Lysimachus' lack of awareness is not just a comic foil for the serious business of the dialogue. It has been noted that his serious but unfocused use of social value-terms of high aspiration, e.g. for all their children to be 'the best' and not end up, as he and Melesias are, 'without reputation', augurs the dilemma of the unity of separateness of virtues which is the central to the final part of the argument of the dialogue. Secondly his tediously repetitive demand on the educational need for care and nurture links him, despite the intellectual distance between them, with the seriousness of Socrates' central concerns. Finally, his willingness to be 'frank', in exposing himself to sacrificing his social prestige in making revelation of parental …show more content…
This is particularly clear in the case of Nicias, who is very conscious of his position as someone familiar with Socrates' methods and aims, and quite effectively takes on the 'Socratic role' in the later and more developed arguments in the second main elenchos section of the dialogue, successfully (defecting spirited but ill-directed attacks by Laches). Yet his intellectual self-confidence is not matched by his personal attitude:while recognizing that conversations with Socrates will involve not just answering questions but 'giving an account of how one lives and has lived one's life', (he claims to correct a naive Lysimachus on this point), he goes on to betray his lack of real involvement by describing the process as one he finds 'not pleasant' and one to which he has 'no objection'- an attitude not born out by his later reaction to personal intellectual failure in the final elenchos. Laches, likewise, not only reacts abusively to Nicias' condescending handling of the 'Socrates role', but also displays his own failure to personify endurance in his own behaviour by his rather choleric 'resignations' from the discussion, when the going gets