In this, the final part of the main argument, Socrates draws some threads together before reaching a conclusion (though in the immediate sequel, 222b3–e7, he will make the conclusion seem to be in doubt): that ‘[i]t's necessary … for the genuine lover, one who's not pretended, to be loved by his darling’ (222a6–7). Quite what this amounts to, and how it relates to the argument so far, may be as opaque, at first reading, as it evidently is to Menexenus, and to Lysis. But on our analysis, it is a natural outcome of the argument of the Lysis up to the present point.

The short passage in question may for convenience be divided up into two movements, though the division is more than usually artificial. The passage has some markedly strange features, which are accounted for by a partial change of register, from full seriousness to a certain mixture of the serious and the playful – largely caused by the fact that Socrates will simultaneously (a) reach his conclusion, (b) appear to give Hippothales what he wants, and (c) leave Lysis and Menexenus in differing degrees of uncertainty as to what, precisely, they have agreed to, even while they have plainly come some of the way with him.

221d6–e5: IS THE OBJECT OF PHILIA WHAT BELONGS (TO OIKEION)?