Plutarch's Morals
favours':[69] and Sappho, addressing a girl not yet ripe for marriage,
says to her, 'You seemed to me a little girl, too young for the favour.'
And someone asks Hercules, 'Did you obtain the girl's favour by force or
by persuasion?' But the love of males for males, whether rape or
voluntary--pathicks effeminately submitting, to use Plato's words, 'to
be treated bestially'--is altogether a foul and unlovely favour. And so
I think Solon wrote the lines quoted above 'in his hot youth,' as Plato
puts it; but when he became older wrote these other lines, 'Now I
delight in Cyprus-born Aphrodite, and in Dionysus, and in the Muses: all
these give joys to men': as if, after the heat and tempest of his boyish
loves, he had got into a quiet haven of marriage and philosophy. But
indeed, Protogenes, if we look at the real facts of the case, the love
for boys and women is really one and the same passion: but if you wish
in a disputatious spirit to make any distinction, you will find that
this boy-love goes beyond all bounds, and, like some late-born and
ill-begotten bastard brat, seeks to expel its legitimate brother the
older love, the love of women. For indeed, friend, it is only yesterday
or the day before, since the strippings and exposures of the youths in
the gymnasiums, that this boy-love crept in, and gently insinuated
itself and got a footing, and at last in a little time got fully-fledged
in the wrestling-schools, and has now got fairly unbearable, and insults
and tramples on conjugal love, that love that gives immortality to our
mortal race, when our nature has been extinguished by death, kindling it
again by new births. And this boy-love denies that pleasure is its aim:
for it is ashamed and afraid to confess the truth: but it needs some
specious excuse for the liberties it takes with handsome boys in their
prime: the pretext is friendship and virtue. So your boy-lover wallows
in the dust, bathes in cold water, raises his eyebrows, gives himself
out for a philosopher, and lives chaste abroad because of the law: but
in the stillness of night
'Sweet is the ripe fruit when the guard's withdrawn.'[70]
But if, as Protogenes says, there is no carnal intercourse in these
boy-familiarities, how is it Love, if Aphrodite is not present, whom it
is the destiny of Love to cherish and pay court to, and to partake of
just as much honour and power as she assigns to him? But if there is any
Love without Aphrodite, as there is drunkenness without wine in drinks
made from figs and barley, the disturbing it will be fruitless and
without effect, and surfeiting and disgusting."
Sec. VI. At the conclusion of this speech, it was clear that Pisias was
vexed and indignant with Daphnaeus; and after a moment's silence he
began: "O Hercules! what levity and audacity for men to state that they
are tied to women as dogs to bitches, and to banish the god of Love from
the gymnasiums and public walks, and light of day and open intercourse,
and to restrict him to brothels[71] and philtres and incantations of
wanton women: for to chaste women, I am sure, it belongs not either to
love or be loved." At this point our father told me he interposed, and
took Protogenes by the hand, and said to him:
"'This word of yours rouses the Argive host,'
and of a verity Pisias makes us to side with Daphnaeus by his extravagant
language, charging marriage with being a loveless intercourse, and one
that has no participation in divine friendship, although we can see that
it is an intercourse, if erotic persuasion and favour fail, that cannot
be restrained by shame and fear as by bit and bridle." Thereupon Pisias
said, "I care little about his arguments; but I see that Daphnaeus is in
the same condition as brass: for, just as it is not worked upon so much
by the agency of fire as by the molten and liquid brass fused with it,
so is he not so much captivated by the beauty of Lysandra as by his
association with one who is the victim of the gentle passion; and it is
plain that, if he doesn't take refuge with us, he will soon melt away
in the flame altogether. But I see, what Anthemion would very much like,
that I am offending the Court, so I stop." "You amuse us," said
Anthemion: "but you ought from the first to have spoken to the point."
Sec. VII. "I say then," continued Pisias, "and give it out boldly, as far
as I am concerned, let every woman have a lover; but we ought to guard
against giving the wealth of Ismenodora to Baccho, lest, if we involve
him in so much grandeur and magnificence, we unwittingly lose him in it,
as tin is lost in brass. For if the lad were to marry quite a plain and
insignificant woman, it would be great odds whether he would keep the
upper hand, as wine mixed with water; and Ismenodora seems already
marked out for sway and command; for otherwise she would not have
rejected such illustrious and wealthy suitors to woo a lad hardly yet
arrived at man's estate, and almost requiring a tutor still. And
therefore men of sense prune the excessive wealth of their wives, as if
it had wings that required clipping; for this same wealth implants in
them luxury, caprice, and vanity, by which they are often elated and fly
away altogether: but if they remain, it would be better to be bound by
golden fetters, as in Ethiopia, than to a woman's wealth."
