is capable of combining good and evil in a degree beyond what we can easily conceive. In imaginative persons, especially, the God and beast in man seem to part asunder more than is natural in a well-regulated mind. The Platonic Socrates (for of the real Socrates this may be doubted: compare his public rebuke of Critias for his shameful love of Euthydemus in Xenophon,
Memorabilia I 2, 29, 30) does not regard the greatest evil of Greek life as a thing not to be spoken of; but it has a ridiculous element (Plato’s
“Symposium” 214), and is a subject for irony, no less than for moral reprobation (compare Plato’s
“Symposium” 218 D, E). It is also used as a figure of speech which no one interpreted literally (compare Xenophon
Symposium 4, 57). Nor does Plato feel any repugnance, such as would be felt in modern times, at bringing his great master and hero into connection with nameless crimes. He is contented with representing him as a saint, who has won “the Olympian victory” over the temptations of human nature. The fault of taste, which to us is so glaring and which was recognized by the Greeks of a later age (Athenaeus
XI 114), was not perceived by Plato himself. We are still more surprised to find that the philosopher is incited to take the first step in his upward progress (
“Symposium” 210 A) by the beauty of young men and boys, which was alone capable of inspiring the modern feeling of romance in the Greek mind. The passion of love took the spurious form of an enthusiasm for the ideal of beauty—a worship as of some godlike image of an Apollo or Antinous. But the love of youth when not depraved was a love of virtue and modesty as well as of beauty, the one being the expression of the other; and in certain Greek states, especially at Sparta and Thebes, the honourable attachment of a youth to an elder man was a part of his education. The “army of lovers and their beloved who would be invincible if they could be united by such a tie” (
“Symposium” 178 and following), is not a mere fiction of Plato’s, but seems actually to have existed at Thebes in the days of Epaminondas and Pelopidas, if we may believe writers cited anonymously by Plutarch, “Pelopidas Vita” 18, 19. It is observable that Plato never in the least degree excuses the depraved love of the body (compare
“Charmides” 155;
Republic V 468 B, C;
Laws VIII 841 and following;
“Symposium” 211 D; and once more Xenophon,
Memorabilia I 2, 29, 30), nor is there any Greek writer of mark who condones or approves such connections. But owing partly to the puzzling nature of the subject (
182 A, B) these friendships are spoken of by Plato in a manner different from that customary among ourselves. To most of them we should hesitate to ascribe, any more than to the attachment of Achilles and Patroclus in Homer, an immoral or licentious character. There were many, doubtless, to whom the love of the fair mind was the noblest form of friendship (
Republic III 402 D), and who deemed the friendship of man with man to be higher than the love of woman, because altogether separated from the bodily appetites. The existence of such attachments may be reasonably attributed to the inferiority and seclusion of woman, and the want of a real family or social life and parental influence in Hellenic cities; and they were encouraged by the practice of gymnastic exercises, by the meetings of political clubs, and by the tie of military companionship. They were also an educational institution: a young person was specially entrusted by his parents to some elder friend who was expected by them to train their son in manly exercises and in virtue. It is not likely that a Greek parent committed him to a lover, any more than we should to a schoolmaster, in the expectation that he would be corrupted by him, but rather in the hope that his morals would be better cared for than was possible in a great household of slaves.
It is difficult to adduce the authority of Plato either for or against such practices or customs, because it is not always easy to determine whether he is speaking of “the heavenly and philosophical love, or of the coarse Polyhymnia”: and he often refers to this (e.g. in the “Symposium”) half in jest, yet “with a certain degree of seriousness.” We observe that they entered into one part of Greek literature, but not into another, and that the larger part is free from such associations. Indecency was an element of the ludicrous in the old Greek Comedy, as it has been in other ages and countries. But effeminate love was always condemned as well as ridiculed by the Comic poets; and in the New Comedy the allusions to such topics have disappeared. They seem to have been no longer tolerated by the greater refinement of the age. False sentiment is found in the Lyric and Elegiac poets; and in mythology “the greatest of the Gods” (Republic III 388 B) is not exempt from evil imputations. But the morals of a nation are not to be judged of wholly by its literature. Hellas was not necessarily more corrupted in the days of the Persian and Peloponnesian wars, or of Plato and the Orators, than England in the time of Fielding and Smollett, or France in the nineteenth century. No one supposes certain French novels to be a representation of ordinary French life. And the greater part of Greek literature, beginning with Homer and including the tragedians, philosophers, and, with the exception of the Comic poets (whose business was to raise a laugh by whatever means), all the greater writers of Hellas
