Complete Works (153 page)

7
. The people of the deme Aexone were regarded as abusive speakers.

8
.
Odyssey
xvii.347.

LYSIS

Translated by Stanley Lombardo.

Lysis,
together with
Charmides,
gives a rich and subtle portrayal of Socrates
in one of his favorite pursuits—engaging in conversation with bright, cultivated,
good-looking teenage boys from distinguished Athenian families. Lysis
and Menexenus are best friends, in their early teens, still overseen by family
servants (slaves) as ‘tutors’. (Menexenus later became one of Socrates’ close associates:
there is a dialogue named after him, and he was present at the conversation
in
Phaedo
.) Hippothales is an older teenage boy, infatuated with Lysis
to the point of boring to death Ctesippus (another close associate of Socrates
later on, also with him on his last day) and the other boys of his own age, with
his poems and prose discourses on Lysis’ and his ancestors’ excellences. For
Socrates, however, this is the wrong way to draw such a young person to you.
Poetry and rhetorical praises will play to their pride and encourage arrogance.
The right way is by engaging them in philosophical discussion. If they are
worth attention at all, it is by turning them toward the improvement of their
souls, that is, their minds, that you will attract their sober interest and grateful
affection. Readers should compare what Alcibiades says about his own love
for Socrates in the
Symposium,
and Socrates’ dithyramb to love for boys in
his second speech in
Phaedrus
.

Socrates exhibits this right approach by engaging Lysis, and then also his
friend Menexenus, in an extended discussion about the nature of friendship:
who are friends to whom (or what), and on what ground? His first question to
Lysis fixes the theme, before it is clearly announced: ‘Am I right in assuming
that your father and mother love you very much?’ The Greek word for love
here is
philein,
cognate to the word for ‘friendship’,
philia
: ‘friendship’ in this
discussion includes the love of parents and children and other relatives, as well
as the close elective attachments of what we understand as personal friendship.
It also covers impassioned, erotic fixations like Hippothales’ for Lysis. What is
friendship, so understood, and under what conditions does it actually exist?

Socrates does not really seek and examine the boys’ opinions on this topic
(as he does with other interlocutors, including Charmides, in Plato’s ‘Socratic’
dialogues). Rather, he confronts them with a carefully constructed series of conceptual
problems that arise when one tries to think seriously about friends and
friendships. Is the friend the one who loves or the one loved? Or are there
friends only where each loves the other? Difficulties arise for each solution. Or
is it rather that good people are friends of other good people? But wait: since
good people are so much like one another, can they do each other any good at
all, as friends must do (if friendship is a good thing)? Poets such as Hesiod
have pointed to an inherent enmity between people of the same kind (people of
the same profession, for example): what is one to make of that idea? Finally,
what is the basis of a friendship: what does the friend ultimately love in loving
his friend, and how does the love of that relate to the love of the friend? These
philosophical (‘logical’) problems, Socrates seems to be saying, must be worked
through in a systematic way before one can claim to understand what friendship
is. But he only poses the problems, bringing the boys to see the difficulty
they face in understanding the relationship they have entered into in being best
friends.

Some of these issues recur in the
Symposium,
in Socrates’ questions to Agathon
and in Diotima’s remarks. Aristotle’s celebrated theory of friendship in
Eudemian
and
Nicomachean Ethics
is visibly constructed in part out of solutions
proposed on these issues.

J.M.C.

[203]
I was on my way from the Academy straight to the Lyceum, following the road just outside and beneath the wall; and when I got to the little gate by Panops spring, I happened to meet Hippothales, Hieronymus’ son, and Ctesippus of Paeania, and with them some other young men standing together in a group. Seeing me coming, Hippothales said,

“Hey, Socrates, where are you coming from and where are you going?”

“From the Academy,” I said, “straight to the Lyceum.”

“Well, come straight over here to us, why don’t you? You won’t come? It’s worth your while, I assure you.”

