Book 1

1.1. Sidon is a city upon the sea; the sea is the Assyrian, the city the mother of the Phoenicians, and her people the father of the Thebans. Within the bay lies a broad double harbour that closes the open water by slow degrees. For where the bay curves inward along its right flank, a second mouth has been cut, and the water flows in again, so that a second harbour forms within the first—calm enough for the merchant ships to ride out the winter there, while in summer they anchor in the outer basin.

1.2. Having come there after a great storm, I was offering thanks for my safe arrival to the goddess of the Phoenicians, whom the Sidonians call Astarte. As I went about the rest of the city and surveyed its offerings, I saw a painting hung up that showed both land and sea together. The painting was of Europa; the sea was the Phoenician sea, the land was Sidon.

1.3. On the land was a meadow and a chorus of girls; in the sea a bull was swimming, and on his back sat a beautiful girl, riding upon the bull toward Crete. The meadow was lush with many flowers, and among them stood ranks of trees and shrubs; the trees grew close, their leaves entwined overhead, the branches joining their foliage, so that the interweaving of the leaves made a roof above the flowers.

1.4. The artist had painted in the shadow beneath the leaves as well, and the sun trickled gently down through whatever gaps the painter had left open in the dense canopy of foliage.

1.5. A wall enclosed the whole meadow, and within that crown of roofing the meadow lay. Beneath the leaves of the plants the beds of flowers grew in rows—narcissus, roses, and myrtle. Water ran through the middle of the meadow, part of it welling up from below out of the earth, part of it flowing around the flowers and the plants.

1.6. A man was painted tending the channels, holding a mattock, stooping over a single conduit and opening a path for the stream. At the far edge of the meadow, where the land ran out toward the sea, the artist had set the girls.

1.7. The girls wore a look both of joy and of fear: garlands were bound about their brows; their hair fell loose over their shoulders; their legs were wholly bare, above by the tunic and below by the sandal, for their girdles drew the tunic up to the knee. Their faces were pale, their cheeks drawn, their eyes wide and turned toward the sea, their mouths a little open, as though about to let out a cry of fear—

1.8. and they stretched out their hands toward the bull. They were stepping into the edge of the sea, just far enough that the wave rose a little above their feet; they seemed to wish to run after the bull, yet to be afraid of going into the water. The colour of the sea was twofold: toward the land it was reddish, but toward the open water it was deep blue.

1.9. Foam and rocks and waves had been wrought there: the rocks rose above the land, the foam whitened around the rocks, and the wave, cresting and breaking upon the rocks, dissolved into foam. Out in the middle of the sea the bull was painted riding upon the waves, while the swell rose like a mountain where the bull's leg curved as it bent.

1.10. The girl sat in the middle of the bull's back, not astride, but sideways, her feet drawn together to the right, holding the horn with her left hand like a charioteer holding the rein; and indeed the bull had turned that way, guided by the pull of her hand. A tunic covered the girl's breast as far as the waist; below that a cloak veiled the lower part of her body. The tunic was white, the cloak purple, and her body showed faintly through the garment.

1.11. The navel was deep, the belly taut, the flank slender; and the narrowness, descending to the loins, broadened out. Her breasts swelled gently from her chest; the band that gathered the tunic bound the breasts as well, and the tunic became a mirror of her body.

1.12. Both her hands were outstretched, the one upon the horn, the other upon the tail; and from both, raised above her head on either side, a veil billowed in a circle about her back. The fold of the robe was stretched out, swelling on every side; this was the painter's wind. And she sat upon the bull like one sailing in a ship, using the robe as a sail.

1.13. Around the bull dolphins danced and Cupids played; you would have said their very movements were painted. Eros led the bull—Eros, a little child, his wings spread, his quiver slung at his side, his torch in his grip; and he had turned toward Zeus and was smiling, as though laughing at him because it was for his sake that he had become a bull.

