An Uncertain Outcome
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Pausanias — παίδων, ἵνα μὴ εἰς ἄδηλον πολλὴ σπουδὴ ἀνηλίσκετο. τὸ γὰρ τῶν παίδων τέλος ἄδηλον οἷ τελευτᾷ κακίας καὶ ἀρετῆς ψυχῆς τε πέρι καὶ σώματος. οἱ μὲν οὖν ἀγαθοὶ τὸν νόμον τοῦτον αὐτοὶ αὑτοῖς ἑκόντες τίθενται, χρῆν δὲ καὶ τούτους τοὺς πανδήμους ἐραστὰς προσαναγκάζειν τὸ τοιοῦτον, ὥσπερ καὶ τῶν ἐλευθέρων γυναικῶν προσαναγκάζομεν αὐτοὺς καθʼ
…boys, so that much effort not be wasted on the uncertain. For the outcome of boys is unclear — as to where it ends up, in badness and virtue of soul and of body. The good, then, willingly impose this law on themselves, but it was necessary also to compel these vulgar lovers to something similar, just as with free women, too, we compel them, so far as…
Continuing Pausanias's sentence from 181d (not yet drafted), where he has been distinguishing genuine lovers from others within paiderastia itself. He now explains the risk in loving a boy before his character is settled: a boy's eventual outcome, in soul and in body, is not yet visible, so effort spent on him is effort spent on an unknown. Good men accept this restraint on their own initiative; the common, vulgar lovers must be compelled toward something similar — just as society already restrains everyone, so far as it can, from free women, a comparison completed at the start of 182a.
Pausanias's reasoning rests on a small commercial metaphor that a smooth translation erases. ἀνηλίσκετο is the ordinary verb for spending money — effort 'spent' the way a coin is spent — and τέλος, 'outcome,' is the same word Greek uses for the return on an investment or the mature yield of a crop. Put those two words together and the sentence stops sounding like a bland worry about character and becomes exactly what it says: don't sink resources into a boy whose eventual kakía or aretḗ, in soul and in body, is still unclear. The boy himself is not addressed anywhere in the sentence; the unclear τέλος belongs entirely to the lover's ledger.
Diotima's speech, later the same evening, answers exactly this problem of an unclear return by changing what the lover invests in. The ascent she describes at 210a–212a moves the lover away from any one uncertain body, toward soul-beauty and then toward Beauty itself — a τέλος that cannot depreciate, because it cannot change at all. Pausanias manages the risk with a rule forcing patience on the men who would otherwise spend carelessly; Diotima removes the risk by changing what is being spent on. The Phaedrus's palinode runs a version of the same fix through myth rather than argument: a soul's philosophical nature is read off how much of the pre-natal vision it still recollects, not off how one boy's aretḗ eventually turns out.
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