A Different Kind of Speech
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Aristophanes — δικαίως ἂν ὑμνοῖμεν ἔρωτα, ὃς ἔν τε τῷ παρόντι ἡμᾶς πλεῖστα ὀνίνησιν εἰς τὸ οἰκεῖον ἄγων, καὶ εἰς τὸ ἔπειτα ἐλπίδας μεγίστας παρέχεται, ἡμῶν παρεχομένων πρὸς θεοὺς εὐσέβειαν, καταστήσας ἡμᾶς εἰς τὴν ἀρχαίαν φύσιν καὶ ἰασάμενος μακαρίους καὶ εὐδαίμονας ποιῆσαι. οὗτος, ἔφη, ὦ Ἐρυξίμαχε, ὁ ἐμὸς λόγος ἐστὶ περὶ Ἔρωτος, ἀλλοῖος ἢ ὁ σός. ὥσπερ οὖν ἐδεήθην σου, μὴ κωμῳδήσῃς αὐτόν, ἵνα καὶ τῶν λοιπῶν ἀκούσωμεν τί ἕκαστος
Justly would we praise Eros, who, in the present, benefits us most by leading us to what is our own, and for the future holds out the greatest hopes: that if we render due piety toward the gods, he will restore us to our ancient nature and heal us, and make us blessed and happy. "This," he said, "Eryximachus, is my speech about Eros, a different kind than yours. Just as, then, I begged you, do not make a comedy of it, so that we may also hear what each of the rest—"
Aristophanes closes his speech: Eros benefits us most right now by leading each of us to our own match, and holds out the greatest hope for the future — that if we honor the gods, he will restore our ancient nature and make us blessed. He then turns, still within his speech, to address Eryximachus directly, recalling the joking rivalry from 189a-b and asking him not to turn the speech into a comedy so the remaining speakers can be heard.
Aristophanes' closing turn to Eryximachus is not a stray joke but a callback with teeth. Back at 189a the two of them had bantered about comedy and laughter before Aristophanes even began — Eryximachus warning him not to make a joke of his own speech, Aristophanes promising to fear the audience's laughter more than any conscious absurdity. Now, with the myth of the sawn-apart round humans behind him, he flips the warning back onto the doctor: mē kōmōidēsēis auton, "don't you turn it into a comedy." The verb is built directly on kōmōidia, and Aristophanes is its most famous living practitioner in Athens — asking someone else not to do to his speech what he does for a living to other people's ideas. Plato lets the joke-maker worry, once, about being made fun of.
The verb ὀνίνημι that opens the sentence is doing real work too: it is the ordinary word for concrete, practical benefit — profit, help, use — not the loftier language of blessing that closes the sentence (μακαρίους, εὐδαίμονας). Aristophanes' Eros operates on two registers at once, mundane help now and cosmic restoration later, and the grammar tracks it: a present-tense verb for what Eros already does, then a run of aorist participles (καταστήσας, ἰασάμενος) for what he has not yet done but might, if the terms are met. The condition — εὐσέβεια toward the gods — matters because Aristophanes has just told a story in which the gods, or one god, split the human race apart for exactly the opposite failing. His own myth supplies the warrant for his own closing prayer.
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