2.1. Now I praised the painting in all its other parts, but, being myself a man given to love, I gazed more intently at the Eros leading the bull, and I said, "What a thing it is, that a mere infant should rule heaven and earth and sea." As I was saying this a young man standing beside me said, "I could bear witness to that—

2.2. "I, who have suffered so many outrages at love's hands." "And what have you suffered, my good friend?" I said. "For I see by your face that you are not far from the god's initiation." "You stir up a swarm of words," he said, "for my story is like a tale of fiction." "Do not hold back, my excellent friend," I said, "by Zeus and by Eros himself; I shall take all the more pleasure in it,

2.3. "even if it is like a tale." And as I spoke I took him by the hand and led him to a grove nearby, where many thick plane-trees grew, and a stream ran past, cold and clear, such as comes from snow newly melted. Seating him on a low bench, and sitting down beside him myself, I said, "Now is the time for me to hear your story; the place, in any case, is pleasant and worthy of tales of love."

3.1. He began to speak thus: "My family is Phoenician, my homeland Tyre, my name Clitophon; my father is Hippias, and my father's brother Sostratus—though not wholly his brother, but only so far as they shared one father; for their mothers differed, the one being a Byzantine, but my own father's a Tyrian. Sostratus, then, lived all his life in Byzantium, for he had inherited a great estate from his mother there; but my father settled in Tyre.

3.2. "My own mother I never knew, for she died while I was still an infant. My father therefore needed another wife, by whom I got a sister, Calligone. My father resolved to join us in marriage; but the Fates, who are stronger than men, were keeping another woman for me. The divine power often loves to speak of the future to men by night—not that they may guard against suffering (for they cannot master what is fated), but that they may bear their suffering more lightly when it comes.

3.3. "For what is sudden and unforeseen strikes the soul all at once when it falls and overwhelms it; but what is expected before the suffering wears away beforehand, little by little, the keenest edge of the pain. Now, when I was in my nineteenth year, and my father was preparing to hold the wedding the following year, Fortune began her drama.

3.4. "I dreamed that I had grown together with the girl, our lower bodies joined as far as the navel, but from there upward two separate bodies. Then there stood over me a woman, terrible and huge, her face savage, her eye bloodshot, her cheeks grim, snakes for hair; she held a sickle in her right hand, a torch in her left. Falling upon me in fury and raising the sickle, she brought it down upon my loins, where the two bodies joined, and cut the girl away from me.

3.5. "Terrified, I leapt up and spoke of it to no one, but turned the grim matter over within myself. Meanwhile the following happened. My father had a brother, as I said, Sostratus. From him came a messenger bearing letters from Byzantium, and what was written ran thus: 'Sostratus to his brother Hippias, greetings.

3.6. "'There are coming to you my daughter Leucippe and Pantheia my wife; for a Thracian war is closing in upon the Byzantines. Keep safe for me the dearest of my house until the war's outcome is decided.'"

4.1. When my father had read this he sprang up and ran down to the sea, and a little later came back again. Behind him followed a great crowd of servants and serving-women, whom Sostratus had sent along with the women; and in the midst of them was a woman, tall and rich in her dress.

4.2. As I strained my eyes upon her, on her left a girl appeared to me, and lightning struck my eyes from her face.

4.3. Such a Selene I once saw painted upon a bull: an eye keen and full of delight; hair fair, and the fairness curling; brows black, and the black unmixed; her cheek white, and the white reddening at the centre, mimicking the purple with which the Lydian woman dyes the ivory; her mouth was the bloom of roses, when the rose begins to open the lips of its petals.

4.4. The moment I saw her, I was lost; for beauty wounds more sharply than any arrow and flows down through the eyes into the soul, since the eye is the road of love's wound.

4.5. Everything took hold of me at once—admiration, astonishment, trembling, shame, shamelessness. I admired her stature, I was stunned by her beauty, my heart trembled, I gazed shamelessly, I was ashamed to be caught. I struggled to drag my eyes away from the girl, but they would not; they pulled themselves back to her, drawn by the cable of her beauty, and in the end they won.

5.1. So the women were lodged with us, and my father, setting aside a part of the house for them, made ready a dinner. When the time came we dined together, sharing the couches two by two, as my father had arranged: he and I had the middle couch, the two mothers the one on the left,

5.2. and the girls the one on the right. When I heard of this fine arrangement, I nearly went up and kissed my father, because he had set the girl down right before my eyes.

5.3. What I ate, by the gods, I myself did not know, for I was like a man eating in a dream. Resting my elbow on the cushion and leaning over, I gazed at the girl with my whole face, stealing my glances all the while; for this was my dinner.

