rld. 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
parents forbid their sons to talk with their lovers, and place them
under a tutor's care, who is appointed to see to these things, and their
companions and equals cast in their teeth anything of the 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, as I was saying at first, the truth as I imagine is, that whether
such practices are honourable or whether they are dishonourable is not a
simple 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, inasmuch as he is not
even stable, because he loves a thing which is in itself unstable, and
therefore when the bloom of youth which he was desiring is over, he
takes wing and flies away, in spite of all his words and promises;
whereas the love of the noble disposition is life-long, for it becomes
one with the everlasting. The custom of our country would have both of
them proven well and truly, and would have us yield to the one sort of
lover and avoid the other, and therefore encourages some to pursue,
and others to fly; testing both the lover and beloved in contests and
trials, until they show to which of the two classes they respectively
belong. And this is the reason why, in the first place, a hasty
attachment is held to be dishonourable, because time is the true test of
this as of most other things; and secondly there is a dishonour in being
overcome by the love of money, or of wealth, or of political power,
whether a man is frightened into surrender by the loss of them, or,
having experienced the benefits of money and political corruption, is
unable to rise above the seductions of them. For none of these things
are of a permanent or lasting nature; not to mention that no generous
friendship ever sprang from them. There remains, then, only one way of
honourable attachment which custom allows in the beloved, and this is
the way of virtue; for as we admitted that any service which the lover
does to him is not to