Delphi Complete Works of Lucian

by Lucian Samosata

  27. But why do we not pursue those pleasures that are mutual and bring equal delight to the passive and to the active partners? For, generally speaking, unlike irrational animals we do not find solitary existences acceptable, but we are linked by a sociable fellowship and consider blessings sweeter and hardships lighter when shared. Hence was instituted the table that is shared, and, setting before us the board that is the mediator of friendship, we mete out to our bellies the enjoyment due to them, not drinking Thasian wine, for example, by ourselves, or stuffing ourselves with expensive dishes on our own, but each man thinks pleasant what he enjoys along with another, and in sharing our pleasures we find greater enjoyment. Now men’s intercourse with women involves giving like enjoyment in return. For the two sexes part with pleasure only if they have had an equal effect on each other — unless we ought rather to heed the verdict of Tiresias that the woman’s enjoyment is twice as great as the man’s. And I think it honourable for men not to wish for a selfish pleasure or to seek to gain some private benefit by receiving from anyone the sum total of enjoyment, but to share what they obtain and to requite like with like. But no one could be so mad as to say this in the case of boys. No, the active lover, according to his view of the matter, departs after having obtained an exquisite pleasure, but the one outraged suffers pain and tears at first, though the pain relents somewhat with time and you will, men say, cause him no further discomfort, but of pleasure he has none at all. And, if I may make a rather far-fetched point, but one I should make as we are in the precinct of Aphrodite, a woman, Callicratidas, may be used like a boy, so that one can have enjoyment by opening up two paths to pleasure, but a male has no way of bestowing the pleasure a woman gives.

  28. Therefore, if even men like you, Callicratidas, can find satisfaction in women, let us males fence ourselves off from each other; but, if males find intercourse with males acceptable, henceforth let women too love each other. Come now, epoch of the future, legislator of strange pleasures, devise fresh paths for male lusts, but bestow the same privilege upon women, and let them have intercourse with each other just as men do. Let them strap to themselves cunningly contrived instruments of lechery, those mysterious monstrosities devoid of seed, and let woman lie with woman as does a man. Let wanton tribadism — that word seldom heard, which I feel ashamed even to utter — freely parade itself, and let our women’s chambers emulate Philaenis, disgracing themselves with Sapphic amours. And how much better that a woman should invade the provinces of male wantonness than that the nobility of the male sex should become effeminate and play the part of a woman!

  29. In the midst of this intense and impassioned speech Charicles stopped with a wild fierce glint in his eyes. It seemed to me that he was also regarding his speech as a ceremony of purification against love of boys. But I, laughing quietly and turning my eyes gently towards the Athenian, said, “It was to decide a sportive piece of fun, Callicratidas, that I expected to sit as umpire, but somehow or other thanks to Charicles’ vehemence I’ve been brought to face a more serious task. For he has shown an extraordinary degree of passion almost as though he were in the Areopagus contesting a case of murder or arson or indeed poisoning. Therefore the present moment, if any time ever did, demands that you should recall one of the speeches made to the people in the Pnyx and in this one speech of yours should expend all the resources of Athens, of Periclean persuasiveness and of the tongues of the ten orators which were marshalled against the Macedonians.”

  30. After waiting for a moment Callicratidas, who, judging from his expression, appeared to me to be most full of fight, began to discourse in his turn and said: “If the assembly and the law-courts were open to women and they could participate in politics, you would have been elected their general or their champion and they would have honoured you, Charicles, with bronze statues in the market-places. For hardly even those among them thought preeminent for wisdom could, if given full authority to speak, have spoken about themselves with such zeal, no, not even Telesilla, who armed herself against the Spartiates, and because of whom Ares is numbered at Argos among the gods of the women, no nor Sappho, the honey-sweet pride of Lesbos or Theano, that daughter of Pythagorean wisdom! Perhaps even Pericles could not have pleaded equally well for Aspasia. But, since it is not improper for men to speak on behalf of women, let us men also speak on behalf of men; and you, Aphrodite, be propitious. For we too honour your son, Eros.

