The lover’s company
SocratesThat point is clear; let us leave it. We must now say what benefit or harm to a person’s property will come from a lover’s company and guardianship. Everyone can see, and the lover most of all, that he would wish above everything for his beloved to be left without the dearest, most well-disposed and most sacred things he has. He would gladly see him deprived of father, mother, relatives and friends, regarding them as obstacles to and critics of his most pleasurable association with the young man. If the beloved has gold or other property, however, the lover will think him harder to capture and harder to handle once caught. The lover must therefore envy him when he owns property and rejoice when he loses it. He would also wish his beloved to remain unmarried, childless and without a household for as long as possible, so that he could go on enjoying what pleases him.
There are other bad things as well, but some god has mixed immediate pleasure into most of them. A flatterer is a fearsome beast and does great harm, yet nature has mixed into him a certain pleasure, not without charm. One might condemn a courtesan for the harm she does; yet she, like many creatures and pursuits of that kind, may give great pleasure day after day. But a lover is not only harmful to his beloved: to spend the day with him is more disagreeable than anything. As the old saying goes, one age takes pleasure in its own age. I suppose similarity in years brings similar pleasures and so gives rise to friendship. Even the company of one’s peers, though, can become too much.