5.4. When dinner was over, a boy came in with a lyre tuned and ready, a servant of my father's. First he ran his bare fingers over the strings and plucked them, and after sounding a soft little prelude, whispering with his fingers, he then struck the strings with the plectrum, and after playing a little while he sang to his playing.

5.5. The song was of Apollo reproaching Daphne as she fled, pursuing her and on the point of catching her, and the girl turning into a plant, and Apollo crowning himself with the plant. This kindled my soul still more;

5.6. for a tale of love is fuel for desire. Even if a man admonishes himself toward self-control, the example provokes him to imitation, especially when the example comes from one greater than himself; for the shame a man feels at his own faults becomes boldness when sanctioned by the dignity of his betters.

5.7. And I said to myself: "Look, even Apollo loves, and loves a girl, and is not ashamed of his love, but pursues her; while you hesitate and feel shame and play the prude at the wrong moment. Are you greater than the god?"

6.1. When evening came, the women turned to sleep first, and a little later we too; the others had measured their pleasure by the belly, but I, carrying my feast in my eyes, gorged on the sight of the girl's face and that unmixed spectacle until I had my fill, and went off drunk with love.

6.2. When I came to the chamber where I was used to sleep, I could not even find sleep. For by nature all other sicknesses, and the body's wounds too, are harder to bear by night, and rise up against us more when we are at rest, and irritate our pains;

6.3. for when the body lies still, then the wound has leisure to ache. But the wounds of the soul, when the body is not moving, hurt far more. By day the eyes and ears, filled with much business, lighten the height of the malady, drawing the soul away from its leisure to suffer; but when the body is fettered by stillness, the soul, left alone with itself, is tossed about by its trouble.

6.4. For then everything wakes that until then was sleeping: in the mourners their griefs, in the anxious their cares, in the endangered their fears, in lovers their fire. Toward dawn at last some sleep took pity on me and gave me a little rest.

6.5. But not even then would the girl leave my soul, for Leucippe was all my dreams: I talked with her, played with her, dined with her, touched her—I had more blessings than by day. I even kissed her, and the kiss was real; so that when the servant woke me, I scolded him for his bad timing, since I had lost so sweet a dream.

6.6. So I rose and walked about, on purpose, inside the house, in front of the girl, holding a book and reading with my head bent over it; but with my eyes, whenever I came near the doorway, I glanced up at her from below, and after pacing a few turns and drawing in love from the sight, I went away with my soul in a wretched state. And for three days this fire burned in me.

7.1. Now I had a cousin, Clinias, an orphan and young, two years older than myself, already initiated into love—his love was for a boy. He was so devoted to him that, having bought a horse, when the boy saw it and praised it, he at once gave it to him and made him a present of the horse.

7.2. I always used to mock him for his idleness, that he had leisure to be in love and was the slave of love's pleasure; and he, smiling at me and shaking his head, would say, "You too will be my slave one day, and soon."

7.3. So I went to him, greeted him, sat down beside him, and said, "Clinias, I have paid the penalty for my mockery: I too have become a slave." He clapped his hands and burst out laughing, then rose and kissed my face, which showed the marks of a lover's sleeplessness, and said, "You are in love—truly in love; your eyes proclaim it." Just as he was speaking, Charicles ran in—for that was the boy's name—in distress,

7.4. crying, "Clinias, I am lost." Clinias groaned with him, as though his life hung upon the boy's, and said in a trembling voice, "You will kill me with your silence. What grieves you? Whom must I fight?" And Charicles said, "My father is arranging a marriage for me, and a marriage to an ugly girl, so that I am to share my home with a double evil; for a woman is a bad thing, even if she is beautiful; but if she is also cursed with ugliness, the evil is doubled.

7.5. "But my father, looking only to wealth, is eager for the match; I, unlucky man, am being given away for her money, so that I am sold into marriage."

8.1. When Clinias heard this he turned pale. He urged the boy on to refuse the marriage, railing at the whole race of women. "Your father is already giving you a wife?" he said. "What wrong have you done,

8.2. "that you should be fettered? Have you not heard Zeus saying, 'In return for fire I will give them an evil, in which they may all take delight in their hearts, embracing their own evil'? Such is the pleasure of women, and it is like the nature of the Sirens;

8.3. "for they too kill with the sweetness of their song. You may understand the magnitude of the evil even from the very preparations for a wedding: the droning of flutes, the banging of doors, the brandishing of torches. Anyone who saw such an uproar would say, 'Unlucky is the man about to marry; he is being sent off to war,

8.4. "'so it seems to me.' Now, were you a stranger to learning, you would be ignorant of the dramas of women; but as it is, you yourself could tell others with how many tales women have filled the stage. The necklace of Eriphyle, the banquet of Philomela, the slander of Stheneboea, the theft of Aerope, the slaughter by Procne.