  31. I thought that our merry contest had gone as far as jest allowed but, since Charicles in his discourse has been minded also to wax philosophical on behalf of women, I have gladly seized my opportunity; for love of males, I say, is the only activity combining both pleasure and virtue. For I would pray that near us, if it were possible, grew that plane-tree which once heard the words of Socrates, a tree more fortunate than the Academy and the Lyceum, the tree against which Phaedrus leaned, as we are told by that holy man endowed with more graces than any other. Perhaps like the oak at Dodona, that sent its sacred voice bursting forth from its branches, that tree itself, still remembering the beauty of Phaedrus, would have spoken in praise of love of boys. But that is impossible,

  “For in between there lies

  Many a shady mountain and the roaring sea,”

  and we are strangers cut off in a foreign land, and Cnidus gives Charicles the advantage. Nevertheless we shall not be overcome by fear and betray the truth.

  32. Only do you, heavenly spirit, lend me seasonable help, you kindly hierophant of the mysteries of friendship, Eros, who are no mischievous infant as painters light-heartedly portray you, but were already full-grown at your birth, when brought forth by the earliest source of all life. For you gave shape to everything out of dark confused shapelessness. As though you had removed a tomb burying the whole universe alike, you banished that chaos which enveloped it to the recesses of farthest Tartarus, where in truth, “Are gates of iron and thresholds of bronze,” so that, chained in an impregnable prison, it may be denied any return. Spreading bright light over gloomy night you became the creator of all things both with and without life. But compounding for mortals the special gift of harmony of mind, you united their hearts with the holy sentiment of friendship, so that goodwill might grow in souls still innocent and tender and come to perfect maturity.

  33. For marriage is a remedy invented to ensure man’s necessary perpetuity, but only love for males is a noble duty enjoined by a philosophic spirit. Anything cultivated for aesthetic reasons in the midst of abundance is accompanied with greater honour than things which require for their existence immediate need, and beauty is in every way superior to necessity. Thus, as long as human life remained unsophisticated and the daily struggle for existence left it no leisure for improving itself, men were content to limit themselves to bare necessities, and the urgency of their day did not allow them to discover the proper way to live. But, once pressing needs were at an end and the thoughts of each succeeding generation had been released from the shackles of necessity so that they had leisure ever to devise higher things, from that time the arts gradually began to develop. What this process was like we may judge from the more perfected of the crafts. Right from the moment of their birth the earliest men had to search for a remedy against their daily hunger, and, under the duress of immediate need, prevented by their helplessness from choosing what was better, fed on any chance herb, digging up tender roots and eating mostly the fruit of the oak. But after a time this was cast before brute animals, and the careful husbandmen discovered how to sow wheat and barley and saw these renew themselves every year. And not even a madman would maintain that the fruit of the oak is superior to the ear of grain.

  34. Moreover, did not men right from the start of human life, because they needed protection from the elements, skin wild beasts and clothe themselves in their woolly coats? And as refuges against the cold they thought of mountain caves or the dry hollows afforded by old roots or trees. Then, ever improving the imitative skill that started thus, they wove themselves cloaks of wool and built
themselves houses, and imperceptibly the crafts that concentrated on these things, being taught by time, replaced simple fabrics with ornate garments of greater beauty, and instead of cheap cottages they devised lofty mansions of expensive marble, and painted the native ugliness of their walls with the luxuriant dyes of colour. However each of these crafts and accomplishments has, after being mute and plunged in deep forgetfulness, gradually risen, as it were, to its own bright zenith after long being set. For each man made some discovery to hand on to his successor. Then each successive recipient, by adding to what he had already learnt, made good any deficiencies.

