Plutarch's Morals
more of compulsion than choice, being forced by the law and shame and
fear,
"Those needful bits and curbs to headstrong weeds,"[138]
that will always exist in wedlock. But in Love there is such
self-control and decorum and constancy, that if the god but once enter
the soul of a licentious man, he makes him give up all his amours,
abates his pride, and breaks down his haughtiness and dissoluteness,
putting in their place modesty and silence and tranquillity and decorum,
and makes him constant to one. You have heard of course of the famous
courtesan Lais,[139] how she set all Greece on fire with her charms, or
rather was contended for by two seas,[140] and how, when she fell in
love with Hippolochus the Thessalian, 'she left Acro-Corinthus washed by
the green sea,'[141] and deserted all her other lovers, that great army,
and went off to Thessaly and lived faithful to Hippolochus. But the
women there, envious and jealous of her for her surpassing beauty,
dragged her into the temple of Aphrodite, and there stoned her to death,
for which reason probably it is called to this day the temple of
Aphrodite the Murderess.[142] We have also heard of servant girls who
have refused the embraces of their masters, and of private individuals
who have scorned an amour with queens, when Love has had dominion in
their hearts. For as in Rome, when a dictator is proclaimed, all other
magistrates lay down their offices, so those over whom Love is lord are
free henceforward from all other lords and masters, and pass the rest of
their lives dedicate to the god and slaves in his temple. For a noble
woman united by Love to her lawful husband would prefer the embraces of
bears and dragons to those of any other man."
Sec. XXII. "Although there are plenty of examples of this virtue of
constancy, yet to you, that are the festive votaries of the god,[143] it
will not be amiss to relate the story of the Galatian Camma. She was a
woman of most remarkable beauty, and the wife of the tetrarch Sinatus,
whom Sinorix, one of the most influential men in Galatia, and
desperately in love with Camma, murdered, as he could neither get her by
force or persuasion in the lifetime of her husband. And Camma found a
refuge and comfort in her grief in discharging the functions of
hereditary priestess to Artemis, and most of her time she spent in her
temple, and, though many kings and potentates wooed her, she refused
them all. But when Sinorix boldly proposed marriage to her, she declined
not his offer, nor blamed him for what he had done, as though she
thought he had only murdered Sinatus out of excessive love for her, and
not in sheer villany. He came, therefore, with confidence, and asked her
hand, and she met him and greeted him and led him to the altar of the
goddess, and pledged him in a cup of poisoned mead, drinking half of it
herself and giving him the rest. And when she saw that he had drunk it
up, she shouted aloud for joy, and calling upon the name of her dead
husband, said, 'Till this day, dearest husband, I have lived, deprived
of you, a life of sorrow: but now take me to yourself with joy, for I
have avenged you on the worst of men, as glad to share death with him as
life with you.' Then Sinorix was removed out of the temple on a litter,
and soon after gave up the ghost, and Camma lived the rest of that day
and following night, and is said to have died with a good courage and
even with gaiety."[144]
Sec. XXIII. "As many similar examples might be adduced, both among
ourselves and foreigners, who can feel any patience with those that
reproach Aphrodite with hindering friendship when she associates herself
with Love as a partner? Whereas any reflecting person would call the
love of boys wanton and gross lasciviousness, and say with the poet:
'This is an outrage, not an act of love.'
All willing pathics, therefore, we consider the vilest of mankind, and
credit them with neither fidelity, nor modesty, nor friendship, for as
Sophocles says:
'Those who shall lose such friends may well be glad,
And those who have such pray that they may lose them,'[145]
But as for those who, not being by nature vicious, have been seduced or
forced, they are apt all their life to despise and hate their seducers,
and when an opportunity has presented itself to take fierce vengeance.
As Crateus, who murdered Archelaus, and Pytholaus, who murdered
Alexander of Pherae. And Periander, the tyrant of the Ambraciotes,
having asked a most insulting question of his minion, was murdered by
him, so exasperated was he. But with women and wives all this is the
beginning of friendship, and as it were an initiation into the sacred
mysteries. And pleasure plays a very small part in this, but the esteem
and favour and mutual love and constancy that result from it, proves
that the Delphians did not talk nonsense in giving the name of Arma[146]
to Aphrodite, nor Homer in giving the name of friendship[147] to sexual
love, and testifies to the fact that Solon was a most experienced
legislator in conjugal matters, seeing that he ordered husbands not less
than thrice a month to associate with their wives, not for pleasure, but
as states at certain intervals renew their treaties with one another, so
he wished that by such friendliness marriage should, as it were, be
renewed after any intervening tiffs and differences. But you will tell
me there is much folly and even madness in the love of women. Is there
not more extravagance in the love of boys?
'Seeing my many rivals I grow faint.
The lad is beardless, smooth and soft and handsome,
O that I might in his embraces die,
And have the fact recorded on my tomb.'
