"Hear
me," said my father, "for the heavenly phenomenon compels us so to
speak. The rainbow[127] is, I suppose, a reflection caused by the sun's
rays falling on a moist cloud, making us think the appearance is in the
cloud. Similarly erotic fancy in the case of noble souls causes a
reflection of the memory, from things which here appear and are called
beautiful, to what is really divine and lovely and felicitous and
wonderful. But most lovers pursuing and groping after the semblance of
beauty in boys and women, as in mirrors,[128] can derive nothing more
certain than pleasure mixed with pain. And this seems the love-delirium
of Ixion, who instead of the joy he desired embraced only a cloud, as
children who desire to take the rainbow into their hands, clutching at
whatever they see. But different is the behaviour of the noble and
chaste lover: for he reflects on the divine beauty that can only be
felt, while he uses the beauty of the visible body only as an organ of
the memory, though he embraces it and loves it, and associating with it
is still more inflamed in mind. And so neither in the body do they sit
ever gazing at and desiring this light, nor after death do they return
to this world again, and skulk and loiter about the doors and
bedchambers of newly-married people, disagreeable ghosts of
pleasure-loving and sensual men and women, who do not rightly deserve
the name of lovers. For the true lover, when he has got into the other
world and associated with beauties as much as is lawful, has wings and
is initiated and passes his time above in the presence of his Deity,
dancing and waiting upon him, until he goes back to the meadows of the
Moon and Aphrodite, and sleeping there commences a new existence. But
this is a subject too high for the present occasion. However, it is with
Love as with the other gods, to borrow the words of Euripides, 'he
rejoices in being honoured by mankind,'[129] and _vice versa_, for he is
most propitious to those that receive him properly, but visits his
displeasure on those that affront him. For neither does Zeus as god of
Hospitality punish and avenge any outrages on strangers or suppliants,
nor as god of the family fulfil the curses of parents, as quickly as
Love hearkens to lovers unfairly treated, being the chastiser of boorish
and haughty persons. Why need I mention the story of Euxynthetus and
Leucomantis, the latter of whom is called The Peeping Girl to this day
in Cyprus? But perhap