Symposium

before being praised by me instead? But let it be, 223a you daimonic man, and do not be envious of the lad’s being praised by me; for indeed I very much desire to make an encomium of him.”

“Hurrah, hurrah!” said Agathon.¹ “Alcibiades, there is no way I could stay here, but I shall most certainly move, so as to be praised by Socrates.”

“There it is,” said Alcibiades, “the usual thing: when Socrates is present, it is impossible for anyone else to get a share of the beautiful ones. And now, how resourcefully he has found even a persuasive argument, so that this one here should recline beside him!”

223bSo Agathon was getting up to recline beside Socrates; but suddenly very many revellers came to the doors, and finding them open, as someone was going out, they came straight in to them and lay down, and everything was full of uproar, and, in no order any longer, they were compelled to drink a very great deal of wine.² Now Eryximachus and Phaedrus and some others, Aristodemus said, went off and away, and sleep took him, 223c and he slept a very long time, since the nights were long,³ and woke towards day, with the cocks already crowing; and on waking he saw that the others were asleep or gone, and that Agathon and Aristophanes and Socrates alone were still awake and drinking from a large bowl, going to the right. So Socrates was conversing with them; and the rest 223d of the talk Aristodemus said he did not remember — for he had not been there from the beginning, and he was nodding off — the sum of it, however, he said, was that Socrates was compelling them to agree that it belongs to the same man to know how to make comedy and tragedy, and that he who is by craft a maker of tragedy is a maker of comedy too.⁴ They, being compelled to this and not following very closely, were nodding, and the first to fall asleep was