"Mary Renault - Greece 4 - The Last Of The Wine" - читать интересную книгу автора (Renault Mary)

There was a red mark on Sokrates' face. Kriton was urging him to bring an action, and offering to cover
the speech-writer's fee. Old friend, said Sokrates, last year an ass bolted in the street and kicked you;
but I don't recall your suing him. As for you, my dear Lysis, thanks for your kind intentions. Just when he
was starting to doubt the force of his argument, you re-stated it for him with eloquence and conviction.
And now, gentlemen, shall we return to what we were saying about the functions of music? Their
reasoning became too hard for me; but I lingered, standing in the dust, and looking at them on the
pavement above me. Lysis was the nearest, being a little behind the rest. I set him in my mind beside his
statue in the hallway; the comparison was easy because his face was shaved; a new fashion then, which
the athletes had lately begun setting. It seemed to me a pity that someone should not do another bronze
of him, now he was a man. His hair, which he wore short, lay half-curled against his head, and being
mingled fair and brown, gleamed like a bronze helmet inlaid with gold. Just as I was thinking about him,
he looked round. It was evident he did not recollect having ever seen me before; he smiled at me,
however, as if to say, Come nearer, then, if you like; no one will eat you.

I took courage at this, and a step forward. But Midas, who never idled for long, saw me and came
bustling over. He even seized me by the arm; so to save myself from more indignity, I went with him
quietly. Sokrates, who was talking to Kriton, took no notice. I saw Lysis looking after me as I went; but
whether approving my obedience, or despising my meekness, I could not tell.

On the way home Midas said to me, Son of Myron, a boy of your age should not need watching every
moment. What do you mean by running after Sokrates after all I have told you? Especially today. —
Why today? I said.— Have you forgotten that he taught Alkibiades? — Well, what of it? — Sokrates
has always refused to be initiated into the holy Mysteries; so who else, do you suppose, taught
Alkibiades to mock at them? — Mock at them? I said. Does he? — You have heard what all the citizens
are saying. It was the first I had heard of it; but I knew that slaves tell things to one another. Well, if he
does, it's absurd to blame Sokrates for it. I've not seen Alkibiades go near him for years, or speak to him
beyond a greeting in the street. — A teacher has to answer for his pupil. If Alkibiades left Sokrates
justly, then Sokrates gave him cause and is to blame; or if unjustly, then Sokrates did not teach him
justice, so how can he claim to make his pupils better?

I suppose he had picked up this argument from someone like Dionysodoros. Though still untrained in
logic I could smell a fallacy. If Alkibiades broke the Herms, everyone agrees it's the worst thing he has
done. So when he was with Sokrates he must have been better than he is now, mustn't he? You don't
even know yet if he did it at all. And, I said, becoming angry again, as for Lysis, he only wanted out of
kindness to put me at ease. Midas sucked in his cheeks. Certainly. Why should anyone doubt it?
However, we know your father's orders.

I could think of no answer to this, so I said, Father told you I wasn't to hear the Sophists: Sokrates is a
philosopher. — Any Sophist, said Midas sniffing, is a philosopher to his friends.

I walked on in silence, thinking, Why do I argue with a man who thinks whatever will earn him his
freedom in two years? He can think what he likes then. It seems I can be more just than Midas, not
because I am good, but because I am free. He walked a foot behind my elbow, carrying my tablets and
lyre. I thought, When he is free he will grow his beard and look, I should think, rather like Hippias. And if
he chooses, he can strip for exercise then, with other free men; but he is getting old for that, and might not
care to show his body, soft and white as it must be. I had not seen him naked in all these years; he might
as well have been a woman. Even when he was free he would still be no more than a metic, an immigrant,
never a citizen. Once long before, I had asked my father why Zeus made some men to be Hellenes living