In this sense, and
whatever may have been the influence of Platonism on this erotics, it is clearly
far removed from an erotics that referred essentially to the temperate love of
boys and to its perfection in the lasting form of friendship.
It
is true that the love of boys is not completely absent from this romantic
literature. Not only does it occupy an important place, certainly, in the tales
of Petronius or Apuleius, which attests to the frequency and quite general
acceptance of the practice. But it is also present in certain tales of
virginity, betrothal, and marriage.
Thus in Leucippe and Clitophon, two
characters represent it, and in a completely positive manner: Clinias, who tries
to dissuade his own male lover from marriage, nevertheless gives the hero of
the tale some excellent advice for making progress in the love of girls.
Menelaus, for his part, offers a charming theory of a boy's kiss - not cunning,
or soft, or licentious, like that of a woman; a kiss that is the product not of
art but of nature: a glaze of nectar become lips, such is the simple kiss of a
boy at the gymnasium.
But these are only episodic and marginal themes. The love
of a boy is never the principal object of the narrative. The whole focus of
attention is centered on the relationship of the boy and the girl. This
relationship always begins with a revelation that strikes them both and makes
them love each other with an equal intensity.
Except in the novel by Chariton of
Aphrodisias, Chaereas and Callirhoe, this love does not immediately
result in their union: the novel recounts a long series of adventures, which
separate the two young people and prevent both marriage and the consummation of
pleasure until the last moment
(In Chaereas and Callirhoe,
the separation occurs immediately after marriage; but the two spouses preserve
their love, their purity, and their faithfulness throughout their adventures.)
These adventures are, insofar as possible, symmetrical. Everything that
happens to the one has its counterpart in the changes of fortune the other is
made to undergo, which allows them to show the same courage, the same endurance,
the same fidelity. This is because the primary significance of these adventures
and their ability to sustain one's interest until the denouement have to do with
the fact that in the midst of them the two characters hold strictly to a
reciprocal sexual fidelity. A fidelity where the protagonists are married, as in
the case of Chaereas and Callirhoe; a virginity in other tales, where the
adventures and misfortunes come after the discovery of love and before
marriage.
Now it must be understood that this virginity is not simply an
abstention resulting from a pledge. It is a choice of lives, which in the Ethiopica
even appears to be prior to love. Chariclea, carefully schooled by her adoptive
father in the quest for “the best of lives,” refused even to entertain the
idea of marriage. The father had complained of this, moreover, after
suggesting an honourable candidate:
“Neither by kind attentions, nor by
promises, nor by appeals to reason, have I been able to persuade her. Hardest
blow of all, she has aimed, as they say, my own shafts against me, and
brandishes over me her accomplishment in the arts of speech -- the subtleties of
which I have imparted to her … glorifying the virgin state, which, she
declares, is next to the immortal.”
Symmetrically, Theagenes had never had
relations with a woman:
“He affirmed with many oaths that he had never yet
had intimacy with a woman. He had spurned all women, and marriage itself, and
many love affairs that were mentioned to him, until the beauty of Chariclea had
proved to him that he was not by nature obdurate. But up to the previous day he
had never beheld a woman worthy of being loved.”
We
see then that virginity is not simply abstention as a preliminary to sexual
practice. It is a choice, a style of life, a lofty form of existence that the
hero chooses out of the regard that he has for himself. When the most
extraordinary occurrences separate the two protagonists and expose them to the
worst dangers, the gravest will of course be that of falling prey to the sexual
cupidity of others. The greatest test of their own worth and their mutual love
will be that of resisting at all costs and of saving that virginity which is
essential to the relationship with themselves and essential to the
relationship with each other.
Thus the novel by Achilles Tatius unfolds as a
kind of odyssey of double virginity. A virginity exposed, assailed, doubted,
slandered, safeguarded - except for an honourable, minor lapse that Clitophon
allowed himself - and finally justified and certified in a sort of divine
ordeal, which makes it possible to proclaim concerning the girl,
“she is still
the same, up to the present day, as when you sent her away from Byzantium; it is
to be put down to her credit that she remained a virgin when surrounded by a
gang of pirates, and overcame the worst of them.”
And speaking of himself,
Clitophon can also say, in a symmetrical fashion:
“You will find that I have
imitated your virginity, if there be any virginity in men.”
But
if love and sexual abstention thus coincide during the entire adventure, one has
to understand that it is not simply a question of defending oneself against
outsiders. This preservation of virginity holds within the love relation as
well. The lovers save themselves for each other until the time when love and
virginity find their fulfillment in marriage.
So that premarital chastity, which
brings the two fiancés together in spirit so long as they are separated and
being put to the test by others, keeps them self restrained and makes them
abstain when they are finally reunited after many twists of fate. Finding
themselves alone in a cave, left to themselves, Theagenes and Chariclea
“took
their fill of ardent embraces and kisses. In a moment they were oblivious of
everything else. For a long time they clung to each other as though grown into
one person, satiating themselves with a devout, virginal love, communing
with one another through the flow of hot tears, and commingling only by the
chaste means of their kisses.
For Chariclea, when she found Theagenes making
some too impulsive advance of manly ardour, restrained him by recalling his
oaths, and his attempt was easily checked. It was a light matter for him to be
temperate, for although mastered by love he could be master of his pleasures.”
This virginity is not to be understood, then, as an attitude that is set against
all sexual relations, even if they take place within marriage. It is much more
the test preparatory to that union, the movement that leads to it and in which
it will find its fulfillment. Love, virginity, and marriage form a whole: the
two lovers have to preserve their physical integrity, but also their purity of
heart, until the moment of their union, which is to be understood in the
physical but also the spiritual sense.
Thus
there begins to develop an erotics different from the one that had taken its
starting point in the love of boys, even though abstention from the sexual
pleasures plays an important part in both. This new erotics organizes itself
around the symmetrical and reciprocal relationship of a man and a woman, around
the high value attributed to virginity, and around the complete union in which
it finds perfection.
