Plutarch's Morals
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Title: Plutarch's Morals
Author: Plutarch
Translator: A. R. Shilleto
Release date: November 27, 2007 [eBook #23639]
Language: English
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*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK PLUTARCH'S MORALS ***
Produced by Paul Murray, Turgut Dincer and the Online
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_BOHN'S CLASSICAL LIBRARY_
PLUTARCH'S MORALS
GEORGE BELL & SONS,
LONDON: YORK STREET, COVENT GARDEN
NEW YORK: 66, FIFTH AVENUE, AND
BOMBAY: 53, ESILANADE ROAD
CAMBRIDGE: DEIGHTON, BELL & CO.
PLUTARCH'S MORALS
ETHICAL ESSAYS
TRANSLATED
WITH NOTES AND INDEX
BY ARTHUR RICHARD SHILLETO, M.A.
_Sometime Scholar of Trinity College, Cambridge,
Translator of Pausanias._
[Illustration]
LONDON
GEORGE BELL AND SONS
1898
CHISWICK PRESS:--CHARLES WHITTINGHAM AND CO., TOOKS COURT,
CHANCERY LANE.
+------------------------------------------------------------+
| Transcriber's note: The original book uses often colons |
| instead of semicolons. Spelling of proper names is |
| different in different pages and some words occur in |
| hyphemated and unhyphenated forms. These have not been |
| changed. A couple of commas and periods have been added or |
| removed to improve the reading and only obvious spelling |
| errors have been corrected. |
+------------------------------------------------------------+
PREFACE.
Plutarch, who was born at Chaeronea in Boeotia, probably about A.D. 50,
and was a contemporary of Tacitus and Pliny, has written two works still
extant, the well-known _Lives_, and the less-known _Moralia_. The
_Lives_ have often been translated, and have always been a popular work.
Great indeed was their power at the period of the French Revolution. The
_Moralia_, on the other hand, consisting of various Essays on various
subjects (only twenty-six of which are directly ethical, though they
have given their name to the _Moralia_), are declared by Mr. Paley "to
be practically almost unknown to most persons in Britain, even to those
who call themselves scholars."[1] _Habent etiam sua fata libelli._
In older days the _Moralia_ were more valued. Montaigne, who was a great
lover of Plutarch, and who observes in one passage of his Essays that
"Plutarch and Seneca were the only two books of solid learning he
seriously settled himself to read," quotes as much from the _Moralia_ as
from the _Lives_. And in the seventeenth century I cannot but think the
_Moralia_ were largely read at our Universities, at least at the
University of Cambridge. For, not to mention the wonderful way in which
the famous Jeremy Taylor has taken the cream of "Conjugal Precepts" in
his Sermon called "The Marriage Ring," or the large and copious use he
has made in his "Holy Living" of three other Essays in this volume,
namely, those "On Curiosity," "On Restraining Anger," and "On
Contentedness of Mind," proving conclusively what a storehouse he found
the _Moralia_, we have evidence that that most delightful poet, Robert
Herrick, read the _Moralia_, too, when at Cambridge, so that one cannot
but think it was a work read in the University course generally in those
days. For in a letter to his uncle written from Cambridge, asking for
books or money for books, he makes the following remark: "How kind
Arcisilaus the philosopher was unto Apelles the painter, Plutark in his
Morals will tell you."[2]
In 1882 the Reverend C. W. King, Senior Fellow of Trinity College,
Cambridge, translated the six "Theosophical Essays" of the _Moralia_,
forming a volume in Bohn's Classical Library. The present volume
consists of the twenty-six "Ethical Essays," which are, in my opinion,
the cream of the _Moralia_, and constitute a highly interesting series
of treatises on what might be called "The Ethics of the Hearth and
Home." I have grouped these Essays in such a manner as to enable the
reader to read together such as touch on the same or on kindred
subjects.
As is well known, the text of the _Moralia_ is very corrupt, and the
reading very doubtful, in many places. In eight of the twenty-six Essays
in this volume I have had the invaluable help of the text of Rudolf
Hercher; help so invaluable that one cannot but sadly regret that only
one volume of the _Moralia_ has yet appeared in the _Bibliotheca
Teubneriana_. Wyttenbach's text and notes I have always used when
available, and when not so have fallen back upon Reiske. Reiske is
always ingenious, but too fond of correcting a text, and the criticism
of him by Wyttenbach is perhaps substantially correct. "In nullo
auctore habitabat; vagabatur per omnes: nec apud quemquam tamdiu
divertebat, ut in paulo interiorem ejus consuetudinem se insinuaret." I
have also had constantly before me the Didot Edition of the _Moralia_,
edited by Frederic Duebner.
Let any reader who wishes to know more about Plutarch, consult the
article on Plutarch, in the Ninth Edition of the _Encyclopaedia
Britannica_, by the well-known scholar F. A. Paley. He will also do well
to read an Essay on Plutarch by R. W. Emerson, reprinted in Volume III.
of the Bohn's Standard Library Edition of Emerson's Works, and Five
Lectures on Plutarch by the late Archbishop Trench, published by Messrs.
Macmillan and Co. in 1874. All these contain much of interest, and will
repay perusal.
In conclusion, I hope this little volume will be the means of making
popular some of the best thoughts of one of the most interesting and
thoughtful of the ancients, who often seems indeed almost a modern.
Cambridge,
_March_, 1888.
[1] See article _Plutarch_, in _Encyclopaedia
Britannica_, Ninth Edition.
[2] Grosart's _Herrick_, vol. i. p. liii. See in this
volume, p. 180, and also note to p. 288. Richard Baxter
again is always quoting the _Moralia_.
CONTENTS
Page
PREFACE. vii
I. ON EDUCATION 2
II. ON LOVE TO ONE'S OFFSPRING 21
III. ON LOVE 29
IV. CONJUGAL PRECEPTS 70
V. CONSOLATORY LETTER TO HIS WIFE 85
VI. THAT VIRTUE MAY BE TAUGHT 92
VII. ON VIRTUE AND VICE 95
VIII. ON MORAL VIRTUE 98
IX. HOW ONE MAY BE AWARE OF ONE'S PROGRESS IN VIRTUE 118
X. WHETHER VICE IS SUFFICIENT TO CAUSE UNHAPPINESS 138
XI. WHETHER THE DISORDERS OF MIND OR BODY ARE WORSE 142
XII. ON ABUNDANCE OF FRIENDS 145
XIII. HOW ONE MAY DISCERN A FLATTERER FROM A FRIEND 153
XIV. HOW A MAN MAY BE BENEFITED BY HIS ENEMIES 201
XV. ON TALKATIVENESS 214
XVI. ON CURIOSITY 238
XVII. ON SHYNESS 252
XVIII. ON RESTRAINING ANGER 267
XIX. ON CONTENTEDNESS OF MIND 289
XX. ON ENVY AND HATRED 312
XXI. HOW ONE CAN PRAISE ONESELF WITHOUT EXCITING ENVY 315
XXII. ON THOSE WHO ARE PUNISHED BY THE DEITY LATE 331
XXIII. AGAINST BORROWING MONEY 365
XXIV. WHETHER "LIVE UNKNOWN" BE A WISE PRECEPT 373
XXV. ON EXILE 378
XXVI. ON FORTUNE 394
INDEX 401
PLUTARCH'S MORALS.
ON EDUCATION.
Sec. I. Come let us consider what one might say on the education of free
children, and by what training they would become good citizens.
Sec. II. It is perhaps best to begin with birth: I would therefore warn
those who desire to be fathers of notable sons, not to form connections
with any kind of women, such as courtesans or mistresses: for those who
either on the father or mother's side are ill-born have the disgrace of
their origin all their life long irretrievably present with them, and
offer a ready handle to abuse and vituperation. So that the poet was
wise, who said, "Unless the foundation of a house be well laid, the
descendants must of necessity be unfortunate."[3] Good birth indeed
brings with it a store of assurance, which ought to be greatly valued by
all who desire legitimate offspring. For the spirit of those who are a
spurious and bastard breed is apt to be mean and abject: for as the poet
truly says, "It makes a man even of noble spirit servile, when he is
conscious of the ill fame of either his father or mother."[4] On the
other hand the sons of illustrious parents are full of pride and
arrogance. As an instance of this it is recorded of Diophantus,[5] the
son of Themistocles, that he often used to say to various people "that
he could do what he pleased with the Athenian people, for what he wished
his mother wished, and what she wished Themistocles wished, and what
Themistocles wished all the Athenians wished." All praise also ought we
to bestow on the Lacedaemonians for their loftiness of soul in fining
their king Archidamus for venturing to marry a small woman, for they
charged him with intending to furnish them not with kings but kinglets.
Sec. III. Next must we mention, what was not overlooked even by those who
handled this subject before us, that those who approach their wives for
procreation must do so either without having drunk any wine or at least
very little. For those children, that their parents begot in drink, are
wont to be fond of wine and apt to turn out drunkards. And so Diogenes,
seeing a youth out of his mind and crazy, said, "Young man, your father
was drunk when he begot you." Let this hint serve as to procreation: now
let us discuss education.
Sec. IV. To speak generally, what we are wont to say about the arts and
sciences is also true of moral excellence, for to its perfect
development three things must meet together, natural ability, theory,
and practice. By theory I mean training, and by practice working at
one's craft. Now the foundation must be laid in training, and practice
gives facility, but perfection is attained only by the junction of all
three. For if any one of these elements be wanting, excellence must be
so far deficient. For natural ability without training is blind: and
training without natural ability is defective, and practice without both
natural ability and training is imperfect. For just as in farming the
first requisite is good soil, next a good farmer, next good seed, so
also here: the soil corresponds to natural ability, the training to the
farmer, the seed to precepts and instruction. I should therefore
maintain stoutly that these three elements were found combined in the
souls of such universally famous men as Pythagoras, and Socrates, and
Plato, and of all who have won undying fame. Happy at any rate and dear
to the gods is he to whom any deity has vouchsafed all these elements!
But if anyone thinks that those who have not good natural ability cannot
to some extent make up for the deficiencies of nature by right training
and practice, let such a one know that he is very wide of the mark, if
not out of it altogether. For good natural parts are impaired by sloth;
while inferior ability is mended by training: and while simple things
escape the eyes of the careless, difficult things are reached by
painstaking. The wonderful efficacy and power of long and continuous
labour you may see indeed every day in the world around you.[6] Thus
water continually dropping wears away rocks: and iron and steel are
moulded by the hands of the artificer: and chariot wheels bent by some
strain can never recover their original symmetry: and the crooked staves
of actors can never be made straight. But by toil what is contrary to
nature becomes stronger than even nature itself. And are these the only
things that teach the power of diligence? Not so: ten thousand things
teach the same truth. A soil naturally good becomes by neglect barren,
and the better its original condition, the worse its ultimate state if
uncared for. On the other hand a soil exceedingly rough and sterile by
being farmed well produces excellent crops. And what trees do not by
neglect become gnarled and unfruitful, whereas by pruning they become
fruitful and productive? And what constitution so good but it is marred
and impaired by sloth, luxury, and too full habit? And what weak
constitution has not derived benefit from exercise and athletics? And
what horses broken in young are not docile to their riders? while if
they are not broken in till late they become hard-mouthed and
unmanageable. And why should we be surprised at similar cases, seeing
that we find many of the savagest animals docile and tame by training?
Rightly answered the Thessalian, who was asked who the mildest
Thessalians were, "Those who have done with fighting."[7] But why pursue
the line of argument further? For the Greek name for moral virtue is
only habit: and if anyone defines moral virtues as habitual virtues, he
will not be beside the mark. But I will employ only one more
illustration, and dwell no longer on this topic. Lycurgus, the
Lacedaemonian legislator, took two puppies of the same parents, and
brought them up in an entirely different way: the one he pampered and
cosseted up, while he taught the other to hunt and be a retriever. Then
on one occasion, when the Lacedaemonians were convened in assembly, he
said, "Mighty, O Lacedaemonians, is the influence on moral excellence of
habit, and education, and training, and modes of life, as I will prove
to you at once." So saying he produced the two puppies, and set before
them a platter and a hare: the one darted on the hare, while the other
made for the platter. And when the Lacedaemonians could not guess what
his meaning was, or with what intent he had produced the puppies, he
said, "These puppies are of the same parents, but by virtue of a
different bringing up the one is pampered, and the other a good hound."
Let so much suffice for habit and modes of life.
Sec. V. The next point to discuss will be nutrition. In my opinion mothers
ought to nurse and suckle their own children. For they will bring them
up with more sympathy and care, if they love them so intimately and, as
the proverb puts it, "from their first growing their nails."[8] Whereas
the affection of wet or dry nurses is spurious and counterfeit, being
merely for pay. And nature itself teaches that mothers ought themselves
to suckle and rear those they have given birth to. And for that purpose
she has supplied every female parent with milk. And providence has
wisely provided women with two breasts, so that if they should bear
twins, they would have a breast for each. And besides this, as is
natural enough, they would feel more affection and love for their
children by suckling them. For this supplying them with food is as it
were a tightener of love, for even the brute creation, if taken away
from their young, pine away, as we constantly see. Mothers must
therefore, as I said, certainly try to suckle their own children: but if
they are unable to do so either through physical weakness (for this
contingency sometimes occurs), or in haste to have other children, they
must select wet and dry nurses with the greatest care, and not introduce
into their houses any kind of women. First and foremost they must be
Greeks in their habits. For just as it is necessary immediately after
birth to shapen the limbs of children, so that they may grow straight
and not crooked, so from the beginning must their habits be carefully
attended to. For infancy is supple and easily moulded, and what
children learn sinks deeply into their souls while they are young and
tender, whereas everything hard is softened only with great difficulty.
For just as seals are impressed on soft wax, so instruction leaves its
permanent mark on the minds of those still young. And divine Plato seems
to me to give excellent advice to nurses not to tell their children any
kind of fables, that their souls may not in the very dawn of existence
be full of folly or corruption.[9] Phocylides the poet also seems to
give admirable advice when he says, "We must teach good habits while the
pupil is still a boy."
