[198c]
half as fine, that for very shame I was on the point of slinking away, had I had any chance. For his speech so reminded me of Gorgias that I was exactly in the plight described by Homer:1 I feared that Agathon in his final phrases would confront me with the eloquent Gorgias' head, and by opposing his speech to mine would turn me thus dumbfounded into stone. And so in that moment I realized what a ridiculous fool I was to fall in with your proposal that I should take my turn in your eulogies of Love,
1 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.
Plato. Plato in Twelve Volumes, Vol. 9 translated by Harold N. Fowler. Cambridge, MA, Harvard University Press; London, William Heinemann Ltd. 1925.
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