Epistulae et dialexeis

The roses, riding as it were on their leaves as on wings, have made haste to come to you. Receive them kindly, whether as memorials of Adonis, or as the dye of Aphrodite, or as the eyes of the earth. For the athlete the wild olive is fitting, and for the great king the upright tiara, and for the soldier the helmet-crest; but for a beautiful youth the rose—both for the kinship of fragrance and for the closeness of colour. It is not you who will wear the roses, but they who will wear you.

I have sent you a crown of roses, not to honour you—though this too—but to do some favour to the roses themselves, that they may not wither.

The Lacedaemonians used to put on crimson-dyed tunics, either to terrify their enemies by the fearful colour, or that they might not notice their own blood through its kinship with the dye; but you who are beautiful must arm yourselves with roses only, and take this panoply from your lovers. The hyacinth, then, suits a fair-skinned youth, and the narcissus a dark one, but the rose suits all, since it too was once a youth, and is at once flower and remedy and perfume. These persuaded Anchises, these stripped Ares, these reminded Adonis to come; these are the tresses of spring, these the lightning-flashes of earth, these the torches of Love.

You blame me because I did not send you roses; but I did this neither out of indifference nor as a man without love, but I considered that, being golden-haired and crowned with roses of your own, you have no need of another's flowers. For not even Homer set a crown upon golden-haired Meleager, since that would have been another fire upon fire and a double brand upon him; nor upon Achilles, nor upon Menelaus, nor upon any others who have fair hair in his pages. For the flower is dreadfully jealous and short-lived and quick to fade; and its first origin too is said to have begun from a most painful occasion, for the thorn of the roses pricked Aphrodite as she passed, as the Cypriots and Phoenicians say. But what of it? Shall we not be crowned with a flower that does not even spare Aphrodite?

Whence are you, youth? Tell me, that you are so unmelted toward loves. Will you say from Sparta? Did you then not see Hyacinthus, nor are you crowned with his wound? Or from Thessaly? Did the Phthian then not teach you? Or from Athens? Did you not pass by Harmodius and Aristogeiton? Or from Ionia? And what is more delicate than that land, where are Branchus and Claros, the fair ones of Apollo? Or from Crete, where Love is most abundant, who ranges round the hundred cities? You seem to me to be a Scythian and a barbarian, from that altar and those inhospitable spectacles. It is permitted you, then, to imitate your ancestral custom; but if you do not wish to save, take the sword: I do not refuse it, do not be afraid—I long even for the wound.

If you are chaste, why for me alone? But if you grant favours, why not to me too?

Because I am poor, I seem to you of less account; and yet Love himself is naked, and the Graces, and the stars. And I see Heracles in the paintings clad in the skin of a beast and for the most part sleeping on the ground, while Apollo, girt high, throws the discus or shoots the bow or runs; but the kings of the Persians live in luxury and sit aloft, wrapped about with much gold—and so they suffered ill, overcome by the poor Greeks. Socrates was a beggar, but the rich Alcibiades crept beneath his cloak. Look toward the theatre: the people are poor. Look toward the law-courts: the poor sit there. Look toward the battles: the costly and gold-armoured men desert their ranks, while we are foremost in valour. And in the very dealings with you beautiful ones, consider how great the difference is. The rich man insults the one who has yielded, as though he had bought him; the poor man feels gratitude, as one shown mercy. Again, the splendid man refers what has been done to the power of his own resources, but the poor man to the kindness of the giver. The rich man sends as his messenger a flatterer and a parasite, a cook and the men of his table; the poor man sends himself. And what need is there to say much? The rich man calls you his beloved, but I call you my master; he his servant, but I my god; he a portion of his possessions, but I my all. Wherefore, falling in love again with another, he will be the same toward that one too; but the poor man loves once for all. Who can stay by you when you are sick? Who can throw himself in front of a missile aimed at you? Who can fall on your behalf? In all these things I am rich.

If, being a stranger, I love you, do not wonder: it is not possible for the eyes to be caught by their being strangers, for beauty kindles fire in them all alike. Indeed Branchus did not flee from Apollo as from a stranger, nor Patroclus from Achilles, nor Chrysippus from Laius. Polycrates the Samian too loved Smerdies, and Agesilaus the Persian youth, though I do not know the youth's name. Strangers too are the rains to the earth, and the rivers to the sea, and Asclepius to the Athenians, and Zeus to us, and the Nile to the Egyptians, and the Sun to all. The soul is a stranger to the body, and the nightingale to the spring, and the swallow to the house, and Ganymede to heaven, and the halcyon to the rock, and the elephant to the Romans, and the bird, the phoenix, to the Indians who prepare perfumes—this one is a stranger and slow; but the stork, those who first beheld it even worship. Letters too are strangers, for they came from Phoenicia, and the weavings of the Seres, and the theology of the Magi; all of which we use with more pleasure than what is native, because the acquired thing is rare and what is one's own is slighted. The stranger is the better lover too, inasmuch as he is unsuspected through being unknown, and more hidden from notice.

What befell the roses—which, before they came to you, were fair and were roses (for I would not have sent them, had they not had something worth possessing)—that, having come, they at once withered and breathed out their life? The clear cause I do not know, for they would not tell me anything; but, as is easy to guess, they could not bear to be outdone, nor did they endure the rivalry with you, but the moment they touched a more fragrant skin they perished. So too the lamp falls, overcome by a greater fire, and the stars grow dim, when they cannot look the sun in the face.

