The Usual Thing
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Socrates — ὦ δαιμόνιε, καὶ μὴ φθονήσῃς τῷ μειρακίῳ ὑπʼ ἐμοῦ ἐπαινεθῆναι· καὶ γὰρ πάνυ ἐπιθυμῶ αὐτὸν ἐγκωμιάσαι.
Agathon — ἰοῦ ἰοῦ,
Aristodemus — φάναι τὸν Ἀγάθωνα,
Agathon — Ἀλκιβιάδη, οὐκ ἔσθʼ ὅπως ἂν ἐνθάδε μείναιμι, ἀλλὰ παντὸς μᾶλλον μεταναστήσομαι, ἵνα ὑπὸ Σωκράτους ἐπαινεθῶ.
Alcibiades — ταῦτα ἐκεῖνα,
Aristodemus — φάναι τὸν Ἀλκιβιάδην,
Alcibiades — τὰ εἰωθότα· Σωκράτους παρόντος τῶν καλῶν μεταλαβεῖν ἀδύνατον ἄλλῳ. καὶ νῦν ὡς εὐπόρως καὶ πιθανὸν λόγον ηὗρεν, ὥστε παρʼ ἑαυτῷ τουτονὶ κατακεῖσθαι.
My strange friend, don't begrudge the young man being praised by me; for indeed I am very eager to sing his praises. Hurrah, hurrah! said Agathon, ‘Alcibiades, there is no way I could stay here, but I will move more than anything, so that I may be praised by Socrates.’ ‘That’s the usual thing,’ said Alcibiades, ‘the customary thing: when Socrates is present, no one else can share in the beautiful ones. And see now how readily and persuasively he found an argument, so that this one here should recline beside him.’
Completing the sentence Socrates began at the end of 222e — where he insisted that, since Alcibiades already praised him, he must in turn praise ὁ ἐπὶ δεξιά, 'the one on his right,' before Alcibiades can be praised again — he turns to ask that he not be begrudged the chance to praise Agathon, his new right-hand neighbor. Agathon leaps at the chance to change couches for it, and Alcibiades reads the whole maneuver as a pattern he has seen from Socrates before.
Agathon's answer is pure comic overkill: he will metanastḗsomai, 'relocate,' as if swapping couches were a migration, just to sit within Socrates' praising range. Alcibiades is less amused. His flat generalization — that when Socrates is present tôn kalôn metalabeîn adýnaton állōi, 'no other man can get a share of the beautiful ones' — restates in one clause the complaint that filled his whole speech at 215a–222b, that Socrates' presence makes it impossible for anyone else to hold or be noticed by whoever is beautiful in the room. He calls it ta eiōthóta, 'the usual thing,' the vocabulary of someone who has watched this exact move before and lost.
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