yet these philosophers and poets--who, as everywhere, _must
have been far above the emotional level of their countrymen in
general_--knew nothing of romantic love. What makes this the more
remarkable is that, so far as their minds were concerned, they were
quite capable of experiencing such a feeling. Indeed, they were
actually familiar with the psychic and altruistic ingredients of love;
sympathy, devotion, self-sacrifice, affection, are sometimes
manifested in their dramas and stories when dealing with the love
between parents and children, brothers and sisters, or pairs of
friends like Orestes and Pylades. And strangest of all, they actually
had a kind of romantic love, which, except for one circumstance, is
much like modern romantic love.

Euripides knew this kind of romantic love. Among the fragments that
remain to us of his lost tragedies is one from _Dictys_, in which
occurs this sentiment:

"He was my friend, and never did love lead me to folly
or to Cypris. Yes, there is another kind of love, love
for the soul, honorable, continent, and good. Surely
men should have passed a law that only the chaste and
self-contained should love, and Cypris [Venus] should
have been banished."

Now it is very interesting to note that Euripides was a friend of
Socrates, who often declared that his philosophy was the science of
love, and whose two pupils, Xenophon and Plato, elucidated this
science in several of their works. In Xenophon's _Symposium_
Critobulus declares that he would rather be blind to everything else
in the world than not to see his beloved; that he would rather _give_
all he had to the beloved than _receive_ twice the amount from
another; rather be the beloved's slave than free alone; rather work
and dare for the beloved than live alone in ease and security. For, he
continues, the enthusiasm which beauty inspires in lovers

"makes them more generous, more eager to exert
themselves, and more ambitious to overcome dangers,
nay, it makes them purer and more continent, causing
them to avoid even that to which the strongest appetite
urges them."

Several of Plato's dialogues, especially the _Symposium_ and
_Phaedrus_, also bear witness to the fact that the Socratic conception
of love resembled modern romantic love in its ideal of purity and its
altruistic impulses. Especially notable in this respect are the
speeches of Phaedrus and Pausanius in the _Sympo