The nests receive the birds, the rocks the fishes, the eyes the beautiful; and those creatures wander, shifting and changing their dwelling now to one place, now to another—for the seasons lead them as they lead—but beauty, once it has flowed upon the eyes, does not depart from this lodging. So I too have received you and carry you everywhere in the nets of my eyes; and if I go to the sea, the sea brings you up, as the myth does Aphrodite; and if to a meadow, you stand out from the very flowers. And what indeed grows there of such a kind? For even if the flowers are fair and graceful, they last but one day. And looking up to heaven, I think that the sun goes down and walks somewhere below, and that in his stead you shine. And if night comes on, I see only two stars, the evening star and you.

How often have I opened my eyes for you, that you might go away, like those who unfold their nets to give the beasts the chance to flee? And you remain fixed, like those dreadful settlers who, once they have seized another's land, no longer admit of any removal. So once more, as is my custom, I lift my lids: fly off at last and raise the siege and become a stranger to other eyes. You do not listen, you who rather hold to your forward course even unto the soul. And what is this new conflagration? I am in danger, I ask for water, and no one puts the fire to sleep, because the means of quenching this flame is hard to find, whether one bring it from a spring or take it from a river. For the very water is burned by love.

From where did you take possession of my soul? Or is it plain that it was from the eyes, through which alone beauty enters? For as tyrants seize the citadels, and kings the strongholds, and eagles the heights, so too Love seizes the citadel of the eyes, which, having walled it not with timber nor with bricks but with the eyelids alone, quietly and little by little he slips into the soul—swiftly, as being winged; freely, as being naked; irresistibly, as being an archer. And the eyes, since they are first to perceive beauty, are for this reason most of all set ablaze, some god, I think, having willed that the same path should be both of the pleasure of seeing and of the occasion of grieving. For why, O wretched torch-bearers of Love and over-curious witnesses of the bloom of bodies, were you the first to kindle beauty for us, the first to make the soul remember the influx from without, the first to constrain the sun to leave its own and praise a fire not its own? Therefore you keep watch and are burned, unable to find release from what you have chosen.

The beautiful one, if he is savage, is fire; but if he is gentle, light. Do not burn me, then, but save me, and keep the altar of Pity in your soul, receiving in exchange a steadfast friend for a short-lived gift, and forestalling time, which alone overthrows the beautiful, as the commons overthrow tyrants. For I fear—since what I think shall be spoken—that while you delay and tarry the beard may come upon you and overshadow the grace of your face, as the muster of clouds is wont to hide the sun. But why do I fear what one may already see? The down creeps on, the cheeks grow green, the whole face blooms. Before, then, your whole spring departs and winter sets in, grant me something of it—by Love, by these very cheeks, on which tomorrow I must swear.

Hail, even if you do not wish it; hail, even if you do not write—fair to others, but to me disdainful. You were not compounded of flesh and blood and of the things mixed with these, but of adamant and rock and the Styx. Soon may I behold you bearded and lying at the doors of others. Yea, by Love, yea, by Nemesis—swift gods and ever turning.

Why do you show me your beard, my boy? You are not ceasing from beauty, but beginning; for the keen edge of youth has passed by, that part of it which is winged and faithless, but what is settled and sure remains. Time does not convict the truly beautiful, but rather shows them forth and bears witness to them more than it envies them. The down-cheeked youth Homer too calls the most graceful—the poet who knew well both how to see and how to compose. He would never have declared this, had he not first himself touched the beard of a beloved and kissed it. For before you bloomed, your cheeks, being soft and translucent, were no different from a woman's; but now that you have begun to grow green, you are more manly than yourself and more perfect. But what? Did you wish to be no different from eunuchs, whose beards are barren and hard and like stones? At any rate, the wretches are ashamed at this loss more than at the other, holding the one a thing unspeakable, the other a clearer proof of their appearance.

Not even Menander's Polemon shaved the head of a beautiful youth, but he dared it in anger upon a captive beloved, whom even when he had shorn he could not endure—at any rate he weeps, falling down, and repents of the murder of her hair; but the ephebe at least the drama spared. As for you, I do not know what has come over you that you have made war upon yourself, you man-slayer of your own head. What need was there of knives against the hair? What of voluntary and many wounds? What a harvest you have cut down! Did not even the poets instruct you, bringing on stage the long-haired Euphorbuses and Menelauses and the whole army of the Achaeans? And if any river among them is fair, it has long hair; for as gold is an offering and silver, so too is hair. The barbarians wear their hair in felt caps, the Greeks in helmets, the eyes in eyelids, the ship in sails, the earth in mountains, the mountains in glens, the sea in islands, the bulls in horns, the rivers in their dells, the cities in walls. More terrible too is the shaggy lion, and more proud the horse that now trusts in his mane, and more warlike the cock that has roused his comb. The wise honour too, among the stars, the comets, and among the priests those who let their hair grow free, and among the gods each in his own way—Poseidon as dark-haired, Apollo as unshorn, Pan as shaggy, Isis as loose-haired, Dionysus as having long hair adorned with ivy; and Aphrodite did not cut her hair even in mourning. Indeed I have heard a wise man say that the rays too are the hair of the Sun, and that Zeus is more august than the other gods when he shakes his hair, and if he nods he does not lie; and Hermes wears his hair long at the temples and at the ankles. A city then cuts its hair, when it is taken; a woman then casts off the beauty of her head, when she mourns; and the earth has famine when it has no hair. But a tree, when it falls, is bewailed, and the loud-voiced poet says much over it; while you, having cut off so many leaves, do not weep. Come, let me speak to you the funeral oration of your hair: O citadel of beauty, O grove of love, O stars of the head.

