Static Electricity in Agathon's Speech in Plato's Symposium

Extract

Agathon's mannered yet striking encomium on Eros in Plato's Symposium (197c ff.) has attracted critical attention in ample measure, yet at least one dark corner remains unilluminated. As the speaker approaches his climax in the words quoted above, he slips into nautical imagery: κυβερν⋯της ⋯πιβ⋯της … (a soldier on shipboard), but then disconcerts readers and commentators alike by immediately lapsing into the down-to-earth language of παραστ⋯της τε⋯ σωτ⋯ρ … words which seem to lack maritime connotations. The standard editions offer no help: Hug–Schöner (1909) devote several lines to the metaphors as they conceive them and suggest various groupings, but conclude somewhat despairingly: ‘dass es im ubrigen hier nicht auf Schärfe der Begriffe ankommt, leuchtet ein’. Dover, elsewhere a supportive editor, here only offers observations on ⋯πιβ⋯της and the ‘predominantly nautical sense’ of κυβερν⋯της (‘pilot’); he translates παραστ⋯της as ‘comrade-in-arms, – strictly the hoplite posted beside one’. Bury (1909, ad loc.) has some desultory statements which lead nowhere, while lecture-notes of pupils betray perplexity; some consider the four nouns here to be an ‘odd assortment’, and say that ‘many emendations have been suggested’. It has even been suggested that it was perhaps Plato's intention to show Agathon talking ‘near-nonsense’.