Socrates on the Way to Agathon's
174a–175e
Aristodemus said that he met Socrates freshly bathed and wearing sandals, which he seldom did, and asked him where he was going, looking so fine.
He said: "To dinner at Agathon's. I avoided him yesterday at the victory celebration, for fear of the crowd, but I agreed to come today. That is why I have made myself beautiful: to go beautiful to a beautiful man. But you," he said, "how 174b would you feel about coming to dinner uninvited?"
"I told him," said Aristodemus, "that I would do whatever he said."
"Then follow me," he said, "so that we may spoil the proverb by changing it, and show that 'to good men's feasts the good go uninvited'.1 Homer, indeed, seems not only to have spoiled this proverb but to have outraged it. He makes Agamemnon a man exceptionally good 174c in war, and Menelaus a 'soft spearman'; and yet, when Agamemnon was offering a sacrifice and giving a feast, he made Menelaus come uninvited to the banquet, the worse man to the feast of the better."
When Aristodemus heard this, he said: "But perhaps, Socrates, I shall not be the case you describe, but Homer's — a poor man going uninvited to the feast of a wise one. So if you bring me, think what excuse you will make; for I shall not admit that I came uninvited, 174d but say that you invited me."
"'Two going together,'"2 he said, "'we will plan before we go' what we shall say. Come on."
After some such conversation, Aristodemus said, they set off. But Socrates, absorbed somehow in his own thoughts, kept falling behind on the way, and when Aristodemus waited for him he told him to go on ahead. When he reached Agathon's house 174e he found the door open, and there, he said, something comic happened to him. A slave came out at once from inside to meet him and led him to where the others were reclining, and he found them just about to dine. As soon as Agathon saw him he said: "Aristodemus! You have come at the right moment to dine with us. If you came for any other reason, put it off for another time; I was looking for you yesterday to invite you, but could not find you. But how is it you are not bringing Socrates?"
"And I turned round," said Aristodemus, "and saw Socrates nowhere behind me. So I said that I had come with Socrates myself, invited by him to dinner here."
"You did well," said Agathon. "But where is he?"
175a "He was coming in just behind me; I wonder myself where he can be."
"Boy," said Agathon, "go and look, and bring Socrates in. And you, Aristodemus, recline beside Eryximachus."
Then, he said, the slave washed his feet so that he might recline; and another slave came back to report: "This Socrates has retreated into the porch of the neighbours' house and is standing there, and when I call him he will not come in."
"How strange," said Agathon. "Call him, and do not let him go."
175b But Aristodemus said: "No, no; leave him alone. It is a habit of his: sometimes he goes off and stands still wherever he happens to be. He will come soon, I think. Do not disturb him; leave him alone."
"Well, we must do so, if you think so," said Agathon. "But serve the rest of us, boys. In any case you set out whatever you like, whenever no one is in charge of you — which I have never been. So now, think of me too as invited to dinner by you, and these others too, 175c and look after us, so that we may praise you."
After this, he said, they began to dine, but Socrates did not come in. Agathon kept wanting to send for him, but Aristodemus would not let him. At last he came, having spent not so long as usual, when they were about halfway through dinner. Agathon, who happened to be reclining alone in the last place, said: "Here, Socrates, lie down beside me, so that by touching you I may enjoy 175d the piece of wisdom that came to you in the porch. Clearly you found it and have it; otherwise you would not have stopped."
Socrates sat down and said: "It would be a fine thing, Agathon, if wisdom were the sort of thing that flows from the fuller of us into the emptier when we touch each other, as water in cups flows through a strand of wool from the fuller into the emptier. If wisdom too is like that, 175e I set a high value on lying beside you; for I think I shall be filled from you with much fine wisdom. Mine is a poor sort of thing, as disputable as a dream; but yours is brilliant and full of promise — it shone out so mightily from you, young as you are, and was made manifest the day before yesterday before more than thirty thousand Greeks as witnesses."
"You are insolent, Socrates," said Agathon. "You and I will settle this matter of wisdom a little later, with Dionysus as our judge. For now, turn to your dinner first."