The Reign of Necessity
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Agathon — ὥστε καὶ οὗτος Ἔρωτος ἂν εἴη μαθητής, καὶ Μοῦσαι μουσικῆς καὶ Ἥφαιστος χαλκείας καὶ Ἀθηνᾶ ἱστουργίας καὶ Ζεὺς κυβερνᾶν θεῶν τε καὶ ἀνθρώπων. ὅθεν δὴ καὶ κατεσκευάσθη τῶν θεῶν τὰ πράγματα Ἔρωτος ἐγγενομένου, δῆλον ὅτι κάλλους— αἴσχει γὰρ οὐκ ἔπι ἔρως— πρὸ τοῦ δέ, ὥσπερ ἐν ἀρχῇ εἶπον, πολλὰ καὶ δεινὰ θεοῖς ἐγίγνετο, ὡς λέγεται, διὰ τὴν τῆς ἀνάγκης βασιλείαν; ἐπειδὴ δʼ ὁ θεὸς οὗτος ἔφυ, ἐκ τοῦ ἐρᾶν τῶν καλῶν πάντʼ ἀγαθὰ γέγονεν καὶ θεοῖς καὶ ἀνθρώποις.
So this one too would be a pupil of Eros, and the Muses of music, and Hephaestus of metalworking, and Athena of weaving, and Zeus of piloting gods and men. Hence indeed the affairs of the gods were set in order, once Eros was born among them— clearly, of beauty— for there is no love of the ugly. But before that, just as I said at the start, many terrible things used to happen among the gods, as is said, because of the reign of Necessity; but since this god was born, from the loving of beautiful things all good things have come to be, both for gods and for men.
Agathon completes the catalogue of divine crafts he began with Apollo's archery, medicine, and prophecy: the Muses learned music, Hephaestus metalworking, Athena weaving, and Zeus the governing of gods and men, all from Eros. He draws the moral — the gods' affairs fell into order only once Eros was born among them, since love touches nothing ugly — and contrasts it with the harsh reign of Necessity that came before.
Agathon finishes the roster of divine crafts he opened with Apollo's archery, medicine, and prophecy: every god's signature skill turns out to be something learned under Eros. The Muses got music, Hephaestus his forge, Athena her loom, and Zeus—in a line the manuscript apparatus itself flags as a quotation from an unidentified source—his kybernân, ‘the piloting of gods and men,’ the same steering-word Plato elsewhere reserves for the soul's own guide. The list closes on Agathon's signature move: a balanced pair of sound-alikes, kállous against aíschei, ‘of beauty’ against ‘in ugliness,’ asserting by rhythm alone that love cannot touch what is ugly—no argument offered, because with Gorgias's cadences doing the work, none is needed.
What Agathon glides past matters more than what he says. “Before this,” he says, “many terrible things used to happen among the gods… because of the reign of Necessity” (anánkē)—two words standing in for the whole of Hesiod's Theogony: Ouranos mutilated by his own son, Kronos swallowing his children, the violent succession that ends only with Zeus. The Republic (378a–b) singles out exactly these stories as unfit to tell the young, whatever Hesiod's authority, because a city that repeats them teaches its citizens that gods do such things to each other. Agathon needs the violence gone before he can credit Eros with pacifying it, so it survives here only as a gesture—pollà kaì deinà, ‘many terrible things,’ no names, no castration, no swallowed children—a speech that praises Eros for civilizing exactly the stories it declines to tell.
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