πολλὰ...ἔργα. Another rhetorical “tag,” as is shown by the parallel in Menex. 239 A πολλὰ...καὶ καλὰ ἔργα ἀπεφήναντο εἰς πάντας ἀνθρώπους: cp. Phaedrus's expressions in 179 B, C.
παντοίαν ἀρετήν. Cp. Critias 112 E “κατὰ τὴν τῶν ψυχῶν παντοίαν ἀρετήν” : Eur. Med. 845 (ἔρωτας） παντοίας ἀρετᾶς ξυνέργους.
ἱερὰ πολλὰ. For the shrine of Lycurgus, see Hdt. I. 66, Plut. Lyc. 31. The language echoes Aristophanes' μέγιστ᾽ ἂν αὐτοῦ ἱερὰ κατασκευάσαι (189 C); and it is cited by Clem. Al. Strom. I. p. 300 P.
Ταῦτα...κἂν σὺ μυηθείης. Here Diotima passes on to the final section of her discourse on erotics (see 210 D n.). Hug and P. Crain (following C. F. Hermann and Schwegler) suppose that κἂν σὺ μ. indicates that what follows is something beyond the ken of the historical Socrates, whose view they regard as correctly represented in Xen. Symp. VIII. 97 ff. But although we may admit (with Thompson, Meno p. 158) that “we often find Plato making his ideal Socrates criticise the views the real Socrates held,” we are not hereby justified in assuming such criticism on every possible occasion. And, in the case before us, another and more probable explanation of the words lies to hand. Socrates throughout—with his usual irony—depicts himself as a mere tiro in the hands of the Mantinean mistress; but he is still, in spite of his mock-modesty, the ideal philosopher of Alcibiades' encomium. As it was a part of his irony that he had already (201 E) put himself on the level of Agathon and the rest of the unphilosophic, so the contemptuous κἂν σὺ here serves to keep up the same ironical fiction,—i.e. it applies neither to the ideal nor to the real (historical) Socrates, but to the hypothetical Socrates—the disguise assumed by the ideal Socrates when he played the part of pupil (cp. Rettig's note, and F. Horn Platonstud. p. 248). The attitude of Socr. may be illustrated by the words of S. Paul (1 Cor. iv. 6) ταῦτα δέ, ἀδελφοί, μετεσχημάτισα εἰς ἐμαυτὸν καὶ Ἀπολλὼ δἰ ὑμᾶς, ἵνα ἐν ὑμῖν μάθητε κτλ. For μυηθείης, see next note.
