Plato, Symposium

[183a] or effect to which one might be inclined, would bring one nothing in return but the sharpest reproach. For suppose that with the view of gaining money from another, or some office, or any sort of influence, a man should allow himself to behave as lovers commonly do to their favorites—pressing their suit with supplications and entreaties, binding themselves with vows, sleeping on doorsteps, and submitting to such slavery as no slave would ever endure—both the friends and the enemies of such a man would hinder his behaving in such fashion; [183b] for while the latter would reproach him with adulation and ill-breeding, the former would admonish him and feel ashamed of his conduct. But in a lover all such doings only win him favor: by free grant of our law he may behave thus without reproach, as compassing a most honorable end. Strangest of all, he alone in the vulgar opinion has indulgence from the gods when he forsakes the vow he has sworn; for the vow of love-passion, they say, is no vow.¹ So true it is that both gods [183c] and men have given absolute licence to the lover, as our Athenian law provides. Thus far, then, we have ground for supposing that here in our city both loving some one and showing affection to one's lover are held in highest honor. But it happens that fathers put tutors in charge of their boys when they are beloved, to prevent them from conversing with their lovers: the tutor has strict injunctions on the matter, and when they observe a boy to be guilty of such a thing his playmates and fellows reproach him, [183d] while his reproachers are not in their turn withheld or upbraided by their elders as speaking amiss; and from this it might rather be inferred that his behavior is held to be a great disgrace in Athens. Yet the truth of it, I think, is this: the affair is no simple thing; you remember we said that by itself it was neither noble nor base, but that it was noble if nobly conducted, and base if basely. To do the thing basely is to gratify a wicked man in a wicked manner: ‘nobly’ means having to do with a good man in a noble manner. By ‘wicked’ we mean that popular lover, who craves the body rather than the soul: [183e] as he is not in love with what abides, he himself is not abiding. As soon as the bloom of the body he so loved begins to fade he ‘flutters off and is gone,’² leaving all his speeches and promises dishonored: whereas the lover of a nature that is worthy abides throughout life,