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 talk-
ing 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, frighten-
ing 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
ON LOVE. 31
marrying a widow, but, neglecting the opinions of every-
body 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 * of his lovers. Pisias objected to the marriage, and
upbraided Anthemion with throwing the youth away on
Ismenodora. Anthemion replied that it was not well in
Pisias, being a good fellow in other respects, to imitate
depraved lovers by shutting out his friend from house and
marriage and wealth, merely that he might enjoy the sight
of him as long as possible naked and in all his virgin
bloom at the wrestling-schools.
§ III. To avoid getting estranged by provoking one
another on the question, they came and chose our father
and his companions as umpires on the matter. And of the
other friends, as if by concerted arrangement, 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 forgetful-
ness 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 ' unfold-
ing its swift wings,' flew over the sea from Cilicia to
Athens, merely to gaze at and saunter about with handsome
boys. For that was the original reason, doubtless, of
Protogenes' journey abroad."
§ IV. And some laughter ensuing, Protogenes replied,
*' Do I really seem to you now to be hostile to love, and
not to be fighting for love against ungovernable lust,
which with most disgraceful acts and emotions assumes
the most honourable of titles ? " Whereupon Daphnaeus,
"Do you call the marriage and union of man and woman
most disgraceful, than which no holier tie exists nor ever
^ It is difficult to know what the best English word here is. Yrora
the sly thrust in § ix. Pisias was evidently grey. I have therefore
selected the word gravest. But the most aiistere, the most sensible, the
most solid, the most sedate, all might express the Greek word also. Let
the reader take which he likes best.
32 Plutarch's morals.
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 ; ^ 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.^ But as
nature leads one to eat and drink moderately and suflB.-
ciently, and excess in this is called gluttony and gorman-
dizing, 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.' ^ 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,*
taking us to the woman's side of the house : or rather as
'■ 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.
^ That is, from interested and selfish motives.
3 On Lais and Aristippus see Cicero, " Ad. Fam.," ix. 26.
^ 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.
ON LOYE. 33
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 fisli 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."
§ Y. Protogenes was intending to go on at greater length,
when Daphneeus 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 ^schylus, ' You did not disdain the
honour of the thighs, thankless one after all my fre-
quent kisses.' ^ 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
^ Fragment of ^schylus. See Athenaeus, xiii. p. 602, E, which
explains the otherwise obscure allusion,
D
34 plutakch's morals.
* without any favours' :^ 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 mar-
riage 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 dispu-
tatious 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.' ^
* 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.
* dmopa is so used also in ^Esch. "Suppl.," 998, 1015. See also
ON LOVE. 35
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 dis-
gusting."
§ VI. At the conclusion of this speech, it was clear that
Pisias was vexed and indignant with Daphnseus ; and after
a moment's silence he began : " 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 ^ 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 jours rouses the Argive host,'
and of a verity Pisias makes us to side with Daphngeus
by his extravagant language, charging man-iage with being
a loveless intercourse, and one that has no participation in
divine friendship, although we can see that it is an inter-
course, if erotic persuasion and favour fail, that cannot be
restrained by shame and fear as by bit and bridle." There-
upon Pisias said, " I care little about his arguments ; but
I see that Daphnseus 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
" Athenfeus," 608, F. Daphngeus implies these very nice gentlemen,
like the same class described by Juvenal, " Curios simulant et Baccha-
nalia vivunt."
^ I omit Kai KOTTiSag as a gloss or explanation of the old reading
fiuKsXeXa instead of narpvXna. Nothing can be made of kuI Komdag in
the context.
36 pltjtaech's morals.
us, lie 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."
§ VII. " I say then," continued Pisias, " and give it out
boldly, as far as lam concerned, let every woman have a lover;
but we ought to guard against giving the wealth of Ismeno-
dora 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 alto-
gether : but if they remain, it would be better to be bound
by golden fetters, as in Ethiopia, than to a woman's
wealth."
§ 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 : ' *
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
> *' Works and Days," 606-608.
ON LOVE.
37
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."
§ IX. When Protogenes had done speaking, my father
said, " Do you see, Anthemion, that they force us to inter-
vene 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,^ 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 intoler-
able tyrants, Syrian flute-girls and ballet-dancers, as Aris-
tonica, and QCnanthe with her tambourine, and Agatho-
clea, who have lorded it over kings' diadems.^ 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
^ 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, Keiske, and
Diibner. I mention this here once for all, for it is unnecessary in a
translation to minutely specify the various readings on evei-y occasion.
I am not editing the "Moralia."
'^ '' l)e CEnantha et Agathoclea, v. Polyb. excerpt. I. xr." — Eciske.
38 Plutarch's morals.
Ninns 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 I^inus 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 ^ 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 un-
consciously 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,'^ 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 dis-
cerning their loss of beauty these mares lose their self-respect
and allow themselves to be covered by asses. ^ 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. Anti-
gonus indeed wrote to his officer who had garrisoned
Munychia'* 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-con-
^ Thespiae. The alhision is to Phryne. See Pausanias, ix. 27; x. 15.
2 Peading with Wyttenbach, wairtp daKrvXiov SaKTvXov hxvov, dig
^ Perhaps cur = coward, was originally cur-tail.
* One of tlie three ports at Athens. See Pausanias, i. 1.
ON LOVE. 39
trol and good sense, and bj 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 pro-
creation 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 in-
equality of age in marriages, seeing that he gave his own
wife Megara in marriage to lolaus, though he was only
sixteen and she three- and- thirty." ^
§ 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
1 lolaus was the nephew of Hercules, and was associated with him in
many of his Labours. See Pausanias, i. 19 ; vii. 2 ; viii. 14, 45.
40 , Plutarch's morals.
match, bat only stood in awe of Ins 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 ^ 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 accustomedregularly 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,^ 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 neighbour-
hood of Ismenodora's house, and there stood in groups
talking and disputing about what had happened.
§ 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 feehngs."
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 ridicu-
^ I read awoapi^ovraQ. The general reading avvepwvTag will hardly
do here. Wyttenbach suggests (Tweapi^ovrag.
'■^ What the SifSoXla was is not quite clear. I have supposed a jersey.
ON LOVE. 41
lous 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 ? ^ 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