 Love |
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| Some say a host of cavalry, others of infantry, and others of ships, is the most beautiful thing on the black earth, but I say it is whatsoever a person loves. It is perfectly easy to make this understood by everyone: for she who far surpassed mankind in beauty, Helen, left her most noble husband and went, sailing off to Troy with no thought at all for her child or dear parents, but . . . led her astray . . . lightly . . . has reminded me now of Anactoria who is not here; I would rather see her lovely walk and the bright sparkle of her face than the Lydians' chariots and armed infantry. . . impossible to happen . . . mankind . . . but to pray to share . . . unexpectedly. - Testimonia, fragment 16, translated by D.A. Campbell: "Greek Lyric, I, Sappho and Alcaeus", 1990 Harvard University Press, Cambridge Sappho |
One of the earliest Greek creation myths says that Night was seduced by Wind, and she laid a silver egg in the womb of Darkness. Out of this egg hatched Love, who set the Universe in Motion* This was Love in the
passionate sense, in the sense of physical desire, and is called eros. The myth belonged to the antehomeric matriarchal tradition of the Pelasgian Greeks. Later, when the patriarchal Dorians invaded
Greece, they subverted the myth, making Eros the name of
Aphrodite's son by Zeus, or
Hermes, or
Zephyr. * Robert Graves, "The Greek Myths",pg.30, Moyer Bell, 1988, Wakefield, Rhode Island |
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If love is chaste, if pity comes from heaven, |
[The love that moves the sun and the other stars.] - Paradiso, canto 33 |
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| Reliquary ©Scott Bodenheimer, September 12, 1997, revised November 25, 2003,d | |||
