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AUTOB. Now then, Daphnaeus, let us confute the reason that Zeuxippus has but now alleged, by making love to be all one with inordinate desire that hurries the soul to intemperance. Not that it is his opinion, but only what he has frequently heard from men morose and no way addicted to love. Of this class there are some who, marrying poor silly women for the sake of some petty portion, and having nothing to do with them and their money but to make them perpetual drudges in pitiful mechanic employments, are every day brawling and quarrelling with them. Others, more desirous of children than of wives, like cicadae that spill their seed upon squills or some such like herb, discharge their lust in haste upon the next they meet with; and having reaped the fruit they sought for, bid marriage farewell or else regard it not at all, neither caring to love nor to be beloved. And in my opinion, the words στέργειν and στέργεσθαι, which signify dearly to love and dearly to be beloved again, differing but one letter from στέγειν, which signifies to contain or endure, seem to me to import and denote that mutual kindness called conjugal, which is intermixed by time and custom with necessity. But in that wedlock which love supports and inspires, in the first place, as in Plato’s Commonwealth, there will be no such language as thine and mine. For properly to speak, there is not community of goods among all friends; but only where two friends, though severed in body, yet have their souls joined and as it were melted together, and neither desire to be two nor believe themselves to be separate persons. And, in the second place, there will be that mutual respect and reverence, which is the chiefest happiness of wedlock. Now as to that respect that comes from without, carrying with it more force of law than voluntary and reciprocal duty, or that comes by fear and shame, And many other curbs, that loose desire And lawless frisks of wanton heat require,Sophocles, Frag. 784.
