Plutarch's Morals
inequality of age in marriages, seeing that he gave his own wife Megara
in marriage to Iolaus, though he was only sixteen and she
three-and-thirty."[79]
Sec. X. As the conversation was going on, our father said that a friend of
Pisias came galloping up from the town to report an act of marvellous
audacity. Ismenodora, it appears, thinking Baccho had no personal
dislike to the match, but only stood in awe of his friends who tried to
dissuade him from it, determined that she would not let the young fellow
slip through her fingers. Accordingly, she sent for the most active and
intimate[80] of her male friends, and for some of her female cronies,
and instructed them as to what part they should play, and waited for the
hour when Baccho was accustomed regularly to pass by her house on his
way to the wrestling-school. And as he passed by on this occasion with
two or three of his companions, anointed for the exercise, Ismenodora
met him at the door and just touched his cloak, and her friends rushed
out all together and prettily seized the pretty fellow as he was in his
cloak and jersey,[81] and hurried him into the house and at once locked
the doors. And the women inside at once divested him of his cloak and
put on him a bridal robe; and the servants ran about the town and put
olive wreaths and laurel garlands at the doors of Baccho's house as well
as Ismenodora's, and a flute-girl went up and down the street playing
and singing the wedding-song. And some of the inhabitants of Thespiae and
the strangers laughed, others were indignant and tried to make the
superintendents of the gymnasium move in the matter, for they have great
power in Thespiae over the youths, and pay great attention to their
actions. And now there was no more talk about the sports, but everyone
left the theatre for the neighbourhood of Ismenodora's house, and there
stood in groups talking and disputing about what had happened.
Sec. XI. Now when Pisias' friend had come up like an _aide-de-camp_ in war,
"bloody with spurring, fiery red with haste," to report this news that
Ismenodora had seized Baccho, my father said that Zeuxippus smiled, and
being a great lover of Euripides repeated the line,
"Lady, though rich, thou hast thy sex's feelings."
But Pisias jumped up and cried out, "Ye gods, what will be the end of
license like this which will overthrow our town? Already we are fast
tending to lawlessness through our independence. And yet it is perhaps
ridiculous to be indignant about law and justice, when nature itself is
trampled upon by being thus subjected to women? Saw even Lemnos ever the
like of this?[82] Let us go," he continued, "let us go and hand over to
the women the gymnasium and council-hall, if the townsmen have lost all
their nerve." Pisias then left the company, and Protogenes went with
him, partly sympathizing with his indignation, but still endeavouring to
cool him. And Anthemion said, "'Twas a bold deed and certainly does
savour somewhat of Lemnos--I own it now we are alone--this Ismenodora
must be most violently in love." Hereupon Soclarus said, with a sly
smile, "You don't think then that this rape and detention was an excuse
and stratagem on the part of a wily young man to escape from the
clutches of his lovers, and fly of his own volition to the arms of a
rich and handsome widow?" "Pray don't say so, Soclarus," said Anthemion,
"pray don't entertain any such suspicions of Baccho, for even if he were
not by nature most simple and naive, he would not have concealed the
matter from me to whom he divulges all his secrets, especially as he
knows that I have always been very anxious he should marry Ismenodora.
But as Heraclitus says truly, It is more difficult to control love than
anger; for whatever love has a fancy to, it will buy even at the cost of
life, money, and reputation. Who lives a more quiet life in our town
than Ismenodora? When did ever any ugly rumour attach itself to her?
When did ever any breath of suspicion sully her house? Some divine
inspiration, beyond human calculation, seems now to have possessed her."
Sec. XII. Then Pemptides laughed and said, "Of course you know that there
is a certain disease of the body called the sacred disease.[83] It is no
wonder, therefore, if some call the greatest and most insane passion of
the soul sacred and divine. However, as in Egypt I once saw two
neighbours disputing when a serpent passed by them on the road, both
calling it a good omen, but each claiming the blessing as his alone; so
seeing lately that some of you drag Love to the men's apartments, while
others confine it to the women's side of the house, while all of you
regard it as a divine and superlative blessing, I do not wonder, since
it is a passion that has such power and honour, that those who ought to
banish it from every quarter and clip its wings do themselves add to its
influence and power. And hitherto I held my peace, for I saw that the
discussion turned rather on private than public interests, but now that
we have got rid of Pisias, I would gladly hear from you to what they had
an eye who first called Love a god."
