Plutarch's Morals Part 4

It was a happy thought our remembering Alcestis, for though women have not much of Ares in them, yet when possessed by Love they are bold even to the death, beyond what one would expect from their nature. For if we may credit legendary lore, the stories about Alcestis, and Protesilaus, and Eurydice the wife of Orpheus, show that the only one of the G.o.ds that Hades pays attention to is Love; although to everybody else, as Sophocles says, "he knows of no forbearance or favour, or anything but strict justice;" yet before lovers his genius stands rebuked, and they alone find him neither implacable nor relentless. Wherefore although, my friend, it is an excellent thing to be initiated in the Eleusinian mysteries, yet I see that the votaries and initiated of Love have a better time of it in Hades than they have, * *[114] though in regard to legendary lore I stand in the position of one who neither altogether believes nor altogether disbelieves. For legendary lore speaks well, and by a certain wonderful good fortune lights upon the truth, in saying that lovers have a return from Hades to the light of day, but it knows not by what way or how, having as it were got benighted on the road which Plato first discovered by philosophy. There are, indeed, some slender and obscure particles of truth scattered about in the mythology of the Egyptians, but they require a clever man to hunt them out, a man capable of getting great results from small data. Wherefore let that matter pa.s.s. And now next to the mighty power of Love let us consider its good will and favour to mankind, I do not mean as to whether it bestows many gifts on its votaries--that is palpable to all--but whether they derive any further advantage from it. For Euripides, though very amorous, admired a very small matter, when he wrote the line--

'Love teaches letters to a man unlearn'd.'[115]

For it makes one previously sluggish quick and intelligent, and, as has been said before, it makes the coward brave, as people harden wood in the fire and make it strong from being weak. And every lover becomes liberal and genuine and generous, even if he was mean before, his littleness and miserliness melting away like iron in the fire, so that they rejoice to give to their loves more than they do to receive themselves from others. You know of course that Anytus, the son of Anthemion, was in love with Alcibiades, and was on one occasion sumptuously entertaining several of his friends, when Alcibiades broke in and took from the table half the cups and went away again; and when some of the guests were indignant and said, 'The stripling has used you most insolently and contemptuously,' Anytus replied, 'Nay, rather, he has dealt kindly with me, for when he might have taken all he has left me half.'"

-- XVIII. Zeuxippus was pleased with this story, and said, "O Hercules, you have been within an ace of making me forget my hereditary hatred to Anytus for his behaviour to Socrates and philosophy,[116] since he was so mild and n.o.ble to his love." "Be it so," said my father, "Love also makes peevish and gloomy persons kind and agreeable to those they live with; for as 'when the fire blazes the house looks brighter,'[117] so man, it seems, becomes more cheerful through the heat of love. But most people are affected rather curiously; if they see by night a light in a house, they look on it with admiration and wonder; but if they see a little, mean, and ign.o.ble soul suddenly filled with n.o.ble-mindedness, freedom, dignity, grace, and liberality, they do not feel constrained to say with Telemachus, 'Surely, some G.o.d is there within.'[118] And is it not wonderful, Daphnaeus," continued my father,[119] "in the name of the Graces, that the lover who cares about hardly anything, either his companions and friends, or even the laws and magistrates and kings, who fears nothing, admires nothing, courts nothing, but can even endure to gaze on 'the forked lightning,'[120] yet directly he looks on his love 'he crouches like a c.o.c.k with drooping feathers,' and his boldness is broken and his pride is cowed. And among the Muses it would not be amiss to mention Sappho; for as the Romans say Cacus the son of Hephaestus vomited out of his mouth fire and flames, so she really speaks words that burn like fire, and in her songs shows the warmth of her heart, as Philoxenus puts it, 'by euphonious songs a.s.suaging the pains of love.' And if you have not in your love for Lysandra forgot all your old love-songs, do repeat to us, Daphnaeus, the lines in which beautiful Sappho says that 'when her love appeared her voice failed and her body burned, and she was seized with paleness and trembling and vertigo.'"

And when Daphnaeus had repeated the lines, my father resumed, "In the name of Zeus, is not this plainly a divine seizure? Is not this a wonderful commotion of soul? Why, the Pythian priestess on the tripod is not moved so much as this! Who of those inspired by Cybele are made beside themselves to this extent by the flute and the kettledrum?

