The Memorabilia Part 24

"Cyrop." I. vi. 40.

Theod. And by what like contrivance would you have me catch my lovers?

Soc. Well now! what if in place of a dog you can get a man who will hunt up your wealthy lover of beauty and discover his lair, and having found him, will plot and plan to throw him into your meshes?

Theod. Nay, what sort of meshes have I?

Soc. One you have, and a close-folding net it is, (11) I trow; to wit, your own person; and inside it sits a soul that teaches you (12) with what looks to please and with what words to cheer; how, too, with smiles you are to welcome true devotion, but to exclude all wantons from your presence. (13) It tells you, you are to visit your beloved in sickness with solicitude, and when he has wrought some n.o.ble deed you are greatly to rejoice with him; and to one who pa.s.sionately cares for you, you are to make surrender of yourself with heart and soul. The secret of true love I am sure you know: not to love softly merely, but devotedly. (14) And of this too I am sure: you can convince your lovers of your fondness for them not by lip phrases, but by acts of love.

(11) Or, "right well woven."

(12) Lit. "by which you understand."

(13) Or, "with what smiles to lie in wait for (cf. 'Cyrop.' II. iv.

20; Herod. vi. 104) the devoted admirer, and how to banish from your presence the voluptary."

(14) Or, "that it should be simply soft, but full of tender goodwill."

Theod. No, upon my word, I have none of these devices.

Soc. And yet it makes all the difference whether you approach a human being in the natural and true way, since it is not by force certainly that you can either catch or keep a friend. Kindness and pleasure are the only means to capture this fearful wild-fowl man and keep him constant.

Theod. You are right.

Soc. In the first place you must make such demands only of your well-wisher as he can grant without repentance; and in the next place you must make requital, dispensing your favours with a like economy.

Thus you will best make friends whose love shall last the longest and their generosity know no stint. (15) And for your favours you will best win your friends if you suit your largess to their penury; for, mark you, the sweetest viands presented to a man before he wants them are apt to prove insipid, or, to one already sated, even nauseous; but create hunger, and even coa.r.s.er stuff seems honey-sweet.

(15) Or, "This is the right road to friendship--permanent and open- handed friendship."

Theod. How then shall I create this hunger in the heart of my friends?

Soc. In the first place you must not offer or make suggestion of your dainties to jaded appet.i.tes until satiety has ceased and starvation cries for alms. Even then shall you make but a faint suggestion to their want, with modest converse--like one who would fain bestow a kindness...

and lo! the vision fades and she is gone--until the very pinch of hunger; for the same gifts have then a value unknown before the moment of supreme desire.

Then Theodote: Oh why, Socrates, why are you not by my side (like the huntsman's a.s.sistant) to help me catch my friends and lovers?

Soc. That will I be in good sooth if only you can woo and win me.

Theod. How shall I woo and win you?

Soc. Seek and you will find means, if you truly need me.

Theod. Come then in hither and visit me often.

And Socrates, poking sly fun at his own lack of business occupation, answered: Nay, Theodote, leisure is not a commodity in which I largely deal. I have a hundred affairs of my own too, private or public, to occupy me; and then there are my lady-loves, my dear friends, who will not suffer me day or night to leave them, for ever studying to learn love-charms and incantations at my lips.

Theod. Why, are you really versed in those things, Socrates?

Soc. Of course, or else how is it, do you suppose, that Apollodorus (16) here and Antisthenes never leave me; or why have Cebes and Simmias come all the way from Thebes to stay with me? Be a.s.sured these things cannot happen without diverse love-charms and incantations and magic wheels.

(16) For Apollodorus see "Apol." 28; Plat. "Symp." 172 A; "Phaed." 59 A, 117 D. For Antisthenes see above. For Cebes and Simmias see above, I. ii. 48; Plat. "Crit." 45 B; "Phaed." pa.s.sim.

Theod. I wish you would lend me your magic-wheel, (17) then, and I will set it spinning first of all for you.

(17) Cf. Theocr. ii. 17; Schneider ad loc.

Soc. Ah! but I do not wish to be drawn to you. I wish you to come to me.

Theod. Then I will come. Only, will you be "at home" to me?

Soc. Yes, I will welcome you, unless some one still dearer holds me engaged, and I must needs be "not at home."

