From the book
Symposium
Plato · Diotimos Editions · 2026
Browse this book’s lexicon →Orientation
At a Glance
- The wordAtopos and atopia describe what does not fit the expected situation or familiar classification.
- In the SymposiumAgathon’s first use concerns a practical oddity: his guest stands outside instead of entering dinner.
- In this editionThe edition uses “outlandish” and “outlandishness” for the adjective and noun, including the comparative in Diotima’s speech.
- A place to readA guest’s unusual behaviour is identified as a familiar Socratic habit.
Meaning
Atopos and atopia describe what does not fit the expected situation or familiar classification. “Outlandish” preserves the discomfort of an encounter with something not readily placed, without making the word a technical doctrine of transcendence.
Use in the book
Agathon’s first use concerns a practical oddity: his guest stands outside instead of entering dinner. Aristodemus answers not with a theory but with familiarity: Socrates often does this, and should be left alone. What is outlandish for one participant can be customary for another.
Alcibiades makes the word central to his praise. Socrates’ combination of erotic appearance, indifference to inducement, formidable speech, bodily endurance, and calm in danger is difficult to recount neatly. More radically, no ancient or contemporary human being furnishes an adequate comparison. Achilles may be matched with Brasidas and Pericles with Homeric counsellors, but Socrates and his speeches must be compared instead with sileni and satyrs. The chosen nonhuman likeness both expresses and partially answers the failure of ordinary comparison.
The family is not restricted to this portrait. Diotima calls the replacement of knowledge within an apparently continuous life still more outlandish than other bodily and psychic changes. That occurrence helps prevent a mechanical reading in which every use secretly means “Socratic.” Strangeness can mark a surprising explanatory claim as well as an extraordinary person. The reader is invited to investigate what initially seems anomalous, not merely to admire oddness.
Places to read
- 175a–bA guest’s unusual behaviour is identified as a familiar Socratic habit.
- 207e–208a2The changing life of knowledge is called still more outlandish.
- 215aAlcibiades warns that Socrates’ strangeness is difficult to recount in sequence.
- 221c–d2Human comparisons fail and sileni return as the alternative.
Translation in this edition
The edition uses “outlandish” and “outlandishness” for the adjective and noun, including the comparative in Diotima’s speech. These words need not imply moral disapproval: Agathon is puzzled, while Alcibiades is largely admiring and aggrieved at once.
ἀτοπία (atopia)
atopia — Outlandishness or strangeness, especially Socrates’ resistance to ordinary personal comparisons.
- 215a — ἀτοπίαν. Alcibiades says it is hard to enumerate Socrates’ outlandishness in order.
- 221d — ἀτοπίαν. Both Socrates and his speeches resist likeness to another human being.
Read: Outlandishness.
ἄτοπος (atopos)
atopos — Outlandish, strange, or resistant to familiar expectations; not exclusively an epithet for Socrates.
- 175a — Ἄτοπόν. Agathon reacts to the report of Socrates standing in the neighbours’ porch.
- 207e — ἀτοπώτερον. Diotima calls the continual alteration of knowledge still more outlandish.
Read: Outlandishness.