[205a]
so that I may know whether you understand what a lover ought to say of his favorite to his face or to others.
Do you attach any weight, Socrates, he asked, to anything you have heard this fellow say?
Tell me, I said; do you deny being in love with the person he mentions?
Not I, he replied; but I do deny that I make poems and compositions on my favorite.
He is in a bad way, said Ctesippus; why, he raves like a madman!
Then I remarked: Hippothales, I do not want to hear your verses,