Sec.VI. Attention also must be given to this point, that the lads that are
to wait upon and be with young people must be first and foremost of good
morals, and able to speak Greek distinctly and idiomatically, that they
may not by contact with foreigners of loose morals contract any of their
viciousness. For as those who are fond of quoting proverbs say not
amiss, "If you live with a lame man, you will learn to halt."[10]
Sec.VII. Next, when our boys are old enough to be put into the hands of
tutors,[11] great care must be taken that we do not hand them over to
slaves, or foreigners, or flighty persons. For what happens nowadays in
many cases is highly ridiculous: good slaves are made farmers, or
sailors, or merchants, or stewards, or money-lenders; but if they find a
winebibbing, greedy, and utterly useless slave, to him parents commit
the charge of their sons, whereas the good tutor ought to be such a one
as was Phoenix, the tutor of Achilles. The point also which I am now
going to speak about is of the utmost importance. The schoolmasters we
ought to select for our boys should be of blameless life, of pure
character, and of great experience. For a good training is the source
and root of gentlemanly behaviour. And just as farmers prop up their
trees, so good schoolmasters prop up the young by good advice and
suggestions, that they may become upright. How one must despise,
therefore, some fathers, who, whether from ignorance or inexperience,
before putting the intended teachers to the test, commit their sons to
the charge of untried and untested men. If they act so through
inexperience it is not so ridiculous; but it is to the remotest degree
absurd when, though perfectly aware of both the inexperience and
worthlessness of some schoolmasters, they yet entrust their sons to
them; some overcome by flattery, others to gratify friends who solicit
their favours; acting just as if anybody ill in body, passing over the
experienced physician, should, to gratify his friend, call him in, and
so throw away his life; or as if to gratify one's friend one should
reject the best pilot and choose him instead. Zeus and all the gods! can
anyone bearing the sacred name of father put obliging a petitioner
before obtaining the best education for his sons? Were they not then
wise words that the time-honoured Socrates used to utter, and say that
he would proclaim, if he could, climbing up to the highest part of the
city, "Men, what can you be thinking of, who move heaven and earth to
make money, while you bestow next to no attention on the sons you are
going to leave that money to?"[12] I would add to this that such fathers
act very similarly to a person who should be very careful about his shoe
but care nothing about his foot. Many persons also are so niggardly
about their children, and indifferent to their interests, that for the
sake of a paltry saving, they prefer worthless teachers for their
children, practising a vile economy at the expense of their children's
ignorance. _Apropos_ of this, Aristippus on one occasion rebuked an
empty-headed parent neatly and wittily. For being asked how much money a
parent ought to pay for his son's education, he answered, "A thousand
drachmae." And he replying, "Hercules, what a price! I could buy a slave
for as much;" Aristippus answered, "You shall have two slaves then, your
son and the slave you buy."[13] And is it not altogether strange that
you accustom your son to take his food in his right hand, and chide him
if he offers his left, whereas you care very little about his hearing
good and sound discourses? I will tell you what happens to such
admirable fathers, when they have educated and brought up their sons so
badly: when the sons grow to man's estate, they disregard a sober and
well-ordered life, and rush headlong into disorderly and low vices; then
at the last the parents are sorry they have neglected their education,
bemoaning bitterly when it is too late their sons' debasement. For some
of them keep flatterers and parasites in their retinue--an accursed set
of wretches, the defilers and pest of youth; others keep mistresses and
common prostitutes, wanton and costly; others waste their money in
eating; others come to grief through dice and revelling; some even go in
for bolder profligacy, being whoremongers and defilers of the marriage
bed,[14] who would madly pursue their darling vice if it cost them their
lives. Had they associated with some philosopher, they would not have
lowered themselves by such practices, but would have remembered the
precept of Diogenes, whose advice sounds rather low, but is really of
excellent moral intent,[15] "Go into a brothel, my lad, that you may see
the little difference between vice and virtue."
Sec. VIII. I say, then, to speak comprehensively (and I might be justly
considered in so saying to speak as an oracle, not to be delivering a
mere precept), that a good education and sound bringing-up is of the
first and middle and last importance; and I declare it to be most
instrumental and conducive to virtue and happiness. For all other human
blessings compared to this are petty and insignificant. For noble birth
is a great honour, but it is an advantage from our forefathers. And
wealth is valuable, but it is the acquisition of fortune, who has often
taken it away from those who had it, and brought it to those who little
expected it; and much wealth is a sort of mark for villanous slaves and
informers to shoot at to fill their own purses; and, what is a most
important point, even the greatest villains have money sometimes. And
glory is noble, but insecure. And beauty is highly desirable, but
shortlived. And health is highly valuable, but soon impaired. And
strength is desirable, but illness or age soon made sad inroads into it.
And generally speaking, if anyone prides himself on his bodily strength,
let him know that he is deficient in judgment. For how much inferior is
the strength of a man to that of animals, as elephants, bulls, and
lions! But education is of all our advantages the only one immortal and
divine. And two of the most powerful agencies in man's nature are mind
and reason. And mind governs reason, and reason obeys mind; and mind is
irremovable by fortune, cannot be taken away by informers, cannot be
destroyed by disease, cannot have inroads made into it by old age. For
the mind alone flourishes in age; and while time takes away everything
else, it adds wisdom to old age. Even war, that sweeps away everything
else like a winter torrent, cannot take away education. And Stilpo, the
Megarian, seems to me to have made a memorable answer when Demetrius
enslaved Megara and rased it to the ground. On his asking whether Stilpo
had lost anything, he replied, "Certainly not, for war can make no havoc
of virtue." Corresponding and consonant to this is the answer of
Socrates, who when asked, I think by Gorgias,[16] if he had any
conception as to the happiness of the King of Persia, replied, "I do not
know his position in regard to virtue and education: for happiness lies
in these, and not in adventitious advantages."
Sec. IX. And as I advise parents to think nothing more important than the
education of their children, so I maintain that it must be a sound and
healthy education, and that our sons must be kept as far as possible
from vulgar twaddle. For what pleases the vulgar displeases the wise. I
am borne out by the lines of Euripides, "Unskilled am I in the oratory
that pleases the mob; but amongst the few that are my equals I am
reckoned rather wise. For those who are little thought of by the wise,
seem to hit the taste of the vulgar."[17] And I have myself noticed
that those who practise to speak acceptably and to the gratification of
the masses promiscuously, for the most part become also profligate and
lovers of pleasure in their lives. Naturally enough. For if in giving
pleasure to others they neglect the noble, they would be hardly likely
to put the lofty and sound above a life of luxury and pleasure, and to
prefer moderation to delights. Yet what better advice could we give our
sons than to follow this? or to what could we better exhort them to
accustom themselves? For perfection is only attained by neither speaking
nor acting at random--as the proverb says, _Perfection is only attained
by practice_.[18] Whereas extempore oratory is easy and facile, mere
windbag, having neither beginning nor end. And besides their other
shortcomings extempore speakers fall into great disproportion and
repetition, whereas a well considered speech preserves its due
proportions. It is recorded by tradition that Pericles, when called on
by the people for a speech, frequently refused on the plea that he was
unprepared. Similarly Demosthenes, his state-rival, when the Athenians
called upon him for his advice, refused to give it, saying, "I am not
prepared." But this you will say, perhaps, is mere tradition without
authority. But in his speech against Midias he plainly sets forth the
utility of preparation, for he says, "I do not deny, men of Athens, that
I have prepared this speech to the best of my ability: for I should have
been a poor creature if, after suffering so much at his hands, and even
still suffering, I had neglected how to plead my case."[19] Not that I
would altogether reject extempore oratory, or its use in critical cases,
but it should be used only as one would take medicine.[20] Up, indeed,
to man's estate I would have no extempore speaking, but when anyone's
powers of speech are rooted and grounded, then, as emergencies call for
it, I would allow his words to flow freely. For as those who have been
for a long time in fetters stumble if unloosed, not being able to walk
from being long used to their fetters, so those who for a long time have
used compression in their words, if they are suddenly called upon to
speak off-hand, retain the same character of expression. But to let mere
lads speak extempore is to give rise to the acme of foolish talk. A
wretched painter once showed Apelles, they say, a picture, and said, "I
have just done it." Apelles replied, "Without your telling me, I should
know it was painted quickly; I only wonder you haven't painted more such
in the time." As then (for I now return from my digression), I advise to
avoid stilted and bombastic language, so again do I urge to avoid a
finical and petty style of speech; for tall talk is unpopular, and petty
language makes no impression. And as the body ought to be not only sound
but in good condition, so speech ought to be not only not feeble but
vigorous. For a safe mediocrity is indeed praised, but a bold
venturesomeness is also admired. I am also of the same opinion with
regard to the disposition of the soul, which ought to be neither
audacious nor timid and easily dejected: for the one ends in impudence
and the other in servility; but to keep in all things the mean between
extremes is artistic and proper. And, while I am still on this topic, I
wish to give my opinion, that I regard a monotonous speech first as no
small proof of want of taste, next as likely to generate disdain, and
certain not to please long. For to harp on one string is always tiresome
and brings satiety; whereas variety is pleasant always whether to the
ear or eye.
Sec. X. Next our freeborn lad ought to go in for a course of what is called
general knowledge, but a smattering of this will be sufficient, a taste
as it were (for perfect knowledge of all subjects would be impossible);
but he must seriously cultivate philosophy. I borrow an illustration to
show my meaning: it is well to sail round many cities, but advantageous
to live in the best. It was a witty remark of the philosopher Bion,[21]
that, as those suitors who could not seduce Penelope took up with her
maids as a _pis aller_, so those who cannot attain philosophy wear
themselves out in useless pursuits. Philosophy, therefore, ought to be
regarded as the most important branch of study. For as regards the cure
of the body, men have found two branches, medicine and exercise: the
former of which gives health, and the latter good condition of body; but
philosophy is the only cure for the maladies and disorders of the soul.
For with her as ruler and guide we can know what is honourable, what is
disgraceful; what is just, what unjust; generally speaking, what is to
be sought after, what to be avoided; how we ought to behave to the gods,
to parents, to elders, to the laws, to foreigners, to rulers, to
friends, to women, to children, to slaves: viz., that we ought to
worship the gods, honour parents, reverence elders, obey the laws,
submit ourselves to rulers, love our friends, be chaste in our relations
with women, kind to our children, and not to treat our slaves badly;
and, what is of the greatest importance, to be neither over elated in
prosperity nor over depressed in adversity,[22] nor to be dissolute in
pleasures, nor fierce and brutish in anger. These I regard as the
principal blessings that philosophy teaches. For to enjoy prosperity
nobly shows a man; and to enjoy it without exciting envy shows a
moderate man; and to conquer the passions by reason argues a wise man;
and it is not everybody who can keep his temper in control. And those
who can unite political ability with philosophy I regard as perfect men,
for I take them to attain two of the greatest blessings, serving the
state in a public capacity, and living the calm and tranquil life of
philosophy. For, as there are three kinds of life, the practical, the
contemplative, and the life of enjoyment, and of these three the one
devoted to enjoyment is a paltry and animal life, and the practical
without philosophy an unlovely and harsh life, and the contemplative
without the practical a useless life, so we must endeavour with all our
power to combine public life with philosophy as far as circumstances
will permit. Such was the life led by Pericles, by Archytas of Tarentum,
by Dion of Syracuse, by Epaminondas the Theban, one of whom was a
disciple of Plato (viz., Dion). And as to education, I do not know that
I need dwell any more on it. But in addition to what I have said, it is
useful, if not necessary, not to neglect to procure old books, and to
make a collection of them, as is usual in agriculture. For the use of
books is an instrument in education, and it is profitable in learning to
go to the fountain head.
Sec. XI. Exercise also ought not to be neglected, but we ought to send our
boys to the master of the gymnasium to train them duly, partly with a
view to carrying the body well, partly with a view to strength. For good
habit of body in boys is the foundation of a good old age. For as in
fine weather we ought to lay up for winter, so in youth one ought to
form good habits and live soberly so as to have a reserve stock of
strength for old age. Yet ought we to husband the exertions of the body,
so as not to be wearied out by them and rendered unfit for study. For,
as Plato says,[23] excessive sleep and fatigue are enemies to learning.
But why dwell on this? For I am in a hurry to pass to the most important
point. Our lads must be trained for warlike encounters, making
themselves efficient in hurling the javelin and darts, and in the chase.
For the possessions of those who are defeated in battle belong to the
conquerors as booty of war; and war is not the place for delicately
brought up bodies: it is the spare warrior that makes the best
combatant, who as an athlete cuts his way through the ranks of the
enemies. Supposing anyone objects: "How so? As you undertook to give
advice on the education of freeborn children, do you now neglect the
poor and plebeian ones, and give instructions only suitable to the
rich?" It is easy enough to meet such critics. I should prefer to make
my teaching general and suitable to all; but if any, through their
poverty, shall be unable to follow up my precepts, let them blame
fortune, and not the author of these hints. We must try with all our
might to procure the best education for the poor as well as the rich,
but if that is impossible, then we must put up with the practicable. I
inserted those matters into my discourse here, that I might hereafter
confine myself to all that appertains to the right education of the
young.
Sec. XII. And this I say that we ought to try to draw our boys to good
pursuits by entreaties and exhortation, but certainly not by blows or
abusive language. For that seems to be more fitting for slaves than the
freeborn. For slaves try to shirk and avoid their work, partly because
of the pain of blows, partly on account of being reviled. But praise or
censure are far more useful than abuse to the freeborn, praise pricking
them on to virtue, censure deterring them from vice. But one must
censure and praise alternately: when they are too saucy we must censure
them and make them ashamed of themselves, and again encourage them by
praise, and imitate those nurses who, when their children sob, give them
the breast to comfort them. But we must not puff them up and make them
conceited with excessive praise, for that will make them vain and give
themselves airs.
Sec. XIII. And I have ere now seen some fathers, whose excessive love for
their children has turned into hatred. My meaning I will endeavour to
make clearer by illustration. While they are in too great a hurry to
make their sons take the lead in everything, they lay too much work upon
them, so that they faint under their tasks, and, being overburdened, are
disinclined for learning. For just as plants grow with moderate rain,
but are done for by too much rain, so the mind enlarges by a proper
amount of work, but by too much is unhinged. We must therefore give our
boys remission from continuous labour, bearing in mind that all our life
is divided into labour and rest; thus we find not only wakefulness but
sleep, not only war but peace, not only foul weather but fine also, not
only working days but also festivals. And, to speak concisely, rest is
the sauce of labour. And we can see this not only in the case of
animate, but even inanimate things, for we make bows and lyres slack
that we may be able to stretch them. And generally the body is preserved
by repletion and evacuation, and the soul by rest and work. We ought
also to censure some fathers who, after entrusting their sons to tutors
and preceptors, neither see nor hear how the teaching is done. This is a
great mistake. For they ought after a few days to test the progress of
their sons, and not to base their hopes on the behaviour of a hireling;
and the preceptors will take all the more pains with the boys, if they
have from time to time to give an account of their progress. Hence the
propriety of that remark of the groom, that nothing fats the horse so
much as the king's eye.[24] And especial attention, in my opinion, must
be paid to cultivating and exercising the memory of boys, for memory is,
as it were, the storehouse of learning; and that was why they fabled
Mnemosyne to be the mother of the Muses, hinting and insinuating that
nothing so generates and contributes to the growth of learning as
memory. And therefore the memory must be cultivated, whether boys have a
good one by nature, or a bad one. For we shall so add to natural good
parts, and make up somewhat for natural deficiencies, so that the
deficient will be better than others, and the clever will outstrip
themselves. For good is that remark of Hesiod, "If to a little you keep
adding a little, and do so frequently, it will soon be a lot."[25] And
let not fathers forget, that thus cultivating the memory is not only
good for education, but is also a great aid in the business of life. For
the remembrance of past actions gives a good model how to deal wisely in
future ones.
