Lysis

Introduction

The dialogue

The Lysis is a conversation that Socrates tells, from beginning to end, to a listener who is never named and who never speaks; once, it seems, near the end of the argument about opposites, he turns to him with “And indeed, my companion” (216a). He was making his way from the Academy to the Lyceum by the road outside the city wall, he says, when Hippothales the son of Hieronymus, Ctesippus of Paeania and other young men stopped him at the little gate by the spring of Panops and asked him into a newly built wrestling-school, where the time “is spent mostly in talk” (203a–204a). It is the Hermaea, the festival of Hermes, and so for that day the young men and the boys “are mixed together in the same place” (206d). Inside, Socrates questions two boys: Lysis, the son of Democrates of Aexone, with whom Hippothales is in love, and Menexenus, the son of Demophon and Ctesippus’ cousin, whose closest companion Lysis is. Hippothales listens, hidden among the bystanders, “afraid of making himself hateful to him” (207b). The talk ends when the boys’ tutors come to take them home (223a–b).

It is a short work: twenty-one pages of Stephanus’ edition (203a–223b), twenty-seven of Burnet’s. The ancient arrangement of Plato’s works by Thrasyllus, which Diogenes Laertius preserves, puts it last in the fifth tetralogy, after the Theages, the Charmides and the Laches, with the subtitle “or On Friendship”, and classes it as “maieutic”, a word taken from the midwife’s art (3.59). Diogenes also tells a story that Socrates, hearing Plato read the Lysis, said “Heracles, how many lies the young man tells about me!” (3.35); the story cannot be used to date the dialogue (interpretation). The dialogue is usually counted among Plato’s earlier works, with the Charmides and the Laches, which also take a word that everyone uses and fail to define it; its date is not known.

The question and the answers

The question, what the friend is, is named in so many words only late (218b, 222b), and the dialogue ends on it: “these people, as they go away, will say that we think we are friends of one another”, Socrates tells the boys, “but have not yet been able to find out what the friend is” (223b). The word for “friend”, philos, is said both of the one who loves and of the one who is loved, of people and of things; the translation renders it “friend” every time, so that the reader can see the same word tried in each answer (see the Key Words).

The talk with Lysis begins from Hippothales’ request to know what talk would make him a friend to his darling (206c), and turns at once to love of another kind. His father and mother love him, Lysis agrees, and want him to be happy; yet they do not let him drive the chariot or touch his mother’s loom, and “someone rules” him, his tutor, who is a slave (207d–208e). They do entrust him with what he understands, reading, writing and the lyre (209a–c), and his father will entrust him with everything on whatever day he believes that Lysis understands better than he does; so will the neighbor and the Athenians, and the Great King would sooner let strangers who understood cooking or medicine better than his son throw salt into his broth or treat his son’s eyes (209c–210a). The conclusion is hard: in the things in which we are of no benefit, no one will be a friend to us, “not even your father”, and if Lysis becomes wise, “everyone will be a friend to you and everyone akin to you, for you will be useful and good” (210c–d).

Menexenus is then asked the question that runs through the rest of the dialogue: “when someone loves someone, which becomes a friend of which, the one who loves of the one loved, or the one loved of the one who loves?” (212a–b). Each answer fails in turn. If one loves and is not loved back, or is even hated, the two cannot both be friends (212b–d); if only those who love each other are friends, then there are no “friends of horses” or “friends of wisdom” unless the horses and wisdom love them back, and the poet who called children and horses friends is lying (212d–e); if what is loved is the friend, then “many are loved by their enemies and hated by their friends” (213a–b); and the last answer fares no better (213b–c). Menexenus gives up: “I don’t see much of a way through, myself” (213c).

Socrates turns to Lysis, who has blurted out that they were not seeking rightly (213d), and takes up the poets’ saying that “the god himself” brings like to like (214a), which the natural philosophers repeat (214b). Perhaps half of it is right, Socrates answers, and perhaps all of it: if the wicked are like one another, half of it is not true, since the wicked man does wrong and those who do wrong cannot be friends (214b–c); so the poets may mean that the bad are not like even themselves, and that “the good man alone is a friend to the good man alone” (214c–d). Yet what is like, insofar as it is like, has nothing to give what is like it (214e–215a), and the good, insofar as they are good, are “sufficient for themselves” and have no use for each other, and so cannot “set great store by each other” (215a–c). The opposite view, which Socrates once heard with Hesiod brought in as a witness, that like is most hostile to like and “the most opposite is most a friend to the most opposite” (215c–216a), falls to the objection the “masters of contradiction” would make, that enmity is most opposite to friendship (216a–b).

The argument’s main stretch

At 216c Socrates proposes something new, “divining” it, he says (216d): that there are, as it were, three kinds, “the good, the bad, and what is neither good nor bad”, and that what is neither good nor bad is a friend of the good. The healthy body needs no doctor; the sick body, which is neither good nor bad, loves medicine because of disease (217a–b). What is neither good nor bad “becomes a friend of the good because of the presence of bad”, but only before it has itself become bad (217b–c): white lead on fair hair makes it only “appear” white, while old age makes it white (217c–e). In the same way, neither the wise, gods or men, nor those who are bad and unlearned “love wisdom”, but those who have ignorance and still believe that they do not know what they do not know (218a–b). Socrates tells the boys that they “have most certainly found out what the friend is and what it is not” (218b), and he is “very glad, like a hunter” (218c).

