From the book
Symposium
Plato · Diotimos Editions · 2026
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At a Glance
- The wordThe bite vocabulary gives philosophical speech the force of a wound.
- In the SymposiumAlcibiades pauses before telling the most intimate part of his story.
- In this editionThe edition translates philosophos in the phrase as “wisdom-loving,” retaining its verbal force.
- A place to readDiotima’s language of initiation supplies a significant earlier comparison.
Meaning
The bite vocabulary gives philosophical speech the force of a wound. Mania and bakcheia recast the listeners as a community of affected, almost initiated people. Bebēlos supplies the contrasting outsider, who is not qualified to hear what follows.
Use in the book
Alcibiades pauses before telling the most intimate part of his story. Wine may make him truthful, but he also needs an audience capable of understanding behaviour produced by philosophical pain. A person bitten by a viper, he says, can explain the suffering only to others who have experienced it. He himself has been bitten by something more painful, in the heart, soul, or whatever the proper name of that vulnerable place is. The hesitation about naming matters: the passage offers a vivid account of experience, not an anatomical identification.
Philosophical speeches grip a gifted young soul more fiercely than a viper and can make it do or say anything. This describes the intensity of Alcibiades’ experience and his plea for sympathetic understanding; it does not endorse everything an overwhelmed listener might do. The very disclosure records serious misunderstanding of Socrates.
He addresses the assembled men as fellow participants in philosophical madness and Bacchic frenzy, then orders slaves and the profane to place gates on their ears. The imagery recalls Diotima’s initiatory progression, but it serves a different immediate purpose: not a graded account of the beautiful, but permission to tell a compromising personal story. His claim that all the named guests share the condition is part of his rhetoric. It should not be converted into independent proof that each follows the same philosophical teaching.
Places to read
Translation in this edition
The edition translates philosophos in the phrase as “wisdom-loving,” retaining its verbal force. Its note connects the command about ears with the language of Orphic exclusions; that contextual parallel is not a claim that Alcibiades is literally performing an initiation rite.
βακχεία (bakcheia)
bakcheia — Bacchic frenzy or inspired revelry, coupled with philosophical madness.
- 218b — βακχείας. Alcibiades describes a shared condition that warrants sympathetic hearing.
βέβηλος (bebēlos)
bebēlos — Profane or uninitiated, excluded from hearing the disclosure in Alcibiades’ mock-sacred address.
- 218b — βέβηλός. Anyone profane, along with household slaves, is told to gate the ears.
δάκνω (daknō)
daknō — To bite; the passive forms make philosophical speech an injury experienced in the heart or soul.
ἔχις (echis)
echis — A viper; the creature supplies a comparison for pain understood by fellow sufferers.
- 217e — τοῦ ἔχεως. The person bitten by a viper tells only others who have been bitten.
μανία (mania)
mania — Madness; here part of Alcibiades’ description of a shared philosophical experience.
- 218b — τῆς φιλοσόφου μανίας. The guests are addressed as partners in wisdom-loving madness.