Sec. XIV. We must also keep our sons from filthy language. For, as
Democritus says, Language is the shadow of action. They must also be
taught to be affable and courteous. For as want of affability is justly
hateful, so boys will not be disagreeable to those they associate with,
if they yield occasionally in disputes. For it is not only excellent to
know how to conquer, but also to know how to be defeated, when victory
would be injurious, for there is such a thing as a Cadmean victory.[26]
I can cite wise Euripides as a witness of the truth of what I say, who
says, "When two are talking, and one of them is in a passion, he is the
wiser who first gives way."[27]
I will next state something quite as important, indeed, if anything,
even more important. That is, that life must be spent without luxury,
the tongue must be under control, so must the temper and the hands. All
this is of extreme importance, as I will show by examples. To begin with
the last case, some who have put their hands to unjust gains, have lost
all the fruits of their former life, as the Lacedaemonian Gylippus,[28]
who was exiled from Sparta for embezzling the public money. To be able
to govern the temper also argues a wise man. For Socrates, when a very
impudent and disgusting young fellow kicked him on one occasion, seeing
all the rest of his class vexed and impatient, even to the point of
wanting to prosecute the young man, said, "What! If a young ass kicked
me would you have me kick it back?" Not that the young fellow committed
this outrage on Socrates with impunity, for as all reviled him and
nicknamed him the kicker, he hung himself. And when Aristophanes brought
his "_Clouds_" on the stage, and bespattered Socrates with his gibes and
flouts, and one of the spectators said, "Aren't you vexed, Socrates, at
his exhibiting you on the stage in this comic light?" he answered, "Not
I, by Zeus, for I look upon the theatre as only a large supper
party."[29] Very similar to this was the behaviour of Archytas of
Tarentum and Plato. The former, on his return from war, where he had
been general, finding his land neglected, called his bailiff, and said
to him, "You would have caught it, had I not been very angry." And
Plato, very angry with a gluttonous and shameless slave, called his
sister's son Speusippus, and said, "Go and beat him, for I am too
angry." But someone will say, these examples are difficult and hard to
follow. I know it. But we must try, as far as possible, following these
examples, to avoid ungovernable and mad rage. For we cannot in other
respects equal those distinguished men in their ability and virtue,
nevertheless we must, like initiating priests of the gods and
torchbearers of wisdom, attempt as far as possible to imitate and nibble
at their practice. Then, again, if anyone thinks it a small and
unimportant matter to govern the tongue, another point I promised to
touch on, he is very far from the reality. For silence at the proper
season is wisdom, and better than any speech. And that is, I think, the
reason why the ancients instituted the mysteries that we, learning
therein to be silent, might transfer our secrecy to the gods to human
affairs. And no one ever yet repented of his silence, while multitudes
have repented of their speaking. And what has not been said is easy to
say, while what has been once said can never be recalled. I have heard
of myriads who have fallen into the greatest misfortunes through
inability to govern their tongues. Passing over the rest, I will mention
one or two cases in point. When Ptolemy Philadelphus married his sister
Arsinoe, Sotades said, "You are contracting an unholy marriage."[30] For
this speech he long lingered in prison, and paid the righteous penalty
for his unseasonable babbling, and had to weep a long time for making
others laugh. Theocritus the Sophist similarly cracked his jokes, and
had to pay even a greater penalty. For when Alexander ordered the Greeks
to furnish him with purple robes to wear at the sacrifices on his
triumphal return from war against the barbarians, and his subjects
contributed so much per head, Theocritus said, "Before I doubted, but
now I am sure, that this is the _purple death_ Homer speaks of."[31] By
this speech he made Alexander his enemy. The same Theocritus put
Antigonus, the King of the Macedonians, a one-eyed man, into a
thundering rage by alluding to his misfortune. For the King sent his
chief cook, Eutropio, an important person at his court, to go and fetch
Theocritus before him to confer with him, and when he had frequently
requested him to come without avail, Theocritus at last said, "I know
well you wish to serve me up raw to the Cyclops;" flouting the King as
one-eyed and the cook with his profession. Eutropio replied, "You shall
lose your head, and pay the penalty for this babbling and mad
insolence;" and reported his words to the King, who sent and had his
head taken off. Our boys must also be taught to speak the truth as a
most sacred duty; for to lie is servile, and most hateful in all men,
hardly to be pardoned even in poor slaves.
Sec. XV. Thus much have I said about the good conduct and self-control of
boys without any doubt or hesitation: but as to what I am now going to
say I am doubtful and undecided, and like a person weighed in the scales
against exactly his weight, and feel great hesitation as to whether I
should recommend or dissuade the practice. But I must speak out. The
question is this--whether we ought to let the lovers of our boys
associate and be with them, or on the contrary, debar them from their
company and scare them off. For when I look at fathers self-opinionated
sour and austere, who think their sons having lovers a disgrace not to
be borne, I am rather afraid of recommending the practice. But when, on
the other hand, I think of Socrates, Xenophon, AEschines, Cebes, and all
the company of those men who have approved of male loves, and who have
introduced their minions to learning, to high positions in the State,
and to good morals, I change my opinion, and am moved to emulate those
men. And Euripides seems to favour these views in the passage, "But
there is among mortals another love, that of the righteous temperate and
pure soul."[32] Nor must we omit the remark of Plato, which seems to mix
seriousness with mirth, that "those who have distinguished themselves
ought to be permitted to kiss any handsome boy they like."[33] Those
then that seek only carnal enjoyment must be kept off, but those that
love the soul must be encouraged. And while the loves common at Thebes
and Elis, and the so-called rape at Crete, must be avoided, the loves of
Athens and Lacedaemon should be emulated.
Sec. XVI. As to this matter, therefore, let every parent follow his
inclination. And now, as I have spoken about the good and decent
behaviour of boys, I shall change my subject and speak a little about
youths. For I have often censured the introducers of bad habits, who
have set over boys tutors and preceptors, but have given to youths full
liberty, when they ought, on the contrary, to have watched and guarded
them more than boys. For who does not know that the offences of boys are
petty and easily cured, and proceed from the carelessness of tutors or
want of obedience to preceptors; but the faults of young men are often
grave and serious, as gluttony, and robbing their fathers, and dice, and
revellings, and drinking-bouts, and deflowering of maidens, and seducing
of married women. Such outbreaks ought to be carefully checked and
curbed. For that prime of life is prodigal in pleasure, and frisky, and
needs a bridle, so that those parents who do not strongly check that
period, are foolishly, if unawares, giving their youths license for
vice.[34] Sensible parents, therefore, ought during all that period to
guard and watch and restrain their youths, by precepts, by threats, by
entreaties, by advice, by promises, by citing examples,[35] on the one
hand, of those who have come to ruin by being too fond of pleasure, on
the other hand, of those who by their self-control have attained to
praise and good report. For these are, as it were, the two elements of
virtue, hope of honour, and fear of punishment; the former inciting to
good practices, the latter deterring from bad.
Sec. XVII. We ought, at all hazards, to keep our boys also from association
with bad men, for they will catch some of their villany. This was the
meaning of Pythagoras' enigmatical precepts, which I shall quote and
explain, as they give no slight momentum towards the acquisition of
virtue: as, _Do not touch black tails_: that is, do not associate with
bad men.[36] _Do not go beyond the balance_: that is, we must pay the
greatest attention to justice and not go beyond it. _Do not sit on a
measure_: that is, do not be lazy, but earn tomorrow's bread as well as
to-day's. _Do not give everyone your right hand_: that is, do not be too
ready to strike up a friendship. _Do not wear a tight ring_: that is,
let your life be free, do not bind yourself by a chain. _Do not poke the
fire with a sword_: that is, do not provoke an angry person, but yield
to such. _Do not eat the heart_: do not wear away the heart by anxiety.
_Abstain from beans_: that is, do not meddle in state affairs, for the
voting for offices was formerly taken by beans. _Do not put your food in
the chamber-pot_: that is, do not throw your pearls before swine, for
words are the food of the mind, and the villany of men twist them to a
corrupt meaning. _When you have come to the end of a journey do not look
back_: that is, when people are going to die and see that their end is
near, they ought to take it easily and not be dejected. But I will
return from my digression. We must keep our boys, as I said, from
association with all bad men, but especially from flatterers. For, as I
have often said to parents, and still say, and will constantly affirm,
there is no race more pestilential, nor more sure to ruin youths
swiftly, than the race of flatterers, who destroy both parents and sons
root and branch, making the old age of the one and the youth of the
others miserable, holding out pleasure as a sure bait. The sons of the
rich are by their fathers urged to be sober, but by them to be drunk; by
their fathers to be chaste, by them to wax wanton; by their fathers to
save, by them to spend; by their fathers to be industrious, by them to
be lazy. For they say, "'Our life's but a span;'[37] we can only live
once; why should you heed your father's threats? he's an old twaddler,
he has one foot in the grave; we shall soon hoist him up and carry him
off to burial." Some even pimp for them and supply them with prostitutes
or even married women, and cut huge slices off the father's savings for
old age, if they don't run off with them altogether. An accursed tribe,
feigning friendship, knowing nothing of real freedom, flatterers of the
rich, despisers of the poor, drawn to young men by a sort of natural
logic,[38] showing their teeth and grinning all over when their patrons
laugh,[39] misbegotten brats of fortune and bastard elements in life,
living according to the nod of the rich, free in their circumstances,
but slaves by inclination, when they are not insulted thinking
themselves insulted, because they are parasites to no purpose. So, if
any father cares for the good bringing-up of his sons, he must banish
from his house this abominable race. He must also be on his guard
against the viciousness of his sons' schoolfellows, for they are quite
sufficient to corrupt the best morals.
Sec. XVIII. What I have said hitherto is _apropos_ to my subject: I will
now speak a word to the men. Parents must not be over harsh and rough in
their natures, but must often forgive their sons' offences, remembering
that they themselves were once young. And just as doctors by infusing a
sweet flavour into their bitter potions find delight a passage to
benefit, so fathers must temper the severity of their censure by
mildness; and sometimes relax and slacken the reins of their sons'
desires, and again tighten them; and must be especially easy in respect
to their faults, or if they are angry must soon cool down. For it is
better for a father to be hot-tempered than sullen, for to continue
hostile and irreconcilable looks like hating one's son. And it is good
to seem not to notice some faults, but to extend to them the weak sight
and deafness of old age, so as seeing not to see, and hearing not to
hear, their doings. We tolerate the faults of our friends; why should we
not that of our sons? often even our slaves' drunken debauches we do not
expose. Have you been rather near? spend more freely. Have you been
vexed? let the matter pass. Has your son deceived you by the help of a
slave? do not be angry. Did he take a yoke of oxen from the field, did
he come home smelling of yesterday's debauch? wink at it. Is he scented
like a perfume shop? say nothing. Thus frisky youth gets broken in.[40]
Sec. XIX. Those of our sons who are given to pleasure and pay little heed
to rebuke, we must endeavour to marry, for marriage is the surest
restraint upon youth. And we must marry our sons to wives not much
richer or better born, for the proverb is a sound one, "Marry in your
own walk of life."[41] For those who marry wives superior to themselves
in rank are not so much the husbands of their wives as unawares slaves
to their dowries.[42]
Sec. XX. I shall add a few remarks, and then bring my subject to a close.
Before all things fathers must, by a good behaviour, set a good example
to their sons, that, looking at their lives as a mirror, they may turn
away from bad deeds and words. For those fathers who censure their
sons' faults while they themselves commit the same, are really their own
accusers, if they know it not, under their sons' name; and those who
live a depraved life have no right to censure their slaves, far less
their sons. And besides this they will become counsellors and teachers
of their sons in wrongdoing; for where old men are shameless youths will
of a certainty have no modesty. We must therefore take all pains to
teach our sons self-control, emulating the conduct of Eurydice, who,
though an Illyrian and more than a barbarian, to teach her sons educated
herself though late in life, and her love to them is well depicted in
the inscription which she offered to the Muses: "Eurydice of Hierapolis
made this offering to the Muses, having conceived a vast love for
knowledge. For when a mother with sons full-grown she learnt letters,
the preservers of knowledge."
To carry out all these precepts would be perhaps a visionary scheme; but
to attain to many, though it would need a happy disposition and much
care, is a thing possible to human nature.[43]
[3] Euripides, "Here. Fur." 1261, 1262.
[4] Euripides, "Hippol." 424, 425.
[5] Cleophantus is the name given to this lad by other
writers.
[6] Compare Sophocles, "Oedipus Tyrannus," 112, 113.
[7] The Thessalians were very pugnacious. Cf. Isocrates,
"Oratio de Pace," p. 316. [Greek: ohi men (Thettaloi)
sphisin autois haei polemousin].
[8] A proverbial expression among the ancients for
earliest childhood. See Erasmus, "Adagia."
[9] Plato, "Republic," ii. p. 429, E.
[10] See Erasmus, "Adagia."
[11] It is difficult to know how to render the word
[Greek: paidagogos] in English. He was the slave who
took the boy to school, and generally looked after him
from his seventh year upward. Tutor or governor seems
the best rendering. He had great power over the boy
entrusted to him.
[12] Plato, "Clitophon," p. 255, D.
[13] Compare Diogenes Laertius, ii. 72.
[14] Reading [Greek: koitophthorountes], the excellent
emendation of Wyttenbach.
[15] From the heathen standpoint of course, not from the
Christian. Compare the advice of Cato in Horace's
"Satires," Book i. Sat. ii. 31-35. It is a little
difficult to know what Diogenes' precept really means.
Is it that vice is universal? Like Shakespeare's
"Measure for Measure," Act ii. Sc. ii. 5. "All sects,
all ages smack of this vice."
[16] He was asked by Polus, see Plato, "Gorgias," p.
290, F.
[17] "Hippolytus," 986-989.
[18] Cf. Plato, "Cratylus," p. 257, E. [Greek: o pai
Hipponikou Hermogenes, palaia paroimia, oti chalepa ta
kala estin ope echei mathein]. So Horace, "Sat." i. ix.
59, 60, "Nil sine magno Vita labore dedit mortalibus."
[19] "Midias," p. 411, C.
[20] _i.e._, occasionally and sparingly.
[21] Diogenes Laertius assigns the remark to Aristippus,
while Stobaeus fathers it on Aristo.
[22] A favourite thought with the ancients. Compare
Isocrates, "Admonitio ad Demonicum," p. 18; and
Aristotle, "Nic. Eth.," iv. 3.
[23] "Republic," vii. p. 489, E.
[24] A famous Proverb. It is "the master's eye"
generally, as in Xenophon, "Oeconom." xii. 20; and
Aristotle, "Oeconom." i. 6.
[25] "Works and Days," 361, 362. The lines were
favourite ones with our author. He quotes them again, Sec.
