Socrate sul campo di Potidea: la riflessione di Odisseo nel Simposio di Platone

The image of Socrates remaining silent in the porch of the neighbors, the ἄτοπος, according to Agathon’s brief comment, is confirmed, in Plato’s Symposium, at the end, in Alcibiades’ words, by the meditation of Socrates on the field of Potidaea, for many hours, amid the amazement of the soldiers. But here the quotation of the verse of Homer from the scene in Sparta on the numerous deeds of Odysseus, from the passage in contact with the Little Iliad, with the ancient tradition on Troy, indicates the matrix from which the image of Socrates derives: the story told by Antenor about the embassy, inside the walls of Troy, with the silence of Odysseus nourishing the power of oratory. In Plato’s Symposium, the literary memory of Homer immediately pervades the story told by Aristodemus, and the image of Socrates remaining silent in the porch of the neighbors and on the field of Potidaea indicates a comparison between the ἄφρων that Antenor suggests for the μῆτις of Odysseus, and the ἄτοπος that Agathon’s brief comment recalls for the meditation of Socrates.