Eros

Firstly, blackwinged Night laid a germless egg in the bosom of the infinite deeps of Erebus, and from this, after the revolution of long ages, sprang the graceful Eros with his glittering golden wings, swift as the whirlwinds of the tempest.

First of all, Victory flies with golden wings, Eros is undoubtedly winged too, and Iris is compared by Homer to a timorous dove.

That of the Immortals did not exist until Eros had brought together all the ingredients of the world, and from their marriage Heaven, Ocean, Earth and the imperishable race of blessed gods sprang into being.

This very Eros, who is said to be among the most ancient of the gods, no one honoured before Charmus seized a certain youth and set up an altar in the Academy as a thank-offering for a lust brought to fulfilment;

thus a man who has bought both Stichus and Eros may state in his Demonstratio, ‘Whereas I bought of you the slave Eros,’ and sue for Stichus by another formula, because it is true that the purchaser of both is also the purchaser of each;

if he is entitled, for instance, to Stichus and claims Eros, or if he is entitled by stipulation and alleges in the intentio that he is entitled to have the object made over to him under a will, or if a cognitor or procurator claim to have the object made over to him in his own right instead of in the right of his principal.

Sed sunt qui putant minus recte conprehendi, ut qui forte Stichum et Erotem emerit, recte uideatur ita demonstrare qvod ego de te hominem erotem emi, et si uelit, de Sticho alia formula agat, quia uerum est eum qui duos emerit singulos quoque emisse;

In truth at first Chaos came to be, but next wide-bosomed Earth, the ever-sure foundation of all the deathless ones who hold the peaks of snowy Olympus, and dim Tartarus in the depth of the wide-pathed Earth, and Eros (Love), fairest among the deathless gods, who unnerves the limbs and overcomes the mind and wise counsels of all gods and all men within them.

And with her went Eros, and comely Desire followed her at her birth at the first and as she went into the assembly of the gods.

for, I take it, next there are among them feasts and carousals and revellings and courtesans and all the doings of those whose souls are entirely swayed by the indwelling tyrant Eros.

But when the wanton-spirited Love gains the ascendant in the seasons of the year, great destruction and wrong does he wreak.

Then if Love lacks beautiful things, and good things are beautiful, he must lack good things too.

Now then, said Socrates, keep carefully in mind what is the object of Love, and only tell me whether he desires the particular thing that is his object.

” Love, in the sense of Eros, is simply “lust,” refined, ennobled, transfigured.

All I propose is to leave this potent god to shift for himself, without the aid of a policeman.

I have now worked out this doctrine of philosophy in the school of that crooked sophist, Eros.