3, of "How one may be aware of one's Progress in
Virtue."
[26] See Pausanias, ix. 9. Also Erasmus, "Adagia."
[27] A fragment from the "Protesilaus" of Euripides. Our
"It takes two to make a quarrel."
[28] See Plutarch's Lysander.
[29] Or _symposium_, where all sorts of liberties were
taken.
[30] I have softened his phrase. His actual words were
very coarse, and would naturally be resented by Ptolemy.
See Athenaeus, 621, A.
[31] See "Iliad," v. 83; xvi. 334; xx, 477.
[32] A fragment from the "Dictys" of Euripides.
[33] "Republ." v. 463, F. sq.
[34] Cf. Shakespeare's "Winter Tale," Act iii. sc. iii.
59-63.
[35] As Horace's father did. See "Satires," Book i. Sat.
iv. 105-129.
[36] What we call _black sheep_.
[37] From Simonides. Cf. Seneca, "Epist." xlix. "Punctum
est quod vivimus, et adhuc puncto minus."
[38] Reading with Wyttenbach, [Greek: hos ek logikes
technes.]
[39] Like _Carker_ in Dombey.
[40] Compare the character of Micio in the "Adelphi" of
Terence.
[41] This saying is assigned by Diogenes Laertius to
Pittacus.
[42] Compare Plautus, "Asinaria," i. l. 74. "Argentum
accepi: dote imperum vendidi." Compare also our author,
"Whether Vice is sufficient to cause Unhappiness," Sec. i.
[43] Wyttenbach thinks this treatise is not Plutarch's.
He bases his conclusion partly on external, partly on
internal, grounds. It is not quoted by Stobaeus, or any
of the ancients, before the fourteenth century. And its
style is not Plutarch's; it has many words foreign to
Plutarch: it has "nescio quid novum ac peregrinum, ab
illa Plutarchea copia et gravitate diversum leve et
inane." Certainly its matter is superior to its manner.
ON LOVE TO ONE'S OFFSPRING.
Sec. I. Appeals to foreign law-courts were first devised among the Greeks
through mistrust of one another's justice, for they looked on justice as
a necessity not indigenous among them. Is it not on much the same
principle that the philosophers, in regard to some of their questions,
owing to their variety of opinion, have appealed to the brute creation
as to a strange state, and submitted the decision to their instincts and
habits as not to be talked over and impartial? Or is it a general
charge against human infirmity that, having different opinions on the
most necessary and important things, we seek in horses and dogs and
birds how to marry and beget and rear children, as though we had no
means of making our own nature known, and appeal to the habits and
instincts of the brute creation, and call them in to bear witness
against the many deviations from nature in our lives, which from the
first are confused and disorderly. For among the brutes nature remains
ever the same, pure and simple, but in men, owing to reason and habit,
like oil in the hands of the perfumers, being mixed up with many added
opinions, it becomes various and loses its original simplicity. And let
us not wonder that the brutes follow nature more closely than human
beings, for in that respect even they are outstripped by inanimate
things, which, being dowered neither with imagination nor any appetite
or inclination contrary to nature, ever continue in the one path which
nature has prescribed for them, as if they were tied and bound. But in
brutes the gentleness of mood inspired by reason, the subtlety, the love
of freedom, are not qualities found in excess, but they have
unreasonable appetites and desires, and act in a roundabout way within
certain limits, riding, as it were, at the anchor of nature, and only
going straight under bit and bridle. But in man reason, which is
absolute master, inventing different modes and fashions of life, has
left no plain or evident trace of nature.[44]
Sec. II. Consider in their marriages how much the animals follow nature.
For they do not wait for any legislation about bachelor or late-married,
like the citizens of Lycurgus and Solon, nor do they fear penalties for
childlessness, nor are they anxious for the _jus trium liberorum_,[45]
like many of the Romans, who only marry and have children for the
privileges it bestows, not to have heirs, but to be qualified for
succeeding themselves to inheritances. Then, again, the male animal
does not go with the female at all times; for its aim is not pleasure
but procreation: so in the season of spring, the most appropriate time
for such pairings,[46] the female being submissive and tender attracts
the male by her beautiful condition of body, coming as she does from the
dew and fresh pastures, and when pregnant modestly retires and takes
thought for the birth and safety of her offspring. We cannot adequately
describe all this, but every animal exhibits for its young affection and
forethought and endurance and unselfishness. We call the bee wise, and
celebrate its "making the yellow honey,"[47] flattering it for its
tickling sweetness; but we neglect the wisdom and ingenuity of other
creatures, both as regards the birth and bringing up of their young. For
example, the kingfisher after conception weaves its nest with the thorns
of the marine needle, making it round and oblong in shape like a
fisherman's basket, and after deftly and closely weaving it together,
subjects it to the action of the sea waves, that its surface may be
rendered waterproof by this plash and cement, and it is hard for even
iron or stone to break it. And what is more wonderful still, so
symmetrically is the entrance of the nest adjusted to the kingfisher's
shape and size, that no beast either greater or smaller can enter it,
they even say that it does not admit the sea, or even the very smallest
things. And cats, when they breed, very often let their kittens go out
and feed, and take them back into their entrails again.[48] And the
bear, a most savage and ugly beast, gives birth to its young without
shape or joints, and with its tongue as with an instrument moulds its
features, so that it seems to give form as well as life to its progeny.
And the lion in Homer, "whom the hunters meet in the wood with its
whelps, exulting in its strength, which so frowns that it hides its
eyes,"[49] does it not intend to bargain with the hunters for its
whelps? For universally the love of animals for their offspring makes
timid ones bold, and lazy ones energetic, and greedy ones unselfish.
And so the bird in Homer, feeding its young "with its beak, with
whatever it has captured, even though it goes ill with itself,"[50]
nourishes its young at the cost of its own hunger, and when the food is
near its maw abstains from it, and holds it tightly in its mouth, that
it may not gulp it down unawares. "And so a bitch bestriding her tender
pups, barks at a strange man, and yearns for the fray,"[51] making her
fear for them a sort of second anger. And partridges when they are
pursued with their young let them fly on, and, contriving their safety,
themselves fly so near the sportsmen as to be almost caught, and then
wheel round, and again fly back and make the sportsmen hope to catch
them, till at last, having thus provided for the safety of their young,
they lead the sportsmen on a long way. As to hens, we see every day how
they watch over their chicks, dropping their wings over some, and
letting others climb on their backs, or anywhere about them, and
clucking for joy all the time: and though they fly from dogs and dragons
when only afraid for themselves, if they are afraid for their chicks
they stand their ground and fight valiantly. Are we to suppose then that
nature has only implanted these instincts in fowls and dogs and bears,
anxious only about their offspring, to put us mortals out of countenance
and to give us a bad name? considering these examples for us to follow,
while disgrace justly attaches to our inhumanity, for mankind only is
accused of having no disinterested affection, and of not knowing how to
love except in regard to advantage. For that line is greatly admired in
the theatres, "Man loves man only for reward," and is the view of
Epicurus, who thinks that the father so loves his son, the mother her
child, children their parents. Whereas, if the brutes could understand
conversation, and if anyone were to introduce horses and cows and dogs
and birds into a common theatre,[52] and were to change the sentiment
into "neither do dogs love their pups, nor horses their foals, nor birds
their young, out of interest, but gratuitously and by nature," it would
be recognized by the affections of all of them to be a true sentiment.
Why it would be disgraceful, great God, that birth and travail and
procreation should be gratis and mere nature among the beasts, while
among mankind they should be merely mercenary transactions!
Sec. III. But such a statement is not true or worthy of credit. For as
nature, in wild growths, such as wild vines, wild figs, or wild olives,
makes the fruit imperfect and inferior to the fruit of cultivated trees,
so has she given to the brutes an imperfect affection for their kind,
one neither marked by justice nor going beyond commodity: whereas to
man, a logical and social animal, she has taught justice and law, and
honour to the gods, and building of cities, and philanthropy, and has
contributed the noble and goodly and fruitful seeds of all these in love
to one's offspring, thereby following the very first elements that are
found in the construction of the body. For nature is everywhere perfect
and artistic and complete, and, to borrow the expression of
Erasistratus, has nothing tawdry about her: but one cannot adequately
describe all the processes appertaining to birth, nor would it be
perhaps decent to pry too closely into such hidden matters, and to
particularize too minutely all their wondrous ingenuity. But her
contrivance and dispensation of milk alone is sufficient to prove
nature's wonderful care and forethought. For all the superfluous blood
in women, that owing to their languor and thinness of spirit floats
about on the surface and oppresses them, has a safety-valve provided by
nature in the menses, which relieve and cleanse the rest of the body,
and fit the womb for conception in due season. But after conception
nature stops the menses, and arrests the flow of the blood, using it as
aliment for the babe in the womb, until the time arrives for its birth,
and it requires a different kind of food. At this stage the blood is
most ingeniously changed into a supply of milk, not diffused all over
the body, but externally in the breasts, so that the babe can with its
mouth imbibe the gentle and soothing nutriment.[53] But all these
various processes of nature, all this economy, all this forethought,
would be useless, had not nature also implanted in mothers love to their
offspring and anxiety for their welfare.
"For of all things, that on the earth do breathe
Or creep, man is by far the wretchedest."[54]
And the poet's words are especially applicable to a newborn babe. For
there is nothing so imperfect, so helpless, so naked, so shapeless, so
foul as a newborn babe: to whom almost alone nature has given an impure
outlet to the light of day: being kneaded with blood, and full of
defilement, and like one killed rather than born: which no one would
touch, or lift up, or kiss, or embrace, but from natural affection. And
that is why all the animals have their udders under the belly, women
alone have their breasts high on their bodies, that they can lift up
their babes to kiss, to dandle, and to fondle: seeing that their bearing
and rearing children comes not from necessity but love.
Sec. IV. Refer the question to the ancient inhabitants of the earth, to the
first mothers and fathers. There was no law ordering them to have
families, no expectation of advantage or return to be got out of them. I
should rather say that mothers would be likely to be hostile and bear
malice to their babes, owing to the great danger and pains of travail.
And women say the lines, "When the sharp pangs of travail seize on the
pregnant woman, then come to her aid the Ilithyiae, who help women in
hard childbirth, those daughters of Hera, goddesses of travail,"[55]
were not written by Homer, but by some Homerid who had been a mother, or
was even then in the throes of travail, and who vividly felt the sharp
pain in her womb. But the love to one's offspring implanted by nature,
moves and influences the mother even then: in the very height of her
throes, she neglects not nor flees from her babe, but turns to it and
smiles at it, and takes it up and caresses it, though she derives no
pleasure or utility from it, but with pain and sorrow receives it,
"warming it and fostering it in swaddling clothes, with unintermittent
assiduity both night and day."[56] What hope of gain or advantage had
they in those days? nay, or even now? for the hopes of parents are
uncertain, and have to be long waited for. He who plants a vine in the
spring equinox, gleans its vintage in the autumnal equinox; he who sows
corn when the Pleiads set, reaps it when they rise; cattle and horses
and birds have produce at once fit for use; whereas man's bringing up is
toilsome, his growth slow; and as excellence flowers late, most fathers
die before their sons attain to fame. Neocles lived not to see
Themistocles' victory at Salamis, nor Miltiades Cimon's at the
Eurymedon, nor did Xanthippus hear Pericles haranguing, nor did Aristo
hear Plato philosophizing, nor did their fathers know of the triumphs of
Euripides and Sophocles. They heard them faltering in speech and lisping
in syllables, the poor parents saw their errors in revelling and
drinking and love-affairs, so that of all Evenus'[57] lines, that one
alone is most remembered and quoted, "to a father a son is always a
cause of fear or pain." Nevertheless, parents do not cease to bring up
sons, even when they can least need them. For it is ridiculous to
suppose that the rich, when they have sons, sacrifice and rejoice that
they will have people to take care of them and to bury them; unless
indeed they bring up sons from want of heirs; as if one could not find
or fall in with anyone who would be willing to have another's property!
Why, the sand on the sea shore, and the dust, and the wings of birds of
varied note, are less numerous than the number of would-be heirs. For
had Danaus, the father of fifty daughters, been childless, he would have
had more heirs, and of a different spirit. For sons have no gratitude,
nor regard, nor veneration for inheritance; but take it as a debt;
whereas the voices of strangers which you hear round the childless man,
are like those lines in the play, "O People, first bathe, after one
decision in the courts, then eat, drink, gobble, take the
three-obol-piece."[58] And what Euripides has said, "Money finds friends
for men, and has the greatest power among mankind," is not merely a
general truth, but is especially true in the case of the childless. For
those the rich entertain to dinner, those great men pay court to, to
those alone orators give their services gratis. "A mighty personage is a
rich man, whose heir is unknown." It has at any rate made many much
loved and honoured, whom the possession of one child would have made
unloved and insignificant. Whence we see that there is no power or
advantage to be got from children, but that the love of them, alike in
mankind as among the animals, proceeds entirely from nature.
Sec. V. What if this natural affection, like many other virtues, is
obscured by badness, as a wilderness chokes a garden? Are we to say that
man does not love himself by nature, because many cut their throats or
throw themselves down precipices? Did not Oedipus put out his eyes? And
did not Hegesias by his speeches make, many of his hearers to commit
suicide?[59] "Fatality has many different aspects."[60] But all these
are diseases and maladies of the soul driving a man contrary to nature
out of his wits: as men themselves testify even against themselves. For
if a sow destroys one of its litter, or a bitch one of its pups, men are
dejected and troubled, and think it an evil omen, and sacrifice to the
gods to avert any bad results, on the score that it is natural to all to
love and cherish their offspring, unnatural to destroy it. For just as
in mines the gold is conspicuous even though mixed up with earth, so
nature manifests plainly love to offspring even in instances of faulty
habits and affections. For when the poor do not rear their children, it
is from fear that if reared to man's estate they would be more than
ought to be the case servile, and have little culture, and be debarred
of all advantages: so, thinking poverty the worst of all evils, they
cannot bear to give it their children, any more than they would some bad
disease.[61]
[44] Much of this is very corrupt in the Greek. I have
tried to get the best sense I could; but it is very
obscure. Certainly Plutarch's style is often very harsh
and crabbed.
[45] The _jus trium liberorum_ assigned certain
privileges to the father of three children, under the
Roman Emperors. Frequent allusions are made to this law
by the ancient writers.
[46] Compare Lucretius, i. 10-20.
[47] A quotation from Simonides.
[48] We are not bound to swallow all the ancients tell
us. Credat Judaeus Apella!
[49] "Iliad," xvii. 134-136.
[50] "Iliad," ix. 324. Quoted again in "How one may be
aware of one's Progress in Virtue," Sec. 8.
[51] "Odyssey," xx. 14, 15.
[52] A theatre, that is, in which animals and birds and
human beings should meet in common.
