R. G. Bury, The Symposium of Plato

Speech of Agathon

πρῶτον μὲν...ἔπειτα εἰπεῖν. Stallbaum, though reading ὡς, punctuates like Hommel (who keeps the vulgate ᾗ) after the first as well as after the second εἰπεῖν, as if the meaning were “to speak in the way in which I ought to speak,” which is nonsense. The first εἰπεῖν (=δηλοῦν) is different in force from the other two (=λόγον ποιεῖσθαι), the sense being “first to state the proper method I am to adopt in my oration, and secondly to deliver it.” Agathon has imbibed a “worship of machinery”—the machinery of method— from the fashionable schools of rhetoric.

δοκοῦσι γάρ μοι. Agathon, like the rest (cp. 180 D, 185 E), adopts the favourite rhetorical device of criticizing the manner or thought of previous speakers: cp. Isocr. Busir. 222 B, 230 A; Hel. 210 B φησὶ μὲν γὰρ ἐγκώμιον... τυγχάνει δ᾽ ἀπολογίαν εἰρηκώς κτλ.: Panegyr. 41 B ff., 44 C.