It might, perhaps, seem to savour of pedantry, to remark, that the nice distinctions between the aorists [Greek: diapythesthai] and [Greek: diêgêsai] and the imperfect [Greek: diêgeito], are needlessly slurred over; but the clause [Greek: paizôn hama têi klêsei] must mean something more than 'in merry mood.' We do not know precisely what the joke was; but probably [Greek: phalêros] or [Greek: phalaros] was applied to one who had a bare patch on his head, a white whisker perhaps, or some such facial peculiarity.
Let this, however, pass. We admit there is no serious error here, but the passage will fairly well illustrate the kind of paraphrastic version Professor Jowett has generally adopted,--we do not say wrongly, for we repeat that it is quite a matter of taste and judgment; and neither of these qualities in so experienced a scholar is it our desire to impugn. His object was to give the _matter_ of Plato, certainly not to compose 'a crib' for young students. But, whatever the motive was, we are rather afraid that this slipshod way of translating, and of inverting or perverting the order of the Greek words, not unfrequently borders closely on inaccuracy. For instance, and not to go further than the first chapter of this same _Symposium_ (p. 173, A.), Apollodorus says, in his impulsive way, that he has kept close company with Socrates for something less than three years; 'Before that, I used to run from one to another without any fixed object; and though I persuaded myself I was doing something, I was the most miserable of men; aye, as miserable as you (Glaucon) are, in thinking you ought to do anything rather than study philosophy.'
The point of the passage is the hit at his friend as one of the [Greek: chrêmatistikoi] (not 'traders,' but) those absorbed in money-making, and the eulogy of his own novitiate in philosophy. In Mr. Jowett's version the passage stands thus: 'I used to be running about the world, thinking that I was doing something, and would have done anything rather than be a philosopher; I was almost as miserable as you are now.' A little further down (173, D.) he appears to us to miss the true sense, or, at least, to misrepresent it. The friend ([Greek: hetairos]) says to Apollodorus, 'How ever you came to be called by this name, "The Excitable," I know not; for in your conversations you are always the same; you are savage at yourself and everybody else except Socrates.'