The One Right Method
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Agathon — ταῦτα ἐδωρήσατο, οὐδεὶς εἴρηκεν. εἷς δὲ τρόπος ὀρθὸς παντὸς ἐπαίνου περὶ παντός, λόγῳ διελθεῖν οἷος οἵων αἴτιος ὢν τυγχάνει περὶ οὗ ἂν ὁ λόγος ᾖ. οὕτω δὴ τὸν ἔρωτα καὶ ἡμᾶς δίκαιον ἐπαινέσαι πρῶτον αὐτὸν οἷός ἐστιν, ἔπειτα τὰς δόσεις. φημὶ οὖν ἐγὼ πάντων θεῶν εὐδαιμόνων ὄντων ἔρωτα, εἰ θέμις καὶ ἀνεμέσητον εἰπεῖν, εὐδαιμονέστατον εἶναι αὐτῶν, κάλλιστον ὄντα καὶ ἄριστον. ἔστι δὲ κάλλιστος ὢν τοιόσδε. πρῶτον μὲν νεώτατος θεῶν, ὦ Φαῖδρε. μέγα
these things he bestowed, no one has said. But there is one right method for any praise, on any subject: to explain in speech what sort of thing it is, and of what things it happens to be responsible for, whatever the speech is about. So, in this way, it is right for us too to praise Eros: first, what sort of being he himself is; then, his gifts. I say, then, that although all the gods are blessed, Eros — if it is right and gives no offense to say so — is the most blessed of them, being the most beautiful and the best. And he is most beautiful, in this way: First of all, he is the youngest of the gods, O Phaedrus. A great—
Agathon finishes the sentence interrupted at the end of 194e, then states outright the method he thinks every proper encomium must follow: say what the subject is before saying what it gives. He applies it at once to Eros, calling him the most blessed, most beautiful, and best of the gods — with a careful hedge — before naming his first attribute: youngest of the gods.
Agathon turns his complaint from 194e into a formal rule. It is not that the earlier speakers praised Eros the wrong way — they missed the one right method for praising anything at all: state what the subject is, then what it is responsible for, whatever the topic happens to be. No earlier speaker in the dialogue frames the task this broadly. Phaedrus, Pausanias, Eryximachus, and Aristophanes each praised Eros their own way; Agathon claims to have found the general law any praise must obey, on any subject — a rhetorician reaching, in his own idiom, for the kind of definition Socrates keeps demanding elsewhere, the same insistence that shuts down Meno's list of separate virtues in favor of the one form all of them share (Meno 72a–c).
Before he commits to a superlative, Agathon hedges: he will call Eros ‘the most blessed of the gods, the most beautiful and the best’ only after clearing the claim with ει θέμις καὶ ἀνεμέσητον εἰπεῖν — literally, ‘if it is themis and free of nemesis to say so.’ Themis is what divine and human order permits; nemesis is the resentment, human or divine, that punishes a claim exceeding its due. Ranking one god above the whole pantheon carries real risk in this world, even at a dinner party — the gods are jealous of exactly this kind of praise. Agathon says it anyway, then spends the rest of his speech making good on it.
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