  35. Let no one expect love of males in early times. For intercourse with women was necessary so that our race might not utterly perish for lack of seed. But the manifold branches of wisdom and men’s desire for this virtue that loves beauty were only with difficulty to be brought to light by time which leaves nothing unexplored, so that divine philosophy and with it love of boys might come to maturity. Do not then, Charicles, again censure this discovery as worthless because it wasn’t made earlier, nor, because intercourse with women can be credited with greater antiquity than love of boys, must you think love of boys inferior. No, we must consider the pursuits that are old to be necessary, but assess as superior the later additions invented by human life when it had leisure for thought.

  36. For I came very close to laughing just now when Charicles was praising irrational beasts and the lonely life of Scythians. Indeed his excessive enthusiasm for the argument almost made him regret his Greek birth. For he did not hide his words in restrained tones like a man contradicting the thesis that he maintained, but with raised voice from the full depth of his throat says, “Lions, bears, boars do not love others of their own sort but are ruled by their urge only for the female. And what’s surprising in that? For the things which one would rightly choose as a result of thought, it is not possible for those that cannot reason to have because of their lack of intellect. For, if Prometheus or else some god had endowed each animal with a human mind, they would not be satisfied with a lonely life among the mountains, nor would they find their food in each other, but just like us they would have built themselves temples and, though each making his hearth the centre of his private life, they would live as fellow-citizens governed by common laws. Is it any wonder that, since animals have been condemned by nature not to receive from the bounty of Providence any of the gifts afforded by intellect, they have with all else also been deprived of desire for males? Lions do not have such a love, because they are not philosophers either. Bears have no such love, because they are ignorant of the beauty that comes from friendship. But for men wisdom coupled with knowledge has after frequent experiments chosen what is best, and has formed the opinion that love between males is the most stable of loves.

  37. Do not, therefore, Charicles, heap together courtesans’ tales of wanton living and insult our dignity with unvarnished language nor count Heavenly Love as an infant, but learn better about such things though it’s late in your life, and now at any rate, since you’ve never done so before, reflect in spite of all that Love is a twofold god who does not walk in but a single track or exert but a single influence to excite our souls; but the one love, because, I imagine, his mentality is completely childish, and no reason can guide his thoughts, musters with great force in the souls of the foolish and concerns himself mainly with yearnings for women. This love is the companion of the violence that lasts but a day and he leads men with unreasoning precipitation to their desires. But the other Love is the ancestor of the Ogygian age, a sight venerable to behold and hedged around with sanctity, and is a dispenser of temperate passions who sends his kindly breath into the minds of all. If we find this god propitious to us, we meet with a welcome pleasure which is blended with virtue. For in truth, as the tragic poet says, Love blows in two different ways, and the one name is shared by differing passions. For Shame too is a twofold goddess, with both a beneficial and a harmful role.

  Shame which to men doth mighty harm and mighty good.

  Nor yet are rivalries of but one sort; two kinds

  On earth there are; the one a man of sense would praise,

  The other’s to be blamed; for different is their heart.

  It need not surprise us, therefore, that passion has come to have the same name as virtue so that both unrestrained lust and sober affection are called Love.

  38. Charicles may ask if I therefore think marriage worthless and banish women from this life, and if so, how we humans are to survive. Indeed, as the wise Euripides says, it would be greatly to be desired if we had no intercourse with women but, in order to provide ourselves with heirs, we went to shrines and temples and bought children for gold and silver. For we are constrained by necessity that puts a heavy yoke on our shoulders and bids us obey her. Though therefore we should by use of reason choose what is beautiful, let our need yield to necessity. Let women be ciphers and be retained merely for child-bearing; but in all else away with them, and may I be rid of them. For what man of sense could endure from dawn onwards women who beautify themselves with artificial devices, women whose true form is unshapely, but who have extraneous adornments to beguile the unsightliness of nature?

  39. If at any rate one were to see women when they rise in the morning from last night’s bed, one would think a woman uglier than those beasts whose name it is inauspicious to mention early in the day. That’s why they closet themselves carefully at home and let no man see them. They’re surrounded by old women and a throng of maids as ugly as themselves who doctor their ill-favoured faces with an assortment of medicaments. For they do not wash off the torpor of sleep with pure clean water and apply themselves to some serious task. Instead numerous concoctions of scented powders are used to brighten up their unattractive complexions, and, as though in a public procession, each maid is entrusted with something different, with silver basins, ewers, mirrors, an array of boxes reminiscent of a chemist’s shop, and jars full of many a mischief, in which she marshals dentifrices and contrivances for blackening the eyelids.

