In all this time, Lysis never asked anything from me beyond a kiss. I understood him, that he wanted me to know he was in love from the soul, and not, as they say, with the love of the Agora. As for me, it seemed to me that nothing could have added to the joy I felt in his company; and I wished for nothing, except to possess whatever would increase his happiness, that I might give it him. I felt that another time would come, as one feels an air of summer while still in spring. We had no need of words to say such things. We talked of I know not what; of our childhood, and of times when we had happened to see each other at festivals, or in the palaestra, or at the Games. When it grew late he threw the last of his wine into the bowl, saying, “This for my Alexias,” and the bowl rang true. Then we drank to the Good Goddess in clear water; and he called for a torch and took me home.
At the door he said, “All this happiness we owe to Sokrates. We ought not to stay away from him any longer. We will go tomorrow.”
Next day we met early, and went together to find him. At his house, his son Lamprokles told us he was already gone out. I had met this boy before, and had never borne him any grudge for looking at me with resentment, as he always did. It was not to be expected that Sokrates should have bequeathed him much beauty; and in him his father’s ugliness had lost its strength, without gaining anything else. He had been apprenticed to a mason, not having wit enough, it seems, to learn the trade of sculptor which Sokrates had abandoned. The house was one of those poor ones so clean that the very threshold seems to curse your foot. As we spoke to the lad, we heard his mother, whose eye we had seen at the window, shout out to him not to stand gossiping, as if one do-nothing in the house were not enough. This was nothing fresh to us, for she could often be heard railing at Sokrates before one got near the door. We called her vixen and shrew among ourselves; yet one can see she might find it bitter that he taught for nothing, hearing him asked for by so many young men who could have paid. He had kept at his work till Kriton, learning what his savings were, offered to invest them so that for his plain life they would bring in enough. I spoke gently to the boy, being sorry for him; not only because of his mother, but because he seemed much less Sokrates’ son that Lysis was, or, I thought, even I.
The Herm at the door was the work of Sokrates. At the time of the sacrilege, he had got out his old tools as an act of piety, to make a new head for the god. The work was what we call sincere, when we mean that an artist we like is not exactly a master; being in the austere style of Pheidias’ day, it already looked a little out of date.
We found Sokrates in the Lykeion gardens, already in conversation with five or six people, all as it happened old friends of his. Kriton was there, and Eryximachos, Agathon with his friend Pausanias, and one or two more. Sokrates saw us first, and gave a smiling nod without pausing in his talk. The others made room with the kind of easiness people have ready beforehand; only Agathon widened his blue eyes at us and gave us openly one of his sweet smiles.
They had been conversing about the nature of truth. I don’t know in what form this subject had first arisen. Soon after we came, Sokrates said that truth could not be served as a slave serves a master, who gives no reason for his commands; we should seek her rather, he said, as a true lover seeks knowledge of the beloved, to learn entirely what he is and what he needs, not like base lovers seeking only to know what they can turn to gain. And so, from this, he began to speak of love.
Love, he said, is not a god, for a god cannot want anything; but one of those great spirits who are messengers between gods and men. He does not visit fools, who are content with their low condition, but those who aware of their own need and desire, by embracing the beautiful and good, to beget goodness and beauty; for creation is man’s immortality and brings him nearest to the gods. All creatures, he said, cherish the children of their flesh; yet the noblest progeny of love are wisdom and glorious deeds, for mortal children die, but these live forever; and these are begotten not of the body but the soul. Mortal passion sinks us in mortal pleasure, so that the wings of the soul grow weak; and such lovers may rise to the good indeed, but not to the very best. But the winged soul rises from love to love, from the beautiful that is born and dies, to beauty is only a moving shadow flung upon a wall.
As his deep voice talked on, my soul grew impatient with my body, and reached beyond it, seeking a god above the gods. I remembered nothing of my life, except the moments this god had touched: when in the High City I had watched dawn break upon the ships; or in the mountains sometimes, when Xenophon had gone off with the dogs and left me watching the nets alone; or with Lysis on the banks of the Kephissos. Sokrates did not stay as usual to invite our objections to his argument, but got up at once, and bade us good day.
The others sat down on the grass to talk, and we sat too. No one spoke to us. Long after, Agathon told me he would as soon have spoken to the Pythia while she was in the trance of the god. But I don’t think we were a trouble to them. We were so deep in our thoughts, not even looking at one another, that they talked round and over us, as if we had been statues or trees. After what I suppose was not so very long, I began to hear what they were saying. Pausanias said, “It is a long time since Sokrates last gave us what we heard today. It was at your house, Agathon, do you remember? When we drank to your first crown.”—“I shall be dead, my dear, when I forget that.”—“And as he ended, Alkabiades came in drunk through the garden door.”—“His looks can’t stand wine as they did,” said Kriton. “When he was a boy, he looked like a flushed god.” Someone asked, “What happened then?”—“Hearing us all praising Sokrates, he said, ‘Oh, I can tell you something more remarkable than that.’ And he described how he had tried, without success, to seduce Sokrates one night after supper. Drunk as he was, I must say he told the story well; but you could see that years later he was still puzzling it over. I really think he had offered the highest praise he knew. Sokrates made a joke of it, which indeed it was, in its own way. I should have laughed myself with the best, if I had not remembered when he loved the boy.”
At this my thoughts, which had been nowhere and everywhere, settled and grew clear. I remembered the dull youth at Sokrates’ house. And Alkibiades had received his love as a cracked jar holds wine. Yet being in love with the good, he could not, I thought, have ceased desiring to beget her offspring. It was for Lysis and me, not to be chosen (for no man can lay such a thing upon another) but to choose ourselves his sons.
I felt Lysis look at me, and turned towards him. Understanding each other, we got up and walked out through the gardens into the streets. We did not speak, having no need of it, but made for the High City, and climbed the stairway side by side. Leaning on the northern wall we looked out to the mountains. On the tops of Parnes the first snow had fallen; the day was bright and blue, with a few small clouds, white and violet-dark. The wind from the north blew our hair from our brows, and streamed our garments behind us. The air was clear, keen, and filled with light. It seemed to us that at our command the wind would have lifted us like eagles, that our home was the sky. We joined our hands; they were cold, so that in clasping them we felt the bone within the flesh. Still we had not spoken; or not with words. Turning from the wall we saw people offering at the altars or going in and out of the temples; it had seemed to us that the place was empty, but for ourselves. When we came to the great altar of Athene I stopped and said, “Shall we swear it?” He thought for a moment and answered, “No. When a man needs an oath, he has repented that he swore it, and is compelled by fear. This must come from our own souls, and from love.”