e no difficulty in bringing him,' he replied; 'if you
will only go into the house with Ctesippus, and sit down and talk,
he will come of himself; for he is fond of listening, Socrates. And
as this is the festival of the Hermaea, there is no separation of
young men and boys, but they are all mixed up together. He will
be sure to come. But if he does not come, Ctesippus, with whom
he is familiar, and whose relation Menexenus is, his great friend,
shall call him.'

'That will be the way,' I said. Thereupon I and Ctesippus
went towards the Palaestra, and the rest followed.

Upon entering we found that the boys had just been sacrificing;
and this part of the festival was nearly come to an end. They
were all in white array, and games at dice were going on among
them. Most of them were in the outer court amusing themselves;
but some were in a corner of the Apodyterium playing at odd-and-even
with a number of dice, which they took out of little wicker
baskets. There was also a circle of lookers-on, one of whom was
Lysis. He was standing among the other boys and youths, having
a crown upon his head, like a fair vision, and not less worthy of
praise for his goodness than for his beauty. We left them, and
went over to the opposite side of the room, where we found a quiet
place, and sat down; and then we began to talk. This attracted
Lysis, who was constantly turning round to look at us--he was
evidently wanting to come to us. For a time he hesitated and had
not the courage to come alone; but first of all, his friend Menexenus
came in out of the court in the interval of his play, and when
he saw Ctesippus and myself, came and sat by us; and then Lysis,
seeing him, followed and sat down with him; and the other boys
joined. 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.

Enough has been quoted to show that beneath the porches of a Greek
palaestra, among the youths of Athens, who wrote no exercises in dead
languages, and thought chiefly of attaining to perfect manhood by
the harmonious exercise of mind and body in temperate leisure,
divine philosophy must indeed have been charming both to teachers
and to learners:--

Not harsh and crabbed, as dull fools suppose,
But musical as is Apollo's lute,
And a perpetual feast of