Plutarch's Morals
some think, but a sweet and productive radiance and warmth, the Sun
bringing to the body nourishment and light and growth, and Love doing
the same to the soul. And as the heat of the Sun is more powerful when
it emerges from clouds and after mist, so Love is sweeter and hotter
after a jealous tiff with the loved one,[124] and moreover, as some
think the Sun is kindled and extinguished, so also do people conceive of
Love as mortal and uncertain. Moreover, just as without training the
body cannot easily bear the heat of the Sun, so neither can the
untrained soul easily bear the yoke of Love, but both are equally out of
tune and suffer, for which they blame the deity and not their own
weakness. But in this respect they seem to differ, in that the Sun
exhibits to the eye things beautiful and ugly alike, whereas Love throws
its light only on beautiful things, and persuades lovers to concentrate
their attention on these, and to neglect all other things. As to those
that call Aphrodite the Moon, they, too, find some points in common
between them; for the Moon is divine and heavenly and a sort of
halfway-house between mortal and immortal, but inactive in itself and
dark without the presence of the Sun, as is the case with Aphrodite in
the absence of Love. So we may say that Aphrodite resembles the Moon,
and Love the Sun, more than any other deities, yet are not Love and the
Sun altogether the same, for just as body and soul are not the same, but
something different, so is it with the Sun and Love, the former can be
seen, the latter only felt. And if it should not seem too harsh a
saying, one might argue that the Sun acts entirely opposite to Love, for
it turns the mind away from the world of fancy to the world of reality,
beguiling us by its grace and splendid appearance, and persuading us to
seek for truth and everything else in and round it and nowhere else. For
as Euripides says,
'Too passionately do we love the Sun,
Because it always shines upon the earth,
From inexperience of another life,'[125]
or rather from forgetfulness of those things which Love brings to our
remembrance. For as when we are woke by a great and bright light,
everything that the soul has seen in dreams is vanished and fled, so the
Sun is wont to banish the remembrance of past changes and chances, and
to bewitch the intelligence, pleasure and admiration causing this
forgetfulness. And though reality is really there, yet the soul cleaves
to dreams and is dazzled by what is most beautiful and divine. 'For
round the soul are poured sweet yet deceiving dreams,' so that the soul
thinks everything here good and valuable, unless it obtain divine and
chaste Love as its physician and preserver. For Love brings the soul
through the body to truth and the region of truth, where pure and
guileless beauty is to be found, kindly befriending its votaries like an
initiator at the mysteries. And it associates with the soul only through
the body. And as geometricians, in the case of boys who cannot yet be
initiated into the perception of incorporeal and impassive substance,
convey their ideas through the medium of spheres, cubes, and
dodecahedrons, so celestial Love has contrived beautiful mirrors of
beautiful things, and exhibits them to us glittering in the shapes
colours and appearances of youths in all their flower, and calmly stirs
the memory which is inflamed first by these. Consequently some, through
the stupidity of their friends and intimates, who have endeavoured by
force and against reason to extinguish the flame, have got no advantage
from it, but filled themselves with smoke and confusion, or have rushed
into secret and lawless pleasures and ingloriously wasted their prime.
But as many as by sober reason and modesty have abated the extravagance
of the passion, and left in the soul only a bright glow--not exciting a
tornado of passion, but a wonderful and productive diffusion, as in a
growing plant, opening the pores of complaisance and friendliness--these
in no long time cease to regard the personal charms of those they love,
and study their inward characters, and gaze at one another with
unveiled eyes, and associate with one another in words and actions, if
they find in their minds any fragment or image of the beautiful; and if
not they bid them farewell and turn to others, like bees that only go to
those flowers from which they can get honey. But wherever they find any
trace or emanation or pleasing resemblance of the divine, in an ecstasy
of pleasure and delight they indulge their memory, and revive to
whatever is truly lovely and felicitous and admired by everybody."