“Where do you mean, and who all are you?”

“Over here,” he said, showing me an open door and an enclosed area just facing the wall. “A lot of us spend our time here. There are quite a
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few besides ourselves—and they’re all good-looking.”

“What is this, and what do you do here?”

“This is a new wrestling-school,” he said, “just built. But we spend most of our time discussing things, and we’d be glad to have you join in.”

“How very nice,” I said. “And who is the teacher here?”

“Your old friend and admirer, Mikkos.”

“Well, God knows, he’s a serious person and a competent instructor.”

“Well, then, won’t you please come in and see who’s here?”

[b] “First I’d like to hear what I’m coming in for—and the name of the best-looking member.”

“Each of us has a different opinion on who that is, Socrates.”

“So tell me, Hippothales, who do you think it is?”

He blushed at the question, so I said, “Aha! You don’t have to answer that, Hippothales, for me to tell whether you’re in love with any of these boys or not—I can see that you are not only in love but pretty far gone too. I may not be much good at anything else, but I have this god-given ability to tell pretty [c] quickly when someone is in love, and who he’s in love with.”

When he heard this he really blushed, which made Ctesippus say, “O very cute, Hippothales, blushing and too embarrassed to tell Socrates the name. But if he spends any time at all with you he’ll be driven to distraction hearing you say it so often. We’re all just about deaf, Socrates, from all [d] the ‘Lysis’ he’s poured into our ears. And if he’s been drinking, odds are we’ll wake up in the middle of the night thinking we hear Lysis’ name. As bad as all this is in normal conversation, it’s nothing compared to when he drowns us with his poems and prose pieces. And worst of all, he actually sings odes to his beloved in a weird voice, which we have to put up with listening to. And now when you ask him the name he blushes!”

“Lysis must be pretty young,” I said. “I say that because the name [e] doesn’t register with me.”

“That’s because they don’t call him by his own name much. He still goes by his father’s name, because his father is so famous. I’m sure you know what the boy looks like; his looks are enough to know him by.”

“Tell me whose son he is,” I said.

“He’s the oldest son of Democrates of Aexone.”

“Well, congratulations, Hippothales, on finding someone so spirited and noble to love! Now come on and perform for me what you’ve performed
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for your friends here, so that I can see if you know what a lover ought to say about his boyfriend to his face, or to others.”

“Do you think what
he
says really counts for anything, Socrates?”

“Are you denying that you are in love with the one he says you are?”

“No, but I am denying that I write love poems about him and all.”

“The man’s not well, he’s raving,” Ctesippus hooted.

“O.K., Hippothales,” I said. “I don’t need to hear any poems or songs [b] you may or may not have composed about the boy. Just give me the general sense, so I’ll know how you deal with him.”

“Well why don’t you ask Ctesippus? He must have total recall of it all, from what he says about it being drummed into his head from listening to me.”

“You bet I do,” Ctesippus said, “and it’s pretty ridiculous too, Socrates. I mean, here he is, completely fixated on this boy and totally unable to say anything more original to him than any child could say. How ridiculous [c] can you get? All he can think of to say or write is stuff the whole city goes around singing—poems about Democrates and the boy’s grandfather Lysis and all his ancestors, their wealth and their stables and their victories at the Pythian, Isthmian, and Nemean Games in the chariot races and the horseback races. And then he gets into the really ancient history. Just the day before yesterday he was reciting some poem to us about Heracles [d] being entertained by one of their ancestors because he was related to the hero—something about him being a son of Zeus and the daughter of their deme’s founding father—old women’s spinning-songs, really. This is the sort of thing he recites and sings, Socrates, and forces us to listen to.”

When I heard that I said, “Hippothales, you deserve to be ridiculed. Do you really compose and sing your own victory-ode before you’ve won?”

“I don’t compose or sing victory-odes for myself, Socrates.”

“You only think you don’t.”

“How is that?” he asked.

