Agathon Dedicates His Speech
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Agathon — λόγῳ κυβερνήτης, ἐπιβάτης, παραστάτης τε καὶ σωτὴρ ἄριστος, συμπάντων τε θεῶν καὶ ἀνθρώπων κόσμος, ἡγεμὼν κάλλιστος καὶ ἄριστος, ᾧ χρὴ ἕπεσθαι πάντα ἄνδρα ἐφυμνοῦντα καλῶς, ᾠδῆς μετέχοντα ἣν ᾁδει θέλγων πάντων θεῶν τε καὶ ἀνθρώπων νόημα. οὗτος, ἔφη, ὁ παρʼ ἐμοῦ λόγος, ὦ Φαῖδρε, τῷ θεῷ ἀνακείσθω, τὰ μὲν παιδιᾶς, τὰ δὲ σπουδῆς μετρίας, καθʼ ὅσον ἐγὼ δύναμαι, μετέχων.
In a word, a helmsman, a shipmate, a comrade in the fight and best savior, ornament of all the gods and men together, most beautiful and best leader, whom every man must follow, hymning him well, sharing in the song he sings, enchanting the mind of all gods and men. This, he said, is my speech, Phaedrus— let it be dedicated to the god, sharing partly in play, partly in such measured seriousness as I am able.
Continuing the asyndetic catalogue of Eros's offices that began in 197d (a run of prepositional phrases ending on a bare ἐν, completed here by λόγῳ — 'in a word'), Agathon calls Eros helmsman, comrade, savior, and leader of gods and men, then closes his own speech with a formal dedication to the god, part play and part measured seriousness.
Agathon's list of what Eros does for gods and men reads like the job description of a fifth-century admiral: helmsman, shipmate, comrade-in-the-fight, savior. The word he then reaches for, kósmos, carries both of its senses at once — ornament and order — the same word Plato later gives the visible universe in the Timaeus. For Agathon the two never separate: whatever is beautifully arranged simply is good, and Eros supplies both by definition. The verb he picks for the god's own singing, thélgō, is Homer's word for a charm that works on the will rather than the judgment — the drug in Circe's wine, the note the Sirens hold. Praising Eros, Agathon has just described, without seeming to notice it, what his own speech has been doing to the room.
Then he grades himself. His speech, he says, is paidiá in part and spoudḗ, measured seriousness, in another — a hedge that hands Socrates his opening. What follows is Socrates asking, in effect, whether a speech built for beauty owes anything to truth at all; the ratio Agathon confesses to here is exactly what gets tested next. The Phaedrus, this dialogue's companion, spends much of its second half on the same suspicion — that a speech which moves the soul (its own word for this is psychagōgía) can work less like an argument than like the enchantment Agathon has just claimed for Eros.
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