There is a springtime of beauty too, as of the rose; and he who does not use what is present is a fool, lingering among things that do not stay and tarrying among things that depart. For time is jealous and makes vanish the season of the flower and leads away the bloom of beauty. Delay nothing, O speaking rose, but while it is possible and you live, share with us what you have.

You were rather softly affected, chafed by your sandal, as I am persuaded; for the newness of leather is dreadful in biting tender flesh. For this reason Asclepius easily heals the wounds of war and the chase and of every such fortune, but these he leaves alone, because of their voluntariness, as having come about through folly rather than through the malice of the gods. Why do you not walk unshod? Why do you grudge yourself to the earth? Slippers and sandals and boots and shoes are the gear of the sick or of the old. At any rate they paint Philoctetes in these defences, as both lame and sick; but the philosopher from Sinope, and the Theban Crates, and Ajax and Achilles unshod, and Jason half so; for it is said that, as he crossed the river Anaurus, his shoe was held fast by the stream, and Jason was thus freed as to one of his feet, taught the right thing by fortune, not having chosen it by judgement, and he went off finely despoiled. Let nothing come between your foot and the earth. Do not be afraid: the dust will receive your tread as grass. O rhythms of dearest feet, O new flowers, O plantings of the earth, O kisses pressed upon it.

You sell yourself: so do mercenaries. And you belong to everyone who gives: so do helmsmen. Thus we drink of you as of rivers, thus we touch you as we touch roses. Do not, then, be ashamed of your readiness, but take pride in your easiness; for water too is set before all, and fire is not of one man, and the sun is a public god. Your chamber is the citadel of beauty, those who come in are priests, those who are crowned are pilgrims, the silver is tribute. Rule pleasantly over your obedient subjects, and be worshipped besides.

To Zeus too, when he slept on Mount Ida, the earth sent up flowers—the lotus and hyacinth and crocus—but the roses were not present: was it because they are the possessions of Aphrodite alone, from whom Hera had to borrow even these, just as she borrowed the girdle? Or because Zeus would not have slept, had these too been present, whereas they needed Zeus to sleep? For whenever roses breathe, all men and gods alike must needs keep a pleasant wakefulness, since their fragrance is mighty to drive out all repose. Let these things, then, be left to Homer and the license of the poets; but you have acted boorishly, sleeping alone among roses and being chaste among the unchaste. For either one of your lovers ought to have been there with you—either I or Zeus—unless indeed you were eager, O fair one, having brought the crown to your breast, to embrace a new paramour.

Being golden-haired, why do you seek roses? Indeed you are by nature even as they. Why do you take a flower that in a little while will be no more? Why do you crown your head with fire? For to me the necklace of the Colchian woman, which she sent to Glauce, seems to have been roses charged with poison, and for this reason she was burned when she took it. For if roses are delightful, let them not outshine the fair; if fragrant, let them not breathe against them; if short-lived, let them not affright them. For your head is a meadow bearing many flowers, which neither depart in summer, and grow even in mid-winter, and are not undone when they are plucked.

The woman who adorns herself tends to what is lacking, fearing to be detected in what nature does not give her; but the beautiful woman needs none of these acquired things, sufficing to herself for all that is complete. The pencilling of the eyes, the additions to the hair, the painting of the cheeks, the dyeing of the lips, and whatever drug comes from the art of beautifying, and whatever deceitful bloom from rouge, were devised for the correction of deficiency; but the unadorned is truly beautiful. So that if you most of all trust in yourself, for this reason most of all do I love you, reckoning the lack of contrivance a proof of your confidence in your loveliness. For you do not plaster your face, but are guilelessly beautiful, such as the women of old were, with whom gold fell in love, and a bull, and water, and birds, and serpents. But rouge and wax and the Tarentine gauze and the serpents worn on the wrist and the golden anklets are the drugs of Thais and Lais and Aristagora.

If you need money, I am poor; but if friendship and an honest disposition, I am rich. And it is not so dreadful for me not to have, as it is shameful for you to love for hire. For it is the work of a courtesan to admit those who carry the long pike and the broadsword, as being ready to give; but of a free woman to look always to the best and to set the honourable in goodwill. Command as you wish, and I obey. Bid me sail: I embark. To endure blows: I bear it. To cast away my life: I do not hesitate. To run through fire: I am not burned. What rich man does these things?

Agamemnon, when he mastered his anger, was beautiful and like not to one god but to many—in eyes and head like Zeus who delights in thunder, in girdle like Ares, in chest like Poseidon; but when he behaved unseemly in the sweetness of his wrath and was savage toward his comrades, he was reckoned a deer and a dog, and the eyes of Zeus were nowhere. For swine grow angry, and dogs and serpents and wolves and all the other beasts that use no reason; but a beautiful man, even by not smiling, gives pain, much more by becoming more sullen than himself. It does not befit even the sun to hide its face in a cloud. What is this gloom, what this night, what this hateful darkness? Smile, be calm, give us back the daylight of your eyes.