Sec. XIII. Just as Pemptides had left off, and our father was about to
answer his question, another messenger came from the town, sent by
Ismenodora to summon Anthemion, for the tumult had increased, and there
was a difference of opinion between the superintendents of the
gymnasium, one thinking they ought to demand the liberation of Baccho,
the other thinking they ought not to interfere. Anthemion got up at once
and went off. And our father, addressing Pemptides especially, said,
"You seem to me, my dear Pemptides, to be handling a great and bold
matter, or rather to be discussing things that ought not to be
discussed, in asking for a reason in each case for our opinion about the
gods. Our ancient and hereditary faith is sufficient, a better argument
than which we cannot either utter or find,
'Not e'en if wisdom in our brains resides;'[84]
but if this common foundation and basis of all piety be disturbed, and
its stability and time-honoured ideas be unsettled, it becomes
undermined and is suspected by everybody. You have heard, of course,
what hot water Euripides got into, when he wrote at the beginning of his
'Melanippe,'
'Zeus, whosoe'er he is, I do not know
Except by hearsay,'[85]
but if he changed the opening line, he had confidence, it seems, that
his play would go down with the public uncommonly well,[86] so he
altered it into
'Zeus the divine, as he is truly called.'[87]
And what difference is there between calling in question the received
opinion about Zeus or Athene, and that about Love? For it is not now for
the first time that Love asks for an altar and sacrifices, nor is he a
strange god introduced by foreign superstition, as some Attis or Adonis,
furtively smuggled in by hermaphrodites and women, and secretly
receiving honours not his own, to avoid an indictment among the gods for
coming among them under false pretences. And when, my friend, you hear
the words of Empedocles,
'Friendship is there too, of same length and breadth,
But with the mind's eye only can you see it,
Till with the sight your very soul is thralled,'
you must suppose that they refer to Love. For this god is invisible, but
to be extolled by us as one of the very oldest gods. And if you demand
proofs about every one of the gods, laying a profane hand on every
temple, and bringing a learned doubt to every altar, you will scrutinize
and pry into everything. But we need not go far to find Love's pedigree.
'See you how great a goddess Aphrodite is?
She 'tis that gave us and engendered Love,
Whereof come all that on the earth do live.'[88]
And so Empedocles calls Aphrodite _Life-giving_,[89] and Sophocles calls
her _Fruitful_, both very appropriate epithets. And though the wonderful
act of generation belongs to Aphrodite only, and Love is only present in
it as a subordinate, yet if he be absent the whole affair becomes
undesirable, and low, and tame. For a loveless coition brings only
satiety, as the satisfaction of hunger and thirst, and has nothing noble
resulting from it, whereas by Love Aphrodite removes the cloying element
in pleasure, and produces harmonious friendship. And so Parmenides
declares Love to be the oldest of the creations of Aphrodite, writing in
his Cosmogony,
'Of all the gods first Love she did contrive.'
But Hesiod, more naturally in my opinion, makes Love the most ancient of
all, so that all things derive their existence from him.[90] If we then
deprive Love of his ancient honours, those of Aphrodite will be lost
also. For we cannot argue that, while some revile Love, all spare
Aphrodite, for on the same stage we hear of Love,
'Love is an idle thing and for the idle:'[91]
and again of Aphrodite,
'Cypris, my boys, is not her only name,
For many names has she. She is a hell,
A power remorseless, nay a raging madness.'[92]
Just as in the case of the other gods there is hardly one that has not
been reviled, or escaped the scurrility of ignorance. Look, for example,
at Ares, who may be considered as it were the counterpart of Love, what
honours he has received from men, and again what abuse, as
'Ares is blind, ye women, has no eyes,
And with his pig's snout roots up all good things.'[93]
And Homer calls him 'blood-stained' and 'fickle.'[94] And Chrysippus
brings a grievous charge against him, in defining his name to mean
destroyer,[95] thereby giving a handle to those who think that Ares is
only the fighting, wrangling, and quarrelsome instinct among mankind.
Others again will tell us that Aphrodite is simply desire, and Hermes
eloquence, and the Muses the arts and sciences, and Athene wisdom. You
see what an abyss of impiety opens up before us, if we describe each of
the gods, as only a passion, a power, or a virtue!"
Sec. XIV. "I see it," said Pemptides, "and it is impious either to make the
gods passions, or to do just the contrary, and make the passions gods."
"What then?" said my father, "do you consider Ares a god, or only a
human passion?" And Pemptides, answering that he looked on Ares as god
of the passionate and manly element in mankind, "What," cried my father,
"shall the passionate and warlike and antagonistic instincts in man have
a god, but the affectionate and social and clubable have none? Shall
Ares, under his names of Enyalius and Stratius, preside over arms and
war and sieges and sacks of cities, and shall there be no god to witness
and preside over, to direct and guide, conjugal affection, that
friendship of closest union and communion? Why even those who hunt
gazelles and hares and deer have a silvan deity who harks and halloos
them on, for to Aristaeus[96] they pay their vows when in pitfalls and
snares they trap wolves and bears,
'For Aristaeus first set traps for animals.'
And Hercules invoked another god, when he was about to shoot at the
bird, as the line of AEschylus shows,
'Hunter Apollo, make my bolt go straight!'[97]
And shall no god or good genius assist and prosper the man who hunts in
the best chase of all, the chase of friendship? For I cannot for my
part, my dear Daphnaeus, consider man a less beautiful or important plant
than the oak, or sacred olive, or the vine which Homer glorifies,[98]
seeing that man too has his growth and glorious prime alike of soul and
body."
Sec. XV. Then said Daphnaeus, "In the name of the gods, who thinks
differently?" "All those certainly must," answered my father, "who think
that the gods care only about ploughing and planting and sowing. Have
they not Nymphs attending upon them, called Dryads, 'whose age is coeval
with the trees they live in: and Dionysus the mirth-giving does he not