Alkibiades recites acts of distinguished courage performed by Sokrates, at the siege of Potidæa as well as at the battle of Delium.
About the potent effect produced by the conversation of Sokrates upon his companions, compare Sympos. p. 173 C-D.
In the Xenophontic Apology (s. 18), Sokrates adverts to the undisturbed equanimity which he had shown during the long blockade of Athens after the battle of Ægospotami, while others were bewailing the famine and other miseries.
Drunkenness of others at the close of the Symposion — Sokrates is not affected by it, but continues his dialectic process.
After the speech of Alkibiades is concluded, the close of the banquet is described by the primary narrator. He himself, with Agathon and Aristophanes, and several other fresh revellers, continue to drink wine until all of them become dead drunk. While Phædrus, Eryximachus, and others retire, Sokrates remains. His competency to bear the maximum of wine without being disturbed by it, is tested to the full. Although he had before, in acceptance of the challenge of Alkibiades, swallowed the contents of the wine cooler, he nevertheless continues all the night to drink wine in large bowls, along with the rest. All the while, however, he goes on debating his ordinary topics, even though no one is sufficiently sober to attend to him. His companions successively fall asleep, and at day-break, he finds himself the only person sober,[44] except Aristodemus (the narrator of the whole scene), who has recently waked after a long sleep. Sokrates quits the house of Agathon, with unclouded senses and undiminished activity — bathes — and then visits the gymnasium at the Lykeion; where he passes all the day in his usual abundant colloquy.[45]
[44] In Sympos. p. 176 B, Sokrates is recognised as δυνατώτατος πίνειν, above all the rest: no one can be compared with him. In the two first books of the Treatise De Legibus, we shall find much to illustrate what is here said (in the Symposion) about the power ascribed to him of drinking more wine than any one else, without being at all affected by it. Plato discusses the subject of strong potations (μέθη) at great length; indeed he seems to fear that his readers will think he says too much upon it (i. 642 A). He considers it of great advantage to have a test to apply, such as wine, for the purpose of measuring the reason and self-command of different men, and of determining how much wine is sufficient to overthrow it, in each different case (i. 649 C-E). You can make this trial (he argues) in each case, without any danger or harm; and you can thus escape the necessity of making the trial in a real case of emergency. Plato insists upon the χρεία τῆς μέθης, as a genuine test, to be seriously employed for the purpose of testing men’s reason and force of character (ii. p. 673). In the Republic, too (iii. p. 413 E), the φύλακες are required to be tested, in regard to their capacity of resisting pleasurable temptation, as well as pain and danger.
Among the titles of the lost treatises of Theophrastus, we find one Περὶ Μέθης (Diog. L. v. 44). It is one of the compliments that the Emperor Marcus Antoninus (i. 16) pays to his father — That he was, like Sokrates, equally competent both to partake of, and to abstain from, the most seductive enjoyments, without ever losing his calmness and self-mastery.
[45] Plato, Sympos. p. 223.
Symposion and Phædon — each is the antithesis and complement of the other.
The picture of Sokrates, in the Symposion, forms a natural contrast and complement to the picture of him in the Phædon; though the conjecture of Schleiermacher[46] — that the two together are intended to make up the Philosophus, or third member of the trilogy promised in the Sophistês — is ingenious rather than convincing. The Phædon depicts Sokrates in his last conversation with his friends, immediately before his death; the Symposion presents him in the exuberance of life, health, and cheerfulness: in both situations, we find the same attributes manifested — perfect equanimity and self-command, proof against every variety of disturbing agency — whether tempting or terrible — absorbing interest in philosophical dialectic. The first of these two elements, if it stood alone, would be virtuous sobriety, yet not passing beyond the limit of mortal virtue: the last of the two superadds a higher element, which Plato conceives to transcend the limit of mortal virtue, and to depend upon divine inspiration or madness.[47]