Despite the word's original meaning being a much bigger and more intimate tie. It's usually characterised as a first-person dialogue. Socrates, the youths Lysis and Menexenus, and Hippothales, who is in unrequited love with Lysis and hides himself behind the surrounding listeners after the initial dialogue, are the key characters. Socrates gives four different perspectives on the genuine nature of loving friendship.



Socrates finds himself in a wrestling school full of young men who enjoy debating various issues in between classes. Hippothales, for example, is one of them, and Socrates can see right away that he is deeply in love with another lad. When the young men present hear this, they confirm Socrates' perception, saying that Hippothales is so madly in love (v) that his singing for unrequited love has battered the drums of those around him (204d-205a). Hippothales' object of desire is a young man named Lysis, after whom the dialogue is named, and Socrates requests permission to speak with him directly.