honorable label on a shameful affection, and are rather lovers of children than lovers of wisdom.4 But to avoid recalling the famous only to besmirch them, I will not speak further of these matters.
Let's now descend from these lofty considerations to an examination of your own lusts, Callicratidas; I will demonstrate that the use of women is better far than that of boys. To start, I deem enjoyment to be more satisfying the longer it continues. Fleeting delight ends, as they say, before it has begun. Real pleasure lies in what is lasting. Would that it had pleased the gods for stingy Fate to spin long the thread of our life, granting enjoyment of perpetual health with no foothold for grief. Then we would spend our days in feasts and celebrations. But since some nefarious demon has begrudged us such great boons, the sweetest of real pleasures are those that last. And woman, from maidenhood until her middle years, before the wrinkles of old age have carved her face, is worthy indeed of commerce with men and, even when her beauty is gone,
With wiser tongue
Experience speaks,
Than can the young.5
Furthermore, one who courts boys of twenty seems to me a seeker of passive pleasures, a votary of an ambivalent Aphrodite. The bodies of those become men are hard, their chins, once soft, have become bristly, and their muscular thighs are soiled by hairs. As for what is most hidden, I leave that knowledge to you, men of experience. Any woman's skin, however, shines with grace. Thick locks crown her head like the purple flower of the hyacinth—some spilling down her back to embellish her shoulders, others framing the ears and the temples, curlier than parsley in a field. Her entire body, devoid of the least hair, has, as has been said, more brilliance than amber, or glass from Sidon.
Why not seek, when it comes to desires, those which are mutual, and which satisfy alike the one who gives and the one who receives? We do not like, in truth, to lead solitary lives as the dumb beasts do, but rather, joined by our mutual feelings, we find our happiness greater and our pains lighter when shared. Hence the invention of the communal table, brought out as the center of a gathering of friends. If we grant our belly the pleasure it demands, we will not, for
