The God Who Makes a Poet of Anyone
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Agathon — τὴν αὑτοῦ, ποιητὴς ὁ θεὸς σοφὸς οὕτως ὥστε καὶ ἄλλον ποιῆσαι· πᾶς γοῦν ποιητὴς γίγνεται, κἂν ἄμουσος ᾖ τὸ πρίν, οὗ ἂν Ἔρως ἅψηται. ᾧ δὴ πρέπει ἡμᾶς μαρτυρίῳ χρῆσθαι, ὅτι ποιητὴς ὁ Ἔρως ἀγαθὸς ἐν κεφαλαίῳ πᾶσαν ποίησιν τὴν κατὰ μουσικήν· ἃ γάρ τις ἢ μὴ ἔχει ἢ μὴ οἶδεν, οὔτʼ ἂν ἑτέρῳ δοίη οὔτʼ ἂν ἄλλον διδάξειεν. καὶ
his own [craft]; the god is so skilled a poet that he also makes another one. Everyone, at any rate, becomes a poet even if he was a stranger to the Muse before, whom Eros touches. This, indeed, we may fittingly use as evidence, that Eros is a good poet, in short, in every kind of making belonging to the Muses' arts. For what someone does not have or does not know, he could neither give to another, nor could he teach another. And—
Agathon, having closed the courage argument, turns to wisdom: the god's own skill as a poet is proven by what he does to others—everyone Eros touches becomes a poet, even one who was a stranger to the Muse before, in every kind of making that belongs to the Muses' arts.
Agathon’s proof runs by effect rather than definition: he does not say what makes Eros a poet, he points to what Eros does. Touch someone, and a poet results, “even if he were a stranger to the Muse before” (ámousos). That half-line is not Agathon’s own invention; ancient readers already heard behind it a verse from Euripides’s lost Stheneboea, where the same claim—that eros makes a poet of anyone it touches—survived as a quotable tag long after the play itself was gone. Agathon takes the borrowed line and builds an argument on it: whatever Eros touches turns fluent, so Eros himself must be a good poietēs, a maker, “in every kind of making that belongs to the Muses’ arts.”
The clinching premise—a person cannot give what he does not have, cannot teach what he does not know—sounds unimpeachable, and Agathon means it to close the case for good. It will not last the evening. When Socrates opens his cross-examination a few pages on, he asks Agathon whether desire is desire for what one lacks, and the very same logic that here proves Eros must possess poetic skill in order to hand it out will instead prove Eros lacks beauty and goodness, since desire is always desire for what is absent. Agathon calls his evidence a martyrion, courtroom language for a proof exhibit, as if praise of a god could be adjudicated like a case; Socrates will use that same vocabulary of testimony against him, treating Agathon’s own speech as evidence to be cross-examined rather than admired. The Meno’s old puzzle stands behind both moments: how can anyone give or acquire what he does not, in some sense, already know?
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