  40. But most of their efforts are spent on dressing their hair. For some pass unfavourable Judgment on their own gifts from nature and, by means of pigments that can redden the hair to match the sun at noon, they dye their hair with a yellow bloom as they do coloured wool; those who do feel satisfied with their dark locks spend their husbands’ wealth on radiating from their hair almost all the perfumes of Arabia; they use iron instruments warmed in a slow flame to curl their hair perforce into woolly ringlets, and elaborately styled locks brought down to their eyebrows leave the forehead with the narrowest of spaces, while the tresses behind float proudly down to the shoulders.

  41. Next they turn to flower-coloured shoes that sink into their flesh and pinch their feet and to thin veils that pass for clothes so as to excuse their apparent nakedness. But everything inside these can be distinguished more clearly than their faces except for their hideously prominent breasts which they always carry about bound like prisoners. Need I recount the scandals still more extravagant than these? The Red Sea pearls worth many a talent that hang heavily from the ears, or the snakes round their wrists and arms, which I wish were real snakes instead of gold? Their heads are surrounded with crowns bearing a galaxy of Indian gems, and from their throats hang expensive necklaces, while gold has the misfortune to go right down to the tips of their toes, pinching any part of their ankles left naked — though it’s iron with which their legs should by rights be shackled at the ankles! When all their body has been tricked out with the deceptive beauty of a spurious comeliness, they redden their shameless cheeks by smearing on rouge so that its crimson tint may lend colour to their pale fat skins.

  42. How, then, do they behave after all these preparations? They leave the house immediately and visit every god that plagues married men, though the wretched husbands do not even know the very names of some of these, be they Coliades and Genetyllides or the Phrygian goddess and the rout that commemorates an unhappy love and ho
nours the shepherd-boy. Then follow secret initiations and suspicious all-female mysteries and, to put things bluntly, the corruption of their souls. But when they’ve finished with these, the moment they’re home they have long baths, and, by heavens, sumptuous meals accompanied by much coyness towards the men. For when they are surfeited with gorging the dishes in front of them, and even their throats can now hold no more, they score each of the foods before them with their fingertips to taste them. Meanwhile they talk of their nights, their heterosexual slumbers, and their beds fraught with femininity, on rising from which every man immediately needs a bath.

  43. These then are the signs of an orderly femalelife; but, should one wish to examine in detail the truth about the more offensive of womankind, he will curse Prometheus in real life and burst out with these words of Menander:

  “Then are not painters right when they depict

  Prometheus nailed to rocks? With brand of fire

  But naught else good can he be credited.

  But all the gods, methinks, hate what he did,

  In fashioning females, a cursed brood,

  I swear it by the honoured gods above.

  Suppose a man her weds and taketh her to wife,

  She’ll spend her time in evil furtive lusts

  Thenceforth and lovers who luxuriate

  On nuptial couch, and poisonings and spite,

  That bane and plague most terrible wherewith

  A woman all her lifetime doth consort.”

  Who goes in quest of boons like these? Who finds so wretched a life acceptable?

  44. We ought therefore to contrast with the evils associated with women the manly life of a boy. He rises at dawn from his unwed couch, washes away with pure water such sleep as still remains in his eyes and after securing his shirt and his mantle with pins at the shoulder “he leaves his father’s hearth with eyes bent down” and without facing the gaze of anyone he meets. He is followed by an orderly company of attendants and tutors, who grip in their hands the revered instruments of virtue, not the points of a toothed comb that can caress the hair nor mirrors that without artists’ aid reproduce the shapes confronting them, but behind him come many-leaved writing tablets or books that preserve the merit of ancient deeds, along with a tuneful lyre, should he have to go to a music master.