Page:The Dialogues of Plato v. 1.djvu/574

 

 

(Symp. 210 A) by the beauty of young men and boys, which Symposium Introduction was alone capable of inspiring the modern feeling of romance in the Greek mind. The passion of love took the spurious form of an enthusiasm for the ideal of beauty—a worship as of some godlike image of an Apollo or Antinous. But the love of youth when not depraved was a love of virtue and modesty as well as of beauty, the one being the expression of the other; and in certain Greek states, especially at Sparta and Thebes, the honour- able attachment of a youth to an elder man was a part of his education. The 'army of lovers and their beloved who would be invincible if they could be united by such a tie ' (Symp. 178 ff.), is not a mere fiction of Plato's, but seems actually to have existed at Thebes in the days of Epaminondas and Pelopidas, if we may believe writers cited anonymously by Plutarch, Pelop. Vit. 18, 19. It is observable that Plato never in the least degree excuses the depraved love of the body (cp. Charm. 155 ; Rep. v, 468 B, C ; Lawsviii. 841 ff. ; Symp. 211 D ; and once more Xenophon, Mem. i. 2, 29, 30), nor is there any Greek writer of mark who condones or approves such connexions. But owing partly to the puzzling nature of the subject (182 A, B) these friendships are spoken of by Plato in a manner different from that customary among ourselves. To most of them we should hesitate to ascribe, any more than to the attachment of Achilles and Patroclus in Homer, an immoral or licentious character. There were many, doubtless, to whom the love of the fair mind was the noblest form of friendship (Rep. iii. 402 D), and who deemed the friendship of man with man to be higher than the love of woman, because altogether separated from the bodily appetites. The existence of such attachments may be reasonably attributed to the inferiority and seclusion of woman, and the want of a real family or social life and parental influence in Hellenic cities; and they were encouraged by the practice of gymnastic exercises, by the meetings of political clubs, and by the tie of military companionship. They were also an educational institution : a young person was specially entrusted by his parents to some elder friend who was expected by them to train their son in manly exercises and in virtue. It is not likely that a Greek parent committed him to a lover, anymore than we should to a schoolmaster, in the expectation that he

would be corrupted by him, but rather in the hope that his morals