In like manner the sensual appetites were, theoretically at least, excluded from Platonic paiderastia. It was the divine in human flesh--"the radiant sight of the beloved," to quote from Plato; "the fairest and most intellectual of earthly bodies," to borrow a phrase from Maximus Tyrius--it was this which stimulated the Greek lover, just as a similar incarnation of divinity inspired the chivalrous lover, Thus we might argue that the Platonic conception of paiderastia furnishes a close analogue to the chivalrous devotion to women, due regard being paid to the differences which existed between the plastic ideal of Greek religion and the romantic ideal of mediæval Christianity. The one veiled adultery, the other sodomy. That in both cases the conception was rarely realised in actual life only completes the parallel.
To pursue this inquiry further is, however, alien to my task. It is enough to have indicated the psychological agreement in respect of purified affection which underlay two such apparently antagonistic ideals of passion. Few modern writers, when they speak with admiration or contempt of Platonic love, reflect that in its origin this phrase denoted an absorbing passion for young men. The Platonist, as appears from numerous passages in the Platonic writings, would have despised the Petrarchist as a vulgar
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woman-lover The Petrarchist would have loathed the Platonist as a moral Pariah. Yet Platonic love, in both its Attic and its mediæval manifestations, was one and the same thing.
The philosophical ideal of paiderastia in Greece which bore the names of Socrates and Plato met with little but contempt. Cicero, in a passage which has been echoed by Gibbon, remarked upon "the thin device of virtue and friendship which amused the philosophers of Athens." 1 Epicurus criticised the Stoic doctrine of paiderastia by sententiously observing that philosophers only differed from the common race of men in so far as they could better cloak their vice with sophistries. This severe remark seems justified by the opinions ascribed to Zeno by Plutarch, Sextus Empiricus, and Stobæus. 2 But it may be doubted whether the real drift of the Stoic theory of love, founded on Adiaphopha, was understood. Lucian, in the Amores, 3 makes Charicles, the advocate of love for women, deride the Socratic ideal as vain nonsense, while Theomnestus, the man of pleasure, to whom the dispute is finally referred, decides that the philosophers are either fools or humbugs. 4 Daphnæus, in the erotic dialogue of Plutarch, arrives at a similar conclusion; and, in an essay on education, the same author contends that no prudent father would allow the sages to enter into intimacy with his sons. 5 The discredit incurred by philosophers in the later age of Greek culture is confirmed by more than one passage in Petronius and Juvenal, while Athenæus especially inveighs against philosophic lovers as acting against nature. 6 The attempt of the Platonic Socrates to elevate without altering the morals of his race may therefore be said fairly to have failed. Like his republic, his love existed only in heaven.
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Footnotes
47:3 See Pol., ii. 7, 5; ii. 6, 5; ii. 9, 6.
48:1 The advocates of paiderastia in Greece tried to refute the argument from animals (Laws, p. 636 B: cp. Daphnis and Chloe, lib. 4, what Daphnis says to Gnathon) by, the following considerations: Man is not a lion or a bear. Social life among human beings is highly artificial; forms of intimacy p. 49 unknown to the natural state are therefore to be regarded, like clothing, cooking of food, houses, machinery, &c., as the invention and privilege of rational beings. See Lucian, Amores, 33, 34, 35, 36, for a full exposition of this argument. See also Mousa Paidiké, 245. The curious thing is that many animals are addicted to all sorts of so-called unnatural vices.
49:1 Maximus Tyrius, who, in the rhetorical analysis of love alluded to before (p. 172), has closely followed Plato, insists upon the confusion introduced by language, Dissert., xxiv. 3. Again, Dissert., xxvi. 4; and compare Dissert., xxv. 4.
49:2 This is the development of the argument in the Phædrus, where Socrates, improvising an improvement on the speech of Lysias, compares lovers to wolves and boys to lambs. See the passage in Max. Tyr., where Socrates is compared to a shepherd, the Athenian lovers to butchers, and the boys to lambs upon the mountains.
49:3 This again is the development of the whole eloquent analysis of love, as it attacks the uninitiated and unphilosophic nature, in the Phædrus.
50:1 Jowett's trans., p. 837.
51:1 Dissert., xxv. r. The same author pertinently remarks that, though the teaching of Socrates on love might well have been considered perilous, it formed no part of the accusations of either Anvtus or Aristophanes. Dissert., xxiv. 5-7.
52:1 This is a remark of Diotima's. Maximus Tyrius (Dissert., xxvi.
gives it a very rational interpretation. Nowhere else, he says, but in the human form, does the light of the divine beauty shine so clear. This is the word of classic art, the word of the humanities, to use a phrase of the Renaissance. it finds an echo in many beautiful sonnets of Michelangelo.
52:2 See Bergk., vol. ii. pp. 616-629, for a critique of the canon of the highly paiderastic epigrams which bear Plato's name and for their text.
53:1 I select the Vita Nuova as the most eminent example of mediaeval erotic mysticism.
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