Abstract

Agathon's mannered yet striking encomium on Eros in Plato's Symposium 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: κυβερντης πιβτης …, but then disconcerts readers and commentators alike by immediately lapsing into the down-to-earth language of παρασττης τε σωτρ … words which seem to lack maritime connotations. The standard editions offer no help: Hug–Schöner 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 πιβτης and the ‘predominantly nautical sense’ of κυβερντης ; he translates παρασττης as ‘comrade-in-arms, – strictly the hoplite posted beside one’. Bury 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’.