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The excerpt represents the core issue or deciding factor on which you must meditate, and is drawn from The Symposium by Xenophon: with oil of myrrh to please his fellow? Women, and especially young
women (like our two friends' brides, Niceratus' and Critobulus'), need
no perfume, being but compounds themselves of fragrance.[5] No,
sweeter than any perfume else to women is good olive-oil, suggestive
of the training-school:[6] sweet if present, and when absent longed
for. And why? Distinctions vanish with the use of perfumes. The
freeman and the slave have forthwith both alike one odour. But the
scents derived from toils--those toils which every free man loves[7]--
need customary habit first, and time's distillery, if they are to be
sweet with freedom's breath, at last.[8]
[5] Cf. Solomon's Song, iv. 10: "How fair is thy love, my sister, my
The Symposium |
