Symposium | Page 4

authority of the poets; secondly upon the benefits which love gives
to man. The greatest of these is the sense of honour and dishonour. The
lover is ashamed to be seen by the beloved doing or suffering any
cowardly or mean act. And a state or army which was made up only of
lovers and their loves would be invincible. For love will convert the
veriest coward into an inspired hero.
And there have been true loves not only of men but of women also.
Such was the love of Alcestis, who dared to die for her husband, and in
recompense of her virtue was allowed to come again from the dead. But
Orpheus, the miserable harper, who went down to Hades alive, that he
might bring back his wife, was mocked with an apparition only, and the
gods afterwards contrived his death as the punishment of his
cowardliness. The love of Achilles, like that of Alcestis, was
courageous and true; for he was willing to avenge his lover Patroclus,
although he knew that his own death would immediately follow: and
the gods, who honour the love of the beloved above that of the lover,
rewarded him, and sent him to the islands of the blest.
Pausanias, who was sitting next, then takes up the tale:--He says that
Phaedrus should have distinguished the heavenly love from the earthly,
before he praised either. For there are two loves, as there are two
Aphrodites--one the daughter of Uranus, who has no mother and is the
elder and wiser goddess, and the other, the daughter of Zeus and Dione,
who is popular and common. The first of the two loves has a noble
purpose, and delights only in the intelligent nature of man, and is
faithful to the end, and has no shadow of wantonness or lust. The

second is the coarser kind of love, which is a love of the body rather
than of the soul, and is of women and boys as well as of men. Now the
actions of lovers vary, like every other sort of action, according to the
manner of their performance. And in different countries there is a
difference of opinion about male loves. Some, like the Boeotians,
approve of them; others, like the Ionians, and most of the barbarians,
disapprove of them; partly because they are aware of the political
dangers which ensue from them, as may be seen in the instance of
Harmodius and Aristogeiton. At Athens and Sparta there is an apparent
contradiction about them. For at times they are encouraged, and then
the lover is allowed to play all sorts of fantastic tricks; he may swear
and forswear himself (and 'at lovers' perjuries they say Jove laughs'); he
may be a servant, and lie on a mat at the door of his love, without any
loss of character; but there are also times when elders look grave and
guard their young relations, and personal remarks are made. The truth
is that some of these loves are disgraceful and others honourable. The
vulgar love of the body which takes wing and flies away when the
bloom of youth is over, is disgraceful, and so is the interested love of
power or wealth; but the love of the noble mind is lasting. The lover
should be tested, and the beloved should not be too ready to yield. The
rule in our country is that the beloved may do the same service to the
lover in the way of virtue which the lover may do to him.
A voluntary service to be rendered for the sake of virtue and wisdom is
permitted among us; and when these two customs--one the love of
youth, the other the practice of virtue and philosophy--meet in one,
then the lovers may lawfully unite. Nor is there any disgrace to a
disinterested lover in being deceived: but the interested lover is doubly
disgraced, for if he loses his love he loses his character; whereas the
noble love of the other remains the same, although the object of his
love is unworthy: for nothing can be nobler than love for the sake of
virtue. This is that love of the heavenly goddess which is of great price
to individuals and cities, making them work together for their
improvement.
The turn of Aristophanes comes next; but he has the hiccough, and
therefore proposes that Eryximachus the physician shall cure him or
speak in his turn. Eryximachus is ready to do both, and after
prescribing for the hiccough, speaks as follows:--

He agrees with Pausanias in maintaining that there are two kinds of
love; but his art has led him to the further conclusion that the empire of
this double love extends over all things, and is to be found in animals
and plants as well