Lysis

For if you prevail on your favorite, and he is such as you describe, all that you have spoken and sung will be so much glory to you, and a veritable eulogy upon your triumph in having secured such a favorite as that: whereas if he eludes your grasp, the higher the terms of your eulogy of your favorite, the greater will seem to be the charms and virtues you have lost, and you will be ridiculed accordingly. Hence anyone who deals wisely in love-matters, my friend, does not praise his beloved until he prevails, for fear of what the future may have in store for him. And besides, these handsome boys, when so praised and extolled, become full of pride and haughtiness: do you not think so? I do, he said. And then, the haughtier they are, the harder grows the task of capturing them? Yes, apparently. And what do you think of a hunter who should scare away his quarry in hunting and make it harder to catch? Clearly he would be a poor one. And hence to use speech and song, not for charming but for driving wild, would be gross fatuity, would it not? I think so. Then take care, Hippothales, not to make yourself guilty of all these things by your verse-making; and yet I fancy you will not like to allow that a man who damages himself by poetry can be a good poet, so long as he is damaging to himself. On my soul, no, he said; of course it would be most absurd. But this is the very reason, Socrates, why I impart my feelings to you, and ask you for any useful advice you can give as to what conversation or conduct will help to endear one to one’s favorite. That is not an easy thing to tell, I replied; but if you will agree to get him to have a talk with me, I daresay I could show you an example of the conversation you should hold with him, instead of those things that your friends say you speak and sing. There is no difficulty about that, he said. If you will go in with Ctesippus here, and take a seat and talk, I think he will come to you of his own accord; he is singularly fond of listening, Socrates, and besides, they are keeping the Hermaea, [*](The festival of Hermes, who was specially honored in wrestling schools.) so that the youths and boys are all mingled together. So he will come to you but if he does not, Ctesippus is intimate with him, as being a cousin of Menexenus; for Lysis has chosen Menexenus for his particular friend. So let Ctesippus call him if you find that he does not come of himself. That is what I must do, I said. Whereupon I took Ctesippus with me into the wrestling school, and the others came after us. When we got inside, we found that the boys had performed the sacrifice in the place and, as the ceremonial business was now almost over, they were all playing at knuckle-bones and wearing their finest attire. Most of them were playing in the court out-of-doors; but some were at a game of odd-and-even in a corner of the undressing room, with a great lot of knuckle-bones which they drew from little baskets; and there were others standing about them and looking on.