From the book
The Lovers
Plato · Diotimos Editions · 2026
Browse this book’s lexicon →Orientation
At a Glance
- The wordTrachēlos means neck.
- In The LoversThe cultured lover’s first attack says the athlete has spent his whole life having his neck twisted, stuffing himself, and sleeping.
- In this editionThe note at 132c explicitly derives the wrestling verb from trachēlos and connects it with the later “unrubbed neck.”
- A place to readτραχηλιζόμενος καὶ ἐμπιμπλάμενος καὶ καθεύδων — The cultured lover caricatures the athlete’s bodily life.
Meaning
Trachēlos means neck. Trachēlizesthai means to have the neck seized and bent in wrestling; the opening participle trachēlizomenos describes undergoing that treatment. Atribēs means unrubbed or unworn and, by extension in relevant contexts, unpractised. Here the adjective describes the rival’s neck: a neck bearing no sign of the athlete’s familiar friction or handling. The local translation “unrubbed” preserves the physical echo.
The bodily image needs care in English. “Having his neck wrung” can suggest killing, whereas the passage’s point is a recurring wrestling experience. The insult reduces a whole life of training to the treatment of one body part; it is not a report of mortal violence.
Use in the book
The cultured lover’s first attack says the athlete has spent his whole life having his neck twisted, stuffing himself, and sleeping. A practice that might have its own discipline is recast as passive, bodily repetition. The athlete later answers with an “unrubbed neck” among his portrait of the philosopher as hungry, sleepless, and thin with worries. Each rival uses the other’s absence from his own practice as evidence of inferiority.
The verbal echo is exact enough to matter dramatically. The athlete has heard and retained the insult, then reverses its evaluative direction: the untrained neck is now the defect. The two physical caricatures explain why this debate cannot be read as a frictionless exchange of propositions. Each concession takes place under a personal threat to reputation.
Still, the athlete’s expertise is more than a neck. Socrates recalls him because of experience in gymnastics, and his substantive contribution identifies appropriate measure. The scene thereby lets a crude bodily joke coexist with a real correction to the cultured speaker’s reasoning. Neither the insult nor its answer should be substituted for a complete account of either man.
Places to read
Translation in this edition
The note at 132c explicitly derives the wrestling verb from trachēlos and connects it with the later “unrubbed neck.” “Twisted” describes the wrestling movement without suggesting killing. No technical reconstruction of an exact wrestling hold is required beyond what the edition’s note supplies.