8.5. "When Agamemnon longs for the beauty of Chryseis, he brings a plague upon the Greeks; when Achilles longs for the beauty of Briseis, he procures grief for himself; if Candaules has a beautiful wife, his wife murders Candaules.

8.6. "The fire of Helen's marriage kindled another fire against Troy; and the marriage of chaste Penelope—how many suitors did it destroy? Phaedra killed Hippolytus by loving him,

8.7. "and Clytemnestra killed Agamemnon by not loving him. O women, who dare all things! If they love, they murder; if they do not love, they murder. Agamemnon, the beautiful, had to be murdered—he whose beauty was heavenly, in his eyes and head the equal of Zeus who delights in thunder; and that head, O Zeus, a woman cut off.

8.8. "These things a man might say of beautiful women, where even so the misfortune is moderate; for beauty offers some consolation for the evils, and that is a piece of good fortune amid misfortunes. But if she is not even beautiful, as you say, the calamity is doubled. And how could anyone endure it—and a boy as beautiful as you?

8.9. "No, by the gods, Charicles, do not become a slave yet, nor lose the flower of your youth before its time. For besides the rest, this too is the misfortune of marriage: it withers the bloom of youth. Do not, I beg you, Charicles, do not wither yet for me; do not hand over a beautiful rose to be plucked by an ugly

8.10. "gardener." And Charicles said, "These things will be the gods' concern, and mine; for there are still some days left until the appointed time of the marriage, and much may happen even in a single night.

8.11. "For the present I am off to ride. For ever since you gave me that fine horse, I have not yet enjoyed your gift; the exercise will lighten the grief in my soul." So he went off on his last road, about to ride for the first and last time.

9.1. As for me, I told Clinias the whole story of my drama, how it came about: how I saw her, how I suffered, the arrival, the dinner, the girl's beauty. And coming to the end of my tale, I knew I was behaving shamefully, and said, "I cannot bear the pain, Clinias; love has fallen upon me utterly, and drives away even sleep from my eyes;

9.2. "always I imagine Leucippe. No one else has ever had such a misfortune; the evil even lives in my house." And Clinias said, "You talk nonsense, lucky as you are in love. For you need not go to another's door, nor call upon a go-between; Fortune has given you your beloved herself, and brought her in and set her within your doors.

9.3. "For another lover even the mere sight of the beloved girl is enough, and a lover counts it the greatest blessing if he is fortunate even as far as the eyes; the happier lovers think themselves blessed if they get so much as a single word. But you see her always and hear her always, and dine with her and drink with her.

9.4. "And, lucky as you are in this, you complain? You are ungrateful to love's gift. You do not know what it is to look upon a beloved: it has a greater pleasure than the act itself. For when eyes meet and are reflected in one another, they take the imprint of the bodies as in a mirror, and the outflowing of beauty, streaming down through them into the soul, holds a kind of union even at a distance;

9.5. "and it is sweeter than the union of bodies, for it is a new sort of bodily embrace. And I prophesy to you that the act, too, will soon be yours; for there is no greater means toward persuasion than constant intimacy with the beloved. The eye is the agent of friendship, and familiarity of company is more effective in winning favour.

9.6. "For if even wild beasts are tamed by familiarity, much more would a woman be softened by it. There is something alluring to a girl in a lover of her own age; the urgency that the prime of youth lays upon nature, and the awareness of being loved, often breeds love in return. For every girl wishes to be beautiful, and rejoices to be loved, and praises the lover for the testimony he gives; and if no one loves her,

9.7. "she does not yet believe she is beautiful. So one thing only I advise: let her believe she is loved, and she will quickly imitate you." "How then," I said, "could this prophecy come about? Give me the means; for you are an older initiate than I, and more practised already in the god's mysteries. What am I to say? What am I to do? How might I win the beloved? For I do not know the ways."

