"Are we to have neither conversation nor songs over our wine, but just to sit drinking as men do when they are thirsty?" He then explains the rules of the evening, and that Alcibiades must now deliver a speech on the subject of Love.

"An excellent idea, Eryximachus, but it can't be fair to make a man who is drunk compete in speaking with men who are sober. Besides... you surely don't believe a word of what Socrates has just said? . . . If I praise any person but him in his presence, be it god or man, he won't be able to keep his hands off me." It is at last agreed that Alcibiades will be permitted to speak a eulogy of Socrates, and he begins by saying. that he will praise Socrates by the use of similes. He first begins by comparing the appearance of Socrates to that of Silenus, a bald, flatnosed old man who, according to legend, was a companion of Dionysius and the Satyrs. He then begins to compare the charm of Socrates' speech with the music of Marsyas. a Satyr, who, in legend, enthralled all his listeners by the melodies he contrived upon the flute.

"But you, Socrates, are so far superior to Marsyas that you produce the same effect by mere words without any instrument. At any rate, whereas we most of us pay little or no attention to the words of any other speaker, however accomplished, a speech by you or even a very indifferent report of what you have said stirs us to the depths and casts a spell over us, men and women and young lads alike. Whenever I listen to him my heart beats faster than if I were in a religious frenzy, and tears run down my face. and I observe that numbers of other people have the same experience. That is the condition to which I have often been reduced by our modern Marsyas, with the result that it seems impossible to go on

living in my present state. He compels me to realize that I am still a mass of imperfections and yet persistently neglect my own true interests by engaging in public life. So against my real inclination I stop up my ears and take refuge in flight otherwise I should sit here beside him until I was an old man. He is the only person in whose presence I experience a sensation of which I might be thought incapable, sensation of shame; he, and he alone, positively makes me ashamed of myself. The reason is that I am conscious that there is no arguing against the conclusion that one should do as he bids, and yet that, whenever I am away from him, I succumb to the temptations of popularity. Many a time I should be glad for him to vanish from the face of the earth, but I know that, if that were to happen, my sorrow would far outweigh my relief. In fact, I simply do not know what to do about him.

nh

“But listen and you shall hear how in other respects too he resembles the creatures to which I compared him, and how marvellous is the power which he possesses. You may be sure that none of you knows his true nature, but I will reveal him to you, now that I have begun. The Socrates whom you see has a tendency to fall in love with goodlooking young men, and is always in their society and in an ecstasy about them. Besides he is, to all appearances, universally ignorant and knows nothing. But . . . he wears these characteristics (of Silenus) only superficially, (and) once you see beneath. the surface you will discover a degree of self-control of

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