[e] “You are really what these songs are all about,” I said. “If you make a conquest of a boy like this, then everything you’ve said and sung turns out to eulogize yourself as victor in having won such a boyfriend. But if he gets away, then the greater your praise of his beauty and goodness,
[206]
the more you will seem to have lost and the more you will be ridiculed. This is why the skilled lover doesn’t praise his beloved until he has him: he fears how the future may turn out. And besides, these good-looking boys, if anybody praises them, get swelled heads and start to think they’re really somebody. Doesn’t it seem that way to you?”

“It certainly does,” he said.

“And the more swell-headed they get, the harder they are to catch.”

“So it seems.”

“Well, what do you think of a hunter who scares off his game and makes it harder to catch?”

“He’s pretty poor.”

[b] “And isn’t it a gross misuse of language and music to drive things wild rather than to soothe and charm?”

“Well, yes.”

“Then be careful, Hippothales, that you don’t make yourself guilty of all these things through your poetry. I don’t imagine you would say that a man who hurts himself, by his poetry, is at all a good poet—after all, he does hurt himself.”

[c] “No, of course not,” he said. “That wouldn’t make any sense at all. But that’s just why I’m telling you all this, Socrates. What different advice can you give me about what one should say or do so his prospective boyfriend will like him?”

“That’s not easy to say. But if you’re willing to have him talk with me, I might be able to give you a demonstration of how to carry on a conversation with him instead of talking and singing the way your friends here say you’ve been doing.”

“That’s easy enough,” he said. “If you go in with Ctesippus here and [d] sit down and start a conversation, I think he will come up to you by himself. He really likes to listen, Socrates. And besides, they’re celebrating the festival of Hermes, so the younger and older boys are mingled together. Anyway, he’ll probably come up to you; but if he doesn’t, he and Ctesippus know one another because Ctesippus’ cousin is Menexenus, and Menexenus is Lysis’ closest companion. So have Ctesippus call him if he doesn’t come by himself.”

[e] “That’s what I’ll have to do,” I said, and, taking Ctesippus with me, I went into the wrestling-school, followed by the others. When we got inside we found that the boys had finished the sacrifice and the ritual and, still all dressed up, were starting to play knucklebones. Most of them were playing in the courtyard outside, but some of them were over in a corner of the dressing-room playing with a great many knucklebones, which they drew from little baskets. Still others were standing around watching this
[207]
group, and among them was Lysis. He stood out among the boys and older youths, a garland on his head, and deserved to be called not only a beautiful boy but a well-bred young gentleman. We went over to the other side of the room, where it was quiet, sat down, and started up a conversation among ourselves. Lysis kept turning around and looking at us, obviously wanting to come over, but too shy to do so alone. After a while Menexenus, taking a break from his game in the court, came in, [b] and, when he saw Ctesippus and me, he came to take a seat beside us. Lysis saw him and followed over, sitting down together with Menexenus next to him, and then all the others came too. When Hippothales (let’s not forget about him) saw that a small crowd had gathered, he took up a position in the rear where he thought Lysis wouldn’t see him—afraid he might annoy him—and listened from his outpost.

Then I looked at Menexenus and asked him, “Son of Demophon, which of you two is older?”

“We argue about that,” he said.

“Then you probably disagree about which one has the nobler family [c] too,” I said.

“Very much so,” he said.

“And likewise about which one is better looking.” They both laughed.

“Naturally, I won’t ask which of you two is richer. For you two are friends, isn’t that so?”

“Definitely,” they said.

“And friends have everything in common, as the saying goes; so in this respect the two of you won’t differ, that is, if what you said about being friends is true.”

They agreed.

I was about to ask them next which of them was juster and wiser when [d] somebody came in to get Menexenus, saying that the trainer was calling him. It seemed he still had some part to play in the ceremony, and so off he went. I asked Lysis then, “Am I right in assuming, Lysis, that your father and mother love you very much?”

“Oh, yes,” he said.