[53] All that is said here about the milk, the menses,
and the blood, I have been obliged somewhat to condense
and paraphrase. The ancients sometimes speak more
plainly than we can. Ever and anon one must pare down a
phrase or word in translating an ancient author. It is
inevitable. _Verbum sat sapienti._
[54] Homer, "Iliad," xvii. 446, 447.
[55] Ibid. xi. 269-271.
[56] A fragment from Euripides, according to Xylander.
[57] Evenus of Paros was an Elegiac Poet.
[58] Aristophanes, "Equites," 50, 51.
[59] See Cicero "Tuscul." i. 34.
[60] Euripides, "Alcestis," 1159; "Helena," 1688;
"Andromache," 1284; "Bacchae," 1388.
[61] The discourse breaks off abruptly. It is directed
against the Epicureans. It throws ridicule on appealing
to the affection of brutes for their offspring instead
of appealing to human nature.
ON LOVE.
FLAVIANUS AND AUTOBULUS, THE OPENERS OF THE DIALOGUE,
ARE BROTHERS. THE OTHER SPEAKERS ARE THEIR FATHER,
DAPHNAEUS, PROTOGENES, PISIAS, AND OTHERS.
I. _Flavianus._--You say that it was on Mount Helicon, Autobulus, that
those conversations took place about Love, which you are now about to
narrate to us at our request, as you either wrote them down, or at least
remember them from frequently asking our father about them.
_Autobulus._--It was on Mount Helicon among the Muses, Flavianus, when
the people of Thespiae were celebrating their Festival to the God of
Love, which they celebrate very magnificently and splendidly every five
years to that God, as also to the Muses.
_Flavianus._--Do you know what all of us who have come to this audience
intend to ask of you?
_Autobulus._--No, but I shall know if you tell me.
_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.
Sec. 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 Thespiae they found there
Daphnaeus 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 Boeotians 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 Thespiae 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.
Sec. 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,
Daphnaeus espoused the view of Anthemion, and Protogenes the view of
Pisias. And Protogenes inveighing somewhat too freely against
Ismenodora, Daphnaeus 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."
Sec. 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 Daphnaeus, "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."
Sec. V. Protogenes was intending to go on at greater length, when Daphnaeus
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 AEschylus, '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 Hephaestus 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."
Sec. VI. At the conclusion of this speech, it was clear that Pisias was
vexed and indignant with Daphnaeus; 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,'
and of a verity Pisias makes us to side with Daphnaeus by his extravagant
language, charging marriage with being a loveless intercourse, and one
that has no participation in divine friendship, although we can see that
it is an intercourse, if erotic persuasion and favour fail, that cannot
be restrained by shame and fear as by bit and bridle." Thereupon Pisias
said, "I care little about his arguments; but I see that Daphnaeus is in
the same condition as brass: for, just as it is not worked upon so much
by the agency of fire as by the molten and liquid brass fused with it,
so is he not so much captivated by the beauty of Lysandra as by his
association with one who is the victim of the gentle passion; and it is
plain that, if he doesn't take refuge with us, he will soon melt away
in the flame altogether. But I see, what Anthemion would very much like,
that I am offending the Court, so I stop." "You amuse us," said
Anthemion: "but you ought from the first to have spoken to the point."
Sec. VII. "I say then," continued Pisias, "and give it out boldly, as far
as I am concerned, let every woman have a lover; but we ought to guard
against giving the wealth of Ismenodora to Baccho, lest, if we involve
him in so much grandeur and magnificence, we unwittingly lose him in it,
as tin is lost in brass. For if the lad were to marry quite a plain and
insignificant woman, it would be great odds whether he would keep the
upper hand, as wine mixed with water; and Ismenodora seems already
marked out for sway and command; for otherwise she would not have
rejected such illustrious and wealthy suitors to woo a lad hardly yet
arrived at man's estate, and almost requiring a tutor still. And
therefore men of sense prune the excessive wealth of their wives, as if
it had wings that required clipping; for this same wealth implants in
them luxury, caprice, and vanity, by which they are often elated and fly
away altogether: but if they remain, it would be better to be bound by
golden fetters, as in Ethiopia, than to a woman's wealth."
Sec. VIII. Here Protogenes put in, "You say nothing about the risk we run
of unseasonably and ridiculously reversing the well-known advice of
Hesiod:
'If seasonable marriage you would make,
Let about thirty be the bridegroom's age,
The bride be in the fifth year of her womanhood:'[72]
if we thus marry a lad hardly old enough for marriage to a woman so many
years older, than himself, as dates and figs are forced. You will say
she loves him passionately: who prevents her, then, from serenading at
his doors, singing her amorous ditty, putting garlands on his statues,
and wrestling and boxing with her rivals in his affections? For all
these are what people in love do. And let her lower her eyebrows, and
give up the airs of a coquette, and assume the appearance of those that
are deeply smitten. But if she is modest and chaste, let her decorously
stay at home and await there her lovers and sweethearts; for any
sensible man would be disgusted and flee from a woman who took the
initiative in love, far less would he be likely to marry her after such
a barefaced wooing."
Sec. IX. When Protogenes had done speaking, my father said, "Do you see,
Anthemion, that they force us to intervene again, who have no objection
to dance in the retinue of conjugal Love?" "I do," said Anthemion, "but
pray defend Love at some length, as you are on his side, and moreover
come to the rescue of wealth,[73] with which Pisias seeks to scare us."
Thereupon my father began, "What on earth will not be brought as a
charge against a woman, if we are to reject Ismenodora because she is in
love and has money? Granted she loves sway and is rich? What then, if
she is young and handsome? And what if she plumes herself somewhat on
the lustre of her race? Have not chaste women often something of the
morose and peevish in their character almost past bearing? Do they not
sometimes get called waspish and shrewish by virtue of their very
chastity? Would it be best then to marry off the street some Thracian
Abrotonus, or some Milesian Bacchis, and seal the bargain by the present
of a handful of nuts? But we have known even such turn out intolerable
tyrants, Syrian flute-girls and ballet-dancers, as Aristonica, and
Oenanthe with her tambourine, and Agathoclea, who have lorded it over
kings' diadems.[74] Why Syrian Semiramis was only the servant and
concubine of one of king Ninus's slaves, till Ninus the great king
seeing and falling in love with her, she got such power over him that
she thought so cheap of him, that she asked to be allowed one day to sit
on the royal throne, with the royal diadem on her head, and to transact
state affairs. And Ninus having granted her permission, and having
ordered all his subjects to obey her as himself, she first gave several
very moderate orders to make trial of the guards; but when she saw that
they obeyed her without the slightest hesitation, she ordered them to
seize Ninus and put him in fetters, and at last put him to death; and
all her commands being obeyed, she ruled over Asia for a long time with
great lustre. And was not Belestiche a foreign woman off the streets,
although at Alexandria she has shrines and temples, with an inscription
as Aphrodite Belestiche, which she owes to the king's love? And she who
has in this very town[75] a temple and rites in common with Eros, and at
Delphi stands in gold among kings and queens, by what dowry got she her
lovers? But just as the lovers of Semiramis, Belestiche, and Phryne,
became their prey unconsciously through their weakness and effeminacy,
so on the other hand poor and obscure men, having contracted alliances
with rich women of rank, have not been thereby spoilt nor merged their
personality, but have lived with their wives on a footing of kindness,
yet still kept their position as heads of the house. But he that abases
his wife and makes her small, like one who tightens the ring on a finger
too small for it fearing it will come off,[76] is like those who cut
their mares' tails off and then take them to a river or pond to drink,
when they say that sorrowfully discerning their loss of beauty these
mares lose their self-respect and allow themselves to be covered by
asses.[77] To select a wife for wealth rather than for her excellence or
family is dishonourable and illiberal; but it is silly to reject wealth
when it is accompanied by excellence and family. Antigonus indeed wrote
to his officer who had garrisoned Munychia[78] to make not only the
collar strong but the dog lean, that he might undermine the strength of
the Athenians; but it becomes not the husband of a rich or handsome
woman to make his wife poor or ugly, but by his self-control and good
sense, and by not too extravagantly showing his admiration for her, to
exhibit himself as her equal not her slave, and (to borrow an
illustration from the scales) to add just so much weight to his
character as shall over-balance her, yet only just. Moreover, both
Ismenodora and Baccho are of a suitable age for marriage and procreation
of children; Ismenodora, I hear, is still in her prime, and" (here my
father smiled slily at Pisias) "she is certainly not a bit older than
her rivals, and has no grey hairs, as some of those who consort with
Baccho have. And if their union is seasonable, who knows but that she
may be a better partner for him than any young woman? For young couples
do not blend and mix well together, and it takes a long time and is not
an easy process for them to divest themselves of their pride and spirit,
and at first there's a good deal of dirty weather and they don't pull
well together, and this is oftenest the case when there's love on both
sides, and, just as a storm wrecks the ship if no pilot is on board, so
their marriage is trouble and confusion, neither party knowing how
either to rule or to give way properly. And if the baby is under the
nurse, and the boy under the master, and the lad under the master of the
gymnasium, and the youth under his lover, and the full-grown man under
the law and magistrate, and no one is his own master and exempt from
obedience to someone, what wonder would it be if a sensible woman rather
older than her husband would direct well the life of a young man, being
useful to him by reason of her superior wisdom, and acceptable to him
for her sweetness and gentleness? And to sum up the whole matter," said
he, "we Boeotians ought to revere Hercules, and so find no fault in any
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
increase the yield of the trees, the sacred splendour of Autumn,' as
Pindar says?[99] And if they care about all this, is there no god or
genius who is interested in the nurture and growth of boys and youths in
all their glorious flower? is there no one that cares that the growing
man may be upright and virtuous, and that the nobility of his nature may
not be warped and corrupted, either through want of a guardian or by the
depravity of those he associates with? Is it not monstrous and thankless
to say so, seeing that we enjoy the divine bounty, which is dealt out to
us richly, and never abandons us in our straits? And yet some of these
same straits have more necessity than beauty. For example, our birth, in
spite of the unpleasant circumstances attending it, is witnessed by the
divine Ilithyia and Artemis: and it would be better not to be born at
all than to become bad through want of a good guardian and guide.
Moreover in sickness the god who is over that province does not desert
us, nor even in death: for even then there is a conductor and guide for
the departed, to lay them to sleep, and convey their souls to
Hades,[100] as the poet says,
'Night bore me not to be lord of the lyre,
Nor to be seer, or healer of diseases,
But to conduct the souls of the departed.'
And yet these duties involve much unpleasantness, whereas we cannot
mention a holier work, nor any struggle or contest more fitting for a
god to attend and play the umpire in, than the guidance of the young and
beautiful in the prosecution of their love-affairs. For there is here
nothing of an unpleasant nature, no compulsion of any kind, but
persuasion and grace, truly making toil sweet and labour delightful,
lead the way to virtue and friendship, and do not arrive at that desired
goal without the deity, for they have as their leader and lord no other
god than Love, the companion of the Muses and Graces and Aphrodite. For
Love 'sowing in the heart of man the sweet harvest of desire,' to borrow
the language of Melanippides, mixes the sweetest and most beautiful
things together. But perhaps you are of a different opinion, Zeuxippus."
Sec. XVI. "Not I, by Zeus," replied Zeuxippus. "To have a different opinion
would be ridiculous." "Then," continued my father, "is it not also
ridiculous, if there are four kinds of friendship, for so the ancients
distinguished, the natural first, the second that to one's kindred, the
third that to one's companions, the fourth the friendship of love, and
each of the first three have a god as patron, either a god of
friendship, or a god of hospitality, or a god of the family, or a god of
the race,[101] whereas the friendship of love only, as something
altogether unholy, is left without any patron god, and that, too, when
it needs most of all attentive direction?" "It is," said Zeuxippus,
"highly ridiculous." My father continued, "The language of Plato is very
suggestive here, to make a slight digression. One kind of madness (he
says) is conveyed to the soul from the body through certain bad
temperaments or mixtures, or through the prevalence of some noxious
spirit, and is harsh, difficult to cure, and baneful. Another kind of
madness is not uninspired or from within, but an afflatus from without,
a deviation from sober reason, originated and set in motion by some
higher power, the ordinary characteristic of which is called enthusiasm.
For, as one full of breath is called [Greek: empnoos], and as one full
of sense is called [Greek: emphron], so the name enthusiasm is given to
the commotion of the soul caused by some Divine agency.[102] Thus there
is the prophetic enthusiasm which proceeds from Apollo, and the Bacchic
enthusiasm which comes from Dionysus, to which Sophocles alludes where
he says, 'Dance with the Corybantes;' for the rites of Cybele and Pan
have great affinities to the orgies of Bacchus. And the third madness
proceeds from the Muses, and possesses an impressionable and pure soul,
and stirs up the poetry and music in a man. As to the martial and
warlike madness, it is well known from what god it proceeds, namely,
Ares, 'kindling tearful war, that puts an end to the dance and the song,
and exciting civic strife.'[103] There remains, Daphnaeus, one more kind
of madness in man, neither obscure nor tranquil, as to which I should
like to ask Pemptides here,
'What god it is that shakes the fruitful thyrsus?'
