Theod. How then shall I create this hunger in the heart of my friends?
Soc. In the first place you must not offer or make suggestion of your dainties to jaded appetites until satiety has ceased and starvation cries for alms. Even then shall you make but a faint suggestion to their want, with modest converse—like one who would fain bestow a kindness... and lo! the vision fades and she is gone—until the very pinch of hunger; for the same gifts have then a value unknown before the moment of supreme desire.
Then Theodote: Oh why, Socrates, why are you not by my side (like the huntsman's assistant) to help me catch my friends and lovers?
Soc. That will I be in good sooth if only you can woo and win me.
Theod. How shall I woo and win you?
Soc. Seek and you will find means, if you truly need me.
Theod. Come then in hither and visit me often.
And Socrates, poking sly fun at his own lack of business occupation, answered: Nay, Theodote, leisure is not a commodity in which I largely deal. I have a hundred affairs of my own too, private or public, to occupy me; and then there are my lady-loves, my dear friends, who will not suffer me day or night to leave them, for ever studying to learn love-charms and incantations at my lips.
Theod. Why, are you really versed in those things, Socrates?
Soc. Of course, or else how is it, do you suppose, that Apollodorus (16) here and Antisthenes never leave me; or why have Cebes and Simmias come all the way from Thebes to stay with me? Be assured these things cannot happen without diverse love-charms and incantations and magic wheels.