Two Ways a Custom Goes Wrong
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Pausanias — χαρίζεσθαι ἐρασταῖς, κακίᾳ τῶν θεμένων κεῖται, τῶν μὲν ἀρχόντων πλεονεξίᾳ, τῶν δὲ ἀρχομένων ἀνανδρίᾳ· οὗ δὲ καλὸν ἁπλῶς ἐνομίσθη, διὰ τὴν τῶν θεμένων τῆς ψυχῆς ἀργίαν. ἐνθάδε δὲ πολὺ τούτων κάλλιον νενομοθέτηται, καὶ ὅπερ εἶπον, οὐ ῥᾴδιον κατανοῆσαι. ἐνθυμηθέντι γὰρ ὅτι λέγεται κάλλιον τὸ φανερῶς ἐρᾶν τοῦ λάθρᾳ, καὶ μάλιστα τῶν γενναιοτάτων καὶ ἀρίστων, κἂν αἰσχίους ἄλλων ὦσι, καὶ ὅτι αὖ ἡ παρακέλευσις τῷ ἐρῶντι παρὰ πάντων θαυμαστή, οὐχ ὥς τι αἰσχρὸν ποιοῦντι, καὶ ἑλόντι τε καλὸν δοκεῖ εἶναι
To gratify lovers lies in the badness of the lawmakers— the rulers' greed, the subjects' cowardice. Where it was simply held noble, that is the laziness of soul in its makers. But here a far finer law than these has been legislated, and, as I said, is not easy to grasp. For to one considering it, it is said nobler to love openly than secretly, and especially to love the noblest and best, even if they are uglier than others, and that, in turn, the encouragement given to the lover by everyone is extraordinary, as though doing nothing shameful, and if he succeeds, it is thought a noble thing—
Continuing Pausanias's survey of other cities' customs about loving boys (begun 182a, carried through the tyrant-fearing Elis/Boeotia/Ionia comparison of 182b-c), he now explains why the customs differ: where a city calls the practice shameful, that traces to the rulers' self-interest and the ruled's cowardice (the very fear of solidarity that led tyrants, per 182c, to suppress it); where a city simply approves it, that is only the laziness of lawgivers who never troubled to think it through. Athens's law, he says, is far better than either — and, for that reason, hard to grasp: it is said nobler to love openly than in secret, nobler still to love the noblest and best men even if less handsome, and the whole city's encouragement of a lover is extraordinary, as though he could do no wrong, and even winning is held a noble thing.
Pausanias turns the question of why customs about love differ into a question of who benefits from each answer. Where a city calls the practice shameful, he says, the verdict traces back to the rulers' greed and the ruled's cowardice — a plain callback to the tyranny he has just named in 182c, where he credited the bond between Harmodius and Aristogeiton with bringing down the Peisistratids: a tyrant bans exactly the kind of love that produces loyal pairs, because loyal pairs produce conspirators. Where a city calls it simply noble, the verdict is no more principled — it is argia, laziness, the soul of a lawgiver who never bothered to draw the distinction Pausanias is about to draw himself. Only Athens, on his account, has taken the trouble to legislate with care, which is exactly why its law sounds so complicated.
The argument he is building is also, transparently, his own defense. Pausanias is Agathon's longtime lover, and the law he describes — pursuit conducted openly, aimed at the noblest man rather than the prettiest, backed by public encouragement so extravagant that no one suspects the lover of wrongdoing — fits his own household with suspicious precision. Phaedrus opened the evening praising Eros as a force that makes a man brave in front of his beloved; Pausanias quietly narrows that claim to men brave enough, and virtuous enough, to be loved by someone like him. The same move surfaces again later, more nakedly, when Alcibiades turns his own drunken account of pursuing Socrates into exactly this kind of self-portrait dressed up as praise of the god.
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