Plutarch's Morals. Plutarch
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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, Daphnæus, 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 στέργειν the other στέγειν, 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."
§ 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
§ 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 Pheræ. 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 Arma146 to Aphrodite, nor Homer in giving the name of friendship147 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