“And you speak quite reasonably, my friend,” said Socrates. “And if it holds thus, what else could Eros be other than love of beauty, but not ugliness?” He was agreeing to this.
Isn’t ὡμολόγει surprising here, since it’s not in indirect speech?
As to the first example, perhaps the 3rd person present “ὡμολόγει” is just indicating that the Apollodorus is jumping out of the narrative for emphasis. I have heard that authors will use the present tense inside of a historical narrative to draw the reader into the narrative.
ὡμολόγει is simply an editorial comment, not part of the grammatical structure of the sentence. As for the second, I think it’s Socrates, speaking in the third person of himself.
Just to provide some context: As I’m sure that people know, the setup of the Symposium is that everything is being related 3rd-hand. Apollodorus is relating what Aristodemus heard at the symposium. It’s “he said that Socrates said” throughout, or “φάναι τον Σωκράτη.”
As suggested, a finite verb could be emphasis or an editorial comment by Apollodorus. But I would surprised to find either in this context. This is a fairly trivial bit – so trivial that we aren’t even told the exact words of Agathon here.
I could believe that this is just for vividness or liveliness, but I thought it had been all infinitives up until now. Likely I just haven’t been paying close enough attention.
Written yesterday but not posted. I hope it will clear up the confusion and misapprehension evident in some of these posts. (But mahasacham understood, and made a reasonable suggestion: “for emphasis.”)
ωμολογει is surprising, yes, a rather startling departure from the cumbersome and strangely distanced reported form of the entire dialogue, with all those φάναι’s etc at second or third remove. It must be marked, I think: this forced agreement is far from “trivial”: it’s the crucial point in the elenchus, leading straight to Agathon’s realization of the incoherence of his position (as invariably happens to Socrates’ interlocutors). The momentary abandonment of the indirect form is not altogether unique in the Symposium, and it might be worth checking the other instances where it’s dropped. (It must have been a bit of pain to sustain it.) I doubt it’s simply in the interests of preserving the tense, though that too must be significant somehow and it’s hard to imagine ὁμολογεῖν. Above we had συμφαναι εφη τον Αγαθωνα (200d6), but here, coming hard on the heels of φαναι τον Αγαθωνα at 201a6, ομολογειν/ομολογῆσαι (εφη) τον Αγαθωνα would be clumsy, and the pace is quickening as we approach his discomfiture at 201b11 (κινδυνευω ω Σωκρατες ουδεν ειδεναι ὧν τοτε ειπον!).
The ω φιλουμενε Αγαθων reply is definitely Socrates. The μεν ουν is corrective, as usual. “I couldn’t gainsay you” says Agathon. “No it’s truth you can’t gainsay, my darling,” says Socrates, “there’s nothing hard about gainsaying Socrates.” He could have said εμοί γε but the objectifying “Socrates” (a mere know-nothing mortal) makes a sharper contrast with “truth.”