le question; they are
honourable to him who follows them honourably, dishonourable to him
who follows them dishonourably. There is dishonour in yielding to
the evil, or in an evil manner; but there is honour in yielding to
the good, or in an honourable manner. Evil is the vulgar lover who
loves the body rather than the soul, and who is inconstant because
he is a lover of the inconstant, and, therefore, when the bloom of
youth, which he was desiring, is over, takes wing and flies away,
in spite of all his words and promises; whereas the love of the
noble mind, which is one with the unchanging, is lifelong."

Pausanias then proceeds, at considerable length, to describe how the
customs of Athens required deliberate choice and trial of character as a
condition of honourable love; how it repudiated hasty and ephemeral
attachments, and engagements formed with the object of money-making or
political aggrandisement; how love on both sides was bound to be
disinterested, and what accession both of dignity and beauty the passion
of friends obtained from the pursuit of philosophy, and from the
rendering of mutual services upon the path of virtuous conduct.

This sufficiently indicates, in general terms, the moral atmosphere in
which Greek love flourished at Athens. In an earlier part of his speech
Pausanias, after dwelling upon the distinction between the two kinds of
Aphrodite, heavenly and vulgar, describes the latter in a way which
proves that the love of boys was held to be ethically superior to that
of women.[94]

"The Love who is the offspring of the common Aphrodite is
essentially common, and has no discrimination, being such as the
meaner sort of men feel, and is apt to be of women as well as of
youths, and is of the body rather than the soul; the most foolish
beings are the objects of this love, which desires only to gain an
end, but never thinks of accomplishing the end nobly, and therefore
does good and evil quite indiscriminately. The goddess who is his
mother is far younger than the other, and she was born of the union
of the male and female, and partakes of both."

Then he turns to the Uranian love.

"The offspring of the heavenly Aphrodite is derived from a mother
in whose birth the female has no part. She is from the male only;
this is that love which is of youths, and the goddess being older,
has nothi