Deceived for Money, Deceived for Virtue
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Pausanias — ἐραστῇ ὡς πλουσίῳ πλούτου ἕνεκα χαρισάμενος ἐξαπατηθείη καὶ μὴ λάβοι χρήματα, ἀναφανέντος τοῦ ἐραστοῦ πένητος, οὐδὲν ἧττον αἰσχρόν· δοκεῖ γὰρ ὁ τοιοῦτος τό γε αὑτοῦ ἐπιδεῖξαι, ὅτι ἕνεκα χρημάτων ὁτιοῦν ἂν ὁτῳοῦν ὑπηρετοῖ, τοῦτο δὲ οὐ καλόν. κατὰ τὸν αὐτὸν δὴ λόγον κἂν εἴ τις ὡς ἀγαθῷ χαρισάμενος καὶ αὐτὸς ὡς ἀμείνων ἐσόμενος διὰ τὴν φιλίαν ἐραστοῦ ἐξαπατηθείη, ἀναφανέντος ἐκείνου κακοῦ
Granting favor to a lover as wealthy, for the sake of wealth, should be deceived and not get the money, the lover turning out poor — is nonetheless disgraceful; for such a person seems to have shown, as far as he himself is concerned, that for the sake of money he would serve anything for anyone, and that is not honorable. By the same reasoning, then, even if someone grants favor as to a good man, and himself as one who will become better through a lover's friendship, should be deceived — that one turning out bad—
Continuing directly from 184e, where Pausanias declared that only the custom aligned with wisdom and virtue makes it honorable for a boy to grant a lover favor — and that being deceived in that one case is no disgrace, though it is shameful in every other. Here he tests the claim with the first case: a boy who grants favor to a lover for his wealth, only to find the man poor, is disgraceful regardless of the outcome, because it proves he would serve anyone for pay. He then opens the second, parallel case — favor granted for the hope of becoming better — a sentence he begins here and completes in 185b.
Pausanias reaches for hypēreteîn, not therapeúein, to describe service bought with money, and the choice matters. A hypēretēs is a ship's oarsman who takes orders from the officers above him — the lowest rank on a trireme, rowing wherever he is told for whatever he is paid. That is the picture behind “he would serve anything for anyone”: interchangeable labor sold to whoever pays, not attention given because the person served is worth serving. Two Stephanus pages earlier he reached for the gentler therapeúein for exactly the opposite case — service that improves the one who gives it. The vocabulary itself already tells the reader which kind of exchange he thinks disgraceful.
Both halves of the comparison turn on the same verb, anaphaínesthai, ‘to come to light’: the lover is anaphanéntos poor, and then anaphanéntos bad, the identical participle marking the moment each disguise fails. Yet Pausanias uses that one word to license two different verdicts. Later, at 185b, deception about the lover's character is called noble regardless of how badly the lover turns out, because only the boy's own hope of becoming better is judged. It is a convenient rule for a speaker defending his own long attachment to Agathon: intention alone acquits the beloved, whatever the lover eventually reveals himself to be.
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