A Physician Is Worth Many Others
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Eryximachus — οὕτως οὔτε τι λέγομεν ἐπὶ τῇ κύλικι οὔτε τι ᾁδομεν, ἀλλʼ ἀτεχνῶς ὥσπερ οἱ διψῶντες πιόμεθα;
Aristodemus — τὸν οὖν Ἀλκιβιάδην εἰπεῖν
Alcibiades — ὦ Ἐρυξίμαχε, βέλτιστε βελτίστου πατρὸς καὶ σωφρονεστάτου, χαῖρε.
Eryximachus — καὶ γὰρ σύ,
Aristodemus — φάναι τὸν Ἐρυξίμαχον·
Eryximachus — ἀλλὰ τί ποιῶμεν;
Alcibiades — ὅτι ἂν σὺ κελεύῃς. δεῖ γάρ σοι πείθεσθαι· ἰητρὸς γὰρ ἀνὴρ πολλῶν ἀντάξιος ἄλλων· ἐπίταττε οὖν ὅτι βούλει.
Eryximachus — ἄκουσον δή,
Aristodemus — εἰπεῖν τὸν Ἐρυξίμαχον.
Eryximachus — ἡμῖν πρὶν σὲ εἰσελθεῖν ἔδοξε χρῆναι ἐπὶ δεξιὰ ἕκαστον ἐν μέρει λόγον
Is this how we say nothing over the cup, sing nothing, but simply, like thirsty men, drink? Alcibiades then said: Eryximachus, you best man, son of an excellent and very temperate father — greetings! And to you too, says Eryximachus — but what are we to do? Whatever you command. We must obey you — a physician is worth any number of other men — so give whatever orders you like. Listen, then, says Eryximachus. Before you came in, we had agreed that each of us, in turn, from the right, should give a speech…
Continuing straight from Eryximachus's question in 214a ('What are we to do, Alcibiades?'), Eryximachus proposes they simply drink without ceremony. Alcibiades greets him with mock formality, then defers to him as a doctor, quoting Homer's line on the worth of a physician. Eryximachus then begins to explain the rule of the evening — before Alcibiades arrived, each guest in turn had agreed to give a speech in praise of Eros — a sentence that trails into 214c.
Alcibiades salutes Eryximachus with a flourish that sounds like formal Athenian courtesy — “best son of a most excellent and temperate father” — and the joke is that he is already too drunk to manage anything simpler. Eryximachus's father, Acumenus, was himself a physician, so the compliment folds two generations of the same profession into one line before Eryximachus has said a word about medicine. When Alcibiades then tells him to command as he pleases, he backs the deference with a line lifted whole from Homer: iētros gar anēr pollōn antaxios allōn, “a physician is worth many other men,” spoken by Nestor of Machaon at Iliad 11.514. Plato keeps the Ionic spelling, iētros rather than the Attic iatros, so the epic register stays audible — a battlefield tribute to a wound-doctor repurposed, half in earnest, for a man qualified only to referee a hangover.
The promotion is not entirely a joke. Eryximachus's own speech at 186–188 will argue that medicine is the art of managing the same opposed forces — hot and cold, wet and dry — that govern love itself, so handing him authority over how much they drink is already treating him as an authority on how a body should be governed. His rule, once he states it, is what has organized the whole evening: each guest in turn, from left to right, giving the best speech he can on Eros. Alcibiades' late arrival broke that order, and this exchange is Eryximachus quietly restoring it — obedience to the doctor turns out to mean picking the thread of the symposium back up.
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