on the other side, he is no less offended when any affront or
contempt is put upon him, as he is most kind and benign to those that
entertain him with proper respect. For neither does Jupiter surnamed
the Hospitable so severely prosecute injuries done to strangers and
suppliants, nor is Jupiter Genitalis so rigorous in accomplishing the
curses of parents disobeyed, as Love is to listen to the complaints of
injured lovers; being the scourger and punisher of proud, ill-natured,
and ill-bred people. For, not to mention Euxynthetus and Leucomantis,
at this day in Cyprus called the Peeper, ’tis a hundred to one but
you have heard of the punishment inflicted upon Gorgo the Cretan, not
much unlike to that of Leucomantis, only that Gorgo was turned into a
stone as she looked out of a window to see her love going to his grave.
With this Gorgo Asander fell in love, a young gentleman virtuous and
nobly descended, but reduced from a flourishing estate to extremity
of poverty. However, he did not think so meanly of himself but that,
being her kinsman, he courted this Gorgo for a wife, though she had
many suitors at the same time by reason of her great fortune; and he so
carried this business that, notwithstanding his numerous and wealthy
rivals, he had gained the good-will of all her guardians and nearest
relations....
21. Now as for those things which they say are the causes that beget
love, they are not peculiar to this or the other sex, but common to
both. For it cannot be that those images that enter into amorous
persons and whisk about from one part to another, by their various
forms moving and tickling the mass of atoms that slide into the seed,
can come from young boys, and that the same cannot come from young
women. But as to these noble and sacred remembrances with which the
soul is winged, recalling that same divine, real, and Olympic beauty,
what should hinder but that these may pass from boys and young men,
and also from virgins and young women, whenever a disposition chaste
and good-natured appears united with bloom of youth and grace of body?
For, as a handsome and well-made shoe shows the proportion of the foot
(as Ariston says), so they that have judgment in these matters can
discern the splendid, upright, and uncorrupted footsteps of a noble and
generous soul in beautiful forms and features, and bodies undefiled.
For, if a voluptuous person, who when the question was put to him,
To which are your hot passions most inclined,
Or to the male, or to the female kind?
answered thus,
’Tis the same thing to me
Where’er I beauty see,
was thought to have returned a proper and pertinent answer and one that
accorded with his passions, is it possible that a noble and generous
lover directs his amours not to loveliness and good-nature, but only to
the parts that distinguish the sex? For certainly a man that delights
in horses will no less value the mettle and swiftness of Podargus, than
of Aetha that was Agamemnon’s mare; and he that is a good huntsman does
not only delight in dogs, but mixes with his cry the bitches of Crete
and Laconia; and shall he that is a lover as well as of civil behavior
carry himself with an inequality more to one than to another, and make
a distinction, as of garments, between the love of men and women? But
some say that beauty is the flower of virtue. Will they then affirm,
that the female sex never blossoms nor makes any show of tendency to
virtue? It were absurd to think so. Therefore was Aeschylus in the
right when he said, that he could never mistake the fire in the eye of
a young woman who had once known a man. Now then are those signs and
marks of lasciviousness, wantonness, and impudence to be discovered
in the visages of women, and shall there be no light shining in their
faces for the discovery of modesty and chastity? Nay, shall there be
many such signs, and those apparent, and shall they not be able to
allure and provoke love? Both are contrary to reason, and dissonant
from truth. But every one of these things is common to both sexes, as
we have showed.
Now then, Daphnaeus, let us confute the reason that Zeuxippus has but
now alleged, by making love to be all one with inordinate desire that
hurries the soul to intemperance. Not that it is his opinion, but only
what he has frequently heard from men morose and no way addicted to
love. Of this class there are some who, marrying poor silly women for
the sake of some petty portion, and having nothing to do with them and
their money but to make them perpetual drudges in pitiful mechanic
employments, are every day brawling and quarrelling with them. Others,
more desirous of children than of wives, like cicadae that spill their
seed upon squills or some such like herb, discharge their lust in haste
upon the next they meet with; and having reaped the fruit they sought
for, bid marriage farewell or else regard it not at all, neither caring
to love nor to be beloved. And in my opinion, the words στέργειν and
στέργεσθαι, which signify _dearly to love_ and _dearly to be beloved
again_, differing but one letter from στέγειν, which signifies _to
contain_ or _endure_, seem to me to import and denote that mutual
kindness called conjugal, which is intermixed by time and custom with
necessity. But in that wedlock which love supports and inspires, in the
first place, as in Plato’s Commonwealth, there will be no such language
as “thine” and “mine.” For properly to speak, there is not community
of goods among all friends; but only where two friends, though severed
in body, yet have their souls joined and as it were melted together,
and neither desire to be two nor believe themselves to be separate
persons. And, in the second place, there will be that mutual respect
and reverence, which is the chiefest happiness of wedlock. Now as to
that respect that comes from without, carrying with it more force of
law than voluntary and reciprocal duty, or that comes by fear and shame,
And many other curbs, that loose desire
And lawless frisks of wanton heat require,[109]
these are always present with those who are coupled in matrimony.
Whereas in love there is so much continency, so much modesty, and so
much of loyal affection, that even if it happen upon an intemperate
and lascivious soul, it is thereby diverted from all other amours, by
cutting off all malapert boldness and bringing down the insolence of
imperious pride; instead of which it introduces modest bashfulness,
silence, and submission, and adorning it with decent and becoming
behavior, makes it for ever after the obedient observer of one lover.
Most certainly you have heard of that celebrated and highly courted
courtesan Lais, how her beauty inflamed all Greece, or rather how two
seas strove for her. This famous beauty, being seized with an ardent
affection for Hippolochus the Thessalian, leaving the Acrocorinthus, as
the poet describes it,