s you have not heard of the punishment of the
Cretan Gorgo, a somewhat similar case to that of Leucomantis, except
that she was turned into stone as she peeped out of window to see her
lover carried out to burial. For this Gorgo had a lover called Asander,
a proper young man and of a good family, but reduced in fortune, though
he thought himself worthy to mate with anybody. So he wooed Gorgo, being
a relation of hers, and though he had many rivals, as she was much run
after for her wealth belike, yet he had won the esteem of all the
guardians and relations of the young girl.[130] * * * *

Sec. XXI. * * * Now the origins and causes of Love are not peculiar to
either sex, but common to both. For those attractions that make men
amorous may as well proceed from women as from boys.[131] And as to
those beautiful and holy reminiscences and invitations to the divine and
genuine and Olympian beauty, by which the soul soars aloft, what hinders
but that they may come either from boys or lads, maidens or grown women,
whenever a chaste and orderly nature and beauteous prime are associated
together (just as a neat shoe exhibits the shapeliness of the foot, to
borrow the illustration of Aristo), whenever connoisseurs of beauty
descry in beautiful forms and pure bodies clear traces of an upright and
unenervated soul.[132] For if[133] the man of pleasure, who was asked
whether "he was most given to the love of women or boys," and answered,
"I care not which so beauty be but there," is considered to have given
an appropriate answer as to his erotic desires, shall the noble lover of
beauty neglect beauty and nobility of nature, and make love only with an
eye to the sexual parts? Why, the lover of horses will take just as much
pleasure in the good points of Podargus, as in those of AEthe,
Agamemnon's mare,[134] and the sportsman rejoices not only in dogs, but
also rears Cretan and Spartan bitches,[135] and shall the lover of the
beautiful and of humanity be unfair and deal unequally with either sex,
and think that the difference between the loves of boys and women is
only their different dress? And yet they say that beauty is a flower of
virtue; and it is ridiculous to assert that the female sex never
blossoms nor make a goodly show of virtue, for as AEschylus truly says,

'I never can mistake the burning eye
Of the young woman that has once known man.'[136]

Shall the indications then of a forward wanton and corrupt character be
f