Marsyas's Tunes, and the Bare Words That Do the Same
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Alcibiades — ὁ μέν γε διʼ ὀργάνων ἐκήλει τοὺς ἀνθρώπους τῇ ἀπὸ τοῦ στόματος δυνάμει, καὶ ἔτι νυνὶ ὃς ἂν τὰ ἐκείνου αὐλῇ— ἃ γὰρ Ὄλυμπος ηὔλει, Μαρσύου λέγω, τούτου διδάξαντος— τὰ οὖν ἐκείνου ἐάντε ἀγαθὸς αὐλητὴς αὐλῇ ἐάντε φαύλη αὐλητρίς, μόνα κατέχεσθαι ποιεῖ καὶ δηλοῖ τοὺς τῶν θεῶν τε καὶ τελετῶν δεομένους διὰ τὸ θεῖα εἶναι. σὺ δʼ ἐκείνου τοσοῦτον μόνον διαφέρεις, ὅτι ἄνευ ὀργάνων ψιλοῖς λόγοις ταὐτὸν
He, for his part, enchanted people through instruments, by the power from his mouth, and even now, whoever plays his tunes— and what Olympus played, I mean Marsyas's, since he taught him— so his tunes, whether a skilled flute-player plays them, or a poor flute-girl, alone possess the hearer, and reveal those who stand in need of the gods and their rites, because they are divine. You differ from him in this one thing only: that without instruments, with bare words, you do the same…
Continuing the Silenus-and-Marsyas image (215a–b), Alcibiades presses the comparison: Marsyas enchanted people only with the help of an instrument, and the tunes still played today under his name — he means Olympus's, since Marsyas taught him — possess their hearers and expose who among them needs the gods and their rites, regardless of who plays them. Socrates, he says, differs from Marsyas in exactly one thing.
Alcibiades has just called Socrates a Silenus and a satyr; now he makes the comparison technical. Marsyas ekēlei, 'enchanted,' people — the verb Homer uses for the Sirens' song, not for ordinary pleasure. But he did it διʼ ὀργάνων, through an instrument, by breath shaped through reed and pipe. The tunes that survive him, Alcibiades adds, aren't even Marsyas's own hand at work anymore: a skilled player or a poor one gets the same result, because the power sits in the music, not in who plays it. That claim about Olympus's tunes sets up the point Alcibiades actually wants: Socrates produces the identical effect, κατέχεσθαι, being possessed, ἄνευ ὀργάνων, ψιλοῖς λόγοις — without any instrument, with bare words. His voice alone does what used to require the reed.
The verb κατέχω is the one Ion uses of poets and rhapsodes possessed by the Muse, and Plato reaches for the same family of language in the Phaedrus when he ranks divine madness above ordinary sanity. Alcibiades isn't paying a compliment so much as reporting something he can't fully explain: he has watched grown men, himself included, go rigid and pale at Socrates's plain talk, the way an initiate reacts at a rite. τελετή is exact here — a mystery-initiation, not a generic ritual — and δεῖσθαι θεῶν, needing the gods, names what the Corybantic dancers he mentions a few lines later actually did, breaking into convulsions until the right rite settled them. Alcibiades reaches for the vocabulary of mystery religion to describe an argument. The Ion makes a related claim about poetry's grip on an audience; here the grip belongs to unadorned prose, and Alcibiades never explains how words alone manage it.
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