Each Holding a Rule of His Own
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Pausanias — τὸν περὶ τὴν φιλοσοφίαν τε καὶ τὴν ἄλλην ἀρετήν, εἰ μέλλει συμβῆναι καλὸν γενέσθαι τὸ ἐραστῇ παιδικὰ χαρίσασθαι. ὅταν γὰρ εἰς τὸ αὐτὸ ἔλθωσιν ἐραστής τε καὶ παιδικά, νόμον ἔχων ἑκάτερος, ὁ μὲν χαρισαμένοις παιδικοῖς ὑπηρετῶν ὁτιοῦν δικαίως ἂν ὑπηρετεῖν, ὁ δὲ τῷ ποιοῦντι αὐτὸν σοφόν τε καὶ ἀγαθὸν δικαίως αὖ ὁτιοῦν ἂν ὑπουργῶν ὑπουργεῖν, καὶ ὁ μὲν δυνάμενος εἰς φρόνησιν καὶ τὴν
The one concerning philosophy and the rest of virtue if it is going to turn out to be noble for a beloved to gratify a lover. For whenever a lover and a beloved arrive at the same point, each holding a rule: the one, serving in any way a beloved who has gratified him, would be justly serving; the other, to the one making him wise and good, in turn would justly render whatever service. And the one being able to contribute toward practical wisdom and the—
Continuing directly from 184c's unfinished sentence, Pausanias completes his naming of the second custom — the one concerning philosophy and virtue generally — and states the condition under which a beloved's compliance becomes noble: that lover and beloved each act on a rule of his own. He begins spelling out those two rules, one verb for what the lover owes and a different verb for what the beloved owes back, breaking off mid-clause at the lover's further qualification, to be completed in 184e.
Pausanias reaches for two different verbs where a translation will flatten both to "serve," and the choice is not decorative. What the lover owes the beloved is hypēreteîn, built on hypēretēs, the trireme's under-rower who kept time to another man's beat and had no say in where the ship went. What the beloved owes back is hypourgeîn, built on the same -ourg- element that gives Athens its leitourgia, the public service a citizen performs by his own choice. In the very grammar Pausanias picks, the lover's part is the subordinate one — he rows where he is told — while the beloved's part is closer to civic duty than to obedience.
The asymmetry matters because Pausanias has spent the whole speech insisting on a slavery that is not really slavery (184c's ethelodouleía). Here he builds a second asymmetry into the very relation he is defending: even inside the one exchange he calls noble, the two parties do not serve on equal terms. The lover's service keeps the shape of the rowing bench; only the beloved's keeps the shape of a free man doing his part for the city. Plato lets the vocabulary of the fleet and the assembly seep into an argument about eros the same way the Republic later borrows political language to describe the soul's internal government — the city is never far from how these people think about a person.
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