The Hemlock Cup - Bettany Hughes [169]
Hence anyone who deals wisely in love-matters, my friend, does not praise his beloved until he prevails, for fear of what the future may have in store for him. And besides, these handsome boys, when so praised and extolled, become full of pride and haughtiness: do you not think so?
I do, he said.
And then, the haughtier they are, the harder grows the task of capturing them?18
Excitingly for scholars of Plato’s work, recent excavations that preceded the 2004 Olympics and that extended earlier archaeological work between 1924 and 1925, and between 1960 to 1981, have confirmed the exact geography of Socrates’ opening lines.
SOCRATES: I was walking straight from the Academy to the Lyceum, by the road which skirts the outside of the walls – just under the wall, and had reached the little gate where you’ll find the spring of Panops [of Hermes the ‘all-seeing’], when I chanced upon Hippothales, the son of Hieronymos, Ktesippos the Paeaniain, and some more young men, standing together in a group …
Come and join us, he said.
Where do you mean? I asked; and who do you mean by ‘us’?
Here, he said, pointing out to me an enclosure with a door open. We pass our time here, he went on; not only us, but others besides, – a great many, and handsome.19
It is still possible to peer down at these excavations in the north-eastern corner of the city today. Hefty stone blocks mark the parameters of the gateway and the boundary of the old wrestling ground. The traces of the spring of Panops are now visible. The work has also uncovered a new cemetery in the area, created during the Peloponnesian War to deal with the increasing number of corpses that Athens produced in those dull decades of its Golden Age history. Touching little artefacts have emerged from the graves: a child’s golden bracelet and finger ring, a young man’s voting disc.20 Moving to think that this spot may well have been precisely where Socrates delivered lines so thoughtful and universal that they still chime today:
May not the truth be that, as we were saying, desire is the cause of friendship; for that which desires is dear to that which is desired at the time of desire?21
And the real Lysis himself has left us an unexpected archaeological treat. In the newly refurbished Archaeological Museum down in Piraeus district, in between the shafts of light that come sea-bright through the blinds, stands a fine funerary urn.22 It is made of solid stone, creamy, finely carved. Chiselled into its front face is a tender scene. An elderly man sits while a woman stands behind him. The man is old, but poised – he extends his hand in farewell. His name is Lysis, son of Demokrates. He is bidding farewell to his own son, Timokleides, who has, prematurely, been taken from the world. The mourning Lysis is the same bright lad that Socrates chatted with one warm day at the wrestling ground. He is in more ways than one ‘the son of Demokrates’. Young, confident, like the democracy itself, he has lived to suffer disappointment and great loss. His fifth-century story can still be read in the stones underneath modern Athens’ feet.
We can map with increasing certainty Socrates’ peregrinations (and those of his peers) around Athens during those final spasms of the Peloponnesian War. Yet the philosopher is still a challenge for history writers, for he does not fit into an easy political narrative. He is not a campaigner. He does not die for the sake of democracy. He does not seize power with the oligarchs, exterminate his enemies and debauch on victory. Instead, while all around him are losing their heads, their principles and their lives, he apparently relaxes in the gymnasia and at the wrestling grounds and, with the next generation of young Athenian men, debates the nature of friendship and looks to the future.
But there is a strong hint in one of the lines given to Socrates by Plato that this devoted entanglement with the young, the not fully mature, spells disaster.
SOCRATES: The young who follow me around, doing so of their free will, who have complete