Yesterday I came upon you angry and thought I was looking at another. The cause of this was the displacement of your temper, exactly confounding the grace of your face. Do not, then, alter your disposition, nor look fierce. For we no longer think the moon bright when it is overcast, nor Aphrodite beautiful when she is angry or weeps, nor Hera ox-eyed when she is wroth with Zeus, nor the sea divine when it is troubled. And Athena cast away the flute as having confounded her face. Already too we call the Furies the Kindly Ones, as though they denied their sullenness; and we rejoice in the thorns of the roses, because from a wild bush that knows how to grieve and to prick they laugh among the roses. The calm of the face is a flower in a woman too. Do not become harsh, do not become fearful, do not deprive yourself of beauty, do not take from yourself the roses which grow in the eyes of you fair ones. But if you disbelieve what I say, take the mirror and see your face transformed. Well done, that you turned away!

You command me not to look, and I command you not to be looked at. What lawgiver commands this? And what the other? But if neither is forbidden, neither deprive yourself of the good repute that comes from display, nor me of the liberty that comes for delight. The spring does not say "do not drink," nor the fruit "do not take," nor the meadow "do not approach." Follow you too the laws, and put a stop to my thirst.

How quarrelsome and contentious your beauty is to you! When neglected it blooms the more, like those plants which, trusting in their nature, have no need of the husbandman's care. You do not mount a horse, you do not go to the wrestling-school, you do not give yourself to the sun, but you go about squalid and dirty and at war with yourself. You are deceived: you are beautiful, even against your will, and you draw all men by your very excess of neglect, like grapes and apples and whatever else is spontaneously beautiful. So too Apollo loved shepherds, and Aphrodite loved herdsmen and rustics, and Demeter those who knew nothing of the elegant. No one ever saw the stars adorned, nor the birds, nor horses tricked out with gold or ivory contriving to hide their pride.

The beautiful one ought to make his roll of lovers from their character, not from their birth; for a stranger can prove to be fair, and a citizen base, the more so as he is nearer to good sense. Now the native is no different from stones and from all that abides, to which fixity belongs of necessity; but the stranger is like the swiftest gods, the Sun and the winds and the stars and Love, by which I too, having become winged, have come hither, moved by a stronger occasion. Do not overlook my supplication. Hippodameia did not dishonour Pelops, though he was a stranger and a barbarian, nor Helen the man who came for her sake, nor Phyllis him who came from the sea, nor Andromeda him who flew down to her. For they knew that from natives they get one city, but from strangers many. And indeed I too am a stranger to love, and you to beauty; for we did not go forth to them, but they came down to us, and we have received their presence gladly, as sailors the presence of the stars. And if my being a stranger is no hindrance to love, neither let it be an obstacle to you against keeping company with your lovers. Quickly indeed would you choose an exile for a bridegroom, as Adrastus chose Polynices and Tydeus, whom he made his sons-in-law to found his kingdom. Do not play the Spartan, O woman, nor imitate Lycurgus; for love admits no expulsion of strangers.

Your eyes I love, but my own I do not love; for in yours I recognise much understanding, but in mine a dreadful officiousness. They are shameless, and able to hide nothing of what they have once seen. They do not, then, stand away from my soul, saying: "Did you not see the fair-haired one, the fair-faced one? Come, mount up, but also weep and write and entreat." And the soul is right well persuaded, unable to disobey such greedy spearmen; for even against its will they drag it forth and force upon it all that they themselves have already praised. Doubtless, before Love flew down to earth, the soul knew the sun alone to be beautiful, and this was its spectacle and its wonder; but having tasted human bloom, it grew weary and fell from that eagerness, and was led over to a bitter servitude.

The deed is one, whether it be with a husband or with a paramour; but what is more perilous in danger is greater in delight; for the openness of license does not gladden so much as the secrecy of pleasure, and everything stolen is sweeter. So too Poseidon went beneath in a purple wave, and Zeus as a bull and as golden rain and as a serpent and in other disguises, from which came Dionysus and Apollo and Heracles and the gods born of adultery. And Homer says that Hera too then looked upon him with pleasure, when he came secretly to her; for he transferred the license of a husband into the theft of adultery.

The adulterer, even when he succeeds, makes a most perilous expenditure, and a painful one when he fails; for the law is the danger of his good fortune, and love the wage of his grief. Yet it is better to be afraid, having gained what one wishes, than to grieve, being neglected.

Your eyes are more translucent than drinking-cups, so that through them one can see even the soul, and the blush of your cheeks is of fairer hue than the wine itself, and this linen tunic shines back against your cheeks, and your lips are dyed with the blood of roses; and you seem to me to carry the water too as if from springs, the springs of your eyes, and on this account to be one of the Nymphs. How many do you halt as they hurry? How many do you hold back as they run past? How many do you summon without uttering a word? I, first of all, whenever I see you, grow thirsty and stand still against my will, holding the cup; I do not bring it to my lips, yet I know I am drinking of you.

