Lysis

— “Certainly not,” he said. — “So now not even your father loves you, nor does anyone else love anyone else, insofar as he is useless.” — “It seems not,” 210d he said. — “So if you become wise, my boy, everyone will be a friend to you and everyone akin to you, for you will be useful and good; but if not, no one else will be a friend to you, nor your father, nor your mother, nor those akin to you. Is it possible, then, Lysis, to think highly of oneself on account of things in which one does not yet understand?”¹ — “And how could one?” he said. — “And if you need a teacher, you do not yet understand.” — “True.” — “Then you are not proud either, if you are still without understanding.” — “By Zeus, Socrates,” he said, “I think not.”

210eAnd when I heard him say this, I looked over at Hippothales, and very nearly slipped; for it occurred to me to say, “This, Hippothales, is how one should talk to one’s darling, humbling him and taking him down, not, as you do, puffing him up and pampering him.” So, seeing him in agony and thrown into confusion by what was being said, I remembered that even in standing by he wanted to escape Lysis’ notice; so I pulled myself up and 211a held back from saying it. And at this point Menexenus came back, and sat down beside Lysis, just where he had got up from. Then Lysis, very boyishly and in a friendly way, without Menexenus noticing, said to me softly, “Socrates, say to Menexenus too what you are saying to me.”

And I said, “You will tell him that yourself, Lysis; for you were certainly paying attention.”

“Very much so,” he said.

“Then try,” I said, “to recall it as 211b fully as you can, so that you can tell him everything clearly; and if you forget any part of it, ask me again the first time you meet me.”

“I’ll do that, Socrates,” he said, “most earnestly, rest assured. But say something else to him, so that I can hear too, until it’s time to go home.”