A route to Homer -- Homeric or sung speech -- Reconsidering Xenophanes -- Rreconsidering speech -- Parmenides' poem -- The way it seems.

This work offers an evaluation of Plato’s portrayal of “Socrates” in relation to models of the ancient Greek “agon”, oral poetic performance, and the practices of “xenia”. The author reinterprets the values of the oral tradition and xenia as non-agonistic, and shows how these values can illuminate the dramatic and philosophical import of Plato’s Socrates in ways potentially relevant to current thinking about “demokratia”.