INTRODUCTION

not wholly clear. It may, of course, be merely a literary device meant to enhance the realism of the account, since the speeches actually related might be thought insufficient to occupy the length of time supposed to elapse between the end of the dinner and the hour of Alcibiades' arrival—which would probably not be early. It is possible, however, that we should look for a deeper reason. If so, may not the intention be to brush aside and discredit other speeches stated by another author to have been delivered on this occasion?

The first Interlude, worthy of the name, occurs between the second and third encomia (185 C—E), and it is noticeable, first, for the reference to the "isology" original: ἰσολογία, meaning "equality of speech" of the rhetorical sophists; secondly, for the device by which the natural order of speakers is changed (Eryximachus taking the place of Aristophanes); and thirdly, for the alleged cause which renders such a change necessary, namely the hiccough of Aristophanes. As regards the significance of this last matter considerable diversity of opinion exists among the commentators. Of the ancients, Olympiodorus (Life of Plato 3) supposed that Plato here "ridiculed Aristophanes when he introduces him suffering from a hiccough in the middle and unable to complete his hymn": and similarly Athenaeus (187 C) writes "he wished to ridicule and lampoon him as being troubled by the hiccough": and Aristides (Oration 46) says, "but I think he had to hiccough so that he might be mocked for his gluttony." Of the moderns, some have followed the ancients in supposing that the incident is meant to satirize Aristophanes and his intemperate habits (so Stallbaum, Rückert, Steinhart); while some (Stephens, Sydenham, Wolf, Schwegler) take the object of the ridicule to be not so much the habits of the poet as his speech with its "indelicate ingredients." On the other hand, Schleiermacher held the view that Eryximachus with his "physiological and medical notion of love" is here being satirized; while Ast—whose view is shared in the main by Hommel, van Prinsterer and Rettig—argued that the real object of the ridicule is Pausanias, by whose speech Aristophanes implies that he has been "fed up" to the point of loathing. This view Rettig thinks is supported by the phrase "Pausanias having ceased," which he takes to indicate Apollodorus' ridicule—by the allusion made by Aristophanes to Pausanias' speech in 189 C—and by his mention of Pausanias again in 193 B; and he construes the hint of another