Flavianus.—Remove from your discourse for this once the poet's meadows and shades, and talk about ivy and yews, and all other commonplaces of that kind that writers love to introduce, with more zeal than discretion, in imitation of Plato's Ilissus and the famous willow and the gentle slope of grass.[62]
Autobulus.—My dear Flavianus, my narrative needs not any such exordium. The occasion that caused the conversation simply demands a chorus for the action and a stage, nothing else is wanting to the drama, let us only pray to the Mother of the Muses to be propitious, and give me memory for my narrative.
§ ii. Long ago our father, before we were born, having lately married our mother, had gone to sacrifice to the God of Love, in consequence of a dispute and variance that broke out among their parents, and took our mother to the Festival, for she also had her part in the vow and sacrifice. Some of their intimate friends journeyed with them from the town where they lived, and when they got to Thespiæ they found there Daphnæus the son of Archidamus, a lover of Lysandra the daughter of Simo, and of all her suitors the one who stood highest in her favour, and Soclarus the son of Aristio, who had come from Tithorea. And there were there also Protogenes of Tarsus, and Zeuxippus from Sparta, strangers, and my father said most of the most notable Bœotians were there also. For two or three days they went about the town in one another's company, as it was likely they would do, quietly carrying on philosophical discussions in the wrestling-schools and theatres: after that, to avoid a wearisome contest of harpers, decided beforehand by canvassing and cabal, most broke up their camp as if they had been in a hostile country, and removed to Mount Helicon, and bivouacked there with the Muses. In the morning they were visited by Anthemion and Pisias, both men of good repute, and very great friends of Baccho, who was surnamed the Handsome, and also rivals of one another somewhat through their affection for him. Now you must know that there was at Thespiæ a lady called Ismenodora, famous for her wealth and good family, and of uncommon good repute for her virtuous life: for she had been a widow some time without a breath of slander lighting upon her, though she was young and good-looking. As Baccho was the son of a friend and crony of hers, she had tried to bring about a marriage between him and a maiden who was her own relation, but by frequently being in his company and talking to him she had got rather smitten with him herself. And hearing much in his favour, and often talking about him, and seeing that many noble young men were in love with him, she fell violently in love with him, and, being resolved to do nothing unbecoming to her fair fame, determined to marry and live openly with him. And the matter seeming in itself rather odd, Baccho's mother looked rather askance at the proposed matrimonial alliance as being too high and splendid for her son, while some of his companions who used to go out hunting with him, frightening him and flouting him with Ismenodora's being rather too old for him, really did more to break off the match than those who seriously opposed it. And Baccho, being only a youth, somehow felt a little ashamed at the idea of marrying a widow, but, neglecting the opinions of everybody else, he submitted the decision as to the expediency of the marriage to Pisias and Anthemion, the latter being his cousin, though older than him, and the former the gravest[63] of his lovers. Pisias objected to the marriage, and upbraided Anthemion with throwing the youth away on Ismenodora. Anthemion replied that it was not well in Pisias, being a good fellow in other respects, to imitate depraved lovers by shutting out his friend from house and marriage and wealth, merely that he might enjoy the sight of him as long as possible naked and in all his virgin bloom at the wrestling-schools.
§ iii. To avoid getting estranged by provoking one another on the question, they came and chose our father and his companions as umpires on the matter. And of the other friends, as if by concerted arrangement, Daphnæus espoused the view of Anthemion, and Protogenes the view of Pisias. And Protogenes inveighing somewhat too freely against Ismenodora, Daphnæus took him up and said, "Hercules, what are we not to expect, if Protogenes is going to be hostile to love? he whose whole life, whether in work or at play, has been devoted to love, in forgetfulness of letters, in forgetfulness of his country, not like Laius, away from his country only five days, his was only a torpid and land love: whereas your love 'unfolding its swift wings,' flew over the sea from Cilicia to Athens, merely to gaze at and saunter about with handsome boys. For that was the original reason, doubtless, of Protogenes' journey abroad."