The cups are of glass, but your hands make them silver and gold, since the liquid gleam they have comes from your eyes. So put them down and let them be—both for other reasons and because of the fear that comes from the brittleness of the material—and pledge me with your eyes alone, of which Zeus too, having tasted, set a fair cup-bearer beside himself. But if you wish, do not waste the wine, but, pouring in water only and bringing it to your lips, fill the cup with kisses and so give it to those who ask. For there is no one so loveless as still to long for the grace of Dionysus after the vines of Aphrodite.

I do not know which of your features I should praise more—your head? But oh, your eyes! Your eyes? But oh, your cheeks! Your cheeks? But your lips draw me on and dreadfully burn me—closed for their seemliness, opened for their fragrance.

Danae received gold, Leda birds, Europe what came from the herd, Antiope the things of the mountains, Amymone the things of the sea; and the poets made the gifts into myths, leading aside the truth by the soul-witchery of falsehoods. Take, take you too, laying aside the coyness of the haughty woman and putting off the dissembling of the chaste, that I too may become Zeus and Poseidon, giving what you wish and taking what I wish.

Never put on shoes, nor hide your ankles with false and deceitful leathers, whose beauty is treacherous in the dye. For if you wear white, you confound the whiteness of your feet, since like does not show in like; if hyacinth-coloured, you grieve them with the dark; if crimson-dyed, you affright, as though blood were flowing from somewhere there. And if all your other parts too were shown, you would be far better still, falling wholly into the snares of those who behold you. But of your other parts make some sparing, if you wish, and grudge them neither covering nor the necessary defences; but leave your feet bare, as your neck, as your cheeks, as your hair, as your nose too and your eyes. For where nature has erred in something, there is need of contrivances against the harm, that art may hide the deficiency; but where beauty suffices by its own display, the drugs are superfluous. Take courage in yourself and trust your feet: fire too will spare them, and the sea too, and if you wish to cross a river, it will stand still, and if to pass over cliffs, you will seem to tread on meadows. So too he who knew exactly all the excellences of beauty called Thetis silver-footed, and so too the painters paint Aphrodite rising from the sea. Do not torture your feet, O fair one, nor hide them, having nothing worthy of concealment, but walk softly and leave your footprint behind, as though about to grant some favour to the earth itself.

Momus said he could find no fault with anything else of Aphrodite—for what indeed could he have blamed?—but one thing only he said he disliked, that her sandal creaked and was too talkative and troublesome with its noise; whereas, had she walked unshod, as she rose from the sea, that wretch would never have found matter for jests or comedy. And it seems to me that even when she committed adultery she was detected for this reason alone, that Hephaestus learned all that was hidden because the little sandal betrayed it. This is the myth for us; but you seem to deliberate better than Aphrodite, using your feet as you were born, and escaping the accusations of Momus. O unbound feet, O free beauty, O thrice-blessed and happy I, if she should tread on me.

What seems to others a reproach and worthy of blame—that you are shameless and bold and easy—this above all I love in you. For we admire horses that show spirit, and birds that do not droop downward. You too, then, do nothing strange, if, being a woman who surpasses many in bloom, you look on high and walk aloft, since there is indeed a citadel of beauty far stronger than royal palaces. You take fees: so did Danae take gold. And you receive crowns: this even Artemis the virgin does. And you give yourself to farmers: but Helen gave herself even to shepherds and lyre-players. Do not despise slaves either, that through you at least they may seem free; nor sailors—they go off quickly, but Jason is not without honour, who first dared the sea. For neither is fire so hot as your breath, nor the flute so sweet a thing to hear as your words.

Will you not endure even to write to an exile? But nod assent to those who love. Aristides too was in exile, but he returned; and Xenophon, though not justly; Themistocles too was in exile, but was honoured even among the barbarians; and Alcibiades, who even walled off Athens; and Demosthenes, but envy was the cause. The sea too flees when it is driven by the sun, and the sun, when night overtakes it; autumn flees too when winter approaches, and winter departs when spring pursues; and, to speak briefly, the comings of the older seasons are the exiles of the younger seasons. The Athenians too received Demeter in flight, and Dionysus when he changed his dwelling, and the wandering sons of Heracles, when they also set up the altar of Pity, as of a thirteenth god, pouring out to him not wine, but tears. Set up the altar, you too, and pity a man in distress, lest I become twice an exile, both robbed of my country and frustrated of my love for you; for if you should be willing, I have come home.

The vermilion that reddens the lips and pencils the cheek is a hindrance to kisses, and it accuses the face of old age, by which the mouth is livid and the cheek wrinkled and past its prime. Hold off, then, from making yourself up, and add nothing to your beauty, lest I indict you for old age on the charge of painting your face.

To Athenodorus. The eyes are the counsellors of love; but you, having only caught a rumour with your hearing, are in love with an Ionian youth, while you dwell in Corinth. This seems prophetic to those who do not yet know that the mind sees.

To the same. If you delight in senseless applause, then consider the storks—when they clap their wings as we pass by—a people so much more sensible than the Athenians, inasmuch as they ask nothing for clapping.

To be in love and to endure is more temperate than not to be in love at all; for in warfare too men are not those who have not been wounded, but those who conquer though wounded.

To Arenais. To grant favours to a man not in love is the opinion of Lysias; to one in love is the view of Plato; but to one whether in love or not in love is yours. No wise man approved this, but Lais, I think, did.