10.1. "Seek to learn nothing of this from another," said Clinias; "for the god is a self-taught master. Just as no one teaches newborn infants their nourishment—for they learn it of themselves, and know that their table lies in the breasts—so too a young man pregnant for the first time with love needs no teaching for the birth.

10.2. "For when the labour comes upon you and the appointed hour of necessity arrives, you will not go astray, even if it is your first delivery; you will find how to give birth, midwifed by the god himself. But all that is common, and does not depend on the chance of the right moment—this learn by listening. Say nothing to the girl of love's matters,

10.3. "but seek how the act may come about in silence. For boy and girl are alike in modesty; but toward the favour of Aphrodite, even if they are willing, they do not wish to hear of what they suffer; for they think that the shame lies in the words.

10.4. "Words please women; but a girl bears the lover's outer skirmishes as a test, and suddenly assents by her nods; yet if you come up and ask for the act outright, you will stun her ears with the word, and she blushes and hates the word and thinks she is being insulted; and even if she wishes to grant the favour, she is ashamed; for then she thinks she is suffering the act, when she hears the proposal in the pleasure of words.

10.5. "But if, having applied your other tests and made her tractable, you then approach her pleasantly, be silent for the most part as in a mystery, and going up to her kiss her gently; for a lover's kiss to a willing beloved is a request, but to an unwilling one a supplication.

10.6. "And even if there is some agreement about the deed—often even willing women, when they come to the act, wish to seem forced, that by the appearance of necessity they may ward off from their shame the charge of consenting. So do not hesitate if you see her resisting, but watch how she resists; for here too there is need of skill.

10.7. "If she holds out stubbornly, hold back your force, for she is not yet persuaded; but if she becomes softer and willing, then play your part, and do not lose your drama."

11.1. And I said, "Great provisions you have given me, Clinias, and I pray to succeed; yet I am afraid all the same that my good fortune may become the beginning of greater evils and wear me down into a deeper love. And if the trouble grows in me, what shall I do?

11.2. "Marry I cannot, for I am promised to another girl; and my father presses me to this marriage with a just demand—no foreign bride, no shameful girl to wed, nor does he sell me for wealth as Charicles is sold, but he gives me his own daughter, beautiful indeed, O gods, before I saw Leucippe; but now I am blind to her beauty, and have eyes for Leucippe alone.

11.3. "I lie on the border between two opposing forces: Eros and my father wage war against me. The one stands armed, mastered by modesty; the other sits, setting me ablaze. How am I to judge the case? Necessity fights, and nature fights, and I wish to give the verdict to you, father, but I have a harder adversary. He puts the judge to the torture; he stands by with his arrows; he gives his verdict with fire. If I disobey him, father, I am burned in the fire."

12.1. So we were philosophizing about the god, when suddenly one of Charicles' servants ran in, bearing on his face the news of disaster, so that Clinias cried out at once when he saw him, "Some evil has befallen Charicles." As he spoke the servant cried out together with him, "Charicles is dead."

12.2. At this news Clinias' voice failed him, and he stood motionless, as though struck by a thunderbolt at the word; but the servant told the story: "He mounted your horse, Clinias, which at first he drove gently; but after going two or three courses round, he checked his riding and, sitting still, patted the sweating horse, letting go the rein.

12.3. "And while he was wiping the sweat from where he sat, a noise came up behind, and the horse, terrified, leapt up straight in the air and bolted in panic. For seizing the bit in his teeth and arching his neck, his mane bristling, maddened with fear he flew through the air. His forefeet sprang up, and his hind feet, pressing to overtake the fore in the race, urged on the gallop;

12.4. "and the horse, curving with the rivalry of his feet, leaping up and down at the eagerness of both, heaved on his back like a ship tossed in a storm. And poor Charicles, swung by the wave of the riding, was flung from his seat like a ball, now sliding back toward the tail, now pitching forward over the neck; and the storm of the surge pressed hard upon him.

12.5. "No longer able to hold the reins, he gave himself up to the gale of the gallop and was at Fortune's mercy. The horse, running at full speed, swerved off the highway and leapt into a wood and at once dashed the wretched Charicles against a tree. He, hurled as if by a catapult, was knocked from his seat, and his face was disfigured by the branches of the tree, and he was torn with as many wounds as there were sharp points among the branches.