Sec. VIII. Here Protogenes put in, "You say nothing about the risk we run
of unseasonably and ridiculously reversing the well-known advice of
Hesiod:
'If seasonable marriage you would make,
Let about thirty be the bridegroom's age,
The bride be in the fifth year of her womanhood:'[72]
if we thus marry a lad hardly old enough for marriage to a woman so many
years older, than himself, as dates and figs are forced. You will say
she loves him passionately: who prevents her, then, from serenading at
his doors, singing her amorous ditty, putting garlands on his statues,
and wrestling and boxing with her rivals in his affections? For all
these are what people in love do. And let her lower her eyebrows, and
give up the airs of a coquette, and assume the appearance of those that
are deeply smitten. But if she is modest and chaste, let her decorously
stay at home and await there her lovers and sweethearts; for any
sensible man would be disgusted and flee from a woman who took the
initiative in love, far less would he be likely to marry her after such
a barefaced wooing."
Sec. IX. When Protogenes had done speaking, my father said, "Do you see,
Anthemion, that they force us to intervene again, who have no objection
to dance in the retinue of conjugal Love?" "I do," said Anthemion, "but
pray defend Love at some length, as you are on his side, and moreover
come to the rescue of wealth,[73] with which Pisias seeks to scare us."
Thereupon my father began, "What on earth will not be brought as a
charge against a woman, if we are to reject Ismenodora because she is in
love and has money? Granted she loves sway and is rich? What then, if
she is young and handsome? And what if she plumes herself somewhat on
the lustre of her race? Have not chaste women often something of the
morose and peevish in their character almost past bearing? Do they not
sometimes get called waspish and shrewish by virtue of their very
chastity? Would it be best then to marry off the street some Thracian
Abrotonus, or some Milesian Bacchis, and seal the bargain by the present
of a handful of nuts? But we have known even such turn out intolerable
tyrants, Syrian flute-girls and ballet-dancers, as Aristonica, and
Oenanthe with her tambourine, and Agathoclea, who have lorded it over
kings' diadems.[74] Why Syrian Semiramis was only the servant and
concubine of one of king Ninus's slaves, till Ninus the great king
seeing and falling in love with her, she got such power over him that
she thought so cheap of him, that she asked to be allowed one day to sit
on the royal throne, with the royal diadem on her head, and to transact
state affairs. And Ninus having granted her permission, and having
ordered all his subjects to obey her as himself, she first gave several
very moderate orders to make trial of the guards; but when she saw that
they obeyed her without the slightest hesitation, she ordered them to
seize Ninus and put him in fetters, and at last put him to death; and
all her commands being obeyed, she ruled over Asia for a long time with
great lustre. And was not Belestiche a foreign woman off the streets,
although at Alexandria she has shrines and temples, with an inscription
as Aphrodite Belestiche, which she owes to the king's love? And she who
has in this very town[75] a temple and rites in common with Eros, and at
Delphi stands in gold among kings and queens, by what dowry got she her
lovers? But just as the lovers of Semiramis, Belestiche, and Phryne,
became their prey unconsciously through their weakness and effeminacy,
so on the other hand poor and obscure men, having contracted alliances
with rich women of rank, have not been thereby spoilt nor merged their
personality, but have lived with their wives on a footing of kindness,
yet still kept their position as heads of the house. But he that abases
his wife and makes her small, like one who tightens the ring on a finger
too small for it fearing it will come off,[76] is like those who cut
their mares' tails off and then take them to a river or pond to drink,
when they say that sorrowfully discerning their loss of beauty these
mares lose their self-respect and allow themselves to be covered by
asses.[77] To select a wife for wealth rather than for her excellence or
family is dishonourable and illiberal; but it is silly to reject wealth
when it is accompanied by excellence and family. Antigonus indeed wrote
to his officer who had garrisoned Munychia[78] to make not only the
collar strong but the dog lean, that he might undermine the strength of
the Athenians; but it becomes not the husband of a rich or handsome
woman to make his wife poor or ugly, but by his self-control and good
sense, and by not too extravagantly showing his admiration for her, to
exhibit himself as her equal not her slave, and (to borrow an
illustration from the scales) to add just so much weight to his
character as shall over-balance her, yet only just. Moreover, both
Ismenodora and Baccho are of a suitable age for marriage and procreation
of children; Ismenodora, I hear, is still in her prime, and" (here my
father smiled slily at Pisias) "she is certainly not a bit older than
her rivals, and has no grey hairs, as some of those who consort with
Baccho have. And if their union is seasonable, who knows but that she
may be a better partner for him than any young woman? For young couples
do not blend and mix well together, and it takes a long time and is not
an easy process for them to divest themselves of their pride and spirit,
and at first there's a good deal of dirty weather and they don't pull
well together, and this is oftenest the case when there's love on both
sides, and, just as a storm wrecks the ship if no pilot is on board, so
their marriage is trouble and confusion, neither party knowing how
either to rule or to give way properly. And if the baby is under the
nurse, and the boy under the master, and the lad under the master of the
gymnasium, and the youth under his lover, and the full-grown man under
the law and magistrate, and no one is his own master and exempt from
obedience to someone, what wonder would it be if a sensible woman rather
older than her husband would direct well the life of a young man, being
useful to him by reason of her superior wisdom, and acceptable to him
for her sweetness and gentleness? And to sum up the whole matter," said
he, "we Boeotians ought to revere Hercules, and so find no fault in any