This Satyric, Silenic Drama
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Socrates — Ἀγάθωνα διαβάλλειν, οἰόμενος δεῖν ἐμὲ μὲν σοῦ ἐρᾶν καὶ μηδενὸς ἄλλου, Ἀγάθωνα δὲ ὑπὸ σοῦ ἐρᾶσθαι καὶ μηδʼ ὑφʼ ἑνὸς ἄλλου. ἀλλʼ οὐκ ἔλαθες, ἀλλὰ τὸ σατυρικόν σου δρᾶμα τοῦτο καὶ σιληνικὸν κατάδηλον ἐγένετο. ἀλλʼ, ὦ φίλε Ἀγάθων, μηδὲν πλέον αὐτῷ γένηται, ἀλλὰ παρασκευάζου ὅπως ἐμὲ καὶ σὲ μηδεὶς διαβαλεῖ.
Aristodemus — τὸν οὖν Ἀγάθωνα εἰπεῖν,
Agathon — καὶ μήν, ὦ Σώκρατες, κινδυνεύεις
and Agathon, trying to divide us, thinking it necessary that I love you, and no one else, and Agathon, be loved by you, and not even by one other. But you didn't escape notice, but this satyric, silenic drama of yours became quite obvious. But, dear Agathon, let nothing more come of it for him, but see to it, that no one divides you and me. Then, Agathon said, And indeed, Socrates, you may well be…
Socrates has just told the room that Alcibiades's whole confession was calculated: a scheme, he says, to make himself the only one Socrates loves and the only one who loves Agathon, so that nothing could pass between Socrates and Agathon at all. He turns to warn Agathon not to let it work, and Agathon starts to answer as the sentence breaks off, completed in 222e.
Socrates names the maneuver with a single verb, diaballein — not simple slander but the ordinary Greek word for throwing two people apart, setting them at variance. The charge is exact: Alcibiades wants a double monopoly, to be loved by Socrates and by no one else, and to be Agathon's only lover too, so that nothing can run between the two men sitting on either side of him. Socrates then hands back, deliberately, the very image Alcibiades spent his whole speech building. Alcibiades had called Socrates a carved Silenus, ugly outside and full of golden figures within (215a–b); Socrates now calls the confession itself a satyrikon kai silēnikon drama, a satyr-and-Silenus play — the ribald piece performed once the tragedy was over, written for laughs rather than truth.
The jealousy behind the scheme matches, almost point for point, the portrait Lysias's speech gives of an ordinary lover at the start of the Phaedrus — one who cannot bear a rival and wants the boy he desires to know no one better (Phaedrus 232c–e). Alcibiades has spent the whole night arguing the opposite, that Socrates is the one who loves no one; here Socrates catches the same possessiveness working in both directions at once, on him and on Agathon. His instruction to Agathon, μηδεὶς διαβαλεῖ, is not sentiment. It closes off, in front of the whole party, an exclusive claim Socrates never agreed to.
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