"You may depend on my following and not deserting him," said Charmides. "If you who are my guardian command me, I should be very wrong not to obey you."
"Well, I do command you," he said.
"Then I will do as you say, and begin this very day."
In the Lysis, the scene is again a Palæstra, near a school kept by Micon, a friend of Socrates. It is a half-holiday (like a saint's day in some of our public schools) in honour of the god Hermes; and the boys are scattered round the courtyard, some wrestling, some playing at dice, and others looking on. Among these last is Lysis, of noble birth and of high promise, with his friend Menexenus. Socrates professes himself charmed at the attachment of the two boys, and calls them very fortunate. All people, he says, have their different objects of ambition—horses, dogs, money, honour, as the case may be; but for his own part he would rather have a good friend than all these put together. It is what he has longed for all his life, and here is Lysis already supplied. "But," he asks, "what is Friendship, and who is a friend?"
Is it sympathy—is it, as the poets say, that "the gods draw like to like" by some mysterious affinity of souls? In that case, the bad man can be no one's friend; for he is not always even like himself—much less like any one else; while the good man is self-sufficing, and therefore has no need of friends. Is not Difference rather the principle? Are not unlike characters attracted by a sense of dependence, and do not the weak thus love the strong, and the poor the rich?
