Why, my dear friend, said Socrates, must not I or any one be in a strait
who has to speak after he has heard such a rich and varied discourse? I am
especially struck with the beauty of the concluding words--who could listen
to them without amazement? When I reflected on the immeasurable
inferiority of my own powers, I was ready to run away for shame, if there
had been a possibility of escape. For I was reminded of Gorgias, and at
the end of his speech I fancied that Agathon was shaking at me the
Gorginian or Gorgonian head of the great master of rhetoric, which was
simply to turn me and my speech into stone, as Homer says (Odyssey), and
strike me dumb. And then I perceived how foolish I had been in consenting
to take my turn with you in praising love, and saying that I too was a
master of the art, when I really had no conception how anything ought to be
praised. For in my simplicity I imagined that the topics of praise should
be true, and that this being presupposed, out of the true the speaker was
to choose the best and set them forth in the best manner. And I felt quite
proud, thinking that I knew the nature of true praise, and should speak
well. Whereas I now see that the intention was to attribute to Love every
species of greatness and glory, whether really belonging to him or not,
without regard to truth or falsehood--that was no matter; for the original
proposal seems to have been not that each of you should really praise Love,
but only that you should appear to praise him. And so you attribute to
Love every imaginable form of praise which can be gathered anywhere; and
you say that 'he is all this,' and 'the cause of all that,' making him
appear the fairest and best of all to those who know him not, for you
cannot impose upon those who know him. And a noble and solemn hymn of
praise have you rehearsed. But as I misunderstood the nature of the praise
when I said that I would take my turn, I must beg to be absolved from the
promise which I made in ignorance, and which (as Euripides would say
(Eurip. Hyppolytus)) was a promise of the lips and not of the mind.
Farewell then to such a strain: for I do not praise in that way; no,