταχὺ αἰσχρὸν νενόμισται, ἵνα χρόνος ἐγγένηται, ὃς δὴ δοκεῖ τὰ πολλὰ καλῶς βασανίζειν, ἔπειτα τὸ ὑπὸ χρημάτων καὶ ὑπὸ πολιτικῶν δυνάμεων ἁλῶναι αἰσχρόν,
Our custom wishes to test well and truly, granting favor to some, escaping others. For this reason, then, it urges some to pursue, others to flee, judging the contest and testing which of the two is truly the lover, and which the beloved. Thus, then, because of this cause, first, being caught quickly has been deemed shameful, so that time might intervene, which indeed seems to test most things well; next, to be won by money or by political power is shameful,
Continuing directly from 183e's unfinished 'these, then, our custom wishes,' Pausanias spells out what the custom actually wants: to test suitors well, letting some succeed and others fail, with the custom itself acting as an agōnothetēs — a contest-judge — deciding who is truly the lover and who the beloved. He then gives the first two grounds his community judges by: being won too quickly is shameful, since only time tests well, and being won by money or political influence is shameful too, the sentence trailing into a further reason completed in 184b.
The verb driving this whole stretch is basanizō, used three times: "to test." Its root noun basanos named the Lydian touchstone, the dark flint a metalworker rubbed gold against to read purity from the streak it left — a technical term for gold assay before it was ever a word for character. Athenian law later borrowed the same verb for the interrogation of a slave under torture, on the theory that pain, like the stone, forces out what is really there. Pausanias does not push that darker sense, but the word he keeps choosing already carries it: a lover, on his account, is something to be assayed, rubbed against resistance until what he is made of shows.
The custom Pausanias describes, run by an agōnothetōn — an "agonothete," the actual title of the citizen appointed to judge a dramatic or athletic contest at a festival like the one Agathon has just won — treats courtship as a formal competition with a referee, not a private feeling between two people. Its two failing conditions here are quickness and money: a suitor won on the first approach has not been tested by χρόνος, time, the one thing Pausanias trusts to test anything properly, and a suitor bought with cash or political pull has bypassed the test altogether by paying for the verdict. Both readings converge on the same worry that runs through his whole speech — that ease of access is itself evidence against a lover, since anything gained without resistance was never really assayed.
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