I refer to that love-fury for modest boys and chaste women, which is
far the keenest and fiercest passion of all. For have you not observed
how the soldier, when he lays aside his arms, ceases from his warlike
fury, as the poet says,
'Then from him
Right gladly did his squires remove the armour,'[104]
and sits down a peaceful spectator of others?[105] The Bacchic and
Corybantic dances one can also modulate and quell, by changing the metre
from the trochaic and the measure from the Phrygian. Similarly, too, the
Pythian priestess, when she descends from her tripod, possesses her soul
in peace. Whereas the love-fury, when once it has really seized on a man
and inflamed him, can be laid by no Muse, no charm or incantation, no
change of place; but present they burn, absent they desire, by day they
follow their loves about, by night they serenade them, sober call for
them, and drunken sing about them. And he who said that poetic fancies,
owing to their vividness, were dreams of people awake, would have more
truly spoken so of the fancies of lovers, who, as if their loves were
present, converse with them, greet them, chide them. For sight seems to
paint all other fancies on a wet ground, so soon do they fade and recede
from the memory, but the images of lovers, painted by the fancy as it
were on encaustic tiles, leave impressions on the memory, that move, and
live, and speak, and are permanent for all time. The Roman Cato, indeed,
said that the soul of the lover resided in the soul of the loved one,
and I should extend the remark to the appearance, the character, the
life, and the actions, conducted by which he travels a long journey in a
short time, as the Cynics say they have found a short cut and, as it
were, forced march to virtue, for there is also a short cut to
friendship and love when the god is propitious. To sum up, the
enthusiasm of lovers is not a thing uninspired, and the god that guides
and governs it is none other than the god whose festival we are now
keeping, and to whom we are now sacrificing. Nevertheless, as we judge
of a god mainly from his power and usefulness (as among human advantages
we reckon and call these two the most divine, dominion and virtue), it
is high time to consider, before we proceed any further, whether Love
yields to any of the gods in power. Certainly, as Sophocles says,
'Wonderful is the power which the Cyprian Queen exerts so as always to
win the victory:'[106] great also is the might of Ares; and in some sort
we see the power of all the other gods divided among these two; for
Aphrodite has most intimate connection with the beautiful, and Ares is
in our souls from the first to combat against the sordid, to borrow the
idea of Plato. Let us consider, then, to begin with, that the venereal
delight can be purchased for six obols, and that no one ever yet put
himself into any trouble or danger about it, unless he was in love. And
not to mention here such famous courtesans as Phryne or Lais,
Gnathaenium, 'kindling her lamp at evening time,' on the look-out for
lovers and inviting them, is often passed by; 'yet, if some sudden whiff
arise' of mighty love and desire, it makes this very delight seem equal
to the fabled wealth of Tantalus and his domains. So feeble and cloying
is the venereal indulgence, if Love inspires it not. And you will see
this more plainly still from the following consideration. Many have
allowed others to share in their venereal enjoyments, prostituting not
only their mistresses but their wives, like that Roman Galba, who used
to ask Maecenas to dinner, and when he saw from his nods and winks that
he had a mind to do with his wife, turned his head gently aside as if
asleep; but when one of his slaves came up to the table and stole some
wine, his eyes were wide open enough, and he said, 'Villain, don't you
know that I am asleep only for Maecenas?'[107] But this is not perhaps so
strange, considering Galba was a buffoon. But at Argos Nicostratus and
Phayllus were great political rivals: so when King Philip visited that
city, Phayllus thought if he prostituted his wife, who was very
handsome, to the King, he would get from him some important office or
place. And Nicostratus getting wind of this, and walking about the doors
of Phayllus' house with some of his servants on the _qui vive_,
Phayllus made his wife put on men's boots, and a military cloak, and a
Macedonian broad-brimmed hat, and so smuggled her into the King, without
being detected, as one of the King's young men. But, of all the
multitude of lovers, did you ever hear of one that prostituted his
boy-love even for the honours of Zeus? I think not. Why, though no one
will generally either speak or act against tyrants, many will who find
them their rivals and are jealous about their handsome minions. You must
have heard how Aristogiton of Athens, and Antileon of Metapontum, and
Melanippus of Agrigentum, rose not against tyrants, although they saw
how badly they managed affairs, and what drunken tricks they played,
yet, when they attempted the chastity of their boy-loves, they
retaliated on them, jeoparding their lives, as if they were defending
the inviolability of temples and sanctuaries. It is also recorded that
Alexander wrote to Theodoras, the brother of Proteas, 'Send me your
singing-girl, unless you love her yourself, and I will give you ten
talents;' and when Antipatridas, one of his companions, came to revel
with him, bringing with him a female harper, he fancied the girl not a
little, and asked Antipatridas if he cared very much about her. And when
he replied that he did immensely, Alexander said, 'Plague take you,' but
nevertheless abstained from touching the girl.
Sec. XVII. "Consider also how Love excels in warlike feats, and is by no
means idle, as Euripides called him,[108] nor a carpet-knight, nor
'sleeping on a maiden's soft cheeks.'[109] For a man inspired by Love
needs not Ares to help him when he goes out as a warrior against the
enemy, but at the bidding of his own god is 'ready' for his friend 'to
go through fire and water and whirlwinds.' And in Sophocles' play,[110]
when the sons of Niobe are being shot at and dying, one of them calls
out for no helper or assister but his lover. And you know of course how
it was that Cleomachus the Pharsalian fell in battle?" "We certainly
don't," said Pemptides and those near him, "but we should very much like
to." "Well," said my father, "the tale's worth hearing. When the war
between the Eretrians and Chalcidians was at its height, Cleomachus had
come to aid the latter with a Thessalian force; and the Chalcidian
infantry seemed strong enough, but they had great difficulty in
repelling the enemy's cavalry. So they begged that high-souled hero
Cleomachus to charge the Eretrian cavalry first. And he asked his
boy-love, who was by, if he would be a spectator of the fight, and he
saying he would, and affectionately kissing him and putting his helmet
on his head, Cleomachus with a proud joy put himself at the head of the
bravest of the Thessalians, and charged the enemy's cavalry with such
impetuosity that he threw them into disorder and routed them; and the
Eretrian infantry also fleeing in consequence, the Chalcidians won a
splendid victory. However, Cleomachus got killed, and they show his tomb
in the market-place at Chalcis, over which a huge pillar stands to this
day, and whereas before that the people of Chalcis had censured
boy-loves, from that time forward they preferred that kind of love to
the normal love. Aristotle gives a slightly different account, namely,
that this Cleomachus came not from Thessaly, but from Chalcis in Thrace,
to the help of the Chalcidians in Euboea; and that that was the origin
of the song in vogue among the Chalcidians,
'Ye boys, who come of noble sires and beauteous are in face,
Grudge not to give to valiant men the joy of your embrace:
For Love that does the limbs relax combined with bravery
In the Chalcidian cities has fame that ne'er shall die.'
But according to the account of the poet Dionysius, in his
'Causes,'[111] the name of the lover was Anton, and that of the boy-love
was Philistus. And among you Thebans, Pemptides, is it not usual for the
lover to give his boy-love a complete suit of armour when he is enrolled
among the men? And did not the erotic Pammenes change the disposition of
the heavy-armed infantry, censuring Homer as knowing nothing about love,
because he drew up the Achaeans in order of battle in tribes and clans,
and did not put lover and love together, that so
'Spear should be next to spear, helmet to helmet,'[112]
seeing that Love is the only invincible general.[113] For men in battle
will leave in the lurch clansmen and friends, aye, and parents and sons,
but what warrior ever broke through or charged through lover and love,
seeing that even when there is no necessity lovers frequently display
their bravery and contempt of life. As Thero the Thessalian, who put his
left hand on a wall, and drew his sword, and chopped off his thumb, and
challenged his rival to do the same. And another in battle falling on
his face, as his enemy was about to give him the _coup-de-grace_, begged
him to wait a little till he could turn round, that his love should not
see him with a wound in his back. And not only are the most warlike
nations most amorous, as the Boeotians the Lacedaemonians and the
Cretans, but also of the old heroes, who were more amorous than
Meleager, Achilles, Aristomenes, Cimon, and Epaminondas. Why,
Epaminondas had as his boy-loves Asopichus and Cephisodorus, the latter
of whom fell with him at Mantinea, and is buried near him. As to ...,
who was most formidable and a source of terror to the enemy, Eucnamus of
Amphissa, who first stood up against him and smote him, received hero
honours from the Phocians for his exploit. And as to all the loves of
Hercules, it would take up too much time to enumerate them, but those
who think that Iolaus was one of them do up to this day worship and
honour him, and make their loves swear fidelity at his tomb. Hercules is
also said, having understood the art of healing, to have preserved the
life of Alcestis, when she was given up by the doctors, to gratify
Admetus, who passionately loved his wife, and was Hercules' minion. They
say also in legend that Apollo was enamoured of Admetus,
'And was his hired slave for one long year.'
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 gods
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 pass. 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.'"
Sec. 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, 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 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
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 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, 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 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 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 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 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 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."
Sec. 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."
Sec. 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 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 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] * * * *
Sec. 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 AEthe,
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 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 chastity 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 sexes.... 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 wishing 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 god 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 surpassing 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 pass the rest of
their lives dedicate to the god and slaves in his temple. For a noble
woman united by Love to her lawful husband would prefer the embraces of
bears and dragons to those of any other man."
Sec. XXII. "Although there are plenty of examples of this virtue of
constancy, yet to you, that are the festive votaries of the god,[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
goddess, 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]
Sec. 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 friendship when she associates 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 friendship, 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 friendship, 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 friendship[147] to sexual
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 associate 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 aptitude for all other virtues, but are deficient as
regards friendship 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 friendship, 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 friendship of her husband. And as Plato
advised Xenocrates, a great and noble 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.
Sec. XXIV. As to the passionate 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 friendship,
'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 gods
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 god Love and the desires
implanted by the god 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.
Sec. 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 astonishing 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 gods 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]
Sec. 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, "Hush! 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 god through the market-place." "Come," said my father, "in
Heaven's name, let us go and laugh at him, and worship the god; for it
is clear that the god 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 Sec. 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 class described
by Juvenal, "Curios simulant et Bacchanalia 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 Duebner. 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_.
[78] One of the three ports at Athens. See Pausanias, i.
1.
[79] Iolaus was the nephew of Hercules, and was
associated with him in many of his Labours. See
Pausanias, i. 19; vii. 2; viii. 14, 45.
[80] I read [Greek: synoarizontas]. The general reading
[Greek: synerontas] will hardly do here. Wyttenbach
suggests [Greek: synearizontas].
[81] What the [Greek: dibolia] was is not quite clear. I
have supposed a jersey.
[82] The women of Lemnos were very masterful. On one
memorable occasion they killed all their husbands in one
night. Thus the line of Ovid has almost a proverbial
force, "Lemniadesque viros nimium quoque vincere
norunt."--_Heroides_, vi. 53. Siebelis in his Preface to
Pausanias, p. xxi, gives from an old Scholia a sort of
excuse for the action of the women of Lemnos.
[83] Probably the epilepsy. See Herodotus, iii. 33.
[84] Euripides, "Bacchae," 203.
[85] Euripides, Fragment of the "Melanippe."
[86] I take Wyttenbach's suggestion as to the reading
here.
[87] This line is taken bodily by Aristophanes in his
"Frogs," 1244.
[88] The first line is the first line of a passage from
Euripides, consisting of thirteen lines, containing
similar sentiments to this. See Athenaeus, xiii. p. 599,
F. The last two lines are from Euripides, "Hippolytus,"
449, 450.
[89] Compare Lucretius, i. 1-5.
[90] Hesiod, "Theogony," 116-120.
[91] Euripides, "Danae," Frag. Compare Ovid, "Cedit amor
rebus: res age, tutus eris."
[92] Sophocles, Fragm. 678, Dindorf. Compare a remark of
Sophocles, recorded by Cicero, "De Senectute," ch. xiv.
[93] Sophocles, Fragm. 720. Reading [Greek: kala] with
Reiske.
[94] Iliad, v. 831.
[95] Connecting [Greek: Ares] with [Greek: anairein].
[96] The _Saint Hubert_ of the Middle Ages.
[97] AEschylus, Frag. 1911. Dindorf.
[98] Odyssey, v. 69.
[99] Fragm. 146, 125.
[100] Hermes is alluded to.
[101] All these four were titles of _Zeus_. They are
very difficult to put into English so as to convey any
distinctive and definite idea to an English reader.
[102] Enthusiasm is the being [Greek: entheos], or
inspired by some god.
[103] From AEschylus, "Supplices," 681, 682.
[104] "Iliad," vii. 121, 122.
[105] Like the character described in Lucretius, ii.
1-6.
[106] Sophocles, "Trachiniae," 497. The Cyprian Queen
is, of course, Aphrodite.
[107] Hence the famous Proverb, "Non omnibus dormio."
See Cic. "Ad. Fam." vii. 24.
[108] Above, in Sec. xiii.
[109] See Sophocles, "Antigone," 783, 784. And compare
Horace, "Odes," Book iv. Ode xiii. 6-8, "Ille virentis
et Doctae psallere Chiae _Pulchris excubat in genis_."
[110] The "Niobe," which exists only in a few fragments.
[111] This was the name of Dionysius' Poem. He was a
Corinthian poet.
[112] "Iliad," xiii. 131.
[113] Reading according to the conjecture of Wyttenbach,
[Greek: hos ton Erota uonon aetteton onta ton
strategon].
[114] Something has probably dropped out here, as Duebner
suspects.
[115] Fragment from the "Stheneboea" of Euripides.
[116] Anytus was one of the accusers of Socrates, and so
one of the causers of his death. So Horace calls
Socrates "Anyti reum," "Sat." ii. 4, 3.
[117] Homeric Epigrammata, xiii. 5. Quoted also in "On
Virtue and Vice," Sec. 1.
[118] Odyssey, xix. 40.
[119] I adopt the suggestion of Wyttenbach, [Greek:
eipen, o Daphnaie].
[120] Pinder, "Pyth." i. 8.
[121] See for example Homer, Iliad, xi. 3, 73; ix. 502.
[122] Euripides, "Pirithous," Fragm. 591. Dindorf.
[123] An allusion to Homer, "Odyssey," xii. 453.
[124] So Terence, "Andria," 555. "Amantium irae amoris
integratiost."
[125] Euripides, "Hippolytus," 194-196.
[126] The lines are from Alcaeus. Thus Love was the child
of the Rainbow and the West Wind. A pretty conceit.
[127] Greek _iris_.
[128] The mirrors of the ancients were of course not
like our mirrors. They were only burnished bronze. Hence
the view in them would be at best somewhat obscure. This
explains 1 Cor. xiii. 12; 2 Cor. iii. 18; James i. 23.
[129] See Euripides, "Hippolytus," 7, 8.
[130] Here the story unfortunately ends, and for all
time we shall know no more of it. Reiske somewhat
forcibly says, "Vel lippus videat Gorgus historiam non
esse finitam, et multa, ut et alias, periisse."
[131] Like Reiske we condense here a little.
[132] Reading with Reiske [Greek: orthes kai
athruptou.]
[133] I read [Greek: ei gar].
[134] See "Iliad," xxiii. 295. Podargus was an entire
horse.
[135] See Ovid, "Metamorph." iii. 206-208.
[136] AEschylus, "Toxotides," Fragm. 224.
[137] A very favourite proverb among the ancients. See
Plat. "Phaedr." fin. Martial, ii. 43.
[138] Soph. Fragm. 712.
[139] On Lais, see Pausanias, ii. 2. Her Thessalian
lover is there called Hippostratus. Her favours were so
costly that the famous proverb is said to owe its origin
to her, "Non cuivis homini contingit adire Corinthum."
[140] The AEgean and Ionian. Cf. Horace, "Odes," i. 7, 2.
[141] On Acro-Corinthus, see Pausanias, ii. 4. The words
in inverted commas are from Euripides, Fragm. 921.
[142] On Lais generally, and her end, see Athenaeus,
xiii. 54, 55.
[143] See Sec. I. The Festival of Love was being kept at
this very time.
[144] This story is also told by Plutarch, "De Mulierum
Virtutibus," Sec. xx.
[145] Sophocles, Fragm. 741. Quoted again in "On
Abundance of Friends," Sec. iii.
[146] A Delphic word for love. Can it be connected with
[Greek: arma]?
[147] Very frequent in Homer, _e.g._, "Iliad," ii. 232;
vi, 165; xiii. 636: xiv. 353, etc.
[148] See Lucretius, iv. 1105-1114. I tone down the
original here a little.
