He is not in his right mind, said Ctesippus; he is talking nonsense,
and is stark mad.
O Hippothales, I said, if you have ever made any verses or songs
in honour of your favourite, I do not want to hear them; but I want to
know the purport of them, that I may be able to judge of your mode
of approaching your fair one.
Ctesippus will be able to tell you, he said; for if, as he avers,
the sound of my words is always dinning in his ears, he must have a
very accurate knowledge and recollection of them.
Yes, indeed, said Ctesippus; I know only too well; and very
ridiculous the tale is: for although he is a lover, and very devotedly
in love, he has nothing particular to talk about to his beloved
which a child might not say. Now is not that ridiculous? He can only
speak of the wealth of Democrates, which the whole city celebrates,
and grandfather Lysis, and the other ancestors of the youth, and their
stud of horses, and their victory at the Pythian games, and at the
Isthmus, and at Nemea with four horses and single horses-these are the
tales which he composes and repeats. And there is greater twaddle
still. Only the day before yesterday he made a poem in which he
described the entertainment of Heracles, who was a connexion of the
family, setting forth how in virtue of this relationship he was
hospitably received by an ancestor of Lysis; this ancestor was himself
begotten of Zeus by the daughter of the founder of the deme.
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