Agathon

Then, Apollodorus, he said, do you know, I have just been looking for you, as I want to hear all about the banquet that brought together Agathon and Socrates and Alcibiades and the rest of that party, and what were the speeches they delivered upon love.

Then Socrates sat down, and How fine it would be, Agathon, he said, if wisdom were a sort of thing that could flow out of the one of us who is fuller into him who is emptier, by our mere contact with each other, as water will flow through wool from the fuller cup into the emptier.

After this, it seems, when Socrates had taken his place and had dined with the rest, they made libation and sang a chant to the god and so forth, as custom bids, till they betook them to drinking.

indeed in some they are all invented, as for instance in Agathon’s Antheus, where both the incidents and the names are invented and yet it is none the less a favourite.

take the way in which Agathon and Homer portray Achilles.

And this, as Agathon says, is a likely result, since it is likely that many quite unlikely things should happen.

And moreover we have to do some things by art, while others fall to our lot by compulsion or chance.

One might perhaps say that this very thing is probable, that many things happen to men that are not probable;

While kissing Agathon, my soul leapt to my lips, as if fain, alas!

Agathon should be set free after two years, and the litter-bearers Ophelio and Posidonius after four years’ further service.

SERVANT For Agathon, our captain, the lord of lovely words, is about —

EURIPIDES Agathon, since you grudge to give yourself, at any rate lend us a gown for this fellow and a breast-band;

AGATHON But if one composes manly dramas, that quality is present already in the body.

And a great-spirited man would consider more what one virtuous man thinks than what many ordinary people think, as Antiphon after his condemnation said to Agathon when he praised his speech for his defence.

Nor yet are any of those brave who, as many men do, commit suicide to escape from trouble, as Agathon says:

Hence Agathon is right in saying This only is denied even to God, The power to make what has been done undone.

And in a sense Art deals with the same objects as chance, as Agathon says:

"treating what is by the way as the main work, and labouring at the main work as though it were by the way.

At the trial of Agathon, the olive-merchant, a day or two ago, he bellowed and ranted and cried Ha-ha!

I fancied I heard his name was Agathon, and I should not be surprised to find he is Pausanias’ favorite.

Yet Pausanias, the lover of the poet Agathon, has said in his defence of those who wallow in lasciviousness that the most valiant army, even, would be one recruited of lovers and their favourites!