12.6. "And the reins, twined about him, would not let go his body, but dragged it back and forth, sweeping him along the road of death. And the horse, still more terrified by the fall and hindered in his course by the body, trampled the wretched man, kicking off the bond that hampered his flight; so that no one who saw him could have recognized him."

13.1. Hearing this, Clinias was silent for a time, stunned, but in the midst of it, coming to his senses out of his trouble, he wailed aloud and hastened to run to the body; and I followed too, comforting him as best I could.

13.2. And meanwhile Charicles was carried in on a litter, a most pitiful and piteous sight; for he was all one wound, so that none of those present could hold back their tears. His father led the lament, crying out in great agitation, "What were you when you went from me, and what are you when you come back to me, my child? Oh, the wickedness of horsemanship! You have not even died a common death; you do not even appear a seemly corpse.

13.3. "For with all other dead men some trace of their features is preserved; even if a man has lost the bloom of his face, the likeness remains and consoles the grieving by mimicking one asleep; for though death has taken away the soul, in the body it preserves the man.

13.4. "But Fortune has destroyed both these in you at once, and you have died to me a double death, of soul and of body. Truly even the shadow of your image has died; for your soul has fled, and I cannot find you even in the body.

13.5. "When, my child, will you marry? When shall I make your wedding sacrifice, you horseman and bridegroom—bridegroom unfulfilled, horseman ill-starred? Your tomb, my child, is your bridal chamber, your marriage is death, your dirge the wedding-hymn, and this wailing the songs of your wedding.

13.6. "Another fire I had hoped to kindle for you, my child; but this envious Fortune has quenched along with you, and kindles for you instead the torches of disaster. Oh, the wickedness of this torchbearing! Your wedding torch becomes your burial."

14.1. So the father wailed; and on the other side Clinias wailed by himself; and there was a contest of lamentations, the lover's and the father's. "I have destroyed my master. Why did I make him such a gift? It was not a golden bowl, for him to pour libations as he drank, and enjoy my gift in luxury.

14.2. "No, wretch that I am, I gave a beast to a beautiful boy; and I even adorned the wicked beast with breast-pieces, frontlets, silver bosses, golden reins. Alas, Charicles, I decked your murderer in gold. O horse, most savage of all beasts, wicked and ungrateful and blind to beauty!

14.3. "He wiped away your sweat and promised you more food and praised your running, and you killed him while he praised you. You took no pleasure in the touch of such a body; such a rider was no luxury to you; but you flung his beauty to the ground, you unloving thing. Alas, unlucky that I am: I bought you the murderer, the man-slayer."

15.1. After the burial I hastened at once to the girl; she was in the garden of the house. The garden was a grove, a great delight to the eyes; and around the grove ran a wall high enough, and each side of the wall—there were four sides—was roofed over by a row of columns; and beneath the columns, within, was the assembly of trees.

15.2. The branches were in bloom; they fell together one upon another, the petals interweaving, the leaves embracing, the fruits entwined; such was the fellowship of the plants.

15.3. About some of the larger trees ivy and bindweed had grown; the bindweed hung from a plane-tree and wrapped it close with its delicate foliage, while the ivy, twined about a pine, made the tree its own by its embraces, so that the plant became the ivy's chariot, and the ivy the plant's crown.

15.4. Vines grew on either side of the tree, supported on canes, flourishing with their leaves, and the fruit, in its ripe bloom, hung out through the gaps of the canes and was the plant's clustering hair; and as the leaves quivered above in the sun against the breeze, the earth glimmered with their mingled, dappled shade.

15.5. The flowers, with their varied hues, displayed their beauty in turn, and this was the earth's purple—narcissus and rose. The rose and the narcissus had one and the same cup, so far as their outline went, and it was the plant's chalice; but the colour of the leaves around the cup, where they split apart, was, in the rose, of blood and milk together in the lower part of the leaf, while the narcissus was wholly like the lower part of the rose.

15.6. The violet had no cup at all, but its colour was such as the sea's calm flashes with. In the midst of the flowers a spring welled up, ringed round by a square channel cut by hand for the stream. The water was a mirror of the flowers, so that the grove seemed to be double, the one of reality, the other of reflection.

15.7. As for birds, some were tame and fed about the grove, those that the food of men had coaxed; but others, with wings still free, played about the tops of the trees—some singing the songs of birds, others resplendent in the finery of their plumage.

