Images of Virtue
Read the full text in our reader
Alcibiades — πᾶς ἂν τῶν λόγων καταγελάσειεν. διοιγομένους δὲ ἰδὼν ἄν τις καὶ ἐντὸς αὐτῶν γιγνόμενος πρῶτον μὲν νοῦν ἔχοντας ἔνδον μόνους εὑρήσει τῶν λόγων, ἔπειτα θειοτάτους καὶ πλεῖστα ἀγάλματʼ ἀρετῆς ἐν αὑτοῖς ἔχοντας καὶ ἐπὶ πλεῖστον τείνοντας, μᾶλλον δὲ ἐπὶ πᾶν ὅσον προσήκει σκοπεῖν τῷ μέλλοντι καλῷ κἀγαθῷ ἔσεσθαι. ταῦτʼ ἐστίν, ὦ ἄνδρες, ἃ ἐγὼ Σωκράτη ἐπαινῶ· καὶ αὖ ἃ μέμφομαι συμμείξας ὑμῖν εἶπον ἅ με ὕβρισεν. καὶ μέντοι
Everyone would laugh at his words. But if one sees them opened up, and gets inside them, he will find, first, that among speeches they alone have sense within; then, that they're most divine and hold within themselves the most images of virtue, and reach the furthest extent — or rather, to everything that is fitting for the one who means to become noble and good to consider. These are the things, gentlemen, for which I praise Socrates. And again, the things I blame him for I have mixed in and told you too — the ways he wronged me. And indeed…
Completing the sentence begun in 221e, Alcibiades finishes the point of his Silenus-satyr comparison: crack open Socrates' absurd-sounding talk and you find sense, divinity, and the whole range of what matters for becoming a good person. He then states plainly why he praises Socrates, but adds in the same breath that he has folded in his grievance too — the way Socrates wronged him — before the sentence breaks off again, completed in 222b.
Alcibiades finally cashes in the image he opened two Stephanus pages earlier: the little Silenus figures, carved hollow and ugly on the outside, that split open to show gods inside (215a–b). Applied now to the talk about pack-asses and cobblers he has just mocked, the payoff turns on one word: agalmata, ‘images.’ The word is not generic — it is the standing term for a cult statue, the carved image a god is worshipped through in a temple. Alcibiades is not saying Socrates' words improve on a second look; he is saying that whoever gets past the ridiculous casing finds something with the weight of a shrine's contents. He adds a claim no other speech at this table has risked: Socrates' words are the only ones (monous) with real nous, mind, inside them at all — a quiet dismissal of Agathon's polished speech and everyone else's, delivered in the house of the man whose party this is.
Then comes the turn. Alcibiades states his praise in one plain sentence — ‘these are the things, gentlemen, for which I praise Socrates’ — and in the very next clause admits he has folded a complaint into the same speech: how Socrates hybrisen him, wronged him. He does not apologize for mixing eulogy with grievance or ask permission for it; he simply tells the room he has done both on purpose. The sentence breaks off again at ‘and indeed’ — the hinge into 222b, where Alcibiades names two more of Socrates' casualties, Charmides and Euthydemus, before turning to warn Agathon directly against being taken in the same way.
Read the full commentary — and tap any word for its dictionary entry — in the interlinear reader.
Open Plato, Symposium 222a 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 222a — The Great Library Project interlinear edition · greatlibraryproject.com/book/symposium/222a/