Symposium

of both female and male. But the Love of the Heavenly comes from a goddess who, first, has no share of female but only of male — and this is the love of boys — and then is older, having no portion of insolence; and so those whom this love inspires turn to the male, cherishing what is by nature stronger and has more sense. And one could recognize, even within pederasty¹ itself, those who are moved purely 181d by this love; for they are not in love with boys, but with boys when they are already beginning to have sense, and this comes near the time the beard grows. For those who begin to be in love from that point are prepared, I think, to be together all their life and to share their life in common, and not to deceive him, taking him in his folly as a youth, and then laugh at him and be gone, running off to another. There ought to have been a law,² too, against being in love with 181e boys, so that much earnestness would not be spent on what is uncertain; for the end of boys is uncertain, where it ends up in vice or virtue, of soul and of body. Now good men lay down this law for themselves willingly, but these common lovers too ought to be compelled to something of the kind, just as we compel them, 182a so far as we can, not to be in love with free-born women. For these are the ones who have brought on the reproach too, so that some dare to say that it is shameful to gratify lovers; and they say it looking at these men, seeing their untimeliness and injustice, since surely no thing done in an orderly way at least, and lawfully,³ could justly bring blame.

“And indeed the law about love in the other cities is easy to understand, for it is defined simply; but the law here 182b and in Lacedaemon is intricate. For in Elis and among the Boeotians,⁴ and where men are not wise in speaking, it is laid down by law simply