Editing Agathon (section)

==Physical appearance==
Agathon's extraordinary physical beauty is brought up repeatedly in the sources; the historian W. Rhys Roberts observes that "ὁ καλός Ἀγάθων (''ho kalos Agathon'') has become almost a stereotyped phrase."<ref>{{cite journal |first=W. Rhys |last=Roberts |title=Aristophanes and Agathon |journal=[[The Journal of Hellenic Studies]] |volume=20 |year=1900 |pages=50 |doi=10.2307/623742 |jstor=623742 |s2cid=163986386 |url=https://zenodo.org/record/2314442 }}</ref>  The most detailed surviving description of Agathon is in the ''Thesmophoriazousae,'' in which Agathon appears as a pale, clean-shaven young man dressed in women's clothes.  Scholars are unsure how much of Aristophanes' portrayal is fact and how much mere comic invention.

After a close reading of the ''Thesmophoriazousae,'' the historian Jane McIntosh Snyder observed that Agathon's costume was almost identical to that of the famous lyric poet [[Anacreon]], as he is portrayed in early 5th-century vase-paintings.  Snyder theorizes that Agathon might have made a deliberate effort to mimic the sumptuous attire of his famous fellow poet, although by Agathon's time, such clothing, especially the κεκρύφαλος (''kekryphalos'', an elaborate covering for the hair) had long fallen out of fashion for men.  According to this interpretation, Agathon is mocked in the ''Thesmophoriazousae'' not only for his notorious effeminacy, but also for the pretentiousness of his dress: "he seems to think of himself, in all his elegant finery, as a rival to the old Ionian poets, perhaps even to Anacreon himself."<ref>{{cite journal |first=Jane McIntosh |last=Snyder |title=Aristophanes' Agathon as Anacreon |journal=Hermes |volume=102 |year=1974 |issue=2 |pages=246 |jstor=4475842 }}</ref>