Lysis (208-212)

How do you mean? I said: they wish you

to be happy, and yet hinder you from doing what you like? But answer me this: suppose you desire to ride in one of your father’s chariots and hold the reins in some race; they will not allow you, but will prevent you? he said; But whom would they allow? What do you say? A hireling, whom they trust rather than you, so that he can do whatever he pleases with the horses; and they pay him besides a salary for doing that! he said. Well, but they trust you with the control of the mule-cart, and if you wanted to take the whip and lash the team, they would let you? he said. Why, I asked, is nobody allowed to lash them? he said, Is he a slave, or free? he replied. So it seems that they value a slave more highly than you, their son, and entrust him rather than you with their property, and allow him to do what he likes, while preventing you? And now there is one thing more you must tell me. Do they let you control your own self, or will they not trust you in that either? he replied. But some one controls you? he said, Is he a slave? he said. What a strange thing, I exclaimed; a free man controlled by a slave! But how does this tutor actually exert his control over you? he replied. And your schoolmasters, can it be that they also control you? Then quite a large number of masters and controllers are deliberately set over you by your father. But when you come home to your mother, she surely lets you do what you like, that she may make you happy, either with her wool or her loom, when she is weaving? I take it she does not prevent you from handling her batten, or her comb, or any other of her wool-work implements. At this he laughed and said: Good heavens! I said; can it be that you have done your father or mother some wrong? he replied.

Well, what reason can they have for so strangely preventing you from being happy and doing what you like? Why do they maintain you all day long in constant servitude to somebody, so that, in a word, you do hardly a single thing that you desire? And thus, it would seem, you get no advantage from all your great possessions— nay, anyone else controls them rather than you—nor from your own person, though so well-born, which is also shepherded and managed by another; while you, Lysis, control nobody, and do nothing that you desire. he said. That can hardly be the hindrance, son of Democrates, since there is a certain amount, I imagine, that your father and mother entrust to you without waiting until you come of age. For when they want some reading or writing done for them, it is you, I conceive, whom they appoint to do it before any others of the household. Is it not so? he replied. And you are free there to choose which letter you shall write first and which second, and you have a like choice in reading. And, I suppose, when you take your lyre, neither your father nor your mother prevents you from tightening or slackening what string you please, or from using your finger or your plectrum at will: or do they prevent you? Then whatever can be the reason, Lysis, why they do not prevent you here, while in the matters we were just mentioning they do? he said, Very well, I said, my excellent friend: so it is not your coming of age that your father is waiting for, as the time for entrusting you with everything; but on the day when he considers you to have a better intelligence than himself, he will entrust you with himself and all that is his. he said. Very well, I went on, but tell me, does not your neighbor observe the same rule as your father towards you? Do you think he will entrust you with the management of his house, as soon as he considers you to have a better idea of its management than himself, or will he direct it himself? Well then, do you not think that the Athenians will entrust you with their affairs, when they perceive that you have sufficient intelligence? Ah, do let me ask this, I went on: what, pray, of the Great King? Would he allow his eldest son, heir-apparent to the throne of Asia, to put what he chose into the royal stew, or would he prefer us to do it, supposing we came before him and convinced him that we had a better notion than his son of preparing a tasty dish? he said. And he would not allow the prince to put in the smallest bit, whereas he would let us have our way even if we wanted to put in salt by the handful.

Again, if his son has something the matter with his eyes, would he let him meddle with them himself, if he considered him to be no doctor,

or would he prevent him? But if he supposed us to have medical skill, he would not prevent us, I imagine, even though we wanted to pull the eyes open and sprinkle them with ashes, so long as he believed our judgement to be sound. So he would entrust us, rather than himself or his son, with all his other affairs besides, wherever he felt we were more skilled than they? he said, The case then, my dear Lysis, I said, stands thus: with regard to matters in which we become intelligent, every one will entrust us with them, whether Greeks or foreigners, men or women and in such matters we shall do as we please, and nobody will care to obstruct us. Nay, not only shall we ourselves be free and have control of others in these affairs, but they will also belong to us, since we shall derive advantage from them; whereas in all those for which we have failed to acquire intelligence, so far will anyone be from permitting us to deal with them as we think fit, that everybody will do his utmost to obstruct us— not merely strangers, but father and mother and any more intimate person than they; and we on our part shall be subject to others in such matters, which will be no concern of ours, since we shall draw no advantage from them. Do you agree to this account of the case? Then will anyone count us his friends or have any affection for us in those matters for which we are useless? he said. So now, you see, your father does not love you, nor does anyone love anyone else, so far as one is useless. he said. Then if you can become wise, my boy, everybody will be your friend, every one will be intimate with you, since you will be useful and good; otherwise, no one at all, not your father, nor your mother, nor your intimate connections, will be your friends. Now is it possible, Lysis, to have a high notion of yourself in matters of which you have as yet no notion? he said. Then if you are in need of a teacher, you have as yet no notion of things? Nor can you have a great notion of yourself, if you are still notionless. he said, On hearing him answer this, I glanced at Hippothales, and nearly made a blunder, for it came into my mind to say: This is the way, Hippothales, in which you should talk to your favorite, humbling and reducing him, instead of puffing him up and spoiling him, as you do now.

