Symposium

Block I: 172a–178b (Burnet pages 1–9)

How it was made. Burnet pages 1–9 (scan pp. 165–173), 242 lines, from Apollodorus’ account of how Glaucon hailed him on the road up from Phaleron, through Aristodemus’ account of how Socrates brought him uninvited to Agathon’s dinner and stood thinking in the neighbours’ porch, to Eryximachus’ proposal that each guest make a speech in praise of Love, and the beginning of Phaedrus’ speech. The block ends at 178b7 with the third line of the quotation from Hesiod. The Greek was set line for line from the photographs of Burnet’s page, with his apparatus, and the English written and annotated; independent reviewers then checked the Greek and the apparatus against the photographs letter by letter, the English against the Greek clause by clause, and every note and the Editorial Note against their sources.

What the reviewers caught. In the Greek, the letterspacing of the adapted proverb at 174b4 begins with Ἀγάθων’, the name Socrates puts into it, not with ἐπί; and three forms in the apparatus were corrected to what Burnet prints: W’s ὅπη at 174a5 and ἀφεστήκη at 175b7, both without the iota subscript, and τ’ ῆ· at 174e7, with a circumflex and no breathing, an apparent misprint, which is kept. Every doubtful mark the draft had left open was measured against sure examples on its page: the dots at 172a5, 173d3, 176b1 and 177c7 and the blot at 175b6 are specks; the breathings at 173a2, 173a6, 174d2, 175c4 and 177e2 and the small letters at 173d8 and 177a7 stand as transcribed; the breathing of ᾄσαντας at 176a3 is smooth; and the indents of the Hesiod at 178b5–7 match Burnet’s. In the English, two page joins were wrong. Page 1 now ends, as Burnet’s does, with the first words of the reply (“I did”), and page 2 continues the sentence without a new paragraph. Page 5 now ends with “not”, so that the next page reads “after spending a long time, as was his custom”, which is what the Greek says, where the draft had “no long time, as was his custom”; and μάλιστα with a measure is “about halfway”, not “at most”. Speakers were made plain where the Greek marks them: it is Aristodemus who answers Agathon (“he said that he himself said”, 175b1) and who will not let Socrates be fetched (“he himself would not let them”, 175c4). Renderings were brought into line: τυγχάνω “is in fact” (172a2), κατάκειμαι “recline” (175a6, 175c8), kept apart from κατακλίνεσθαι “lie down”, κελεύειν “tell”, βούλεσθαι “want”, κινδυνεύω “it looks like” at 174c5 as at 174b5, ἐξαρκεῖν “be enough” at 176c5 as at 177e5, διατριβή “pastime” at 177e1 as at 177d1, and ἐγκωμιάζειν “make an encomium of” (177e6). Phrases were brought closer to the Greek: “beautiful to a beautiful man” (174a9, of Agathon), “any man of that time” (173b3), “so far as it rests with me” (ἑκὼν εἶναι, 176d2), “This indeed you say well” (176b2), “the very oldest” (ἐν τοῖς πρεσβύτατον, 178a9) and the sentence at 178a3. Small words were restored (ἔγωγε three times, μέν, γάρ, καί, δ’ οὖν, and ἀλλ’ twice), and the parenthesis at 175b6 now closes with a dash, as Burnet’s does. The adapted proverb at 174b4–5, which Burnet marks by letterspacing, is now quoted. Fifteen phrases that followed Lamb’s Loeb translation were reworded, and two Stephanus markers were moved (174d1, 178b1).

In the notes, the companion of the frame is no longer taken for Glaucon, who is the acquaintance who hailed Apollodorus on the road; Burnet records four attempts to mend the sentence at 175b6, not five; the proverb at 174b4 is given in both its ancient forms, with Athenaeus as the source; and the notes on the manuscripts’ Agathōn at 176b7, their boulōntai at 176d7 and the question of T and W at 174c7–8 now report the apparatus fully. Four readings that change the sense received notes: “by touching you” (175c8), “yours that shone out” (175e4) and “by a wise man” (177b5), which B lacks or reads otherwise, and W’s “for the god” at 178a9, where B and T have “of the gods”. In the Editorial Note and the Introduction, Burnet’s quotation marks are now described by what they enclose (the conversation with Glaucon, two phrases of Homer and the slave’s message); the title page and the Editorial Note describe the copy as a later impression of the second edition, issued no earlier than January 1935; the Laurentian shelfmark at 174e6 and the round brackets of 172c2 are explained; and the block is shown to end at 178b7, not 178b6.