Sokrates enforces his lecture by reciting to Aristippus the memorable lecture or apologue, which the Sophist Prodikus was then delivering in lofty diction to numerous auditors[154]--the fable still known as the Choice of Hêraklês. Virtue and Pleasure (the latter of the two being here identified with Evil or Vice) are introduced as competing for the direction of the youthful Hêraklês. Each sets forth her case, in dramatic antithesis. Pleasure is introduced as representing altogether the gratification of the corporeal appetites and the love of repose: while Virtue replies by saying, that if youth be employed altogether in pursuing such delights, at the time when the appetites are most vigorous--the result will be nothing but fatal disappointment, accompanied with entire loss of the different and superior pleasures available in mature years and in old age. Youth is the season of labour: the physical appetites must be indulged sparingly, and only at the call of actual want: accomplishments of body and mind must be acquired in that season, which will enable the mature man to perform in after life great and glorious exploits. He will thus realise the highest of all human delights--the love of his friends and the admiration of his countrymen--the sound of his own praises and the reflexion upon his own deserts. At the price of a youth passed in labour and self-denial, he will secure the fullest measure of mature and attainable happiness. [Footnote 154: Xen. Mem. ii. 1, 21-34. [Greek: e)n tô=| suggra/mmati tô=| peri\ Ê(rakle/ous, o(/per dê\ kai\ plei/stois e)pidei/knutai--megaleiote/rois r(ê/masin.]] "It is worth your while, Aristippus" (says Sokrates, in concluding this lecture), "to bestow some reflexion on what is to happen in the latter portions of your life." [Side-note: Illustration afforded of the views of Sokrates respecting Good and Evil.]