Romantic Love and Personal Beauty. Henry T. Finck

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СКАЧАТЬ to characterise Greek notions on this subject. The first is placed in the mouth of Sokrates, who says he heard it of the Hetaira Diotima. What, she asks, is the cause of this love-sickness, this anxiety of men and animals, first to get a mate, and then to take care of the offspring? It is, she replies, the desire to perpetuate themselves. For just as the famous heroes and heroines—Alkestis, Achilles, Kadros—would not have so nobly sacrificed their lives had they not been sustained by the thought that their fame and glory would survive among future generations; so the fact that parents in the affection for their young will even go so far as to sacrifice their own lives to protect them, is due to their craving for immortality in their offspring.

      This theory may be regarded as a vague foreshadowing of Schopenhauer’s, which will be considered in another place.

      The second theory of the origin of love is attributed by Plato to Aristophanes, who relates it in the form of a myth. Human nature, he begins, was not always as it is now. At the beginning there were three sexes: one, the male, descended of the sun-god; the second, female, descended of the earth; and the third, which united the attributes of both sexes, descended of the moon. Each of these beings, moreover, had two pairs of hands and legs, and two faces, and the figure was round, and in rapid motion revolved like a wheel, the pairs of legs alternately touching the ground and describing an arc in the air.

      These beings were fierce, powerful, and vain, so they attempted to storm heaven and attack the gods. As Zeus did not wish to destroy them—since that would have deprived him of sacrifices and other forms of human devotion—he resolved to punish them by diminishing their strength. So he directed Apollo to cut each of them into two, which was done; and thus the number of human beings was doubled. Each of these half-beings now continually wandered about, seeking its other half. And when they found each other, their only desire was to be reunited by Vulcan and never be parted again. “And this longing and striving after union—this is what is meant by the name of Love.”

      The waggish Aristophanes appends a caution to human beings not to offend Zeus again, because it was that god’s intention, on a repetition of the offence, to split human beings once more, so that they would have to hop about on one leg!

      One of the metaphors used by the comic poet is very pretty, even if translated into terms of Modern Love. He compares the two divided halves of one human being to the dice which among the ancients were used as marks of hospitality, being broken into two pieces, of which each person received one, and which were afterwards fitted together in token of recognition. A pair of lovers, then, are like these halved dice, naturally belonging to each other, and craving to be reunited.

      ROMAN LOVE

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WOMAN’S POSITION

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      Among the Romans the domestic position of women was on the whole much more favourable to the growth of feminine culture than in Greece. They were not jealously guarded in special apartments, but were allowed to retain their seat at the table and join in the conversation when guests arrived, as Cornelius Nepos points out with a pardonable sense of superiority. Becker, in his Gallus, thus states the difference between Greek and Roman treatment of women: “Whilst we see that in most of the Grecian states, and especially in Athens, the women (i.e. the whole female sex) were little esteemed and treated as children all their lives, confined to the gynaikoreitis, shut out from social life and all intercourse with men and their amusements, we find that in Rome exactly the reverse was the case. Although the wife is naturally subordinate to the husband, yet she is always treated with open attention and regard. The Roman housewife always appears as the mistress of the whole household economy, instructress of the children, and guardian of the honour of the house, equally esteemed with the paterfamilias both in and out of the house.”

      “Walking abroad was only limited by scruple and custom, not by a law or the jealous will of the husband. The women frequented public theatres as well as the men, and took their places with them at festive banquets.” "Even the vestals participated in the banquets of the men." Although “learned women were dreaded,” a knowledge of Greek and the fine arts was in later times counted an essential part of feminine culture. “Certain advantages accrued to those who had many children, jus trium liberorum.” Masculine “voluntary celibacy was considered, in very early times, as censurable and even guilty;” and from Festus “we learn that there was a celibate fine.” The statement apparently credited by Mr. Lecky that for 520 years there was no case of divorce in Rome, has been shown to rest on a misconception of a passage in Gellius. Yet “manners were so severe, that a senator was censured for indecency because he had kissed his wife in the presence of their daughter.” It was also considered “in a high degree disgraceful for a Roman mother to delegate to a nurse the duty of suckling her child.”

NO WOOING AND CHOICE

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      Yet amid all these domestic virtues and family affections we search in vain for the prevalence of Romantic Love. We have already seen that for the growth of this sentiment something more is needed than domestic affection, and that something is comprised in the word Wooing. There was no wooing at Rome. In most cases, the father took his daughter’s heart in his hand, and, treating it as a piece of personal property, bestowed it on the suitor who best “suited” him. “From the earliest times,” says Ploss, “it was customary in Rome to marry girls when they had barely reached their twelfth or thirteenth year; engagements were probably made at a still earlier age. Although legally the daughter’s consent was required, in actual practice she exercised no choice; her extreme youth in itself preventing this. Often a marriage contract was a mere matter of agreement between two families in which love and personal favour were disregarded; nor did even the betrothal bring the future couple into closer intimacy.” With reference to the laws of the Twelve Tablets, M. Legouvé remarks, in his Histoire Morale des Femmes, that “Rome was worthy of Athens. Not only did a Roman father dispose of his daughter against her inclination, but he even had the right to dissolve a marriage into which she had entered, and to take away from his daughter the husband he had given her, whom she loved, and by whom she had children.” In justice, however, it must be added that this latter right was rarely exercised; but the fact that the Romans could tolerate the very notion of such a law shows what little account was made of love.

      Another absurd impediment to personal choice was raised by the Theodosian Code, which compelled a girl to marry a man who had the same calling as her father—a custom which, indeed, seems to prevail in parts of Europe to the present day, and which is as incompatible with Love as the ancient Hebrew rule that the oldest daughter must be married first—a rule which compelled Jacob to marry Leah before he could get his beloved Rachel, for whom he had laboured seven years. “First come first served” is a rule which Cupid rarely heeds in the case of several sisters.

      In the case of the men it is possible that Sexual Selection occasionally came into play, when early betrothals did not prevent it; for the old Romans were too rational to anticipate the silly and criminal French custom of bargaining for a bride before they had even seen her. In such a case, if the bride was attractive, the suitor’s imagination, dwelling on the fact that this vision of loveliness was to be his own, exclusively, for ever, may have been warmed for a moment with something very like romantic sentiment. But beauty in Rome, Ovid informs us, was very rare—"How few are able to boast it!"—so that even with the men who had a choice, Individual Preference based on Personal Beauty could have been rarely exercised. And as for the women who had no choice, they may have felt СКАЧАТЬ