[149] Homer, "Odyssey," vi. 183, 184. Cf. Eurip.
"Medea," 14, 15.
[150] This means when the moustache and beard and
whiskers begin to grow.
[151] The whole story about Harmodius and Aristogiton
and how they killed Hipparchus is told by Thucydides,
vi. 54-59. Bion therefore practically called these
sprouting beards _tyrant-killers_, _tyrannicides_.
[152] "Scriptus igitur hic libellus est post caedem
Domitiani."--_Reiske._
[153] Vespasian certainly was not cruel generally. "Non
temere quis punitus insons reperietur, nisi absente eo
et ignaro aut certe invito atque decepto..... Sola est,
in qua merito culpetur, pecuniae cupiditas."--Suetonius,
"Divus Vespasianus," 15, 16.
CONJUGAL PRECEPTS.
PLUTARCH SENDS GREETING TO POLLIANUS AND EURYDICE.
After the customary marriage rites, by which, the Priestess of Demeter
has united you together, I think that to make an appropriate discourse,
and one that will chime in with the occasion, will be useful to you and
agreeable to the law. For in music one of the tunes played on the flute
is called Hippothorus,[154] which is a tune that excites fierce desire
in stallions to cover mares; and though in philosophy there are many
goodly subjects, yet is there none more worthy of attention than that of
marriage, on which subject philosophy spreads a charm over those who are
to pass life together, and makes them gentle and mild to one another. I
send therefore as a gift to both of you a summary of what you have often
heard, as you are both well versed in philosophy, arranging my matter in
a series of short observations that it may be the more easily
remembered, and I pray that the Muses will assist and co-operate with
Aphrodite, so that no lyre or lute could be more harmonious or in tune
than your married life, as the result of philosophy and concord. And
thus the ancients set up near Aphrodite statues of Hermes, to show that
conversation was one of the great charms of marriage, and also statues
of Peitho[155] and the Graces, to teach married people to gain their way
with one another by persuasion, and not by wrangling or contention.
Sec. I. Solon bade the bride eat a quince the first night of marriage,
intimating thereby, it seems, that the bridegroom, was to expect his
first pleasure from the bride's mouth and conversation.
Sec. II. In Boeotia they dress up the bride with a chaplet of asparagus,
for as the asparagus gives most excellent fruit from a thorny stalk, so
the bride, by not being too reluctant and coy in the first approaches,
will make the married state more agreeable and pleasant. But those
husbands who cannot put up with the early peevishness of their brides,
are not a whit wiser than those persons who pluck unripe grapes and
leave the ripe grapes for others.[156] On the other hand, many brides,
being at first disgusted with their husbands, are like those that stand
the bee's sting but neglect the honey.
Sec. III. Married people should especially at the outset beware of the
first quarrel and collision, observing that vessels when first
fabricated are easily broken up into their component parts, but in
process of time, getting compact and firmly welded together, are proof
against either fire or steel.
Sec. IV. As fire gets kindled easily in chaff or in a wick or in the fur of
hares, but is easily extinguished again, if it find no material to keep
it in and feed it, so we must not consider that the love of
newly-married people, that blazes out so fiercely in consequence of the
attractions of youth and beauty, will be durable and lasting, unless it
be fixed in the character, and occupy the mind, and make a living
impression.[157]
Sec. V. As catching fish by drugged bait is easy, but makes the fish poor
to eat and insipid, so those wives that lay traps for their husbands by
philtres and charms, and become their masters by pleasure, have stupid
senseless and spoiled husbands to live with. For those that were
bewitched by Circe did her no good, nor could she make any use of them
when they were turned into swine and asses, but she was greatly in love
with the prudent Odysseus who dwelt with her sensibly.
Sec. VI. Those women who would rather lord it over fools than obey sensible
men, resemble those people who would rather lead the blind on a road,
and not people who have eyesight and know how to follow.
Sec. VII. Women disbelieve that Pasiphaee, a king's wife, was enamoured of
a bull, although they see some of their sex despising grave and sober
men, and preferring to associate with men who are the slaves of
intemperance and pleasure, and like dogs and he-goats.
Sec. VIII. Men who through weakness or effeminacy cannot vault upon their
horses' backs, teach them to kneel and so receive their riders.
Similarly, some men that marry noble or rich wives, instead of making
themselves better humble their wives, thinking to rule them easier by
lowering them. But one ought to govern with an eye to the merit of a
woman, as much as to the size of a horse.
Sec. IX. We see that the moon when it is far from the sun is bright and
glorious, but pales and hides its light when it is near. A modest wife
on the contrary ought to be seen chiefly with her husband, and to stay
at home and in retirement in his absence.
Sec. X. It is not a true observation of Herodotus, that a woman puts off
her modesty with her shift.[158] On the contrary, the modest woman puts
on her modesty instead, and great modesty is a sign of great conjugal
love.
Sec. XI. As where two voices are in unison the loudest prevails; so in a
well-managed household everything is done by mutual consent, but the
husband's supremacy is exhibited, and his wishes are consulted.
Sec. XII. The Sun beat the North Wind.[159] For when it blew a strong and
terrible blast, and tried to make the man remove his cloak, he only drew
it round him more closely, but when the Sun came out with its warm rays,
at first warmed and afterwards scorched, he stripped himself of coat as
well as cloak. Most woman act similarly: if their husbands try to
curtail by force their luxury and extravagance, they are vexed and fight
for their rights, but if they are convinced by reason, they quietly drop
their expensive habits, and keep within bounds.
Sec. XIII. Cato turned out of the Senate a man who kissed his own wife in
the presence of his daughter. This was perhaps too strong a step, but if
it is unseemly, as indeed it is, for husband and wife in the presence of
others to fondle and kiss and embrace one another, is it not far more
unseemly in the presence of others to quarrel and jangle? Just as
conjugal caresses and endearments ought to be private, so ought
admonition and scolding and plain speaking.
Sec. XIV. Just as there is little use in a mirror adorned with gold or
precious stones, unless it conveys a true likeness, so there is no
advantage in a rich wife, unless she conforms her life and habits to her
husband's position. For if when a man is joyful the mirror makes him
look sad, and when he is put out and sad it makes him look gay and
smiling from ear to ear, the mirror is plainly faulty. So the wife is
faulty and devoid of tact, who frowns when her husband is in the vein
for mirth and jollity, and who jokes and laughs when he is serious: the
former conduct is disagreeable, the latter contemptuous.[160] And, just
as geometricians say lines and surfaces do not move of themselves, but
only in connection with bodies, so the wife ought to have no private
emotions of her own, but share in her husband's gravity or mirth,
anxiety or gaiety.
Sec. XV. As those husbands who do not like to see their wives eating and
drinking in their company only teach them to take their food on the sly,
so those husbands who are not gay and jolly with their wives, and never
joke or smile with them, only teach them to seek their pleasures out of
their company.
Sec. XVI. The kings of Persia have their wedded wives at their side at
banquets and entertainments; but when they have a mind for a drunken
debauch they send them away,[161] and call for singing-girls and
concubines, rightly so doing, for so they do not mix up their wives with
licentiousness and drunkenness. Similarly, if a private individual,
lustful and dissolute, goes astray with a courtesan or maid-servant, the
wife should not be vexed or impatient, but consider that it is out of
respect to her that he bestows upon another all his wanton depravity.
Sec. XVII. As kings make[162] if fond of music many musicians, if lovers of
learning many men of letters, and many athletes if fond of gymnastics,
so the man who has an eye for female charms teaches his wife to dress
well, the man of pleasure teaches his meretricious tricks and
wantonness, while the true gentleman makes his virtuous and decorous.
Sec. XVIII. A Lacedaemonian maiden, when someone asked her if she had yet
had dealings with a man, replied, "No, but he has with me." This
methinks is the line of conduct a matron should pursue, neither to
decline the embraces of a husband when he takes the initiative, nor to
provoke them herself, for the one is forward and savours of the
courtesan, the other is haughty and unnatural.
Sec. XIX. The wife ought not to have her own private friends, but cultivate
only those of the husband. Now the gods are our first and greatest
friends, so the wife ought only to worship and recognize her husband's
gods, and the door ought to be shut on all superfluous worship and
strange superstitions, for none of the gods are pleased with stealthy
and secret sacrifices on the part of a wife.
Sec. XX. Plato says that is a happy and fortunate state, where the words
_Meum_ and _Tuum_ are least heard,[163] because the citizens regard the
common interest in all matters of importance. Far more essential is it
in marriage that the words should have no place. For, as the doctors
say, that blows on the left shoulders are also felt on the right,[164]
so is it good[165] for husband and wife to mutually sympathize with one
another, that, just as the strength of ropes comes from the twining and
interlacing of fibres together, so the marriage knot may be confirmed
and strengthened by the interchange of mutual affection and kindness.
Nature itself teaches this by the birth of children, which are so much a
joint result, that neither husband nor wife can discriminate or discern
which part of the child is theirs. So, too, it is well for married
persons to have one purse, and to throw all their property into one
common stock, that here also there may be no _Meum_ and _Tuum_. And just
as we call the mixture of water and wine by the name of wine, even
though the water should preponderate,[166] so we say that the house and
property belongs to the man, even though the wife contribute most of the
money.
Sec. XXI. Helen was fond of wealth, Paris of pleasure, whereas Odysseus was
prudent, Penelope chaste. So the marriage of the last two was happy and
enviable, while that of the former two brought an Iliad of woe on Greeks
and barbarians alike.
Sec. XXII. The Roman who was taken to task by his friends for repudiating a
chaste wealthy and handsome wife, showed them his shoe and said,
"Although this is new and handsome, none of you know where it pinches
me."[167] A wife ought not therefore to put her trust in her dowry, or
family, or beauty, but in matters that more vitally concern her husband,
namely, in her disposition and companionableness and complaisance with
him, not to make every-day life vexatious or annoying, but harmonious and
cheerful and agreeable. For as doctors are more afraid of fevers that
are generated from uncertain causes, and from a complication of
ailments, than of those that have a clear and adequate cause, so the
small and continual and daily matters of offence between husband and
wife, that the world knows nothing about, set the household most at
variance, and do it the greatest injury.
Sec. XXIII. King Philip was desperately enamoured of a Thessalian
woman,[168] who was accused of bewitching him; his wife Olympias
therefore wished to get this woman into her power. But when she came
before her, and was evidently very handsome, and talked to her in a
noble and sensible manner, Olympias said, "Farewell to calumny! Your
charms lie in yourself."[169] So invincible are the charms of a lawful
wife to win her husband's affection by her virtuous character, bringing
to him in herself dowry, and family, and philtres, and even Aphrodite's
cestus.[170]
Sec. XXIV. Olympias, on another occasion, when a young courtier had married
a wife who was very handsome, but whose reputation was not very good,
remarked, "This fellow has no sense, or he would not have married with
his eyes." We ought neither to marry with our eyes, nor with our
fingers, as some do, who reckon up on their fingers what dowry the wife
will bring, not what sort of partner she will make.
Sec. XXV. It was advice of Socrates, that when young men looked at
themselves in the mirror, those who were not handsome should become so
through virtue, and those who were so should not by vice deform their
beauty. Good also is it for the matron, when she has the mirror in her
hands, if not handsome to say to herself, "What should I be, if I were
not virtuous?" and if handsome to say to herself, "How good it were to
add virtue to beauty!" for it is a feather in the cap of a woman not
handsome to be loved for herself and not for good looks.
Sec. XXVI. Dionysius, the tyrant of Sicily, sent some costly dresses and
necklaces to the daughters of Lysander, but he would not receive them,
and said, "These presents will bring my daughters more shame than
adornment." And Sophocles said still earlier than Lysander, "Your
madness of mind will not appear handsome, wretch, but most unhandsome."
For, as Crates says, "that is adornment which adorns," and that adorns a
woman that makes her more comely; and it is not gold or diamonds or
scarlet robes that make her so, but her dignity, her correct conduct,
and her modesty.
Sec. XXVII. Those who sacrifice to Hera as goddess of marriage,[171] do
not burn the gall with the other parts of the victim, but when they have
drawn it throw it away beside the altar: the lawgiver thus hinting that
gall and rage have no place in marriage. For the austerity of a matron
should be, like that of wine, wholesome and pleasant, not bitter as
aloes, or like a drug.
Sec. XXVIII. Plato advised Xenocrates, a man rather austere but in all
other respects a fine fellow, to sacrifice to the Graces. I think also
that a chaste wife needs the graces with her husband that, as Metrodorus
said, "she may live agreeably with him, and not be bad-tempered because
she is chaste." For neither should the frugal wife neglect neatness, nor
the virtuous one neglect to make herself attractive, for peevishness
makes a wife's good conduct disagreeable, as untidiness makes one
disgusted with simplicity.
Sec. XXIX. The wife who is afraid to laugh and jest with her husband, lest
she should appear bold and wanton, resembles one that will not anoint
herself with oil lest she should be thought to use cosmetics, and will
not wash her face lest she should be thought to paint. We see also in
the case of those poets and orators, that avoid a popular illiberal and
affected style, that they artificially endeavour to move and sway their
audience by the facts, and by a skilful arrangement of them, and by
their gestures. Consequently a matron will do well to avoid and
repudiate over-preciseness meretriciousness and pomposity, and to use
tact in her dealings with her husband in every-day life, accustoming him
to a combination of pleasure and decorum. But if a wife be by nature
austere and apathetic, and no lover of pleasure, the husband must make
the best of it, for, as Phocion said, when Antipater enjoined on him an
action neither honourable nor becoming, "You cannot have me as a friend
and flatterer both," so he must say to himself about his strict and
austere wife, "I cannot have in the same woman wife and mistress."
Sec. XXX. It was a custom among the Egyptian ladies not to wear shoes, that
they might stay at home all day and not go abroad. But most of our women
will only stay at home if you strip them of their golden shoes, and
bracelets, and shoe-buckles, and purple robes, and pearls.
Sec. XXXI. Theano, as she was putting on her shawl, displayed her arm, and
somebody observing, "What a handsome arm!" she replied, "But not
common." So ought not even the speech, any more than the arm, of a
chaste woman, to be common, for speech must be considered as it were the
exposing of the mind, especially in the presence of strangers. For in
words are seen the state of mind and character and disposition of the
speaker.
Sec. XXXII. Phidias made a statue of Aphrodite at Elis, with one foot on a
tortoise,[172] as a symbol that women should stay at home and be silent.
For the wife ought only to speak either to her husband, or by her
husband, not being vexed if, like a flute-player, she speaks more
decorously by another mouth-piece.
Sec. XXXIII. When rich men and kings honour philosophers, they really pay
homage to themselves as well; but when philosophers pay court to the
rich, they lower themselves without advancing their patrons. The same is
the case with women. If they submit themselves to their husbands they
receive praise, but if they desire to rule, they get less credit even
than the husbands who submit to their rule. But the husband ought to
rule his wife, not as a master does a chattel, but as the soul governs
the body, by sympathy and goodwill. As he ought to govern the body by
not being a slave to its pleasures and desires, so he ought to rule his
wife by cheerfulness and complaisance.