§ iv. And some laughter ensuing, Protogenes replied, "Do I really seem to you now to be hostile to love, and not to be fighting for love against ungovernable lust, which with most disgraceful acts and emotions assumes the most honourable of titles?" Whereupon Daphnæus, "Do you call the marriage and union of man and woman most disgraceful, than which no holier tie exists nor ever did?" Protogenes replied, "Why, as all this is necessary for the human race to continue, our legislators do not act amiss in crying up marriage and eulogizing it to the masses, but of genuine love there is not a particle in the woman's side of a house;[64] and I also say that you who are sweet on women and girls only love them as flies love milk, and bees the honey-comb, and butchers and cooks calves and birds, fattening them up in darkness.[65] But as nature leads one to eat and drink moderately and sufficiently, and excess in this is called gluttony and gormandizing, so the mutual desires between men and women are natural; but that headlong, violent, and uncontrollable passion for the sex is not rightly called love. For love, when it seizes a noble and young soul, ends in virtue through friendship; but these violent passions for women, at the best, aim only at carnal enjoyment and reaping the harvest of a beauteous prime, as Aristippus showed in his answer to one who told him Lais loved him not, 'No more,' he said, 'do meat and wine love me, but I gladly enjoy both.'[66] For the end of passion is pleasure and fruition: but love, when it has once lost the promise of friendship, will not remain and continue to cherish merely for beauty that which gives it pain, where it gives no return of friendship and virtue. You remember the husband in the play saying to his wife, 'Do you hate me? I can bear that hatred very easily, since of my dishonour I make money.' Not a whit more really in love than this husband is the one, who, not for gain but merely for the sexual appetite, puts up with a peevish and unsympathetic wife, as Philippides, the comic poet, ridiculed the orator, Stratocles, 'You scarce can kiss her if she turns her back on you.' If, however, we ought to give the name of love to this passion, then is it an effeminate and bastard love, and like at Cynosarges,[67] taking us to the woman's side of the house: or rather as they say there is a genuine mountain eagle, which Homer called 'black, and a bird of prey,' and there are other kinds of spurious eagles, which catch fish and lazy birds in marshes, and often in want of food emit an hungry wail: so the genuine love is the love of boys, a love not 'flashing with desire,' as Anacreon said the love of maidens was, nor 'redolent of ointment and sprightly,' but you will see it plain and without airs in the schools of the philosophers, or perhaps in the gymnasiums and wrestling-schools, keenly and nobly pursuing youths, and urging on to virtue those who are well worthy of attention: but that soft and stay-at-home love, spending all its time in women's bosoms and beds, always pursuing effeminate delights, and enervated by unmanly, unfriendly, and unimpassioned pleasures, we ought to condemn as Solon condemned it: for he forbade slaves to love boys or to anoint them with oil, while he allowed them to associate with women. For friendship is noble and refined, whereas pleasure is vulgar and illiberal. Therefore, for a slave to love boys is neither liberal or refined: for it is merely the love of copulation, as the love of women."
§ v. Protogenes was intending to go on at greater length, when Daphnæus stopped him and said, "You do well, by Zeus, to mention Solon, and we too may use him as the test of an amorous man. Does he not define such a one in the lines, 'As long as you love boys in the glorious flower of their youth for their kisses and embraces.' And add to Solon the lines of Æschylus, 'You did not disdain the honour of the thighs, O thankless one after all my frequent kisses.'[68] For some laugh at them if they bid lovers, like sacrificing priests and seers, to inspect thighs and loins; but I think this a mighty argument in behalf of the love of women. For if the unnatural commerce with males does not take away or mar the amorous propensity, much more likely is it that the natural love of women will end in friendship after the favour. For, Protogenes, the yielding of the female to the male was called by the ancients the favour. Thus Pindar says Hephæstus was the son of Hera 'without any 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."
§ vi. At the conclusion of this speech, it was clear that Pisias was vexed and indignant with Daphnæus; 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,'