Part 174

“How say you?” I asked, “wishing you to be happy do they hinder you from doing whatever you please? Answer me thus; If you should desire to mount on one of your father’s chariots, and to take the reins when a race is to be run, would he not allow you, but hinder you?”

“By Jupiter,” said he, “he would not allow me.”

“Whom would he then?”

“There is a charioteer who receives pay from my father.”

12. “How say you? Do they suffer a hired servant rather than you to do what he pleases with the horses, and moreover pay him money for so doing?”

“Why not?” said he.

“But I suppose they suffer you to drive the pair of mules and, if you wish to take the whip and beat them, they would allow you.”

“Why allow me?” said he.

“But what?” said I, “is no one allowed to beat them?”

“Certainly,” said he, “the mule-driver.”

“Is he a slave, or free?”.

“A slave,” he replied.

“They think more of a slave then, as it seems, than of you, their son, and commit their property to him rather than to you, and allow him to do what he pleases, but you they hinder. Tell me this too. Do they allow you to govern yourself; or do they not even suffer this?”

“How should they suffer it?” he said.

“Who then governs you?”

“My pædagogue here,” said he.

“Is he a slave?”

“How should he be otherwise? ours though,” said he.

“It is shameful, surely,” said I, “that a freeman should be governed by a slave. And by doing what does this pædagogue govern you?”

“Of course,” said he, “he conducts me to my masters.”

“And do they too govern you, the masters?

“Assuredly.”

13. “Your father, then, voluntarily sets over you many rulers and governors. But when you return home to your mother, does she allow you to do whatever you please, that you may be happy as far as she is concerned, either with her wool or her loom when she is spinning? She surely does not hinder you from touching the comb or the shuttle, or any other of her spinning instruments.”

Whereupon, he laughing replied, “By Jupiter, Socrates, she not only hinders me, but I should be beaten too if I touched them.”

“By Hercules,” said I, “have you in any way injured your father or your mother?”

“By Jupiter, not I,” he said.

“For what reason, then, do they so shamefully hinder you from being happy and doing what you please, and bring you up throughout the whole day in subjection to some one, and in a word let you do scarcely any thing that you wish? So that, as it seems, neither have you any advantage from such great riches, but any one manages them rather than you, nor from your person, which is so noble, but this too another tends and takes care of: but you, Lysis, neither govern any thing, nor do any thing that you wish.”

14, “For I am not yet old enough, Socrates,” said he.