Well, I noticed that he was in an agony of embarrassment at what we had been saying, and I remembered how, in standing near, he wished to hide himself from Lysis.

So I checked myself and withheld this remark. In the meantime, Menexenus came back, and sat down by Lysis in the place he had left on going out. Then Lysis, in a most playful, affectionate manner, unobserved by Menexenus, said softly to me: To which I replied: You shall tell it him yourself, Lysis; for you gave it your closest attention. he said. Then try, I went on, to recollect it as well as you can, so that you tell him the whole of it clearly: but if you forget any of it, mind that you ask me for it again when next you meet me. he said, Well, I must do so, I said, since it is you who bid me. But be ready to come to my support, in case Menexenus attempts to refute me. You know what a keen disputant he is. So that I may make myself ridiculous? I said. he replied; How can I? I asked. It is not easy, when the fellow is so formidable—a pupil of Ctesippus. And here—do you not see?—is Ctesippus himself. he said; I must comply, I said. Now, as these words passed between us,— said Ctesippus, Well, well, I replied, we must give you a share. My friend here fails to understand something that I have been saying, but tells me he thinks Menexenus knows, and he urges me to question him. said he. But I am going to, I replied. Now please answer, Menexenus, whatever question I may ask you. There is a certain possession that I have desired from my childhood, as every one does in his own way. One person wants to get possession of horses, another dogs, another money, and another distinctions: of these things I reck little, but for the possession of friends I have quite a passionate longing, and would rather obtain a good friend than the best quail or cock in the world; yes, and rather, I swear, than any horse or dog. I believe, indeed, by the Dog, that rather than all Darius’s gold I would choose to gain a dear comrade—far sooner than I would Darius himself, so fond I am of my comrades.

Accordingly, when I see you and Lysis together, I am quite beside myself, and congratulate you on being able, at such an early age, to gain this possession so quickly and easily; since you, Menexenus, have so quickly and surely acquired his friendship, and he likewise yours: whereas I am so far from acquiring such a thing, that I do not even know in what way one person becomes a friend of another, and am constrained to ask you about this very point, in view of your experience.

Now tell me: when one person loves another, which of the two becomes friend of the other— the loving of the loved, or the loved of the loving? Or is there no difference? he replied, How is that? I said; do you mean that both become friends mutually, when there is only one loving the other? he replied. But I ask you, is it not possible for one loving not to be loved by him whom he loves? But again, may he not be even hated while loving? This, I imagine, is the sort of thing that lovers do sometimes seem to incur with their favorites: they love them with all their might, yet they feel either that they are not loved in return, or that they are actually hated. Or do you not think this is true? he replied. Now in such a case, I went on, the one loves and the other is loved? Which of the two, then, is a friend of the other? Is the loving a friend of the loved, whether in fact he is loved in return or is even hated, or is the loved a friend of the loving? Or again, is neither of them in such a case friend of the other, if both do not love mutually? he said, So you see, we now hold a different view from what we held before. At first we said that if one of them loved, both were friends: but now, if both do not love, neither is a friend. he said. So there is no such thing as a friend for the lover who is not loved in return. And so we find no horse-lovers where the horses do not love in return, no quail-lovers, dog-lovers, wine-lovers, or sport-lovers on such terms, nor any lovers of wisdom if she returns not their love. Or does each person love these things, while yet failing to make friends of them, and was it a lying poet who said—

Happy to have your children as friends, and your trampling horses,

Scent-snuffing hounds, and a host when you travel abroad?

Solon 21.2. he said. But do you think he spoke the truth?