Feast and hospitality · Lexicon

From the book

Hipparchus

Plato · Diotimos Editions · 2026

Orientation

At a Glance

The wordἙστιᾶν means to entertain or feast someone; the passive participle ἑστιαθείς means having been entertained at a feast.
In HipparchusThe feast at 231b is a counterexample to the first branch of Socrates’ proposed account of gain.
In this editionThe edition gives “entertained at a feast,” “feasting richly,” and “from a feast,” preserving the family while distinguishing the passive guest-role from the experience of abundant dining.
A place to readἐάν τις ἑστιαθείς — The case begins with someone entertained at a feast.

Meaning

Ἑστιᾶν means to entertain or feast someone; the passive participle ἑστιαθείς means having been entertained at a feast. Ἑστίασις is the entertaining or feast itself, here in ἀπὸ ἑστιάσεως, “from a feast.” Εὐωχεῖσθαι means to feast well or richly. Its participle εὐωχηθείς emphasizes the pleasant abundance of the guest’s experience rather than the guest’s expenditure.

“Hospitality” is a convenient description of being fed by another in this example. It is not an attestation of a technical institution of guest-friendship, nor does the text identify host, festival or occasion. The details needed for the argument are that someone is entertained, spends nothing, and acquires a bodily condition.

Use in the book

The feast at 231b is a counterexample to the first branch of Socrates’ proposed account of gain. If every possession acquired without expenditure is gain, disease acquired while enjoying a free feast should count. The companion answers emphatically that it does not. The agreeable circumstances make the bad outcome more pointed: the guest can eat richly and yet fail to gain.

The alternative of acquiring health from a feast then isolates the relevant difference. The setting and absence of outlay do not change, but the outcome does. Health counts as gain, disease does not. The example therefore distinguishes three things that could easily be bundled together: receiving a benefit from a host in ordinary social language, enjoying an experience, and ending with an acquisition genuinely good for oneself.

The scene is deliberately hypothetical. It does not say that the companion has fallen ill after a banquet or that Socrates distrusts feasting in general. No account of overindulgence, poisoned food or negligent hosting is supplied. Introducing one would turn a logically economical counterexample into an unsupported story. The reader needs only to recognize that a pleasant free event can have an undesirable result.

Its relation to the preceding food-and-drink definitions is close but not identical. There food and drink illustrate sameness of kind despite differences in quality. Here the consequences of consuming them undermine the identification of acquisition with gain. The argument moves from what counts as food to whether getting or experiencing something is advantageous. This transition supplies a practical test for an abstract definition.

The absence of payment also prevents the companion from explaining the bad outcome merely as an excessive price. Even a thing obtained gratis may be bad to have. That prepares the stronger final claim that worth possessing must be assessed through benefit, although the feast alone cannot prove the goodness of every financial gain.

Places to read

231bἐάν τις ἑστιαθείς — The case begins with someone entertained at a feast.
231bμηδὲν ἀναλώσας ἀλλ’ εὐωχηθείς — Free and rich feasting is contrasted with the resulting disease.
231bἀπὸ ἑστιάσεως — Health is then imagined as an alternative acquisition from the same sort of event.

Translation in this edition

The edition gives “entertained at a feast,” “feasting richly,” and “from a feast,” preserving the family while distinguishing the passive guest-role from the experience of abundant dining. These are not references to a named symposium in the dramatic setting; the dialogue provides no setting for the conversation itself.