t in any despotic states, he proceeds to
Athens.

"There is yet a more excellent way of legislating about them, which
is our own way; but this, as I was saying, is rather perplexing.
For observe that open loves are held to be more honourable than
secret ones, and that the love of the noblest and highest, even if
their persons are less beautiful than others, is especially
honourable. Consider, too, how great is the encouragement which all
the world gives to the lover; neither is he supposed to be doing
anything dishonourable; but if he succeeds he is praised, and if he
fail he is blamed. And in the pursuit of his love, the custom of
mankind allows him to do many strange things, which philosophy
would bitterly censure if they were done from any motive of
interest or wish for office or power. He may pray and entreat, and
supplicate and swear, and be a servant of servants, and lie on a
mat at the door; in any other case friends and enemies would be
equally ready to prevent him, but now there is no friend who will
be ashamed of him and admonish him, and no enemy will charge him
with meanness or flattery; the actions of a lover have a grace
which ennobles them, and custom has decided that they are highly
commendable, and that there is no loss of character in them; and
what is strangest of all, he only may swear or forswear himself
(this is what the world says), and the gods will forgive his
transgression, for there is no such thing as a lover's oath. Such
is the entire liberty which gods and men have allowed the lover,
according to the custom which prevails in our part of the world.
From this point of view a man fairly argues that in Athens to love
and to be loved is held to be a very honourable thing. But when
there is another regime, and parents forbid their sons to talk with
their lovers, and place them under a tutor's care, and their
companions and equals cast in their teeth anything of this sort
which they may observe, and their elders refuse to silence the
reprovers, and do not rebuke them; any one who reflects on all this
will, on the contrary, think that we hold these practices to be
most disgraceful. But the truth, as I imagine, and as I said at
first, is, that whether such practices are honourable or whether
they are dishonourable is not a simp