XII

Seeing one of those who were with him, a young man, but feeble of body, named Epigenes, (1) he addressed him.

(1) Epigenes, possibly the son of Antiphon. See Plat. "Apol." 33 E; "Phaed." 59 B.

Soc. You have not the athletic appearance of a youth in training, (2) Epigenes.

(2) {idiotikos}, lit. of the person untrained in gymnastics. See A. R.

Cluer ad loc. Cf. Plat. "Laws," 839 E; I. ii. 4; III. v. 15; "Symp." ii. 17.

And he: That may well be, seeing I am an amateur and not in training.

Soc. As little of an amateur, I take it, as any one who ever entered the lists of Olympia, unless you are prepared to make light of that contest for life and death against the public foe which the Athenians will inst.i.tute when the day comes. (3) And yet they are not a few who, owing to a bad habit of body, either perish outright in the perils of war, or are ign.o.bly saved. Many are they who for the self-same cause are taken prisoners, and being taken must, if it so betide, endure the pains of slavery for the rest of their days; or, after falling into dolorous straits, (4) when they have paid to the uttermost farthing of all, or may be more than the worth of all, that they possess, must drag on a miserable existence in want of the barest necessaries until death release them. Many also are they who gain an evil repute through infirmity of body, being thought to play the coward. Can it be that you despise these penalties affixed to an evil habit? Do you think you could lightly endure them? Far lighter, I imagine, nay, pleasant even by comparison, are the toils which he will undergo who duly cultivates a healthy bodily condition. Or do you maintain that the evil habit is healthier, and in general more useful than the good? Do you pour contempt upon those blessings which flow from the healthy state? And yet the very opposite of that which befalls the ill attends the sound condition. Does not the very soundness imply at once health and strength? (5) Many a man with no other talisman than this has pa.s.sed safely through the ordeal of war; stepping, not without dignity, (6) through all its horrors unscathed. Many with no other support than this have come to the rescue of friends, or stood forth as benefactors of their fatherland; whereby they were thought worthy of grat.i.tude, and obtained a great renown and received as a recompense the highest honours of the State; to whom is also reserved a happier and brighter pa.s.sage through what is left to them of life, and at their death they leave to their children the legacy of a fairer starting-point in the race of life.

(3) Or, "should chance betide." Is the author thinking of a life-and- death struggle with Thebes?

(4) e.g. the prisoners in the Latomiae. Thuc. vii. 87.

(5) It is almost a proverb--"Sound of body and limb is hale and strong." "Qui valet praevalebit."

(6) e.g. Socrates himself, according to Alcibiades, ap. Plat. "Symp."

221 B; and for the word {euskhemonos} see Arist. "Wasps," 1210, "like a gentleman"; L. and S.; "Cyr." I. iii. 8; Aristot. "Eth.

N." i. 10, 13, "gracefully."

Because our city does not practise military training in public, (7) that is no reason for neglecting it in private, but rather a reason for making it a foremost care. For be you a.s.sured that there is no contest of any sort, nor any transaction, in which you will be the worse off for being well prepared in body; and in fact there is nothing which men do for which the body is not a help. In every demand, therefore, which can be laid upon the body it is much better that it should be in the best condition; since, even where you might imagine the claims upon the body to be slightest--in the act of reasoning--who does not know the terrible stumbles which are made through being out of health? It suffices to say that forgetfulness, and despondency, and moroseness, and madness take occasion often of ill-health to visit the intellectual faculties so severely as to expel all knowledge (8) from the brain. But he who is in good bodily plight has large security. He runs no risk of incurring any such catastrophe through ill-health at any rate; he has the expectation rather that a good habit must procure consequences the opposite to those of an evil habit; (9) and surely to this end there is nothing a man in his senses would not undergo.... It is a base thing for a man to wax old in careless self-neglect before he has lifted up his eyes and seen what manner of man he was made to be, in the full perfection of bodily strength and beauty. But these glories are withheld from him who is guilty of self-neglect, for they are not wont to blaze forth unbidden.

(10)

(7) Cf. "Pol. Ath." i. 13; and above, III. v. 15.

(8) Or, "whole branches of knowledge" ({tas epistemas}).

(9) Or, "he may well hope to be insured by his good habit against the evils attendant on its opposite."

(10) Or, "to present themselves spontaneously."