symposium   

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.

But 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, there is

nothing of wantonness in her. Those who are inspired by this love turn

to the male, and delight in him who is the more valiant and

intelligent nature; any one may recognise the pure enthusiasts in

the very character of their attachments. For they love not boys, but

intelligent, beings whose reason is beginning to be developed, much

about the time at which their beards begin to grow. And in choosing

young men to be their companions, they mean to be faithful to them,

and pass their whole life in company with them, not to take them in

their inexperience, and deceive them, and play the fool with them,

or run away from one to another of them. But the love of young boys

should be forbidden by law, because their future is uncertain; they

may turn out good or bad, either in body or soul, and much noble

enthusiasm may be thrown away upon them; in this matter the good are a

law to themselves, and the coarser sort of lovers ought to be

restrained by force; as we restrain or attempt to restrain them from

fixing their affections on women of free birth. These are the

persons who bring a reproach on love; and some have been led to deny

the lawfulness of such attachments because they see the impropriety

and evil of them; for surely nothing that is decorously and lawfully

done can justly be censured.

Now here and in Lacedaemon the rules about love are perplexing,

but in most cities they are simple and easily intelligible; in Elis

and Boeotia, and in countries having no gifts of eloquence, they are

very straightforward; the law is simply in favour of these connexions,

and no one, whether young or old, has anything to say to their

discredit; the reason being, as I suppose, that they are men of few