Abstract

After arriving drunk at Agathon's party, Alcibiades offers to praise Socrates instead of love, the object of the other characters' praise. In praising Socrates, Alcibiades says that he will have to use images. He assures his companions, however, that this ‘is no joke: the image will be for the sake of the truth’. Alcibiades goes on to present his famous images of a Socrates who is full of divine images, and who casts spells with his words. Later, Alcibiades describes those words themselves as ‘bursting with images of virtue’.