Moreover, while many see the same body and the same beauty, only the lover is taken by it. Why is this the case? We get no light on it from Menander's words, 'Love is opportunity; and he that is smitten is the only one wounded.' But the G.o.d is the cause of it, striking one and letting another go scot-free. But I will not pa.s.s over now, 'since it has come into my mouth,' as aeschylus says, what perhaps would have been better spoken before, for it is a very important point. Perhaps, my friend, of all other things which we do not perceive through the senses, some got believed through legend, some through the law, some through reason; whereas we owe our conception of the G.o.ds altogether to the poets and legislators and philosophers: all alike teaching the existence of G.o.ds, but greatly differing as to their number and order, nature and power. For the G.o.ds of the philosophers 'know nothing of disease or old age or pain, and have not to cross the resounding Acheron;' nor do the philosophers accept as G.o.ds Strifes, or Prayers, which are found in poetry;[121] nor will they admit Terror and Fear as G.o.ds or as the sons of Ares. And on many points also they are at variance with the legislators, as Xenophanes bade the Egyptians, if they regarded Osiris as mortal, not to honour him as a G.o.d; but if they thought him a G.o.d not to mourn for him. And, again, the poets and legislators will not listen to, nor can they understand, the philosophers who make G.o.ds of ideas and numbers and units and spirits. And their views generally are very different. As there were formerly three parties at Athens, the Parali, the Epacrii, and the Pediei, all at variance with one another, yet all agreed to vote for Solon, and chose him with one accord as their mediator and ruler and lawgiver, as he seemed indisputably to hold the first place in merit; so the three parties that entertain different views about the G.o.ds are all unanimous on one point, for poets legislators and philosophers all alike register Love as one of the G.o.ds, 'loudly singing his praises with one voice,' as Alcaeus says the people of Mitylene chose Pittacus as their monarch. But our king and ruler and governor, Love, is brought down crowned from Helicon to the Academy by Hesiod and Plato and Solon, and in royal apparel rides in a chariot drawn by friends.h.i.+p and intimacy (not such as Euripides speaks of in the line, 'he has been bound in fetters not of bra.s.s,'[122] shamefully throwing round him cold and heavy necessity), and soars aloft to the most beautiful and divine things, about which others have spoken better than I can."

-- XIX. When my father had spoken thus much, Soclarus began, "Do you see that a second time you have committed the same fault, not cancelling your debts as you ought to do--for I must speak my mind--but evading them on purpose, and not delivering to us your promised ideas on a sacred subject? For as some little time back you only just touched on Plato and the Egyptians as if unwilling to enter on the subject more fully, so now you are doing again. However, as to what has been 'eloquently told'[123] by Plato, or rather by the Muses through Plato's mouth, do not tell us that, my good friend, even if we ask for it; but as to your hint that the Egyptian legend about Love corresponded with Plato's views, you need not discuss it fully and minutely, we shall be satisfied if we hear a little of such mighty matters." And as the rest of the company made the same request, my father said, "The Egyptians, (like the Greeks) recognize two Loves, the Pandemian and the Celestial, to which they add the Sun, they also highly venerate Aphrodite. We also see much similarity between Love and the Sun, for neither is a fire, as 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 pa.s.sionately do we love the Sun, Because it always s.h.i.+nes 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 a.s.sociates 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 impa.s.sive 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 pa.s.sion, and left in the soul only a bright glow--not exciting a tornado of pa.s.sion, 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 a.s.sociate 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."

-- 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 G.o.d helping them to truth. Among these are the lines about his birth, 'Well-sandalled Iris bare the most powerful of the G.o.ds to golden-haired Zephyr.'[126] But perhaps the learned have persuaded you that these lines are only a fanciful ill.u.s.tration 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 n.o.ble 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 n.o.ble 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 a.s.sociating 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 a.s.sociated with beauties as much as is lawful, has wings and is initiated and pa.s.ses 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 G.o.ds, 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 G.o.d of Hospitality punish and avenge any outrages on strangers or suppliants, nor as G.o.d 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] * * * *

-- XXI. * * * Now the origins and causes of Love are not peculiar to either s.e.x, 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 a.s.sociated together (just as a neat shoe exhibits the shapeliness of the foot, to borrow the ill.u.s.tration 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 n.o.ble lover of beauty neglect beauty and n.o.bility of nature, and make love only with an eye to the s.e.xual 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 b.i.t.c.hes,[135] and shall the lover of the beautiful and of humanity be unfair and deal unequally with either s.e.x, 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 a.s.sert that the female s.e.x 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 chast.i.ty 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 s.e.xes.... 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 wis.h.i.+ng 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 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 G.o.d 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 surpa.s.sing 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 pa.s.s the rest of their lives dedicate to the G.o.d and slaves in his temple. For a n.o.ble woman united by Love to her lawful husband would prefer the embraces of bears and dragons to those of any other man."

-- XXII. "Although there are plenty of examples of this virtue of constancy, yet to you, that are the festive votaries of the G.o.d,[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 G.o.ddess, 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]

-- 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 friends.h.i.+p when she a.s.sociates 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 friends.h.i.+p, 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 friends.h.i.+p, 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 friends.h.i.+p[147] to s.e.xual 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 a.s.sociate 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 apt.i.tude for all other virtues, but are deficient as regards friends.h.i.+p 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 friends.h.i.+p, 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 friends.h.i.+p of her husband. And as Plato advised Xenocrates, a great and n.o.ble 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.

