Alcibiades Enters, Blind to Socrates
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Alcibiades — γελᾶτε, ὅμως εὖ οἶδʼ ὅτι ἀληθῆ λέγω. ἀλλά μοι λέγετε αὐτόθεν, ἐπὶ ῥητοῖς εἰσίω ἢ μή; συμπίεσθε ἢ οὔ;
Aristodemus — πάντας οὖν ἀναθορυβῆσαι καὶ κελεύειν εἰσιέναι καὶ κατακλίνεσθαι, καὶ τὸν Ἀγάθωνα καλεῖν αὐτόν. καὶ τὸν ἰέναι ἀγόμενον ὑπὸ τῶν ἀνθρώπων, καὶ περιαιρούμενον ἅμα τὰς ταινίας ὡς ἀναδήσοντα, ἐπίπροσθε τῶν ὀφθαλμῶν ἔχοντα οὐ κατιδεῖν τὸν Σωκράτη, ἀλλὰ καθίζεσθαι παρὰ τὸν Ἀγάθωνα
You may laugh, still I know well that I speak the truth. But tell me straight off: on stated terms, am I to come in, or not? Will you drink with me, or not? So they all shouted out and told him to come in and to recline, and Agathon himself called him. And he went, led by his companions, and, meanwhile taking off the ribbons meaning to crown him, holding them in front of his own eyes, he did not catch sight of Socrates, but sat down beside Agathon.
Continuing straight from Alcibiades' drunken challenge at the door in 212e, this unit opens still in his own voice, demanding to know the terms of entry, then shifts to Aristodemus's narration as the room roars welcome and Alcibiades comes in, garland in hand, not yet seeing Socrates in the room.
Alcibiades' demand for entry “on stated terms” (epi rhētois) borrows the vocabulary of a formal settlement — rhētos comes from the same root as rhēma (‘the thing said’) and rhētōr (‘public speaker’), and the phrase belongs to treaties, oracles, and the conditions under which a magistrate holds office. A very drunk young man threatens the household with the diction of a diplomat, negotiating his way into a dinner party as though it were a peace conference. The joke fits the man: Alcibiades, in Thucydides and later in Plutarch's portrait, is remembered for treating alliances and love affairs alike as arrangements to be struck on his own terms, and Plato lets him do it in miniature, over nothing more than whether he gets to sit down and drink.
Then comes the staging Plato is careful to spell out. Alcibiades comes in still wearing his own garland, pulling the ribbons off as he walks so he can crown Agathon with them, and he is holding those ribbons up in front of his own eyes as he does it — which is why he does not see Socrates until he has already sat down beside Agathon, in the one open place in the room. Everything Alcibiades says for the rest of the dialogue will turn out to be about Socrates. Plato has him walk in blind to him first, holding the blindfold in his own hands. It is a small piece of stagecraft, not a symbol pressed too hard — but it sets up exactly what the speech to come will perform: a man who thought he came to crown Agathon finds out, mid-scene, that the crown belongs somewhere else.
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