Alcibiades at the Door
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Agathon — οὐ σκέψεσθε; καὶ ἐὰν μέν τις τῶν ἐπιτηδείων ᾖ, καλεῖτε· εἰ δὲ μή, λέγετε ὅτι οὐ πίνομεν ἀλλʼ ἀναπαυόμεθα ἤδη.
Aristodemus — καὶ οὐ πολὺ ὕστερον Ἀλκιβιάδου τὴν φωνὴν ἀκούειν ἐν τῇ αὐλῇ σφόδρα μεθύοντος καὶ μέγα βοῶντος, ἐρωτῶντος ὅπου Ἀγάθων καὶ κελεύοντος ἄγειν παρʼ Ἀγάθωνα. ἄγειν οὖν αὐτὸν παρὰ σφᾶς τήν τε αὐλητρίδα ὑπολαβοῦσαν καὶ ἄλλους τινὰς τῶν ἀκολούθων, καὶ ἐπιστῆναι ἐπὶ τὰς θύρας
Won't you look, and if one of our friends is there, call him in; but if not, say that we're not drinking, but already resting. And not long after, they heard Alcibiades' voice in the courtyard, very drunk and shouting loudly, asking where Agathon was, and demanding to be led to Agathon. So the flute-girl, holding him up, and some others of his companions, led him in to them, and he came to a stop at the doors.
Continuing straight from 212c, where Agathon has just called out “boys!” to the slaves after the knock and the flute-girl's music were heard behind the courtyard door, this unit gives his actual instructions, then Aristodemus's narration jumps straight to the commotion outside: Alcibiades' voice, roaring drunk, filling the courtyard and demanding to be taken to Agathon.
The same word, phōnḗ, is what Socrates uses at Phaedrus 242c for the private sign that stops him mid-speech and sends him back to make amends for what he has just said — a voice heard, not a person seen, obeyed without argument. Here the identical vocabulary, hearing a voice, announces the opposite kind of interruption: not a private check on one man's own speech but a public, drunken demand to be let into everyone else's. Alcibiades has been offstage for the entire dialogue so far, present only as a name Socrates is known to love and, by his own later account, to keep a careful distance from. His arrival as sound before substance previews what he does for the rest of the evening — he makes a room full of careful speeches answer to an actual, loud, present body. Agathon's rule for the door assumed a visitor could be judged before he was heard. Alcibiades is heard first, drunk and already giving orders, before anyone at the table gets a chance to decide anything about him at all.
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