anyone should promise them to deliver them from love's disease, they would repel him as an enemy; for even to suffer it is pleasant to them; and therefore, oh lovers, let no fear prevent you from offering and dedicating yourselves to love what should seem to you most difficult, nor complain, nor repent, if you have raised things lowly to your height, for love makes the little equal to the sublime, the lesser to the greater; and with just resolve it tempers the various dispositions of lovers, when with pure affection they receive its grace in their hearts. Yield not to dangers, that the glory may be so great as to take away the feeling of every sorrow; and, as for the captains and emperors of old, as a reward for their toils and fatigues, triumphs were prepared according to the greatness of their victories, so for lovers are reserved a multitude of pleasures and joys; and as with the former their glorious reception made them forget all their past troubles and griefs, so with the lover, when beloved by the beloved, his dreadful dreams, his uncertain sleep, his waking nights, his restless days are turned to highest peace and happiness. Hence, Lenio, if you condemn them for their sad effects, you should acquit them for their pleasing and happy ones. And as for the interpretation you gave of Cupid's form, I am going to say that you are almost as wrong in it as in the other things you have said against love. For to picture him a boy, blind, naked, with wings and arrows, means nothing but that the lover must be a boy in not having a double character, but one pure and simple; he must be blind to every other object that might offer itself to him, save that which he has already been able to see and yield to, naked because he must have naught save what belongs to her he loves, having wings of swiftness to be ready for all that may be commanded him on her part, while he is depicted with arrows, for the wound of the loving breast must needs be deep and hidden, and that scarce may be disclosed save to the very cause that is to cure it. That love should strike with two arrows which operate in different ways, is to show us that in perfect love there must be no mean between loving and not loving at the same moment, but that the lover must love whole-heartedly without any admixture of lukewarmness. Finally, Lenio, this love it is which, if it destroyed the Trojans, made the Greeks great; if it caused the works of Carthage to cease, it caused the buildings of Rome to grow; if it took away the kingdom from Tarquin, it brought back the republic to freedom. Though I might here adduce many examples opposed to those I have adduced of the _good_ effects love causes, I do not wish to busy myself with them, since they are so well known of themselves. I only wish to ask you to be disposed to believe what I have shown and to have patience to hear a song of mine which seems as if it was composed in rivalry of yours; and if by it and by what I have said to you, you