The Trick That Fails on Socrates
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Aristodemus — πλέον ἢ ὀκτὼ κοτύλας χωροῦντα. τοῦτον ἐμπλησάμενον πρῶτον μὲν αὐτὸν ἐκπιεῖν, ἔπειτα τῷ Σωκράτει κελεύειν ἐγχεῖν καὶ ἅμα εἰπεῖν,
Alcibiades — πρὸς μὲν Σωκράτη, ὦ ἄνδρες, τὸ σόφισμά μοι οὐδέν. ὁπόσον γὰρ ἂν κελεύῃ τις, τοσοῦτον ἐκπιὼν οὐδὲν μᾶλλον μή ποτε μεθυσθῇ.
Aristodemus — τὸν μὲν οὖν Σωκράτη ἐγχέαντος τοῦ παιδὸς πίνειν. τὸν δʼ Ἐρυξίμαχον
Eryximachus — πῶς οὖν,
Aristodemus — φάναι,
Eryximachus — ὦ Ἀλκιβιάδη, ποιοῦμεν;
holding more than eight kotylai. Having filled it, he himself drank it off first, then ordered it poured for Socrates, and said at the same time: “Against Socrates, gentlemen, my trick is nothing— for however much someone tells him to drink, he could drink that much off he'd never get any more drunk.” So then, once the slave had poured, Socrates drank; And Eryximachus “Well then,” he said, “Alcibiades, what are we doing?”
Continuing a sentence begun in 213e, Aristodemus's narration finishes describing the size of the wine-cooler (ψυκτήρ) Alcibiades has spotted and had filled: he drains it himself first, then has it poured again for Socrates, boasting that no amount anyone orders him to drink will make him any drunker. Once the slave pours and Socrates drinks, Eryximachus asks what they are doing now.
Alcibiades calls his drinking bout a sophisma, the word Athens used for a debater's clever device or a courtroom trick — sophistic vocabulary borrowed for a wine-cooler. The joke only works because the trick fails on its target: however large the cup, Socrates never gets any drunker for it. Plato has not explained why yet; that comes later, when Alcibiades describes drinking Socrates under the table all night at Potidaea in his own speech. Here the claim is planted first, as a boast, before it becomes a marvel.
Aristodemus is oddly precise about the cooler's size — more than eight kotylai, each a bit over a half-pint — which turns Alcibiades's challenge into a number the whole table could check against what actually came out of the jug. Eryximachus's question that closes the passage, “well then, what are we doing?”, is the opening move of his objection to drinking like this at all; the fuller version of that complaint, against gulping wine in silence instead of talking, comes only a few lines later. Here he only asks.
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