Lysis

And what, pray, is this place, and what your pastime? A wrestling school, he said, of recent construction; and our pastime chiefly consists of discussions, in which we should be happy to let you have a share. That is very good of you, I said; and who does the teaching there? Your own comrade, he replied, and supporter, Miccus. Upon my word, I said, he is no slight person, but a qualified professor. Then will you please come in with us, he said, so as to see for yourself the company we have there? I should be glad to hear first on what terms I am to enter, and which is the handsome one. Each of us, he replied, has a different fancy, Socrates. Well, and which is yours, Hippothales? Tell me that. At this question he blushed; so I said: Ah, Hippothales, son of Hieronymus, you need not trouble to tell me whether you are in love with somebody or not: for I know you are not only in love, but also far advanced already in your passion. In everything else I may be a poor useless creature, but there is one gift that I have somehow from heaven,—to be able to recognize quickly a lover or a beloved. When he heard this, he blushed much more than ever. Then Ctesippus remarked: Quite charming, the way you blush, Hippothales, and shrink from telling Socrates the name; yet, if he spends but a little time with you, he will find you a regular torment, as he hears you repeat it again and again. He has deafened our ears, I can tell you, Socrates, by cramming them with Lysis: let him be a trifle in liquor, and as likely as not we start out of our sleep fancying we hear the name of Lysis. The descriptions he gives us in conversation, though dreadful enough, are not so very bad: it is when he sets about inundating us with his poems and prose compositions. More dreadful than all, he actually sings about his favorite in an extraordinary voice, which we have the trial of hearing. And now, at a question from you, he blushes! Lysis apparently, I said, is somebody quite young: this I infer from the fact that I did not recognize the name when I heard it. That is because they do not usually call him by his name, he replied; he still goes by his paternal title, [*](i.e., son of Democrates (see below)) as his father is so very well known. You must, I am sure, be anything but ignorant of the boy’s appearance: that alone would be enough to know him by. Let me hear, I said, whose son he is. The eldest son, he replied, of Democrates of Aexone.