Symposium

believe so,” he said.¹ “Where could you get that, Glaucon?”² I said. “Don’t you know that Agathon has not lived here for many years, and that since I have been spending my time with Socrates, and have made it my concern each day to know whatever he says or does, it is not yet three years? 173a Before that I ran around wherever chance took me, and while I thought I was doing something I was more wretched than anyone at all, no less than you are now, thinking that I ought to do anything rather than love wisdom.”³ And he said, “Don’t mock, but tell me when this gathering took place.” And I said, “When we were still boys, when Agathon won with his first tragedy, on the day after the one on which he and the members of his chorus made the sacrifice for the victory.” “Very long ago, then, it seems,” he said. “But who told it to you? Was it Socrates himself?” 173b “No, by Zeus,” I said, “but the same man who told Phoenix. It was a certain Aristodemus, of Cydathenaeum, a small man, always barefoot.⁴ He had been at the gathering, being a lover of Socrates as much as any man of that time, as it seems to me. Not but that I have also asked Socrates already about some of the things I heard from him, and he agreed with me that they were as that man told them.” “Then why don’t you tell it to me?” he said. “In any case the road to town is suitable for those who walk it, to talk and to listen.”

So as we went along together we talked about these things, 173c so that, as I said when I began, I am not unrehearsed. If, then, I must tell it to you too, that is what I must do. For I for my part, besides, whenever I am myself making some talk about philosophy, or hearing others make it, apart from thinking that I am being benefited, am glad beyond measure; but whenever it is some other talk, above all yours, the talk of rich men and money-makers, I am grieved myself and I pity you, my companions, because you think you are doing something 173d when you are doing nothing. And perhaps you in turn believe that I am unhappy,