The Sneeze That Cured the Hiccups
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Aristodemus — ἐκδεξάμενον οὖν ἔφη εἰπεῖν τὸν Ἀριστοφάνη ὅτι
Aristophanes — καὶ μάλʼ ἐπαύσατο, οὐ μέντοι πρίν γε τὸν πταρμὸν προσενεχθῆναι αὐτῇ, ὥστε με θαυμάζειν εἰ τὸ κόσμιον τοῦ σώματος ἐπιθυμεῖ τοιούτων ψόφων καὶ γαργαλισμῶν, οἷον καὶ ὁ πταρμός ἐστιν· πάνυ γὰρ εὐθὺς ἐπαύσατο, ἐπειδὴ αὐτῷ τὸν πταρμὸν προσήνεγκα.
Aristodemus — καὶ τὸν Ἐρυξίμαχον,
Eryximachus — ὠγαθέ,
Aristodemus — φάναι,
Eryximachus — Ἀριστόφανες, ὅρα τί ποιεῖς. γελωτοποιεῖς μέλλων λέγειν, καὶ φύλακά με τοῦ
Then, taking his turn, he said that Aristophanes said it had quite stopped — not, however, before the sneeze was applied to it — so that I marvel that the orderly part of the body craves such noises and ticklings, of the kind even the sneeze itself is; for it stopped quite immediately, the moment I applied the sneeze to it. And Eryximachus — “My good sir,” he said, “Aristophanes, watch what you are doing. You are playing the buffoon just as you are about to speak, and forcing me to be a guard over the—”
Eryximachus has just closed his own speech and formally handed the floor to Aristophanes, noting at 188e that his hiccup has now stopped. Aristophanes takes his turn and confirms it — but only, he marvels, once the sneeze-cure was applied to it, wondering that the body's orderly nature should crave such noises and ticklings as a sneeze. Eryximachus cuts in, half in earnest, warning him to watch what he is doing: playing the buffoon before he has even begun his speech, and forcing Eryximachus to stand guard over it. The unit breaks off mid-phrase at 'τοῦ', which 189b continues.
Aristophanes turns his own hiccup into a small case study in Eryximachus's own medicine. Kósmion, “orderly,” is the doctor's word, the same vocabulary of bodily harmony Eryximachus has used since 186c to describe health as opposites brought into agreement; Aristophanes borrows it to ask, deadpan, why so well-regulated a thing as the body should crave a sneeze — noise and gargalismós, tickling, among the least dignified events a body produces. The joke lands one Stephanus page after Eryximachus closed his own speech by calling divination a craft of friendship between gods and men (188d): the same cosmic order that reads the will of the gods in a bird's flight, on this telling, also decides whether a nose itches. Aristophanes does not argue against the doctor's method here; he applies it to the smallest and silliest case available, his own late hiccup.
Eryximachus's rebuke, gelōtopoieîs, is not vague crossness at a bad joke. A gelōtopoiós was a recognized fixture of the Greek dinner party, a hired jester paid to make the other guests laugh — Xenophon's own Symposium has one, Philippus, turning up uninvited at Callias's house for exactly that job. Eryximachus is telling Aristophanes, the evening's actual comic poet, that he is doing for free, before he has even opened his prepared speech, the very work Athens pays him to do on stage. And the word Eryximachus reaches for to describe his own position, phýlax, guard, is the same word Plato later gives the ruling class of the Republic, trained from childhood to watch over the city the way a good dog watches a flock. Eryximachus means it lightly — a doctor pressed into policing a comedian's manners — but the comic poet he is guarding against is one speech away from giving the account of love that many readers of the dialogue find hardest to shake.
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