The love of two strong and loyal men is not the bond of satellite to sun, but the bond between two binary stars, revolving about a common center of gravity. Such a love seems to release extraordinary energies in each man, making each greater and better than before. This is a mystery the Greeks early recognized, and that lay behind the magic of Athens, that small city that created in a few generations a culture still dominant in every western nation.

Our society has been inhospitable to such binary loyalties, yet to Plato, it seemed that men united in a bond like this were those best qualified to constitute the leadership of the whole state.

"For I cannot say what greater benefits can fall to the lot of a young man than a virtuous lover and to the lover than a beloved youth.

"What those intending to live a noble life ought to experience throughout their whole life-this is afforded us by neither kinship nor wealth nor honours nor anything else, so well as love.

"Therefore I assert that a man who loves-if he is found doing anything disgraceful, or suffering at anyone's hands without defending himself, through cowardice-would not be so pained if he were seen by his father or his companions or anyone, as he would were he seen by his favourite.

"Similarly we see that a young man who is loved is specially ashamed when his lover sees him committing an offense.

"If, then there were any means whereby a state or army could be formed of lovers, they would administer affairs better than all others, provided they abstain from all disgraceful deeds and compete with one another in honest. rivalry.

"And such men together with others like them-though few in number-so to speak would conquer the world... For as Homer says, courage is breathed into the souls of some of the heroes by the God; but this love of itself inspires it, in those who love."

••2:nme/n;

SONNET-William Shakespeare

Against my love shall be, as I am now,

With Time's injurious hand crush'd and o'erworn; When hours have drain'd his blood and fill'd his brow With lines and wrinkles; when his youthful morn

Hath travell❜d on to age's steepy night,

And all those beauties whereof now he's king

Are vanishing or vanish'd out of sight,

Stealing away the treasure of his spring; For such a time do I now fortify Against confounding age's cruel knife, That he shall never cut from memory My sweet love's beauty, though my lover's life:

His beauty shall in these black lines be seen, And they shall live, and he in them still green.

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