Work
Lysis
In a wrestling school, Socrates converses with Lysis and Menexenus about friendship. Like with like, opposite with opposite, need, and desire are proposed as principles of attachment, and each encounters a difficulty.
- Composition
- c. 399-380 BCE
Sources and precision
The internal chronology remains disputed. This range is a qualified reference point, not a certain year.
Confidence D · disputed range
- Tradition
- Socratic and Platonic thought
- Period
- Antiquity
- Languages
- Ancient Greek · English · French
- Extent
- 21 passages · 9,764 words
Before reading
What you will learn
Compare several models of friendship, analyze reciprocity, and understand an aporetic ending within a scene where friendship already exists.
Short summary
In a wrestling school, Socrates converses with Lysis and Menexenus about friendship. Like with like, opposite with opposite, need, and desire are proposed as principles of attachment, and each encounters a difficulty.
Long summary
The setting presents adolescents, admirers, and strategies of courtship that Socrates criticizes by replacing praise with inquiry. The discussion asks who loves whom, why, and whether usefulness, goodness, or kinship truly grounds friendship.
No formula closes the debate, although the participants already call themselves friends. This contrast between conceptual aporia and lived relationship gives the text its subtlety: definition fails without making the phenomenon disappear.
Inside this work
The table of contents follows the divisions actually carried by the corpus.
Work › Stephanus page
Concepts covered
Historical context
The world around the text
The corpus manifests do not yet establish the precise place and circumstances of composition. The images below document the author’s world or the text’s transmission. They do not claim to show the exact scene of writing.
These are modern reconstructions. They situate a documented place, practice, or transmission and are not period documents.
What the world looked like
Classical Greek world, 5th century BCE
- State of technology
- Bronze, iron, pottery, simple cranes, and shipbuilding sustain cities. Power still comes mainly from people, animals, wind, and water.
- Science and knowledge
- Geometry, astronomy, inquiry into nature, and rational argument advance without modern measuring instruments or standardized experiments.
- Medicine and care
- Practitioners observe symptoms, diet, and seasons; healing sanctuaries and ritual treatment also remain common.
- Transport
- Walking and animals dominate on land. Sailing ships and triremes connect islands, ports, and colonies.
- Agriculture and food
- Small farms, grain, vines, olives, goats, and sheep shape the diet; harvests remain vulnerable to weather and war.
- Communication
- Public speech, messengers, and handwritten letters carry news. Theatre, the civic square, and the banquet are major social media.
- Clothing and fashion
- Women and men drape wool or linen as chitons, peploi, and cloaks. Garments are pinned, belted, and shaped by status rather than tailored like modern clothes.
Editions, translations, and provenance
The following carriers represent the text. They do not create new passage identities.
- Ancient Greekoriginal
- Englishhistorical_translation
- Frenchhistorical_translation
Source manifests: plato.lysis
Reader
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LysisPlato