Of the few boys who had made some attempt to exercise, Xenophon was one. He had finished his bout, and came over to me. I thought he would say there would be less noise in Sparta. But he said, “Have you been listening? I’ll tell you an odd thing. Those who blame the Corinthians or the oligarchs all say it stands to reason, or that everything points to it. But those who blame Alkibiades all say that someone told them in the street.”—“So they do. Then perhaps there is something in it?”—“Yes; unless someone is putting it about.” He had an open face and quiet manners; you had to know him well to learn he had a head on his shoulders. He stood looking about the colonnade, then laughed to himself. “By the way, if you want to study with a Sophist when you leave, now’s the time to choose one.”
One could not blame him for laughing. I had forgotten, till he reminded me, that the Sophists were there. On any other day, each would have stood forth among his pupils like a flower among bees; now, seated on the benches or pacing the colonnade, they were questioning like the rest anyone who professed to know something; some with more seemliness than those around them, some not. Zenon was expressing fiercely his democratic opinions; Hippias, who was accustomed to treat his young men much as if they were still at school, had let them start a quarrel among themselves and was red in the face from calling them to order; Dionysodoros and his brother, cheapjack Sophists who would teach anything from virtue to rope-dancing at cut rates, were screaming like market-women, denouncing Alkibiades, and flying in a rage when people laughed, for he was well known to have taken them on together and refuted them both in half a dozen responses. Only Gorgias, with his long white beard and golden voice, though a Sicilian himself, looked as calm as Saturn; he sat with his hands folded in his lap, surrounded by grave young men whose grace of posture announced their breeding; when a word or two came over, you could hear that they were wholly engaged with philosophy.
“My father told me,” Xenophon said, “that I could choose between Hippias and Gorgias. It had better be Gorgias, I think.” I looked round the palaestra and said, “They are not all here yet.”
I had not confided my own ambitions to him. He shared my father’s view that philosophers should dress and behave in a respectable way, suited to their calling. But Midas had found me out. He took his work seriously; and my father had ordered him, besides repelling suitors, to keep me away from all Sophists and rhetoricians. I was too young, my father said, to get anything solid from philosophy, which would only teach me to quibble with my elders and be wise in my own conceit.
Just then the trainer bawled out that we were there to wrestle, not to gabble like girls at a wedding, and that we should be sorry if he had to speak again. While we were all scrambling to find partners, I heard a loud commotion at the end of the colonnade. In the midst was a voice I knew. Why I did not stay where I was, I hardly know. A boy, like a dog, feels happier with the pack behind him. When his gods are mocked, down go his ears and tail. Yet I had to run to that end of the palaestra, pretending to look for a partner and avoiding anyone who was free.
Sokrates was arguing at the top of his voice with a big man who was trying to shout him down. As I got there he was saying, “Very well, so you respect the gods of the City. And the laws too?”—“How not?” shouted the man. “Ask your friend Alkibiades that, not me.”—“The law of evidence, for instance?” The man shouted out, “Don’t you try to confuse the issue.” At this the bystanders exclaimed, “No, no, that’s fair, you ought to answer that.”—“Very well, any law you like, and there ought to be one against people like you.”—“Good. Then if what you’ve been telling us seems to you to be evidence, why don’t you take it to the archons? If it’s worth anything, they would even pay you. You trust the laws; do you trust the evidence? Well, speak up.”
The man did so, calling Sokrates a cunning snake who would argue black white and was in Corinthian pay. I could not hear Sokrates’ reply; but the man suddenly hit him a swinging blow on the side of the head, rocking him over against Kriton, who was standing beside him. Everyone shouted. Kriton, who was very much put out, said, “You’ll regret this, sir. Striking a free citizen; you’ll pay damages for this.” Sokrates had by now recovered his balance. He nodded to the man and said, “Thank you. Now we can all see the force of your argument.” The man swore and raised his fist and I thought, “This time he will kill him.”
Hardly knowing what I did, I started to run forward. Then I saw that one of the young men who had been walking behind Sokrates had stepped out, and caught the brawler by the wrist. I knew who it was, not only from seeing him with Sokrates or about the City, but because there was a bronze statuette of him in Mikkos’s hallway, done when he was about sixteen. He was a former pupil, who had won a crown for wrestling, while still at school, at the Panathenaic Games. He was said too to have been among the notable beauties of his year, which one could still believe without trouble. I saw his name every day, since it was written on the base of the statue: Lysis, son of Demokrates of OExone.
Sokrates’ enemy was a great hulking man. Lysis was taller, but not so thick. I had seen him on the wrestling-ground, however. He bent back the man’s arm, looking rather grave and careful, as if he were sacrificing. The man’s fist opened and writhed; when he had leaned off balance, Lysis gave him a quick jerk which tumbled him neatly down the steps into the dust of the palaestra. He got a mouthful of it and all the boys laughed, a sweet sound to me. Lysis looked at Sokrates as if with apology for his intrusion, and drew back among the young men again. He had not spoken all this time. Indeed, I had seldom heard his voice, except at the mounted torch-race, when he was urging on his team. Then it carried over the cheers, the noise of the horses, and everything else.
There was a red mark on Sokrates’ face. Kriton was urging him to bring an action, and offering to cover the speech-writer’s fee. “Old friend,” said Sokrates, “last year an ass bolted in the street and kicked you; but I don’t recall your suing him. As for you, my dear Lysis, thanks for your kind intentions. Just when he was starting to doubt the force of his argument, you re-stated it for him with eloquence and conviction. And now, gentlemen, shall we return to what we were saying about the functions of music?”
Their reasoning became too hard for me; but I lingered, standing in the dust, and looking at them on the pavement above me. Lysis was the nearest, being a little behind the rest. I set him in my mind beside his statue in the hallway; the comparison was easy because his face was shaved; a new fashion then, which the athletes had lately begun setting. It seemed to me a pity that someone should not do another bronze of him, now he was a man. His hair, which he wore short, lay half-curled against his head, and being mingled fair and brown, gleamed like a bronze helmet inlaid with gold. Just as I was thinking about him, he looked round. It was evident he did not recollect having ever seen me before; he smiled at me, however, as if to say, “Come nearer, then, if you like; no one will eat you.”
I took courage at this, and a step forward. But Midas, who never idled for long, saw me and came bustling over. He even seized me by the arm; so to save myself from more indignity, I went with him quietly. Sokrates, who was talking to Kriton, took no notice. I saw Lysis looking after me as I went; but whether approving my obedience, or despising my meekness, I could not tell.
On the way home Midas said to me, “Son of Myron, a boy of your age should not need watching every moment. What do you mean by running after Sokrates after all I have told you? Especially today.”—“Why today?” I said.—“Have you forgotten that he taught Alkibiades?”—“Well, what of it?”—“Sokrates has always refused to be initiated into the holy Mysteries; so who else, do you suppose, taught Alkibiades to mock at them?”—“Mock at them?” I said. “Does he?”—“You have heard what all the citizens are saying.” It was the first I had heard of it; but I knew that slaves tell things to one another. “Well, if he does, it’s absurd to blame Sokrates for it. I’ve not seen Alkibiades go near him for years, or speak to him beyond a greeting in the street.”—“A teacher has to answer for his pupil. If Alkibiades left Sokrates justly, then Sokrates gave him cause and is to blame; or if unjustly, then Sokrates did not teach him justice, so how can he claim to make his pupils better?”