Alcibiades Turns the Charge of Jealousy Around
Read the full text in our reader
Alcibiades — σε Σωκράτης ὧν ἄρτι εἶπεν; ἢ οἶσθα ὅτι τοὐναντίον ἐστὶ πᾶν ἢ ὅ ἔλεγεν; οὗτος γάρ, ἐάν τινα ἐγὼ ἐπαινέσω τούτου παρόντος ἢ θεὸν ἢ ἄνθρωπον ἄλλον ἢ τοῦτον, οὐκ ἀφέξεταί μου τὼ χεῖρε.
Socrates — οὐκ εὐφημήσεις;
Aristodemus — φάναι τὸν Σωκράτη.
Alcibiades — μὰ τὸν Ποσειδῶ,
Aristodemus — εἰπεῖν τὸν Ἀλκιβιάδην,
Alcibiades — μηδὲν λέγε πρός ταῦτα, ὡς ἐγὼ οὐδʼ ἂν ἕνα ἄλλον ἐπαινέσαιμι σοῦ παρόντος.
Eryximachus — ἀλλʼ οὕτω ποίει,
Aristodemus — φάναι τὸν Ἐρυξίμαχον,
Eryximachus — εἰ βούλει· Σωκράτη ἐπαίνεσον.
Does Socrates persuade you of anything he just said? Or do you know that the whole thing is the opposite of what he was saying? For this man — if I praise anyone else in his presence, god or man, anyone but himself — he won't keep his hands off me. “Won't you hold your tongue?” said Socrates. “By Poseidon,” said Alcibiades — “say nothing against this, since I wouldn't praise even one other person while you're present.” “Well, do it this way,” said Eryximachus — “if you're willing: praise Socrates.”
Alcibiades has just told Eryximachus it may not be a fair contest to match a drunk man's speeches against sober ones (213c–214c), and now adds a second objection: whatever Socrates just claimed, Alcibiades warns, the opposite is true — if he praises anyone else, god or man, in Socrates' presence, Socrates will not keep his hands off him. Socrates tells him to hush; Alcibiades swears by Poseidon he would never praise another while Socrates is there. Eryximachus proposes a solution: let Alcibiades praise Socrates instead.
Alcibiades takes the exact charge Socrates leveled against him at 213d and throws it back. There Socrates told Agathon he could no longer look at another beautiful man without Alcibiades growing jealous and “scarcely keeping his hands off” him. Here Alcibiades uses nearly the same words — ouk aphéxetai mou tò cheîre, “he won't keep his hands off me” — and hangs them on Socrates instead: it is Socrates, he says, who cannot bear anyone else being praised. Neither man holds the title of jealous lover for long; the accusation just keeps changing hands.
The scene also does structural work. Every speech so far has praised Eros; Eryximachus's fix — let Alcibiades praise Socrates instead — redirects the whole apparatus of encomium onto a living man. Socrates has just argued, through Diotima, that Eros is no god but a spirit stretched between wisdom and ignorance, always reaching for what it lacks (201d–204c). Alcibiades will not answer that argument with more argument. He answers it with a person, and the person is the one who just made it.
Read the full commentary — and tap any word for its dictionary entry — in the interlinear reader.
Open Plato, Symposium 214d in the full reader
Always open passages in the reader
You are reading a page of the Plato, Symposium — the whole book is free in our interlinear reader.
The Great Library Project presses the classics in their original languages, glossed word by word — free to read, always. Browse the whole library.
Also on our shelves:
Plato, Symposium 214d — The Great Library Project interlinear edition · greatlibraryproject.com/book/symposium/214d/