Sec. XX. "The poets indeed seem for the most part to have written and sung
about Love in a playful and merry manner, but have sometimes spoken
seriously about him, whether out of their own mind, or the god helping
them to truth. Among these are the lines about his birth,
'Well-sandalled Iris bare the most powerful of the gods to golden-haired
Zephyr.'[126] But perhaps the learned have persuaded you that these
lines are only a fanciful illustration of the variety and beauty of
love." "Certainly," said Daphnaeus, "what else could they mean?" "Hear
me," said my father, "for the heavenly phenomenon compels us so to
speak. The rainbow[127] is, I suppose, a reflection caused by the sun's
rays falling on a moist cloud, making us think the appearance is in the
cloud. Similarly erotic fancy in the case of noble souls causes a
reflection of the memory, from things which here appear and are called
beautiful, to what is really divine and lovely and felicitous and
wonderful. But most lovers pursuing and groping after the semblance of
beauty in boys and women, as in mirrors,[128] can derive nothing more
certain than pleasure mixed with pain. And this seems the love-delirium
of Ixion, who instead of the joy he desired embraced only a cloud, as
children who desire to take the rainbow into their hands, clutching at
whatever they see. But different is the behaviour of the noble and
chaste lover: for he reflects on the divine beauty that can only be
felt, while he uses the beauty of the visible body only as an organ of
the memory, though he embraces it and loves it, and associating with it
is still more inflamed in mind. And so neither in the body do they sit
ever gazing at and desiring this light, nor after death do they return
to this world again, and skulk and loiter about the doors and
bedchambers of newly-married people, disagreeable ghosts of
pleasure-loving and sensual men and women, who do not rightly deserve
the name of lovers. For the true lover, when he has got into the other
world and associated with beauties as much as is lawful, has wings and
is initiated and passes his time above in the presence of his Deity,
dancing and waiting upon him, until he goes back to the meadows of the
Moon and Aphrodite, and sleeping there commences a new existence. But
this is a subject too high for the present occasion. However, it is with
Love as with the other gods, to borrow the words of Euripides, 'he
rejoices in being honoured by mankind,'[129] and _vice versa_, for he is
most propitious to those that receive him properly, but visits his
displeasure on those that affront him. For neither does Zeus as god of
Hospitality punish and avenge any outrages on strangers or suppliants,
nor as god of the family fulfil the curses of parents, as quickly as
Love hearkens to lovers unfairly treated, being the chastiser of boorish
and haughty persons. Why need I mention the story of Euxynthetus and
Leucomantis, the latter of whom is called The Peeping Girl to this day
in Cyprus? But perhaps you have not heard of the punishment of the
Cretan Gorgo, a somewhat similar case to that of Leucomantis, except
that she was turned into stone as she peeped out of window to see her
lover carried out to burial. For this Gorgo had a lover called Asander,
a proper young man and of a good family, but reduced in fortune, though
he thought himself worthy to mate with anybody. So he wooed Gorgo, being
a relation of hers, and though he had many rivals, as she was much run
after for her wealth belike, yet he had won the esteem of all the
guardians and relations of the young girl.[130] * * * *
Sec. XXI. * * * Now the origins and causes of Love are not peculiar to
either sex, but common to both. For those attractions that make men
amorous may as well proceed from women as from boys.[131] And as to
those beautiful and holy reminiscences and invitations to the divine and
genuine and Olympian beauty, by which the soul soars aloft, what hinders
but that they may come either from boys or lads, maidens or grown women,
whenever a chaste and orderly nature and beauteous prime are associated
together (just as a neat shoe exhibits the shapeliness of the foot, to
borrow the illustration of Aristo), whenever connoisseurs of beauty
descry in beautiful forms and pure bodies clear traces of an upright and
unenervated soul.[132] For if[133] the man of pleasure, who was asked
whether "he was most given to the love of women or boys," and answered,
"I care not which so beauty be but there," is considered to have given
an appropriate answer as to his erotic desires, shall the noble lover of
beauty neglect beauty and nobility of nature, and make love only with an
eye to the sexual parts? Why, the lover of horses will take just as much
pleasure in the good points of Podargus, as in those of AEthe,
Agamemnon's mare,[134] and the sportsman rejoices not only in dogs, but
also rears Cretan and Spartan bitches,[135] and shall the lover of the
beautiful and of humanity be unfair and deal unequally with either sex,
and think that the difference between the loves of boys and women is
only their different dress? And yet they say that beauty is a flower of
virtue; and it is ridiculous to assert that the female sex never
blossoms nor make a goodly show of virtue, for as AEschylus truly says,
'I never can mistake the burning eye
Of the young woman that has once known man.'[136]
Shall the indications then of a forward wanton and corrupt character be
found in the faces of women, and shall there be no gleam of chastity and
modesty in their appearance? Nay, there are many such, and shall they
not move and provoke love? To doubt it would be neither sensible nor in
accordance with the facts, for generally speaking, as has been pointed
out, all these attractions are the same in both sexes.... But, Daphnaeus,
let us combat those views which Zeuxippus lately advanced, making Love
to be only irregular desire carrying the soul away to licentiousness,
not that this was so much his own view as what he had often heard from
morose men who knew nothing of love: some of whom marry unfortunate
women for their dowries, and force on them economy and illiberal saving,
and quarrel with them every day of their lives: while others, more
desirous of children than wives, when they have made those women they
come across mothers, bid farewell to marriage, or regard it not at all,
and neither care to love nor be loved. Now the fact that the word for
conjugal love differs only by one letter from the word for endurance,
the one being [Greek: stergein] the other [Greek: stegein], seems to
emphasize the conjugal kindness mixed by time and intimacy with
necessity. But that marriage which Love has inspired will in the first
place, as in Plato's Republic, know nothing of _Meum_ and _Tuum_, for
the proverb, 'whatever belongs to a friend is common property,'[137] is
especially true of married persons who, though disunited in body, are
perforce one in soul, neither wishing to be two, nor thinking themselves
so. In the second place there will be mutual respect, which is a vital
necessity in marriage. For as to that external respect which has in it