Symposium

he wanted to leave, pleading that it was late, I compelled him to stay. So he rested on the couch next to mine, the one he had dined on, and no one else was sleeping in the room but 217e us. Now up to this point of my speech it would be well to tell it even to anyone; but what follows you would not have heard me tell, if, first, as the saying goes, wine, both without children and with children, were not truthful,¹ and next, to blot out a haughty deed of Socrates when I have come to praise him seems to me unjust. Further, the experience of the man bitten by the viper has hold of me too. For they say, I take it, that one to whom this has happened is not willing to say what it was like except to those who have been bitten, since they alone will understand 218a and pardon him if he dared to do and say anything under the pain. So I, bitten by something more painful, and in the most painful place one could be bitten — for in the heart, or soul, or whatever one must name it, I have been struck and bitten by the speeches of philosophy, which hold on more savagely than a viper when they take hold of the soul of a young man not without gifts, and make it do and say anything whatever — and seeing in turn Phaedruses, Agathons, 218b Eryximachuses, Pausaniases, Aristodemuses and Aristophaneses; and Socrates himself, what need is there to speak of him, and all the others? For you have all been partners in the wisdom-loving madness and Bacchic frenzy — therefore you shall all hear; for you will pardon both what was done then and what is said now. But you household slaves, and anyone else who is profane and boorish, put very great gates upon your ears.²

“Well then, gentlemen, when the lamp had gone out and 218c the slaves were outside, it seemed to me I must use no subtlety with him, but say freely what I thought; and I said, stirring him, ‘Socrates, are you asleep?’

“‘Not at all,’ he said.