Lysis

those who love will be friends, nor those who are loved, nor those who both love and are loved? Or shall we say that there are still others besides these who become friends to each other?” — “No, by Zeus, Socrates,” he said, “I don’t see much of a way through, myself.” — 213d “Can it be, Menexenus,” I said, “that we were not seeking rightly at all?” — “We were not, I think, Socrates,” said Lysis; and as he said it he blushed; for it seemed to me that what he said had escaped him involuntarily, because he was paying such close attention to what was being said; and he had plainly been in that state while he listened, too.

So I, wanting to let Menexenus rest, and pleased with the other’s philosophy,¹ changed over in this way and 213e turned my talk to Lysis, and said, “Lysis, I think what you say is true, that if we had been looking into it rightly, we would never have wandered like this. But let us not go this way any longer, for the looking into it seems to me a hard sort of road, as it were; but where we turned off, there I think one must go, looking into it along the lines of 214a the poets. For they are to us like fathers and guides of wisdom. And they speak, I take it, in no paltry way when they declare who friends are in fact; rather they say that the god himself makes them friends, bringing them to each other. And they say it something like this, I imagine:

Ever, you know, the god brings like to like,²

214band makes him known to him. Or haven’t you come across these verses?” — “I have,” he said. — “Then have you also come across the compositions of the wisest men, saying these very things, that like must always be a friend to like? These are, I take it, the people who talk and write about nature and the whole.”³ — “What you say is true,” he said. — “Then do they speak well?” I said. —