Agathon is portrayed by Plato as a handsome young man, well dressed, of polished manners, courted by the fashion, wealth and wisdom of Athens, and dispensing hospitality with ease and refinement. The epideictic speech in praise of love which Agathon recites in the "Symposium" is full of beautiful but artificial rhetorical expressions, and has led some scholars to believe he may have been a student of Gorgias. In the "Symposium," Agathon is presented as the friend of the comic poet Aristophanes, but this alleged friendship did not prevent Aristophanes from harshly criticizing Agathon in at least two of his comic plays: the "Thesmophoriazousae" and the (now lost) "Gerytades". In the later play "Frogs", Aristophanes softens his criticisms, but even so it may be only for the sake of punning on Agathon's name (ἁγαθός "good") that he makes Dionysus call him a "good poet".