{"id":39272,"date":"2020-12-11T12:00:00","date_gmt":"2020-12-11T12:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/cupblog.bluefusesystems.com\/?p=39272"},"modified":"2021-01-06T11:39:09","modified_gmt":"2021-01-06T11:39:09","slug":"lysis-and-his-life-my-greek-dinner-guest","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.cambridge.org\/core\/blog\/2020\/12\/11\/lysis-and-his-life-my-greek-dinner-guest\/","title":{"rendered":"Lysis and his life: My Ancient Greek dinner guest"},"content":{"rendered":"<div id=\"bsf_rt_marker\"><\/div>\n<p>Visiting museums has been difficult this year, so it is with even greater longing that I often think these days of what is, to me, one of the most moving objects to have survived from antiquity: the gravestone of \u2018Lysis, son of Democrates, of the deme Aexone\u2019 (to cite the inscription), dating from around 350 BC and preserved in the Museum of Piraeus.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>I find it moving because the handsome bearded man on the relief, depicted together with his son and perhaps his daughter, is none other than the Lysis from Plato\u2019s eponymous dialogue. It is wonderful, among so many sculptures and gravestones in museums, suddenly to see the face of someone we feel we know thanks to Plato\u2019s superb penmanship. Archaeologists tell us that the gravestone is modest for its time, suggesting that the family had fallen on hard times after the Peloponnesian War. <\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>I\u2019d love to extend a dinner invitation to Lysis and satisfy my curiosity: how does he look back on his life? What was it like to grow up in the fifth century BCE among the Athenian <em>jeunesse dor\u00e9e<\/em> and to talk to Socrates about friendship (the topic of <em>Lysis<\/em>)?&nbsp; What was it like to read his \u2018own\u2019 Platonic dialogue, and did it make him a celebrity? Did Plato do him justice? And \u2013 after a few glasses of wine &#8211; did he ever become the lover of Hippothales, who Plato says could not stop talking about him and composed love poems for him?<\/p>\n\n\n\n<hr class=\"wp-block-separator\"\/>\n\n\n\n<p>Dr. Luuk Huitink is Assistant Professor in Ancient Greek at the University of Amsterdam. He is co-author of the books <a href=\"https:\/\/www.cambridge.org\/us\/academic\/subjects\/classical-studies\/classical-literature\/xenophon-anabasis-book-iii-1\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\"><em>Xenophon: Anabasis Book III<\/em><\/a> and <a href=\"https:\/\/www.cambridge.org\/us\/academic\/subjects\/classical-studies\/classical-languages\/cambridge-grammar-classical-greek?format=PB\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\"><em>The Cambridge Grammar of Classical Greek<\/em><\/a>, both published by Cambridge University Press.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Visiting museums has been difficult this year, so it is with even greater longing that I often think these days of what is, to me, one of the most moving objects to have survived from antiquity: the gravestone of \u2018Lysis, son of Democrates, of the deme Aexone\u2019 (to cite the inscription), dating from around 350 [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":857,"featured_media":39274,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":true,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[13],"tags":[8258,56,8256],"coauthors":[8255],"class_list":["post-39272","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-classics","tag-ancient-greek","tag-classics-2","tag-lysis"],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.cambridge.org\/core\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/39272","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.cambridge.org\/core\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.cambridge.org\/core\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.cambridge.org\/core\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/857"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.cambridge.org\/core\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=39272"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/www.cambridge.org\/core\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/39272\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":39643,"href":"https:\/\/www.cambridge.org\/core\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/39272\/revisions\/39643"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.cambridge.org\/core\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/39274"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.cambridge.org\/core\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=39272"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.cambridge.org\/core\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=39272"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.cambridge.org\/core\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=39272"},{"taxonomy":"author","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.cambridge.org\/core\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/coauthors?post=39272"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}