To Diodorus. The Erythraeans cultivate the seedless pomegranates, which pour out a drinkable juice, like the grapes of the prosperous. Ten of these I have gathered and sent you; use them, eating them as wine, and getting drunk on them as food.

You have done well to use the roses as a couch; for the pleasure taken in what is sent is a great sign of honour toward the sender, so that I too have touched you through them—for they are amorous and crafty and know how to use their beauty. But I fear that they did not even keep quiet, but troubled you in your sleep, as the gold troubled Danae. And if you wish to do a favour to a friend, send back what is left of them, breathing no longer of roses only, but also of you.

Were you a Laconian, O fair one, you would have made mention of Helen and the ship; if a Corinthian, of the revels of Lais; if a Boeotian, of the marriage of Alcmene; if one of those from Elis, did you not hear of the race of Pelops? Did you not envy her who was wedded from the theatre? Did you not marvel at the Alpheus? Did you not drink of the bridegroom? Tyro too swam upon the Enipeus, and coming to the sea embraced Aegaeon. For she was a good woman and worthy of great lovers. You seem to me to be neither a woman of Thespiae—for then you would surely sacrifice to Love—nor an Attic woman, for you would never be ignorant of the night-festivals and the feasts and the dramas of Menander. But even if you are a barbarian and one of the maidens from the river Thermodon, even these, the tale says, embrace young men and bear children of stealth. But are you perhaps a Thracian or a Sidonian woman? Indeed love laid hold of these too, and the one embraced the Nysian god, the other the Boeotian Zeus. I think I have found you out, unless I am poor and base at reading character: Danaus is your father, and that hand of yours, and a murderous spirit; yet even one of those man-slaying maidens spared a young man who loved her. I do not supplicate you, I do not weep: complete the drama, that you may touch me even with a sword.

You too are so wicked as to pity no one else, and I am so unfortunate as to receive from no other, and I greatly rejoice in my ill success, wishing not to cease from failure, so that you too may not cease from your ill repute for the foulness of your character. For my part is the work of a single pleasure, but yours is a thing shared, to the slander of the blame that comes from all.

I have sent you spring figs; you might marvel at them either that they are already ripe or that they are still here.

What is this strange seizure of a man? What is this tyranny? You draw me by the eyes and drag me unwilling, as Charybdis sucked down those who sailed by. There were, then, rocks of love too, and breaths of the eyes, in which whoever is once caught is dragged under. Yet even Charybdis did not have this; that shipwreck had its fixed term, and a man, waiting a little, found means of safety, discovering a tree in the open sea; but he who has once flowed down into this sea never comes out again.

To Cleonides. Sappho loves the rose and always crowns it with some praise, likening to it the fair among maidens; and she likens it too to the forearms of the Graces, when she bares their arms. That, then, though it is the fairest of flowers, is brief in its season, for it accompanies the withered, having budded with the spring; but your form is ever in flower, whence the autumn of your beauty smiles in your eyes and on your cheeks like a kind of spring.

To Nicetes. To be in love is not a disease, but not to be in love; for if love comes from seeing, then those who do not love are blind.

It is better to take away the cloud of your brows, that there may be nothing gloomy about your bloom; for of the seasons themselves the more pleasant are those that are relaxed and laughing, and the calm about the face reflects the pleasure of beauty as from a mirror, which, if you do not trouble it, you will seem a topmost star seen in daylight. And if these things are from Pindar, this too is somewhere in the manner of Pindar: that the ray which leaps from you is the mother of my eyes.

If you flee even me, yet receive at least the roses in my stead; and I beg you not only to be crowned with them, but also to sleep upon them. For they are fair to see, having such a bloom as fire has, but soft to the touch and more delicate than any couch, beyond the Babylonian scarlet and the Tyrian purple; for even if those are precious, yet they do not breathe of beauty. I have charged them also to kiss your neck and to come upon your breasts and to play the man, if you allow it; and, I know, it will obey. O blessed roses, what a woman you are about to embrace! But entreat her on my behalf, and be my ambassadors, and persuade her; and if she will not listen, burn her up.

Truly the roses are the plants of Love; for they are young, as he is, and tender, as Love himself is, and both have golden hair, and the rest is alike in them: the rose has the thorn instead of arrows, the ruddy hue instead of torches, and it is winged with its leaves; and neither Love nor the roses know time, for the god is an enemy both to the autumn of beauty and to the visitation of roses. I saw in Rome the flower-bearers running and bearing witness by their speed to the faithlessness of the bloom; for their running is a lesson in its use. If, then, you touch the roses quickly, they remain; but if you delay, they are gone. A woman too withers with the roses, if she tarries. Do not delay, O fair one: let us play together, let us be crowned with roses, let us run together.

I shut my eyes upon you. How, do you ask? I will tell you: as the besieged shut their gates. And you, escaping the guard, are within. Tell me, who brought you in, unless my eyes overlooked it? It was, then, an amorous affection, and one that came upon the soul, which long ago pondered only what it wished, and was earnest about the fairest things in its love of wisdom, and its love was to behold the back of heaven and to busy itself about the being that lies in those regions, and what the circuits of the universe are, and what the necessity is that leads them; and the speculation seemed most delightful, to run together with the sun and the moon, to share the danger as one set and the joy as the other waxed full, to wander with the rest of the choir of stars and to leave nothing untrodden and unbeheld of the mysteries above the earth. But from the time it drew near to human love and was captured by beauty through the eyes, neglecting all those things it has been earnest about this one alone; and as much of the outward form as it draws in, so much it stores up within and treasures in memory, and the light that has passed within is day by daylight, but by night becomes a dream.

