im: and now having a question put to him by
you, behold he is blushing.

Who is Lysis? I said: I suppose that he must be young; for the name does
not recall any one to me.

Why, he said, his father being a very well-known man, he retains his
patronymic, and is not as yet commonly called by his own name; but,
although you do not know his name, I am sure that you must know his
face, for that is quite enough to distinguish him.

But tell me whose son he is, I said.

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.

Nay, Socrates, he said; you surely do not attach any importance to what
he is saying.

Do you mean, I said, that you disown the love of the person whom he says
that you love?

No; but I deny that I make verses or address compositions to him.

He is not in his right mind, said Ctesippus; he is talking nonsense, and
is stark mad.

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.

Ctesippus will be able to tell you, he said; for if, as he avers, the
sound of my words is always dinning in his ears, he must have a very
accurate knowledge and recollection of them.

Yes, indeed, said Ctesippus; I know only too well; and very ridiculous
the tale is: for although he is a lover, and very devotedly in love, he
has nothing particular to talk about to his beloved which a child might
not say. Now is not that ridiculous? He can only speak of the wealth of
Democrates, which the whole city celebrates, and grandfather Lysis, and
the other ancestors of the youth, and their stud of horses, and their
victory at the Pythian games, and at the Isthmus, and at Nemea with
four horses and single horses--these are the tales which he composes
and repeats. And there is greater twaddle still. Only the day before
yesterday he made a poem in which he described the entertainment of
Heracles, who was a connexion of the family, setting forth how in virtue
of this relationship he was hospitably received by an ancestor of
Lysis