[174b]
for going unasked to dinner?”“For anything,” he said he replied, “that you may bid me do.”“Come along then,” he said; “let us corrupt the proverb with a new version: What if they go of their own accord,The good men to our Goodman's1 board?Though indeed Homer2 may be said to have not merely corrupted the adage, but debauched it: for after setting forth Agamemnon as a man eminently good at warfare,
1 The name Agathon resembles the Greek for “good men's” in the proverb, which seems to have been: αὐτόματοι δ᾽ ἀγαθοὶ ἀγαθῶν ἐπὶ δαῖτας ἴασι (Athen. i. 8A; Bacchyl. fr. 33). The “corruption” consists in putting the dative Ἀγάθων(ι) for ἀγαθῶν; though perhaps the reference is to another form of the proverb which had δειλῶν (cravens') instead of ἀγαθῶν.
2 Hom. Il. 17.587 Μενέλαον ὑπετρέσας, ὃ τὸ πάρος γε μαλθακὸς αἰχμητής, and Hom. Il. 2.408 αὐτόματος δέ οἱ ἦλθε βοὴν ἀγαθὸς Μενέλαος.
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