'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 noble 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 ignoble soul suddenly filled with noble-mindedness, freedom, dignity, grace, and liberality, they do not feel constrained to say with Telemachus, 'Surely, some god is there within.'[118] And is it not wonderful, Daphnæus," 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 cock 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 Hephæstus 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 assuaging the pains of love.' And if you have not in your love for Lysandra forgot all your old love-songs, do repeat to us, Daphnæus, 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 Daphnæus 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 god is the cause of it, striking one and letting another go scot-free. But I will not pass over now, 'since it has come into my mouth,' as Æschylus 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 gods altogether to the poets and legislators and philosophers: all alike teaching the existence of gods, but greatly differing as to their number and order, nature and power. For the gods 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 gods Strifes, or Prayers, which are found in poetry;[121] nor will they admit Terror and Fear as gods 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 god; but if they thought him a god not to mourn for him. And, again, the poets and legislators will not listen to, nor can they understand, the philosophers who make gods 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 gods are all unanimous on one point, for poets legislators and philosophers all alike register Love as one of the gods, 'loudly singing his praises with one voice,' as Alcæus 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 friendship and intimacy (not such as Euripides speaks of in the line, 'he has been bound in fetters not of brass,'[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 passionately do we love the Sun, Because it always shines 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 associates 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 impassive 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 passion, and left in the soul only a bright glow—not exciting a tornado of passion, 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 associate 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 god helping them to truth. Among these are the lines about his birth, 'Well-sandalled Iris bare the most powerful of the gods to golden-haired Zephyr.'[126] But perhaps the learned have persuaded you that these lines are only a fanciful illustration of the variety and beauty of love." "Certainly," said Daphnæus, "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 noble 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 noble 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 associating 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 associated with beauties as much as is lawful, has wings and is initiated and passes 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 gods, 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 god of Hospitality punish and avenge any outrages on strangers or suppliants, nor as god 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 sex, 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 associated together (just as a neat shoe exhibits the shapeliness of the foot, to borrow the illustration 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 noble lover of beauty neglect beauty and nobility of nature, and make love only with an eye to the sexual parts? Why, the lover of horses will take just as much pleasure in the good points of Podargus, as in those of Æthe, Agamemnon's mare,[134] and the sportsman rejoices not only in dogs, but also rears Cretan and Spartan bitches,[135] and shall the lover of the beautiful and of humanity be unfair and deal unequally with either sex, 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 assert that the female sex never blossoms nor make a goodly show of virtue, for as Æschylus truly says,