f
inclinations, etc., awakened a longing for sexual intercourse in persons
of different sex, and that it was not absolutely immaterial to men and
women, with whom they entered into such most intimate intercourse. But
from such a relation to our sexlove there is a long way yet. All through
antiquity marriages were arranged for the participants by the parents,
and the former quietly submitted. What little matrimonial love was known
to antiquity was not subjective inclination, but objective duty; not
cause, but corollary of marriage. Love affairs in a modern sense
occurred in classical times only outside of official society. The
shepherds whose happiness and woe in love is sung by Theocritos and
Moschus, such as Daphnis and Chloe of Longos, all these were slaves who
had no share in the state and in the daily sphere of the free citizen.
Outside of slave circles we find love affairs only as products of
disintegration of the sinking old world. Their objects are women who
also are standing outside of official society, hetaerae that are either
foreigners or liberated slaves: in Athens since the beginning of its
decline, in Rome at the time of the emperors. If love affairs really
occurred between free male and female citizens, it was only in the form
of adultery. And to the classical love poet of antiquity, the old
Anakreon, sexlove in our sense was so immaterial, that he did not even
care a fig for the sex of the beloved being.

Our sexlove is essentially different from the simple sexual craving, the
Eros, of the ancients. In the first place it presupposes mutual love. In
this respect woman is the equal of man, while in the antique Eros her
permission is by no means always asked. In the second place our sexlove
has such a degree of intensity and duration that in the eyes of both
parties lack of possession and separation appear as a great, if not the
greatest, calamity. In order to possess one another they play for high
stakes, even to the point of risking their lives, a thing heard of only
in adultery during the classical age. And finally a new moral standard
is introduced for judging sexual intercourse. We not only ask: "Was it
legal or illegal?" but also: "Was it caused by mutual love or not?" Of
course, this new standard meets with no better fate in feudal or
bourgeois practice than all other moral standards--it is simply ignored.
But neither does it fare worse. It is recognized just as much as the
others--in theory, on pape