Almost at once “a most strange suspicion” comes to him, and he fears that “we have been rich in a dream” (218c). The sick man is a friend of the doctor because of disease and for the sake of health; health is itself a friend, and so a friend for the sake of something that is a friend; and so on, until one must either give up or arrive at “some starting point”, “first friend, for the sake of which we say all the other things too are friends” (219c–d). The other things that are called friends for its sake may be like “images” of it, and deceive us (219d); what a father sets great store by is not the cup or the wine but the son for whose sake he provides them (219d–220a); and so “what is really a friend is that very thing in which all these friendships, as they are called, end” (220b).

Is the good, then, loved because of the bad (220b–c)? If the bad went away, the good would be “in no way useful to us, but have become useless”, like a remedy where there is no illness (220c–d), and what is really a friend would turn out to be a friend “for the sake of an enemy” (220e). But desires that are neither good nor bad, such as hunger that does no harm, would remain even if the bad perished, and one who desires cannot but love what he desires; so there will still be things that are friends, and the bad was not the cause (221a–c). Desire, then, may be “the cause of friendship”, and what “we were calling a friend before” may have been “some idle talk, like a long poem put together” (221d).

The ending

What desires desires what it lacks; it comes to lack “whatever is taken away from it”; and so “it is of what is akin, it seems, that love and friendship and desire are in fact” (221d–e). The boys agree that if they are friends to each other, they are “by nature in some way akin to each other” (221e), and Socrates draws the conclusion that no one would desire or love another “unless he were in fact in some way akin to his beloved” (222a). Menexenus agrees; Lysis is silent. Since “it is necessary for us to love what is akin by nature”, “it is necessary for the genuine lover, and not the pretended one, to be loved by his darling” (222a); the two boys nod “somehow, just barely”, and Hippothales, “from pleasure, turned colors of every kind” (222b).

Socrates then asks whether the akin is the same as the like. If it is, it is not easy to throw out their earlier argument that like is useless to like (222b–c). Granting, “drunk, as it were, with the argument”, that the akin is something different, the boys answer that each is akin to its own kind, and the argument falls back into those it threw out at first, for the bad man will be a friend to the bad (222c–d); and if the good is what is akin, then “the good man” will be “a friend to the good alone”, which they thought they had refuted (222d). He counts over everything they have said, “like the wise men in the law courts”: neither those who are loved, nor those who love, nor those who are like or unlike, nor the good, nor those who are akin, nor any of the rest has proved to be a friend, and “I no longer know what to say” (222e). He is about to “rouse someone else”, one of the older people, when the tutors arrive, “like spirits of some kind”, and, the worse for a drink at the festival and “impossible to deal with”, take the boys home (223a–b). His last words are that they “have become ridiculous”, an old man and two boys (223b).

What is most exposed

A first-time reader is likely to be troubled at five points. The first is the word itself. Philos is “friend” and “dear”, and is said of the one who loves and of the one who is loved; the argument of 212a–213c turns on that double use, and the translation, which keeps “friend” throughout, shows the argument’s moves but makes some sentences strange, as when “the friend is a friend of the friend” “for the sake of the friend, because of the enemy” (219b), where “of the friend” is Burnet’s own addition. Such sentences are the Greek’s, not the translator’s.

The second is the conclusion of the talk with Lysis, that “not even your father” loves him, nor does anyone love anyone “insofar as he is useless” (210c–d). It is drawn from what parents entrust to their son, and Socrates tells the listener that he very nearly said to Hippothales at once, “This, Hippothales, is how one should talk to one’s darling, humbling him and taking him down” (210e): the reader must decide how far the argument is meant and how far it is a lesson for Hippothales.

The third is the argument that the good, being sufficient for themselves, have no use for each other and so cannot be friends (215a–c). It assumes that one cherishes only what one needs, an assumption the dialogue does not defend there, but returns to when it asks whether the good would be loved if the bad perished (220b–221c) and when it finds that what desires desires what it lacks (221d–e).

The fourth is the “first friend” (219c–d). Whether Socrates means that only the first friend is a friend in truth and the friends we love for its sake are no friends at all, or only that they are friends for its sake, the text does not settle (interpretation). The passage turns on the difference between “for the sake of” and “because of”, which the English keeps apart throughout the passage; at 220e the Greek itself says “for the sake of an enemy” where the earlier steps had “because of”, and the note there says so.