Sec. XXXIV. The philosophers tell us that some bodies are composed of
distinct parts, as a fleet or army; others of connected parts, as a
house or ship; others united and growing together, as every animal is.
The marriage of lovers is like this last class, that of those who marry
for dowry or children is like the second class, and that of those who
only sleep together is like the first class, who may be said to live in
the same house, but in no other sense to live together. But, just as
doctors tell us that liquids are the only things that thoroughly mix, so
in married people there must be a complete union of bodies, wealth,
friends, and relations. And thus the Roman legislator forbade married
people to exchange presents with one another, not that they should not
go shares with one another, but that they should consider everything as
common property.
Sec. XXXV. At Leptis, a town in Libya, it is the custom for the bride the
day after marriage to send to her mother-in-law's house for a pipkin,
who does not lend her one, but says she has not got one, that from the
first the daughter-in-law may know her mother-in-law's stepmotherly
mind,[173] that if afterwards she should be harsher still, she should be
prepared for it and not take it ill. Knowing this the wife ought to
guard against any cause of offence, for the bridegroom's mother is
jealous of his affection to his wife. But there is one cure for this
condition of mind, to conciliate privately the husband's affection, and
not to divert or diminish his love for his mother.
Sec. XXXVI. Mothers seem to love their sons best as able to help them, and
fathers their daughters as needing their help; perhaps also it is in
compliment to one another, that each prefers the other sex in their
children, and openly favours it. This, however, is a matter perhaps of
little importance. But it looks very nice in the wife to show greater
respect to her husband's parents than to her own, and if anything
unpleasant has happened to confide it to them rather than to her own
people. For trust begets trust,[174] and love love.
Sec. XXXVII. The generals of the Greeks in Cyrus's army ordered their men
to receive the enemy silently if they came up shouting, but if they came
up silently to rush out to meet them with a shout. So sensible wives, in
their husband's tantrums, are quiet when they storm, but if they are
silent and sullen talk them round and appease them.
Sec. XXXVIII. Rightly does Euripides[175] censure those who introduce the
lyre at wine-parties, for music ought to be called in to assuage anger
and grief, rather than to enervate the voluptuous still more than
before. Think, therefore, those in error who sleep together for
pleasure, but when they have any little difference with one another
sleep apart, and do not then more than at any other time invoke
Aphrodite, who is the best physician in such cases, as the poet, I ween,
teaches us, where he introduces Hera, saying:
"Their long-continued strife I now will end,
For to the bed of love I will them send."[176]
Sec. XXXIX. Everywhere and at all times should husband and wife avoid
giving one another cause of offence, but most especially when they are
in bed together. The woman who was in labour and had a bad time said to
those that urged her to go to bed, "How shall the bed cure me, which was
the very cause of this trouble?"[177] And those differences and quarrels
which the bed generates will not easily be put an end to at any other
time or place.
Sec. XL. Hermione seems to speak the truth where she says:
"The visits of bad women ruined me."[178]
But this case does not happen naturally, but only when dissension and
jealousy has made wives open not only their doors but their ears to such
women. But that is the very time when a sensible wife will shut her ears
more than at any other time, and be especially on her guard against
whisperers, that fire may not be added to fire,[179] and remember the
remark of Philip, who, when his friends tried to excite him against the
Greeks, on the ground that they were treated well and yet reviled him,
answered, "What will they do then, if I treat them ill?" Whenever, then,
calumniating women come and say to a wife, "How badly your husband
treats you, though a chaste and loving wife!" let her answer, "How would
he act then, if I were to begin to hate him and injure him?"
Sec. XLI. The master who saw his runaway slave a long time after he had
run away, and chased him, and came up with him just as he had got to the
mill, said to him, "In what more appropriate place could I have wished
to find you?"[180] So let the wife, who is jealous of her husband, and
on the point of writing a bill of divorce in her anger, say to herself,
"In what state would my rival be better pleased to see me in than this,
vexed and at variance with my husband, and on the point of abandoning
his house and bed?"
Sec. XLII. The Athenians have three sacred seedtimes: the first at Scirus,
as a remembrance of the original sowing of corn, the second at Rharia,
the third under Pelis, which is called Buzygium.[181] But a more sacred
seedtime than all these is the procreation of children, and therefore
Sophocles did well to call Aphrodite "fruitful Cytherea." Wherefore it
behoves both husband and wife to be most careful over this business, and
to abstain from lawless and unholy breaches of the marriage vow, and
from sowing in quarters where they desire no produce, or where, if any
produce should come, they would be ashamed of it and desire to conceal
it.[182]
Sec. XLIII. When Gorgias the Rhetorician recited his speech at Olympia
recommending harmony to the Greeks, Melanthius cried out, "He recommend
harmony to us! Why, he can't persuade his wife and maid to live in
harmony, though there are only three of them in the house!" Gorgias
belike had an intrigue with the maid, and his wife was jealous. He then
must have his own house in good order who undertakes to order the
affairs of his friends and the public, for any ill-doings on the part of
husbands to their wives is far more likely to come out and be known to
the public than the ill-doings of wives to their husbands.
Sec. XLIV. They say the cat is driven mad by the smell of perfumes. If it
happens that wives are equally affected by perfumes, it is monstrous
that their husbands should not abstain from using perfumes, rather than
for so small a pleasure to incommode so grievously their wives. And
since they suffer quite as much when their husbands go with other women,
it is unjust for a small pleasure to pain and grieve wives, and not to
abstain from connection with other women, when even bee-keepers will do
as much, because bees are supposed to dislike and sting those that have
had dealings with women.
Sec. XLV. Those that approach elephants do not dress in white, nor those
that approach bulls in red, for these colours render those animals
savage; and tigers they say at the beating of drums go quite wild, and
tear themselves in their rage. Similarly, as some men cannot bear to see
scarlet and purple dresses, and others are put out by cymbals and
drums,[183] what harm would it do wives to abstain from these things,
and not to vex or provoke husbands, but to live with them quietly and
meekly?
Sec. XLVI. A woman said to Philip, who against her will was pulling her
about, "Let me go, all women are alike when the lamp is put out."[184] A
good remark to adulterers and debauchees. But the married woman ought to
show when the light is put out that she is not like all other women, for
then, when her body is not visible, she ought to exhibit her chastity
and modesty as well as her personal affection to her husband.
Sec. XLVII. Plato[185] recommended old men to act with decorum especially
before young men, that they too might show respect to them; for where
the old behave shamelessly, no modesty or reverence will be exhibited by
the young. The husband ought to remember this, and show no one more
respect than his wife, knowing that the bridal chamber will be to her
either a school of virtue or of vice. And he who enjoys pleasures that
he forbids his wife, is like a man that orders his wife to go on
fighting against an enemy to whom he has himself surrendered.
Sec. XLVIII. As to love of show, Eurydice, read and try to remember what
was written by Timoxena to Aristylla: and do you, Pollianus, not suppose
that your wife will abstain from extravagance and expense, if she sees
that you do not despise such vanities in others, but delight in gilt
cups, and pictures in houses, and trappings for mules, and ornaments for
horses. For it is not possible to banish extravagance from the women's
side of the house if it is always to be seen in the men's apartments.
Moreover, Pollianus, as you are already old enough for the study of
philosophy, adorn your character by its teaching, whether it consists of
demonstration or constructive reasoning, by associating and conversing
with those that can profit you. And for your wife gather honey from
every quarter, as the bees do, and whatever knowledge you have yourself
acquired impart to her, and converse with her, making the best arguments
well known and familiar to her. For now
"Father thou art to her, and mother dear,
And brother too."[186]
And no less decorous is it to hear the wife say, "Husband, you are my
teacher and philosopher and guide in the most beautiful and divine
subjects." For such teaching in the first place detaches women from
absurdities: for the woman who has learnt geometry will be ashamed to
dance, nor will she believe in incantations and spells, if she has been
charmed by the discourses of Plato and Xenophon; and if anyone should
undertake to draw the moon down from the sky, she will laugh at the
ignorance and stupidity of women that credit such nonsense, well
understanding geometry, and having heard how Aglaonice, the daughter of
the Thessalian Hegetor, having a thorough knowledge of the eclipses of
the moon, and being aware beforehand of the exact time when the moon
would be in eclipse, cheated the women, and persuaded them that she
herself had drawn it down from the sky. For no woman was ever yet
credited with having had a child without intercourse with a man, for
those shapeless embryos and gobbets of flesh that take form from
corruption are called moles. We must guard against such false
conceptions as these arising in the minds of women, for if they are not
well informed by good precepts, and share in the teaching that men get,
they generate among themselves many foolish and absurd ideas and states
of mind. But do you, Eurydice, study to make yourself acquainted with
the sayings of wise and good women, and ever have on your tongue those
sentiments which as a girl you learnt with us, that so you may make your
husband's heart glad, and be admired by all other women, being in
yourself so wonderfully and splendidly adorned. For one cannot take or
put on, except at great expense, the jewels of this or that rich woman,
or the silk dresses of this or that foreign woman, but the virtues that
adorned Theano,[187] and Cleobuline, and Gorgo the wife of Leonidas, and
Timoclea the sister of Theagenes, and the ancient Claudia,[188] and
Cornelia the sister of Scipio,[189] and all other such noble and famous
women, these one may array oneself in without money and without price,
and so adorned lead a happy and famous life. For if Sappho plumed
herself so much on the beauty of her lyrical poetry as to write to a
certain rich woman, "You shall lie down in your tomb, nor shall there be
any remembrance of you, for you have no part in the roses of Pieria,"
how shall you not have a greater right to plume yourself on having a
part not in the roses but in the fruits which the Muses bring, and which
they freely bestow on those that admire learning and philosophy?[190]
[154] This tune is again alluded to by Plutarch in
"Quaestion. Convival.", p. 704, F. See also Clemens
Alexandrinus, "Paedagog." ii. p. 164, [Greek: A tais de
hippois mignumenais oion hymenaios epauleitai nomos
aulodias hippothoron touton keklekasin oi Mousikoi.]
[155] Peitho means Persuasion, and is represented as one
of the Graces by Hermes anax. See Pausanias, ix. 35.
[156] Compare the Proverb [Greek: Eikelos omphakizetai],
and Tibullus, iii. 5, 19: "Quid fraudare juvat vitem
crescentibus uvis?"
[157] Cf. Shakspere, "Romeo and Juliet," A. ii. Sc. vi.
9-15.
[158] Herodotus, i. 8.
[159] An allusion to the well-known Fable of AEsop, No.
82 in Halm's edition.
[160] This comparison of the mirror is beautifully used
by Keble in his "Christian Year:"
"Without a hope on earth to find
A mirror in an answering mind."
_Wednesday before Easter._
[161] Does this throw light on Esther, i. 10-12?
[162] By their patronage.
[163] "Republic," v. p. 462, C.
[164] By the power of sympathy. This is especially true
of eyes. Wyttenbach compares the Epigram in the
Anthology, i. 46. 9. [Greek: Kai gar dexion omma
kakoumenon ommati laio Pollaki tous idious antididosi
ponous.]
[165] Reading [Greek: kalon] with Hercher.
[166] The ancients hardly ever drank wine neat. Hence
the allusion. The symposiarch, or arbiter bibendi,
settled the proportions to be used.
[167] Compare the French proverb, "Le beau soulier
blesse souvent le pied."
[168] Thessaly was considered by the ancients famous for
enchantments and spells. So Juvenal, vi. 610, speaks of
"Thessala philtia," and see Horace, "Odes," i. 27. 21,
22; "Epodes," v. 45.
[169] Wyttenbach well compares the lines of Menander:--
[Greek: enest alethes philtron eugnomon tropos, touto
katakratein andros eiothen gune.]
[170] An allusion to Homer, "Iliad," xiv. 214-217.
[171] Called by the Romans "pronuba Juno." See Verg.
"AEneid," iv. 166; Ovid, "Heroides," vi. 43.
[172] See Pausanias, vi. 25. The statue was made of
ivory and gold.
[173] Compare Terence, "Hecyra," 201. "Uno animo omnes
socrus oderunt nurus." As to stepmotherly feelings, the
"injusta noverca" has passed into a proverb with all
nations. See for example Hesiod, "Works and Days," 823,
[Greek: allote metruie pelei hemere, allote meter].
[174] Wyttenbach compares Seneca's "Fidelem si putaveris
facies." "Ep." iii. p. 6.
[175] Euripides, "Medea," 190-198.
[176] Homer, "Iliad," xiv. 205, 209.
[177] See Mulier Parturiens, Phaedrus' "Fables," i. 18.
[178] Euripides, "Andromache," 930.
[179] Proverb. Cf. Horace, "Oleum adde camino," ii.
"Sat." iii. 321.
[180] See AEsop's Fables, No. 121. Halme. [Greek:
Drapetes] is the title. All readers of Plautus and
Terence know what a bugbear to slaves the threat of
being sent to the mill was. They would have to turn it
instead of horses, or other cattle.
[181] That is, _Yoking oxen for the plough_.
[182] Procreation of children was among the ancients
frequently called _Ploughing_ and _Sowing_. Hence the
allusions in this paragraph. So, too, Shakspere,
"Measure for Measure," Act i. Sc. iv. 41-44.
[183] The reference is to the rites of Cybele. See
Lucretius, ii. 618.
[184] See Erasmus, "Adagia." The French proverb is "La
nuit tous les chats sont gris."
[185] "Laws," p. 729, C.
[186] From the words of Andromache to Hector, "Iliad,"
vi. 429, 430.
[187] Theano was the wife of Pythagoras.
[188] See Livy, xxix. 14. Propertius, v. 11. 51, 52.
Ovid, "Fasti," iv. 305 sq.
[189] And mother of the Gracchi.
[190] Jeremy Taylor, in his beautiful sermon on "The
Marriage Ring," has borrowed not a few hints from this
treatise of Plutarch, as usual investing with a new
beauty whatever he borrows, from whatever source. He had
the classics at his fingers' end, and much of his unique
charm he owes to them. But he read them as a
philosopher, and not as a grammarian.
CONSOLATORY LETTER TO HIS WIFE.
Sec. I. Plutarch to his wife sends greeting. The messenger that you sent to
me to announce the death of our little girl seems to have missed his way
_en route_ for Athens; but when I got to Tanagra I heard the news from
my niece. I suppose the funeral has already taken place, and I hope
everything went off so as to give you least sorrow both now and
hereafter. But if you left undone anything you wished to do, waiting for
my opinion, and thinking your grief would then be lighter, be it without
ceremoniousness or superstition, both which things are indeed foreign to
your character.
Sec. II. Only, my dear wife, let us both be patient at this calamity. I
know and can see very clearly how great it is, but should I find your
grief too excessive, it would trouble me even more than the event
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