-- XXIV. As to the pa.s.sionate 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 friends.h.i.+p,

'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 G.o.ds 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 G.o.d Love and the desires implanted by the G.o.d 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.

-- 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 relax her show of grief, but to keep up the farce. And she did so with the genius of a professional actress, but yearning to see her husband she visited him by night, and returned without being noticed, and for six or seven months she lived with him this underground life. And she disguised him by changing his dress, and cutting off his beard, and re-arranging his hair, so that he should not be known, and took him to Rome, having some hopes of obtaining his pardon. But being unsuccessful in this she returned to her own country, and spent most of her time with her husband underground, but from time to time visited the town, and showed herself to some ladies who were her friends and relations. But what is most astonis.h.i.+ng of all is that, though she bathed with them, she concealed her pregnancy from them. For the dye which women use to make their hair a golden auburn, has a tendency to produce corpulence and flesh and a full habit, and she rubbed this abundantly over all parts of her body, and so concealed her pregnancy. And she bare the pangs of travail by herself, as a lioness bears her whelps, having hid herself in the cave with her husband, and there she gave birth to two boys, one of whom died in Egypt, the other, whose name was Sabinus, was among us only the other day at Delphi. Vespasian eventually put her to death, but paid the penalty for it, his whole progeny in a short time being wiped off the face of the earth.[152] For during the whole of his reign he did no more savage act, nor could G.o.ds or demons have turned away their eyes from a crueller sight. And yet her courage and bold language abated the pity of the spectators, though it exasperated Vespasian, for, despairing of her safety, she bade them go and tell the Emperor, 'that it was sweeter to live in darkness and underground than to wear his crown.'"[153]

-- XXVI. Here my father said that the conversation about Love which took place at Thespiae ended. And at this moment Diogenes, one of Pisias'

companions, was noticed coming up at a faster pace than walking. And while he was yet a little way off, Soclarus hailed him with, "You don't announce war, Diogenes," and he replied, "Hus.h.!.+ it is a marriage; come with me quickly, for the sacrifice only waits for you." All were delighted, and Zeuxippus asked if Pisias was still against the marriage.

"As he was first to oppose it," said Diogenes, "so he was first to yield the victory to Ismenodora, and he has now put on a crown and robed himself in white, so as to take his place at the head of the procession to the G.o.d through the market-place." "Come," said my father, "in Heaven's name, let us go and laugh at him, and wors.h.i.+p the G.o.d; for it is clear that the G.o.d has taken delight in what has happened, and been propitious."

[62] The allusion is to Plato's "Phaedrus," p. 230, B.

Much, indeed, of the subject-matter here is, we shall find, somewhat similar to that of the Phaedrus.

[63] It is difficult to know what the best English word here is. From the sly thrust in -- ix. Pisias was evidently grey. I have therefore selected the word _gravest_. But _the most austere_, _the most sensible_, _the most solid_, _the most sedate_, all might express the Greek word also. Let the reader take which he likes best.

[64] In a Greek house the women and men had each their own separate apartments. This must be borne in mind here to explain the allusion.

[65] That is, from interested and selfish motives.

[66] On Lais and Aristippus see Cicero, "Ad. Fam.," ix.

26.

[67] Pausanias, i. 19, shows us that there was at Athens a Temple of Hercules called Cynosarges. But the matter is obscure. What the exact allusion is I cannot say.

[68] Fragment of aeschylus. See Athenaeus, xiii. p. 602, E, which explains the otherwise obscure allusion.

[69] That is the son of Hera alone, who was unwilling to be outdone by Zeus, who had given birth to Pallas Athene alone. Hesiod has the same view, "Theog." 927.

[70] [Greek: opora] is so used also in aesch. "Suppl.,"

998, 1015. See also "Athenaeus," 608, F. Daphnaeus implies these very nice gentlemen, like the same cla.s.s described by Juvenal, "Curios simulant et Baccha.n.a.lia vivunt."

[71] I omit [Greek: kai kopidas] as a gloss or explanation of the old reading [Greek: makeleia] instead of [Greek: matruleia]. Nothing can be made of [Greek: kai kopidas] in the context.

[72] "Works and Days," 606-608.

[73] I follow here the reading of Wyttenbach. Through the whole of this essay the reading is very uncertain frequently. My text in it has been formed from a careful collation of Wyttenbach, Reiske, and Dubner. I mention this here once for all, for it is unnecessary in a translation to minutely specify the various readings on every occasion. I am not editing the "Moralia."

[74] "De Oenantha et Agathoclea, v. Polyb. excerpt, l.

xv."--_Reiske._

[75] Thespiae. The allusion is to Phryne. See Pausanias, ix. 27; x. 15.

[76] Reading with Wyttenbach, [Greek: hosper daktylion ischnou, ho me perirrhue dedios.]

[77] Perhaps _cur_ = coward, was originally _cur-tail_.