Lysis

“By Zeus,” I said, “the man is no paltry one, either, but a capable sophist.”

“Do you want to come along, then,” he said, “so that you can also see the people who are there?”

204b“First I would gladly hear on what terms I’m going in, and who the beautiful one is.”

“One of us thinks it’s one, Socrates,” he said, “and another another.”

“And who is it for you, Hippothales? Tell me that.”

And at the question he blushed. And I said, “Son of Hieronymus, Hippothales, don’t tell me that any more, whether you are in love with someone or not. For I know that you are not only in love, but already far along, making your way in love. In other things I’m paltry 204c and useless; but this, somehow, has been given me by a god: to be able to know quickly one who is in love and one who is beloved.”

And at this he blushed far more still. Then Ctesippus said, “Oh, that’s charming, Hippothales, that you blush and hesitate to tell Socrates the name! But if he spends even a little time with you, he’ll be worn to death hearing you say it so often. Our 204d ears, at any rate, Socrates, he has deafened and filled full of Lysis. And if he has had a little to drink, it’s easy for us, even when we wake from sleep, to think we hear 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! And what is more dreadful than that, he even sings to his darling in a wondrous voice, and we have to hear it and put up with it. But now, asked by you, he blushes.”

204e“This Lysis is someone young, it seems,” I said. “I judge so because I heard the name and didn’t know it.”