Section 187

But you, Laches and Nicias, are each to tell us who is the cleverest person you have heard on the upbringing of youth; whether you have knowledge of it by learning from someone or by discovering it yourselves; and if you learnt it, who were your teachers respectively, and what other colleagues they had: in order that, if you are not at leisure through the demands of public business, we may go to them and induce them either with gifts or good turns or with both to undertake the care of our and your children together, and so prevent them from turning out knaves and disgracing their ancestors. But if you have made the grand discovery yourselves, give us an instance to show what other persons you have succeeded in changing, by your care of them, from knaves to honest gentlemen. For if you are now going to make your first attempt at educating, you must beware lest you try your experiment, not on a corpus vile, 1 but on your sons and the children of your friends, and you prove to be a mere case, as the proverbial saying has it, of starting pottery on a wine-jar. 2 So tell us what you claim, or do not claim, as your resources and acquirements in this kind. There, Lysimachus, demand that from these good persons, and do not let them off.

To my mind, good sirs, these remarks of Socrates are excellent: but it is for you, Nicias and Laches, to decide for yourselves whether it suits you to be questioned and offer some explanation on such points. For I and Melesias here would certainly be delighted if you would consent to expound in detail all that Socrates puts to you in his questions: as I began by saying at the outset, we invited you to consult with us just because we thought, very naturally, that you had given serious consideration to this kind of thing, especially as your boys, like ours, are almost of an age to be educated. Accordingly, if it is all the same to you, discuss it now by joint inquiry with Socrates, exchanging view’s with him in turn: for it is a particularly good remark of his that we are consulting now about the greatest of all our concerns. Come, see if you consider that this is the proper course to take.

Lysimachus, it looks to me, in very truth, as though you only knew Socrates at second hand— through his father—and had not conversed with him personally except in his childhood, when you may have chanced to meet him among the people of his district, accompanying his father at the temple or at some local gathering. But you have evidently not yet had to do with him since he has reached maturer years.

How are you so sure of that, Nicias?