No Act Is Noble or Base In Itself
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Pausanias — πρεσβύτεροι μὴ διακωλύωσι μηδὲ λοιδορῶσιν ὡς οὐκ ὀρθῶς λέγοντας, εἰς δὲ ταῦτά τις αὖ βλέψας ἡγήσαιτʼ ἂν πάλιν αἴσχιστον τὸ τοιοῦτον ἐνθάδε νομίζεσθαι. τὸ δὲ οἶμαι ὧδʼ ἔχει· οὐχ ἁπλοῦν ἐστιν, ὅπερ ἐξ ἀρχῆς ἐλέχθη οὔτε καλὸν εἶναι αὐτὸ καθʼ αὑτὸ οὔτε αἰσχρόν, ἀλλὰ καλῶς μὲν πραττόμενον καλόν, αἰσχρῶς δὲ αἰσχρόν. αἰσχρῶς μὲν οὖν ἐστι πονηρῷ τε καὶ πονηρῶς χαρίζεσθαι, καλῶς δὲ χρηστῷ τε καὶ καλῶς. πονηρὸς δʼ ἐστὶν ἐκεῖνος ὁ ἐραστὴς ὁ πάνδημος,
The elders neither restrain nor rebuke them as not speaking rightly— and someone, looking at this yet again might think such conduct is counted most shameful here. But the truth, I think, is this: It is not simple— just as was said from the start— to be neither noble in itself, nor base, but done nobly, noble, done basely, base. So it is base to gratify a base man and basely; but noble to gratify a good man, and nobly. And that lover is base— the Common one,
Continuing straight from 183c's picture of paidagōgoi and peer reproach, Pausanias notes that the elders let the reproach against a courted boy stand unchecked, so an onlooker might conclude the opposite of 183c's claim — that such conduct is judged basest here of all. He then states his real principle: the practice is not simple, as he said at the very start of his speech — no act is noble or base in itself, only in the manner of its doing, so that gratifying a base man basely is shameful and gratifying a good man nobly is noble. He begins to name the base type as 'the Common lover,' cut off mid-sentence before saying why.
Pausanias's ruling here — ouch haploun estin, "it is not simple" — repeats almost word for word the claim he opened his whole speech with at 181a, that Eros itself is double rather than single. He now cashes that claim out as a working rule of conduct: no act, including the one everyone has been circling since 183a, is noble or shameful by itself; only how it is done, and to whom, decides. The verb he uses for the act, charizesthai ("to gratify, to grant a favor"), is the standing euphemism in Greek pederastic vocabulary for a boy's sexual compliance — Athenian prose uses it exactly the way English once used "granting his favors." Pausanias's whole argument depends on treating that euphemism as morally blank material, colored only by the character of the two people involved.
The passage breaks off just as Pausanias reaches for his key term: ho erastēs ho pandēmos, "the lover who is Common." Pándēmos ordinarily just means "of all the people" — a public festival or a general muster can be called that with no insult attached — but Pausanias has already split Aphrodite herself into two goddesses at 180d–181a, Ourania and Pandēmos, and here he transfers the split onto her worshippers: the base lover belongs to the Common Aphrodite, and the next unit finishes the sentence by naming what makes him base — love of body over soul, and the inconstancy that follows once a body's bloom fades. The Phaedrus, this dialogue's companion, runs a version of the identical test on speeches instead of lovers: it also refuses to call a thing good or bad outright, asking instead whether it is done with knowledge of the soul it addresses.
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