Banquet

And I aver that even in the case of Ganymede, it was not his person but his spiritual character that influenced Zeus to carry him up to Olympus. This is confirmed by his very name. Homer, you remember, has the words,

He joys to hear;[*](Nothing like the first expression, except the bare occurrence of γάνυται (he joys), is to be found anywhere in the extant Homeric poems. The second phrase, also, is not in these poems, although several different expressions much resembling it are to be seen in the Iliad, vii. 278, xvii. 325, xviii. 363, xxiv. 88, 282, 674 and the Odyssey, ii. 38, xi. 445, xix. 353, xx. 46. Either Xenophon’s memory is faulty or he is quoting from some of the lost epics.)

harbouring shrewd devices in his heart.

Or again, Niceratus, Homer pictures us Achilles looking upon Patroclus not as the object of his passion but as a comrade, and in this spirit signally avenging his death. So we have songs telling also how Orestes, Pylades, Theseus, Peirithous, and many other illustrious demi-gods wrought glorious deeds of valour side by side, not because they shared a common bed but because of mutual admiration and respect.

Moreover, take the splendid feats of the present day; would not a person discover that they are all done for glory’s sake by persons willing to endure hardship and jeopardy, rather than by those who are drifting into the habit of preferring pleasure to a good name? Yet Pausanias, the lover of the poet Agathon, has said in his defence of those who wallow in lasciviousness that the most valiant army, even, would be one recruited of lovers and their favourites!

For these, he said, would in his opinion be most likely to be prevented by shame from deserting one another,—a strange assertion, indeed, that persons acquiring an habitual indifference to censure and to abandoned conduct toward one another will be most likely to be deterred by shame from any infamous act.

But he went further and adduced as evidence in support of his position both the Thebans and the Eleans, alleging that this was their policy; he stated, in fine, that though sharing common beds they nevertheless assigned to their favourites places alongside themselves in the battle-line. But this is a false analogy; for such practices, though normal among them, with us are banned by the severest reprobation. My own view is that those who assign these posts in battle suggest thereby that they are suspicious that the objects of their love, if left by themselves, will not perform the duties of brave men.

In contrast to this, the Lacedaemonians, who hold that if a person so much as feels a carnal concupiscence he will never come to any good end, cause the objects of their love to be so consummately brave that even when arrayed with foreigners and even when not stationed in the same line with their lovers they just as surely feel ashamed to desert their comrades. For the goddess they worship is not Impudence but Modesty.

We could all come to one mind, I think, on the point I am trying to make, if we were to consider the question in this way: of two lads, the objects of the different types of love, which one would a person prefer to trust with his money, or his children, or to lay under the obligation of a favour? My own belief is that even the person whose love is founded on the loved one’s physical beauty would in all these cases rather put his trust in him whose loveliness is of the spirit.