The fifth is the ending. The akin is offered at 221e–222a, nearly made the answer, and then, granted to be different from the like, falls back into the arguments about like and the good that were thrown out at first (222b–d); and the conclusion that the genuine lover must “be loved by his darling” (222a) is drawn while Hippothales listens. The dialogue gives no answer; its last words are what, Socrates says, these people will say as they go away: that he and the two boys think they are friends of one another “but have not yet been able to find out what the friend is” (223b). Several of Burnet’s readings in the last third of the text are conjectures or later readings that change the sense (217c, 218a, 219b, 219c, 220b, 220c, 222c), and the notes say where.

The manner

The Lysis is one of the most playful of Plato’s dialogues. Ctesippus mocks Hippothales’ poems: Hippothales has “deafened” them all with the name of Lysis, “And what he tells in prose, dreadful as it is, isn’t so very dreadful; but when he sets about drenching us with his poems and compositions!” (204c–d); the poems are about the family’s horses and its ancestor who entertained Heracles, “things more Cronian still” (205c–d). Socrates calls himself “paltry and useless” in all but one thing, “to be able to know quickly one who is in love and one who is beloved” (204b–c), and later “altogether like one in love” toward the acquiring of friends (211e). The questioning of Lysis is comic in its turns: the boy may not beat the mules, but “the muleteer” may (208b), and he would be beaten if he so much as touched his mother’s loom (208e); the Great King, who would not let his own son throw in even a little, would let Socrates and Lysis “grab a handful of the salt” and throw it into his broth (209e). Socrates swears “by the Dog” straight after a dog (211e), says “Talk I must” when urged to talk (211c), and finds himself, a moment after he has “most certainly found out” what the friend is, “rich in a dream” (218b–c). The argument makes them “drunk, as it were” (222c), and Socrates counts it over “like the wise men in the law courts” (222e). The tutors arrive at the end “like spirits of some kind”, speaking “half-foreign Greek” and the worse for the festival’s wine (223a–b). Lysis’ youth is drawn in a few touches: he keeps turning round to look at the speakers and hesitates to come over alone (207a–b), speaks to Socrates “very boyishly and in a friendly way” (211a), blushes when he blurts out an answer (213d), is silent when Menexenus agrees that a lover must be akin to his beloved, and only just nods at the conclusion (222a–b).

On reading this edition

Each left-hand page is one page of Burnet’s Greek, line for line, with his margin and apparatus; the right-hand page opposite translates it. The letters in the margins of both pages (a–e) mark the sections of Stephanus’ pages, by which Plato is cited; the numbers 204 to 223 mark where each of his pages begins. The small numbers 5 and 10 in the Greek margin count Burnet’s lines, by which his apparatus is keyed. Socrates tells the whole story himself, to a listener who is never named, so the speeches stand inside his narration, in quotation marks. Where the talk goes quickly, Burnet runs the questions and answers on in one paragraph, divided by dashes, and the English does the same. Burnet sets three quotations of verse on lines of their own (212e, 214a, 215c–d), and so does the English. Words in square brackets [ ] are deleted by Burnet and are not translated (204a, 209d, 213e, 216b, 217c, 218d, 220e); words in angle brackets ⟨ ⟩ are supplied by Burnet where the principal manuscripts lack them, and are translated (211e, 213c, 215d, 219a, 219b). The notes are numbered afresh on each page. At the back of the volume are an Outline of the argument, an Editorial Note on Burnet’s text, his apparatus and the translation, a Glossary of the key terms with the places where they occur, and a Note on how this edition was made.

A note on the persons

What the text itself establishes is this. Lysis is the eldest son of Democrates of Aexone and the grandson of another Lysis; the family is rich, has won chariot races at the great games, and traces its descent from a son of Zeus who entertained Heracles (204e–205d). He is young enough to have a tutor and to be “not yet of age” (208c, 209a), and is “outstanding in looks” (207a). Menexenus, the son of Demophon, is about his age, since they dispute which of them is the elder (207b–c); Lysis is his closest companion (206d); and he is “contentious”, “a pupil of Ctesippus” (211b–c). Hippothales, the son of Hieronymus, is in love with Lysis and writes poems about him (204b–205d). Ctesippus of Paeania is Menexenus’ cousin (206d). Miccus, who teaches at the wrestling-school, is “a companion” of Socrates (204a). Lysis’ tutor is a slave (208c).

Outside sources add a little, and most of it is uncertain. Aexone was a deme on the coast south of Athens (Strabo 9.1.21). A Ctesippus of Paeania appears in the Euthydemus (273a), and Ctesippus of Paeania and a Menexenus are among those present at Socrates’ death in the Phaedo (59b); a Menexenus gives his name to Plato’s Menexenus. That these are the young men of the Lysis is likely but not certain. A Hippothales of Athens appears in Diogenes Laertius’ list of Plato’s pupils (3.46). A marble gravestone in the form of a loutrophoros, of the second quarter of the fourth century BC, from Moschato near Piraeus and now in the Piraeus Museum, was set up for Timocleides son of Lysis; the old man seated on its relief is Lysis son of Democrates, of Aexone, whose father’s name and deme make him the boy of the dialogue (R. S. Stroud, “The Gravestone of Socrates’ Friend, Lysis”, Hesperia 53, 1984, 355–360). Miccus is not otherwise known.