Lysis

“Let me? Not likely!” he said. — “What then?” I said. “Is no one allowed to beat them?” — “Someone certainly is,” he said: “the muleteer.” — “Is he a slave or free?” — “A slave,” he said. — “So it seems they think more of a slave than of you, their son, and entrust what is theirs to him rather than to you, and let him do what he wants, while you 208c they prevent? And tell me this too: do they let you rule yourself, or don’t they entrust even this to you?” — “How could they entrust it?” he said. — “But someone rules you?” — “This man here, my tutor,” he said.¹ — “Not a slave, surely?” — “Well, what else? Ours, though,” he said. — “How dreadful,” I said, “that a free man should be ruled by a slave! And what, in turn, does this tutor of yours do in ruling you?” — “He leads me, of course,” he said, “to my teacher’s.” — “Surely they don’t rule you too, the 208d teachers?” — “Of course they do.” — “Then your father has willingly set a great many masters and rulers over you. But when you go home to your mother, does she let you do whatever you want, so that you may be blessed in her eyes, with the wool or the loom, when she is weaving? For she doesn’t, I take it, prevent you from touching the batten or the shuttle, or any other of the tools for working wool.” — And he laughed and said, “By Zeus, 208e Socrates, she doesn’t just prevent me: I’d be beaten if I touched them.”² — “Heracles!” I said. “You haven’t done some wrong to your father or your mother, have you?” — “No, by Zeus, not I,” he said.

“But then for what reason do they so dreadfully prevent you from being happy and doing what you want, and all day long bring you up always in slavery to someone, and, in a word, doing hardly anything that you desire? So it seems you get no use out of your wealth, great as it is: everyone 209a rules it rather than you; nor out of your body, noble as it is: this too someone else shepherds and tends. And you, Lysis, rule nothing, and do nothing that you desire.”