15.8. The singers were cicadas and swallows: the cicadas singing of Dawn's bed, the swallows of Tereus' banquet. The tame birds were the peacock and the swan and the parrot: the swan feeding about the springs of water, the parrot hung in a cage about a tree, the peacock trailing his plumage among the flowers. And the gleam of the flowers vied with the colour of the birds, and there were flowers of feathers.

16.1. Wishing, then, to make the girl tractable to love, I began a conversation with Satyrus, taking my opportunity from a bird. For she happened to be walking about with Clio and had stopped before the peacock.

16.2. Now it chanced by some good luck that just then the bird had raised the beauty of his plumage and was displaying the theatre of his feathers. "This, you may be sure, the bird does not without art," I said; "for he is a creature of love. Whenever he wishes to draw on his beloved, then he adorns himself thus.

16.3. "Do you see that hen near the plane-tree?"—pointing to a peahen—"It is to her that he is now displaying his beauty, a meadow of feathers. And the peacock's meadow is more flowery than ours; for gold is planted in his feathers too, and round about the gold the purple runs an equal circle, and there is an eye in the feather."

17.1. And Satyrus, understanding the drift of my words, in order that I might have all the more to say on the matter, said, "Has love, then, such power that he sends his fire even as far as birds?" "Not only as far as birds," I said; "that is no wonder, since he too has wings; but to reptiles too, and to plants, and, I think, even to stones.

17.2. "The Magnesian stone, at any rate, loves iron; if it but sees it, it draws it to itself, as though it had some lover's passion within. And is not this the kiss of a loving stone and a beloved iron?

17.3. "About plants the sons of the wise tell a tale, and I should call the story a mere fable, were it not that the sons of farmers tell it too. The story is this: that one plant loves another, but that love troubles the palm tree most of all; and they say that of palms one is male and the other female.

17.4. "The male, then, loves the female; and if the female is set apart in the placing of the planting, the lover withers. The farmer perceives the plant's grief, and going up to a height that overlooks the field, observes which way it leans; for it bends toward its beloved.

17.5. "And learning this, he cures the plant's sickness; for taking a shoot of the female palm, he sets it in the heart of the male. And so he refreshes the plant's soul, and the dying body he quickens again, and it rises up, rejoicing in the embrace of its beloved. And this is the marriage of plants.

18.1. "There is also another marriage of waters, across the sea, and the lover is the Elean river, the beloved a Sicilian spring. For through the sea the river runs as through a plain.

18.2. "And she does not blot out her sweet lover in her briny wave, but parts for him as he flows, and the cleft of the sea becomes a channel for the river; and so he conducts Alpheus as bridegroom to Arethusa. So whenever the festival of the Olympic games is held, many cast into the eddies of the river, one this gift, another that; and the river carries them straight to his beloved, and these are the river's bridal gifts.

18.3. "There is also among reptiles another mystery of love, not only between those of the same kind, but between those of different stock. The viper, the serpent of the land, is mad with desire for the moray; the moray is another serpent, of the sea—in form a serpent, but in use a fish.

18.4. "When, then, they wish to come together in marriage, the viper goes to the shore and hisses toward the sea as a signal to the moray, and she recognizes the sign and rises out of the waves. But she does not go straight to her bridegroom—for she knows that he carries death in his teeth—but goes up onto a rock and waits for the bridegroom to cleanse his mouth.

18.5. "So they both stand looking at one another, the lover of the mainland, the beloved of the island. And when the lover has vomited up the fear from his bride, and she sees the death cast upon the ground, then she comes down from the rock and goes out onto the land and embraces her lover, and no longer fears his kisses."

19.1. As I said all this I watched the girl to see how she felt about this talk of love; and she gave a sign that she was not displeased to hear it. And the flashing beauty of the peacock seemed to me less than that of Leucippe's face. For the beauty of her body vied with the flowers of the meadow: her face shone with the colour of the narcissus, the rose blossomed from her cheek, the gleam of her eyes glittered like the violet, and her hair, curling, coiled more than the ivy.

19.2. Such was the meadow upon Leucippe's face. After a little she went away and was gone, for the hour called her to her lyre; but to me she seemed still present, for in going she had left her form upon my eyes.

19.3. So Satyrus and I praised ourselves—I myself for my storytelling, and he because he had given me the openings.