You are persuaded, as I can guess, but you shrink from the shame of the deed. Then do you flee a thing from which a man becomes a friend? Was it not from this that the verses of Homer were filled with beautiful ones, when he led Nireus and Achilles to Troy? Was it not from this that there were Harmodiuses and Aristogeitons, friends even unto the sword? Did not Apollo serve Admetus and Branchus? Did not Zeus carry off Ganymede, in whom he rejoices even before the nectar? For you beautiful ones alone inhabit heaven too as a city. Do not grudge yourself a lover who, though he has not immortality to give, yet offers his own soul. But if you disbelieve, I am ready to die, if you command this now. And if I weave the noose, you inhuman one, will you not take it away?

I praise you for outwitting time in your turn and trimming your beard; for what has departed by nature remains by art, and most pleasant is the recovery of things that are lost. So that, if you would take my counsel, let your head grow its hair and tend your locks, that some may descend gently to the cheeks and others rest upon the shoulders, as Homer says the Euboeans wore their hair long behind—for a head in bloom is far pleasanter than the plant of Athena, if indeed this citadel too must not be seen bare and unadorned—but let your beard be bare, and let neither cloud nor mist trouble this light. For as closed eyes are no pleasant spectacle, so neither is a beautiful man's bearded chin. Whether, then, by drugs or by fine knives or by the tips of the fingers or by cleansers and herbs or by some other device, contrive to make your beauty last longer. For thus you will be imitating the ageless gods.

Yesterday, having closed my eyelids only so long as to blink quietly, I thought the time long; doubtless I reproached my eyes as loveless: "Why did you forget her? Why did you abandon your watch? Where is she, and what has become of her? Tell me at least that." And thinking that I heard, I went off to where I supposed I should see you, and sought that very thing as though she had been carried off. What, then, am I to do, if you go off to the country, as last year, and leave the haunts of the city for many days? I think I must clearly perish, having nothing pleasant either to hear or to see. For I think the city follows you as you go out, and the very gods of the town are drawn along by the sight. For what do they do here alone? But even if they remain in their place, yet I at least will not be left behind, a tow-rope of Love. And if it be needful even to dig, I will take the mattock; if to prune, I will tend the vines; if to bring water to the vegetables, I will make a road for the stream. For what river is so blind as not to till your land? One thing I forswear of the customs of the country: to milk. Only your breasts do I gladly touch.

Everything of yours captivates me: the linen tunic, like that of Isis; the tavern, like a shrine of Aphrodite; the cups, like the eyes of Hera; the wine, like a flower; and the arrangement of the three fingers on which the cup rides, like the outshoots of the leaves in the roses; and I am afraid lest it fall, but it stands firmly, as though propped by judgement, and is grown together with your fingers. And if you should ever drink it down, all that is left becomes warmer by your breath, and sweeter than nectar. At any rate it goes down to the throat by unhindered ways, as though mixed not with wine but with kisses.

Who has shorn you, O fair one? How senseless and barbarous the man who did not spare the gifts of Aphrodite! For not even the earth in its leafage is so sweet a spectacle as a woman with flowing hair. Alas for the shameless hand! Truly you have suffered all that comes from enemies. I would not have shorn even a captive, honouring beauty as not pleasantly neglected. But since the dreadful deed is done, at least tell me of your hair—where it lies, where it was cut, how I may take it under truce, how I may kiss it lying on the ground. O wings of Love, O first-fruits of the head, O remnants of beauty.

When Alexander judged the goddesses, she from Lacedaemon was not yet present; but had she been, he would have declared her alone beautiful, whichever one he wished. What, then, was lacking to him at that time for his judgement shall now be set right by me. Do not weary yourselves, O goddesses, nor strive; for I have, behold, the apple. Take it, O fair one, you who even surpass the goddesses, and read the writing. Among other things, I have used the apple as a letter: that one was Strife's, this one Love's; that one was silent, this one speaks. Do not throw it away, do not eat it: not even in war is an ambassador wronged. What, then, have I written? It will tell you itself: "Euippe, I love you; write under it, when you have read, that you love me too." It receives the apple, and these letters too.

I learned that the roses, when they came to you, reaped as it were a debt; for I had charged them with it, and how, drinking of the pure dew of your skin, they held back the soul as it went forth and chafed. You did well, O roses, to come back to life; and I pray you, remain until I come. For I have resolved to learn whether you have received anything from each other—you for fragrance, and they for length of days.

Your chastity, on which you greatly pride yourself, I do not know what to call it: a savagery that wars against the ordinances of nature? Or a philosophy fortified with boorishness? Or a self-willed cowardice toward pleasures? Or a haughty disdain of the delights of life? Whatever it may be, and whatever it may seem to the sophists, in opinion it is fine, but in deed rather inhuman. For what great thing is it, before departing from life, to be a chaste corpse? Be crowned before you wholly cease to bloom, and be anointed before you rot, and gain friends before you become desolate. It is good to forestall, while it is yet night, that other night; to drink before you thirst, to eat before you hunger. What day do you think your own? Yesterday? It is dead. Today? It is not. The coming one? I do not know whether it will be present for you; and that too is fortune's, like the rest.

