The Stronger Rules the Weaker
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Agathon — οὐδʼ Ἄρης ἀνθίσταται. οὐ γὰρ ἔχει ἔρωτα Ἄρης, ἀλλʼ Ἔρως Ἄρη— Ἀφροδίτης, ὡς λόγος— κρείττων δὲ ὁ ἔχων τοῦ ἐχομένου· τοῦ δʼ ἀνδρειοτάτου τῶν ἄλλων κρατῶν πάντων ἂν ἀνδρειότατος εἴη. περὶ μὲν οὖν δικαιοσύνης καὶ σωφροσύνης καὶ ἀνδρείας τοῦ θεοῦ εἴρηται, περὶ δὲ σοφίας λείπεται· ὅσον οὖν δυνατόν, πειρατέον μὴ ἐλλείπειν. καὶ πρῶτον μέν, ἵνʼ αὖ καὶ ἐγὼ τὴν ἡμετέραν τέχνην τιμήσω ὥσπερ Ἐρυξίμαχος
Not even Ares stands against him. For Ares does not have desire— but Eros has Ares, Aphrodite's, as the story goes— and the holder is stronger than the one held; and mastering the most courageous of the others, he would be the most courageous of all. Concerning justice, temperance, and courage of the god, then, it has been said; concerning wisdom it remains: as far as possible, one must try not to fall short. And first— so that I too, in turn, may honor our craft, just as Eryximachus—
Agathon caps the courage argument by citing Ares' surrender to Eros — whoever holds is stronger than whoever is held, so a god who overpowers even the most warlike of the gods must be the most courageous of all. He then declares justice, temperance, and courage covered and turns to wisdom, opening with a nod to Eryximachus, whose speech on medicine he means to answer in kind.
The courage argument closes on an old scandal doing philosophical work. Ares does not have erōs; Eros has Ares—Aphrodite’s, as the story goes, a bare nod to the tale Demodocus sings in the Odyssey, where Hephaestus traps the two lovers in an unbreakable net and calls the gods in to see them caught. Agathon treats that comic humiliation as evidence: whoever holds is stronger than whoever is held, and a god who overpowers even the most warlike of the gods must be the most courageous of all. The inference—the stronger rules the weaker—is the same one Thrasymachus states outright in the Republic, when he defines justice as the advantage of the stronger. Agathon reaches for it in praise of Eros; Thrasymachus reaches for it against justice itself. Same move, opposite purpose, and Agathon does not appear to notice that his proof text stars a god famous for being caught, publicly, unable to resist.
He then declares three virtues finished—justice, temperance, courage—and turns to a fourth, wisdom, the same four the Republic will organize the just soul around within a few years of this scene, though Plato gives them a structure in the soul that Agathon never attempts; here they are simply items checked off a list built for effect. His transition gives him away: “as far as possible, one must try not to fall short” (peiratéon mê elleipein) is the sentence of a speaker worried about running dry in front of Gorgias’s own students. He opens the wisdom section by promising to honor his own craft the way Eryximachus honored his—poetry standing in for medicine, craft answering craft—before the sentence runs past this unit’s end and into the claim, finished next, that Eros himself is a poet.
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