[1]: Nothing is known of this man.
[2]: Probably Plato’s brother (Rep. 368A).
[3]: His friend means: I expect you quite deserve your name of crazy fanatic (for your general absorption in philosophy), because your vehement censure of yourself and others suggests it to me.
[4]: Bacchyl. fr. 33
[5]: The name Agathon resembles the Greek for good men’s in the proverb, which seems to have been: αὐτόματοι δ’ ἀγαθοὶ ἀγαθῶν ἐπὶ δαῖτας ἴασι (Athen. i. 8A; Bacchyl. fr. 33). The corruption consists in putting the dative Ἀγάθων(ἰ) for ἀγαθῶν; though perhaps the reference is to another form of the proverb which had δειλῶν (cravens’) instead of ἀγαθῶν.
[6]: Hom. Il. 17.587Μενέλαον ὑπετρέσας, ὃ τὸ πάρος γε μαλθακὸς αἰχμητής, and Hom. Il. 2.408 αὐτόματος δέ οἱ ἦλθε βοὴν ἀγαθὸς Μενέλαος.
[7]: Hom. Il. 17.587
[8]: Cf. Hom. Il. 10.224 σύν τε δύ’ ἐρχομένω, καί τε πρὸ ὃ τοῦ ἐνόησεν ὅππως κέρδος ἔηι, if two go along together, there’s one to espy before another how a profit may be had.
[9]: This clause is probably an asideto his guests.
[10]: Eurip. fr. 488 οὐκ ἐμὸς ὁ μῦθος, ἀλλ’ ἐμῆς μητρὸς ἐμῆς μητρὸς πάρα, not mine the tale; my mother taught it me.
[11]: The moralizing sophist, famous for his parable of The Choice of Heracles (Xen. Mem. 2.1.21), where the appeal of Virtue prevails over that of Vice.
[12]: Hes. Theog. 116
[13]: An Argive compiler of genealogies in the first part of the fifth century B.C.
[14]: Parmenides fr. 132; Cf. Aristot. Met. 1.984b.
[15]: There was such a sacred band (ἱερὸς λόχος) at Thebes, which distinguished itself at Leuctra (371 B.C.).
[16]: Hom. Il. 10.482; Hom. Il. 15.262
[17]: Pindar O. 2.78ff. (Hom. Od. 11.467ff., places him in Hades).
[18]: Hom. Il. 18.96.
[19]: Aesch. Myrm. fr. 135-136.
[20]: Hom. Il. 11.786.
[21]: Hdt. 1.105, Hdt. 1.131; Paus. 1.14.7.
[22]: Paus. 1.22.3.
[23]: Cf. Sophocles, fr. 694 ὅρκους δὲ μοιχῶν εἰς τέφραν ἐγὼ γράφω, the lecher’s vows in ashes I record.
[24]: So Agamemnon speaks of the dream which brought him a message through the lips of Nestor (Hom. Il. 2.71).
[25]: The punning assonance alludes to those sophists who developed the etymological suggestions of Heracleitus and Aeschylus into mere sound-effects for prose. A more serious philological development is discussed in Plat. Crat. 396.
[26]: This cosmic theory was derived from Empedocles, who spoke of Love as the combining, and Strife as the disruptive, force pervading the universe.
[27]: Aristophanes and Agathon.
[28]: Heracl. fr. (Bywater). The universe is held together by the strain of opposing forces, just as the right use of bow or lyre depends on opposite tension.
[29]: i.e. hermaphrodite; cf. Lucret. v. 837ff.
[30]: The double sex of the moon is mentioned in an Orphic hymn (ix. 4): cf. Macrob. iii. 8.
[31]: Hom. Od. 11.305ff.; Hom. Il. 5.385ff.
[32]: A tally, or notched stick matching another, is the nearest English equivalent for σύμβολον, which was a half of a broken die given and kept as a token of friendship; see below, Plat. Sym. 193a (λίσται).
[33]: i.e. his anvil (Hom. Od. 8.274), bellows, tongs, and hammer (Hom. Il. 18.372ff., Hom. Il. 18.474ff.).
[34]: Probably referring to the dispersal of Mantinea into villages in 385 B.C. (Xen. Hell. 5.2.1ff.).
[35]: So Hom. Od. 17.218 Heaven ever bringeth like and like together.
[36]: These two Titans, the sons of Heaven and Earth, were proverbially the original inhabitants of the world
[37]: Hes. Th. 176ff., Hes. Th. 746ff. There are no such stories in the remaining fragments of Parmenides.
[38]: Hom. Il. 19.92-93
[39]: Perhaps here he smiles at or touches the bald head of Socrates.
[40]: Quoted from Alcidamas, a stylist of the school of Gorgias; Aristot. Rh. 3.1406a.
[41]: Soph. Thyest. Fr. 235 Necessity, whom not the God of War withstands.
[42]: Eur. Sthen. Fr. 663
[43]: Agathon here strains the meaning of ποιήτης back to the original and wider one of maker, creator. Cf. below, Plat. Sym. 205 B.C.
[44]: Hom. Il. 2.827, Hom. Il. 1.72; above, Plat. Sym. 190f.
[45]: Unknown
[46]: Cf. Plat. Parm. (Diels2 123) δαίμων ἣ πάντα κυβερνᾷ.
[47]: Cf. Hom. Od. 5.391 Then ceased the wind, and came a windless calm. Agathon is here displaying his own poetic skill, not quoting.
[48]: Hom. Od. 11.632, where Odysseus is sore afraid that Persephone will send up the Gorgon’s head among the crowd of ghosts from Hades. Agathon has just displayed his addiction to the elegant rhetoric of Gorgias.
[49]: Eur. Hipp. 612 The tongue hath sworn; the mind is yet unsworn.
[50]: These names suggest a connection respectively with prophecy and with the favor of Heaven.
[51]: Δαίμονες and τὸ δαιμόνιον represent the mysterious agencies and influences by which the gods communicate with mortals.
[52]: Cf. above, Plat. Sym. 197a.
[53]: Cf. above, Plat. Sym. 204e-205a.
[54]: A prophetic allusion to Aristophanes’ speech, Plat. Sym. 192ff.
[55]: The argument requires the application of begetting and other such terms indifferently to either sex.
[56]: Diotima, like Agathon, breaks into verse of her own composing.
[57]: A legendary king of Athens who exposed his life because an oracle had said that the Dorian invaders would conquer if they did not slay the Athenian king.
[58]: The legendary creator of Spartan laws and customs.
[59]: See Plat. Sym. 205e.
[60]: His drunken gesture interrupts what he means to say and resumes later, If I may speak the truth.
[61]: Hom. Il. 11.514
[62]: The usual proverb of the truthfulness of wine (οἶνος καὶ ἀλήθεια) was sometimes extended to οἶνος καὶ παῖδες ἀληθεῖς Truthful are wine and children.
[63]: Hom. Il. 6.236— Glaucus foolishly exchanging his golden armour for the bronze armour of Diomedes.
[64]: Referring to the sevenfold shield of Ajax; cf.Pind. I. 5.45; Soph. Af. 576.
[65]: 432 B.C.
[66]: Hom. Od. 4.242
[67]: The Athenians were defeated by the Thebans, 424 B.C.: cf. Thuc. 4. 76 ff.
[68]: Aristoph. Clouds 362
[69]: Hom. Il. 17.33 ῥεχθὲν δέ τε νήπιος ἔγνω, fools get their lesson from the deed done.
[70]: At Plat. Sym. 214c it was only agreed that each should impose what topic he pleased upon his neighbor.