To Epictetus. Fear the people, among whom you have great power.

To Chariton. You think the Greeks will remember your discourses when you are dead; but they who are nothing while they exist, what would they be when they exist no longer?

To Philemon. The tragedian Diocles, if you already know him, you surely praise; but if you do not know him, set him down among those rightly praised, and be disposed toward him as is fitting either for one persuaded or for one who does not disbelieve.

To Ctesidemus. The amorous poets are good listening even for those past their prime, for they lead them to the thought of love as though grown young again. Do not, then, suppose yourself too far overdue for the hearing of these; for the company of such poets will either not make you forget love or will remind you of it.

To Epictetus. Those who are initiated to Rhea go mad, smitten in their ears by the clash of instruments. But those are the work of cymbals and flutes; whereas the Athenians so astonish you by their applause that you forget who you are and of whom you are sprung.

To Cleophon and Gaius. Concerning the matters of which you wrote, some have already been done, others will be done at once; for I, being a Lemnian, count Imbros too my fatherland, joining in goodwill both the islands to each other and myself to both.

To Pleistaretianus. The poetic nation is many and more numerous than the swarms of bees; and meadows feed the one, houses and cities the others, and they feast in return, the bees with honeycombs, the poets with splendid cookery. And there are some poets who feast also with sweetmeats; and let us reckon these to be the poets of love, of whom one is this Celsus, who has given over his life to songs, like the good cicadas. But that he may be fed not on dew but on real food, I have trusted that it will be your care.

To Antoninus. The storks do not fly into the ravaged cities, fleeing the echo of evils now ended; but you dwell in a house which you yourself ravaged, and sacrifice to the gods within it, as though they did not exist, or, existing, had forgotten that you hold even their possessions.

To Julia Augusta. Not even the divine Plato bore malice against the sophists, though to some this seems very much the case, but he was emulously disposed toward them, since they went about charming both small cities and greater in the manner of Orpheus and Thamyris; and he was as far from bearing malice as emulation is from envy. For envy nourishes base natures, but emulation rouses the splendid; and a man bears malice against the things unattainable to himself, but emulates those which he will manage better, or no worse. At any rate Plato makes for the very forms of the sophists, and neither allows Gorgias to "Gorgianize" better than himself, but does so much, and utters many things in the echo of Hippias and Protagoras. And various men became emulators of various others; for indeed the son of Gryllus emulates the Heracles of Prodicus, when Prodicus brings Vice and Virtue beside Heracles, calling him to the choice of a life. Of Gorgias the admirers were the best and the most numerous: first the Greeks in Thessaly, among whom to play the orator got the surname of "Gorgianizing"; then the whole Greek world, before which he discoursed at Olympia against the barbarians from the starting-line of the temple. And it is said that Aspasia of Miletus too whetted the tongue of Pericles after the manner of Gorgias; and Critias and Thucydides are not unknown to have got their high-mindedness and their gravity from him, transforming it to their own use, the one by eloquence, the other by force. And Aeschines too, the follower of Socrates, about whom you were earnest the other day as not obscurely chastening his dialogues, did not shrink from Gorgianizing in his discourse about Thargelia; for he says somewhere thus: "Thargelia of Miletus, having come into Thessaly, lived with Antiochus the Thessalian, who reigned over all the Thessalians." And the digressions and the assaults of the discourses of Gorgias were current in many places, but most of all in the circle of the epic poets. Persuade, then, you too, O queen, the more daring Plutarch of the Greek world not to be vexed with the sophists, nor to set himself to slander Gorgias. But if you do not persuade him, you—such is your wisdom and your counsel—know what name should be given to such a man; but I, though I can speak it, cannot.

The epistolary character of style, after the ancients, seems to me to have been best considered, among philosophers, by the man of Tyana and by Dio; among generals, by Brutus, or by whomever Brutus employed for his correspondence; and among emperors, by the divine Marcus in those letters he wrote himself—for besides the judgement of his style, the steadiness of his character too was stamped upon his writings. Among orators, Herodes the Athenian wrote letters best; yet, over-atticizing and over-talkative, he falls in many places short of the character that befits a letter. For the manner of letters ought to appear more Attic than ordinary speech, but more ordinary than Atticism, and to be composed in the civic style, yet not to be out of tune with elegance. Let it have its seemliness in not being figured; for if we shall figure it, we shall seem to be making a display, and display in a letter is boyish. To round off a period I permit in the shorter letters, that by this at least brevity of speech may be made graceful, being otherwise wholly cramped of resonance; but from letters drawn out to length one must remove periods, for this is more suited to a contest than to a letter—unless perhaps at the close of what is written one must either gather up what was said before or shut up the thought that crowns all. Clarity is a good guide of all discourse, but most of all of a letter; for in giving and in asking and in granting and in refusing and in laying hold and in defending and in loving we shall more easily persuade, if we interpret clearly; and we shall interpret clearly, and beyond mere cheapness, if of the things conceived we express the common ones in a fresh way, and the fresh ones in a common way.