From the book
The Lovers
Plato · Diotimos Editions · 2026
Browse this book’s lexicon →Orientation
At a Glance
- The wordDromeus is a runner or racer; palaistēs is a wrestler.
- In The LoversRunning and wrestling make the intellectual hierarchy concrete.
- In this editionThe edition’s “racers” keeps the competitive setting conspicuous.
- A place to readτοὺς δρομέας ἢ τοὺς παλαιστάς — Racers and wrestlers supply the named specialists.
Meaning
Dromeus is a runner or racer; palaistēs is a wrestler. Athlon can denote a prize or contest, and the edition translates the plural athla at 135e as “events.” In this context the reference is to the racers’ and wrestlers’ own competitive disciplines, not to an inventory of trophies. The plural accusatives dromeas and palaistas name the specialist competitors against whom pentathletes are compared.
Use in the book
Running and wrestling make the intellectual hierarchy concrete. The same person can outperform most people and still lose to the appropriately trained specialist. The pentathlete is second in these men’s own events, and first among the remaining athletes. The qualification “in these men’s own events” prevents a global inference that every specialist is better in every respect than every generalist.
This local ranking matters when Socrates moves to the doctor and pilot. The practical question selects a single field in the way that an event selects a single skill. Illness calls for medical competence, a storm for navigation. The analogy works to that extent, but competitive defeat and practical uselessness are not equivalent: losing to a specialist does not demonstrate that one could give no help. The later inference therefore requires more than the image itself supplies.
Wrestling also reconnects the argument to the dramatic rivalry. The athlete had been insulted for having his neck twisted, and he had replied by mocking the intellectual’s unrubbed neck. When Socrates now reaches for a wrestler as an example of genuine expertise, the supposedly inferior rival’s world becomes an explanatory resource. The text need not declare the athlete philosophically superior for that reversal to be visible.
Places to read
Translation in this edition
The edition’s “racers” keeps the competitive setting conspicuous. Its “events” for athla should not be mechanically replaced by “prizes,” although prize language becomes explicit in the following description of second rank. The transition from an event to its ranking is part of the analogy’s construction.