[307] I have before me a dictonary which defines Platonic love as it is now universally, and incorrectly, understood, as "a pure spiritual affection subsisting between the sexes, unmixed with carnal desires, a species of love for which Plato was a warm advocate." In reality Platonic (i.e. Socratic) love has nothing whatever to do with women, but is a fantastic and probably hypocritical idealization of a species of infatuation which in our day is treated neither in poems nor in dialogues, nor discussed in text-books of psychology or physiology, but relegated to treatises on mental diseases and abnormalities. In fact, the whole philosophy of Greek love may be summed up in the assertion that "Platonic love," as understood by us, was by Plato and the Greeks in general considered an impossibility.
[308] In the Deipnosophists of Athenaeus (III., Bk. XII.) we find some other information of anthropological significance: "Hermippus stated in his book about lawgivers that at Lacedaemon all the damsels used to be shut up in a dark room, while a number of unmarried young men were shut up with them; and whichever girl each of the young men caught hold of he led away as his wife, without a dowry." "But Clearches the Solensian, in his treatise on Proverbs, says: 'In Lacedaemon the women, on a certain festival, drag the unmarried men to an altar and then buffet them; in order that, for the purpose of avoiding the insults of such treatment, they may become more affectionate and in due season may turn their thoughts to marriage. But at Athens Cecrops was the first person who married a man to one woman only, when before his time connections had taken place at random and men had their wives in common.'"
[309] My critics might have convicted me of a genuine blunder inasmuch as in my first book (78) I assumed that Plato "foresaw the importance of pre-matrimonial acquaintance as the basis of a rational and happy marriage choice." This was an unwarranted concession, because all that Plato recommended was that "the youths and maidens shall dance together, seeing and being seen naked," after the Spartan manner. This might lead to a rational choice of sound bodies, but romantic love implies an acquaintance of minds, and is altogether a more complicated process than the dog and cattle breeder's procedure commended by Plato and Lycurgus. I may add that in view of Lycurgus's systematic encouragement of promiscuity, the boast of the Spartan Geradas (recorded by Plutarch) that there were no cases of adultery in Sparta, must be accepted either as broad sarcasm, or in the manner of Limburg-Brouwer, who declares (IV., 165) that the boast is "like saying that in a band of brigands there is not a single thief." Even from the cattle-breeding point of view Lycurgus proved a failure, for according to Aristotle (Pol. II., 9) the Spartans grew too lazy to bring up children, and rewards had to be offered for large families.
[310] See the evidence cited in Becker (III., 315) regarding Aristotle's views as to the inferiority of women. After comparing it with the remarks of other writers Becker sums up the matter by saying that "the virtue of which a woman was in those days considered capable did not differ very much from that of a faithful slave."
[311] In the Odyssey (XV., 418) Homer speaks of "a Phoenician woman, handsome and tall." He makes Odysseus compare Nausicäa to Diana "in beauty, height, and bearing," and in another place he declares that, like Diana among her nymphs, she o'ertops her companions by head and brow (VI., 152, 102). However, this manner of measuring beauty with a yard-stick; indicates some progress over the savage and Oriental custom of making rotundity the criterion of beauty.
[312] Compare Menander, Frag. Incert., 154: [Greek: gunaich ho didaskon gpammat ou kalos poiei].
[313] A homely but striking illustration may here be added. In Africa the negroes are proud of their complexion and look with aversion on a white skin. In the United States, knowing that a black skin is looked down on as a symbol of slavery or inferiority, they are ashamed of it. The wife of an eminent Southern judge informed me that Georgia negroes believe that in heaven they will be white; and I have heard of one negro woman who declared that if she could become white by being flayed she would gladly submit to the torture. Thus have ideas regarding the complexion changed the emotion of pride to the emotion of shame.
[314] Professor Rohde appears to follow the old metaphysical maxim "If facts do not agree with my theory, so much the worse for the facts." He piles up pages of evidence which show conclusively that these Greeks knew nothing of the higher traits and symptoms of love, and then he adds: "but they must have known them all the same." To give one instance of his contradictory procedure. On page 70 he admits that, as women were situated, the tender and passionate courtship of the youths as described in poems and romances of the period "could hardly have been copied from life," because the Greek custom of allowing the fathers to dispose of their daughters without consulting their wishes was incompatible with the poetry of such courting. "It is very significant," he adds, "that among the numerous references to the ways of obtaining brides made by poets and moral philosophers, including those of the Hellenistic [Alexandrian] period, and collected by Stobaeus in chapters 70, 71, and 72 of his Florilegium, love is never mentioned among the motives of marriage choice." In the next sentence he declares nevertheless that "no one would be so foolish as to deny the existence of pure, strong love in the Greek life of this period;" and ten lines farther on he backs down again, admitting that though there may be indications of supersensual, sentimental love in the literature of this period these traits had not yet taken hold of the life of these men, though there were longings for them. And at the end of the paragraph he emphasizes his back-down by declaring that "the very essence of sentimental poetry is the longing for what does not exist." (Ist doch das rechte Element gerade der sentimentalen Poesie die Sehnsucht nach dem nicht Vorhandenen.) What makes this admission the more significant is that Professor Rohde, in speaking of "sentimental" elements, does not even use that word as the adjective of sentiment but of sentimentality. He defines this Sentimentalität to which he refers as a " Sehnen, Sinnen und Hoffen," a "Selbstgenuss der Leidenschaft"—a "longing, dreaming, and hoping," a "revelling in (literally, self-enjoying of) passion." In other words, an enjoyment of emotion for emotion's sake, a gloating over one's selfish joys and sorrows. Now in this respect I actually go beyond Rohde as a champion of Greek love! Such Sentimentalität existed, I am convinced, in Alexandrian life as well as in Alexandrian literature; but of the existence of true supersensual altruistic sentiment I can find no evidence. The trouble with Rohde, as with so many who have written on this subject, is that he has no clear idea of the distinction between sensual love, which is selfish (Selbstgenuss) and romantic love, which is altruistic; hence he flounders in hopeless contradictions.
[315] See Anthon, 258, and the authors there referred to.
[316] See Theocritus, Idyll XVII. Regarding the silly and degrading adulation which the Alexandrian court-poets were called upon to bestow on the kings and queens, and its demoralizing effect on literature, see also Christ's Griechische Litteraturgeschichte, 493-494 and 507.