Such extravagant language as this is madness not love. And it is absurd
to detract from woman's various excellence. Look at their self-restraint
and intelligence, their fidelity and uprightness, and that bravery
courage and magnanimity so conspicuous in many! And to say that they
have a natural aptitude for all other virtues, but are deficient as
regards friendship alone, is monstrous. For they are fond of their
children and husbands, and generally speaking the natural affection in
them is not only, like a fruitful soil, capable of friendship, but is
also accompanied by persuasion and other graces. And as poetry gives to
words a kind of relish by melody and metre and rhythm, making
instruction thereby more interesting, but what is injurious more
insidious, so nature, investing woman with beautiful appearance and
attractive voice and bewitching figure, does much for a licentious woman
in making her wiles more formidable, but makes a modest one more apt
thereby to win the goodwill and friendship of her husband. And as Plato
advised Xenocrates, a great and noble man in all other respects, but too
austere in his temperament, to sacrifice to the Graces, so one might
recommend a good and modest woman to sacrifice to Love, that her husband
might be a mild and agreeable partner, and not run after any other
woman, so as to be compelled to say like the fellow in the comedy, 'What
a wretch I am to ill-treat such a woman!' For to love in marriage is far
better than to be loved, for it prevents many, nay all, of those
offences which spoil and mar marriage.
Sec. XXIV. As to the passionate affection in the early days of
marriage,[148] my dear Zeuxippus, do not fear that it will leave any
sore or irritation, though it is not wonderful that there should be some
friction at the commencement of union with a virtuous woman, just as at
the grafting of trees, as there is also pain at the beginning of
conception, for there can be no complete union without some suffering.
Learning puts boys out somewhat when they first go to school, as
philosophy does young men at a later day, but the ill effects are not
lasting, either in their cases or in the case of lovers. As in the
fusion of two liquors, love does indeed at first cause a simmering and
commotion, but eventually cools down and settles and becomes tranquil.
For the union of lovers is indeed a complete union, whereas the union of
those that live together without love resembles only the friction and
concussion of Epicurus' atoms in collision and recoil, forming no such
union as Love makes, when he presides over the conjugal state. For
nothing else produces so much pleasure, or such lasting advantages, or
such beautiful remarkable and desirable friendship,
'As when husband and wife live in one house,
Two souls beating as one.'[149]
And the law gives its countenance, and nature shows that even the gods
themselves require love for the production of everything. Thus the poets
tell us that 'the earth loves a shower, and heaven loves the earth,' and
the natural philosophers tell us that the sun is in love with the moon,
and that they are husband and wife, and that the earth is the mother of
man and beast and the producer of all plants. Would not the world itself
then of necessity come to an end, if the great god Love and the desires
implanted by the god should leave matter, and matter should cease to
yearn for and pursue its lead? But not to seem to wander too far away
and altogether to trifle, you know that many censure boy-loves for their
instability, and jeeringly say that that intimacy like an egg is
destroyed by a hair,[150] for that boy-lovers like Nomads, spending the
summer in a blooming and flowery country, at once decamp then as from an
enemy's territory. And still more vulgarly Bion the Sophist called the
sprouting beards of beautiful boys Harmodiuses and Aristogitons,[151]
inasmuch as lovers were delivered by them from a pleasant tyranny. But
this charge cannot justly be brought against genuine lovers, and it was
prettily said by Euripides, as he embraced and kissed handsome Agatho
whose beard was just sprouting, that the Autumn of beautiful youths was
lovely as well as the Spring. And I maintain that the love of beautiful
and chaste wives flourishes not only in old age amid grey hairs and
wrinkles, but even in the grave and monument. And while there are few
such long unions in the case of boy-loves, one might enumerate ten
thousand such instances of the love of women, who have kept their
fidelity to the end of their lives. One such case I will relate, which
happened in my time in the reign of the Emperor Vespasian.
Sec. XXV. Julius, who stirred up a revolt in Galatia, among several other
confederates had one Sabinus, a young man of good family, and for wealth
and renown the most conspicuous of all the men in those parts. But
having attempted what was too much for them they were foiled, and
expecting to pay the penalty, some committed suicide, others fled and
were captured. Now Sabinus himself could easily have got out of the way
and made his escape to the barbarians, but he had married a most
excellent wife, whose name in that part of the world was Empone, but in
Greek would be Herois, and he could neither leave her behind nor take
her with him. As he had in the country some underground caves, known
only to two of his freedmen, where he used to stow away things, he
dismissed all the rest of his slaves, as if he intended to poison
himself, and taking with him these two trusty freedmen he descended with
them into those underground caves, and sent one of them, Martialis, to
tell his wife that he had poisoned himself, and that his body was burnt
in the flames of his country-house, for he wanted his wife's genuine
sorrow to lend credit to the report of his death. And so it happened.
For she, throwing herself on to the ground, groaned and wailed for three
days and nights, and took no food. And Sabinus, being informed of this,
and fearing that she would die of grief, told Martialis to inform her
secretly that he was alive and well and in hiding, and to beg her not to