Plutarch on Worldly versus Divine Love

Plutarch, John Philips (T) · Living the Life Series · 40 pages

From Plutarch's Morals in the Goodwin edition, in John Philips's translation, forty pages — the longest of the six Plutarch pieces in this section — opened by a train of thoughts summarising the whole dialogue. The scene is laid near Thespiæ on the slope of Mount Helicon, the speakers being Plutarch and several friends.

The occasion is a particular case rather than an abstract question, which is what gives the dialogue its liveliness. A match has been projected between Ismenodora, a chaste, noble and rich widow, and Baccho, a beautiful young man, both of Thespiæ; opinion is divided on the propriety of it, chiefly because of the disparity in age and outward condition. From this the discussion opens out into the nature and foundation of love as it actually exists in the world — whether it springs merely from the desire of carnal gratification or from some higher impulse. Two speakers take opposed and equally forceful positions, one maintaining that genuine love is that for beautiful boys and condemning the love of women, the other condemning male converse as contrary to nature, of recent origin and nourished by the scenes of the palæstra, and arguing that where Venus is not present there is no real love. The objection to the marriage itself is that it would make Baccho dependent on his wife; Plutarch advocates the match, observing that men have sometimes married wives who held them in subjection but came to it by their own weakness, and that there may be positive advantage in a wife older than oneself on account of her superior wisdom. The dialogue is then interrupted by news that Ismenodora and her friends have got Baccho into her house and are holding him there.

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