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Hippothales, seeing me approach, asked whence I came and whither I was going. I am going, I replied, from the Academy straight to the Lyceum. Then come straight to us, he said, and put in here; you may as well. Who are you, I said; and where am I to come? He showed me an enclosed space and an open door over against the wall.
Indeed, I replied; he is a very eminent professor. Are you disposed, he said, to go with me and see them? Yes, I said; but I should like to know first, what is expected of me, and who is the favourite among you? Some persons have one favourite, Socrates, and some another, he said. And who is yours? I asked: tell me that, Hippothales.
I should observe that Hippothales, when he saw the crowd, got behind them, where he thought that he would be out of sight of Lysis, lest he should anger him; and there he stood and listened. I turned to Menexenus, and said: Son of Demophon, which of you two youths is the elder? That is a matter of dispute between us, he said. And which is the nobler? Is that also a matter of dispute?
Then the lover, who is true and no counterfeit, must of necessity be loved by his love. Lysis and Menexenus gave a faint assent to this; and Hippothales changed into all manner of colours with delight. Here, intending to revise the argument, I said: Can we point out any difference between the congenial and the like?
I was going from the Academy straight to the Lyceum, intending to take the outer road, which is close under the wall. When I came to the postern gate of the city, which is by the fountain of Panops, I fell in with Hippothales, the son of Hieronymus, and Ctesippus the Paeanian, and a company of young men who were standing with them.
He is the eldest son of Democrates, of the deme of Aexone. Ah, Hippothales, I said; what a noble and really perfect love you have found! I wish that you would favour me with the exhibition which you have been making to the rest of the company, and then I shall be able to judge whether you know what a lover ought to say about his love, either to the youth himself, or to others.
O Hippothales, I said, if you have ever made any verses or songs in honour of your favourite, I do not want to hear them; but I want to know the purport of them, that I may be able to judge of your mode of approaching your fair one.
Lysis is a young lad admired by Hippothales. The first portion of the dialogue consists of a conversation between Lysis and Socrates; the latter recommends the admirer to avoid foolish converse. On the entry of Lysis' friend Menexenus, Socrates starts the question "What is friendship?"
At this he blushed; and I said to him, O Hippothales, thou son of Hieronymus! do not say that you are, or that you are not, in love; the confession is too late; for I see that you are not only in love, but are already far gone in your love. Simple and foolish as I am, the Gods have given me the power of understanding affections of this kind. Whereupon he blushed more and more.
When I heard him say this, I turned to Hippothales, and was very nearly making a blunder, for I was going to say to him: That is the way, Hippothales, in which you should talk to your beloved, humbling and lowering him, and not as you do, puffing him up and spoiling him.
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